Jenni Lee Afternoon Cocktail File

She measured the gin carefully, watching the clear liquid catch the light. She was aware of every sound: the clink of the ice cubes as she dropped them into the mixing glass, the gentle chime of the spoon against the crystal as she stirred—never shook, her mother had always said, shaking bruises the gin. She strained the pale, straw-colored liquid into a chilled Nick & Nora glass, the shape elegant and slightly old-fashioned, like something from a black-and-white movie.

Tomorrow, she thought, she might try a Sazerac. But that was tomorrow. For now, the afternoon was over, and the evening was a clean, dark slate. She smiled, and the silence smiled back. jenni lee afternoon cocktail

Jenni Lee was forty-seven, an age she had recently decided was less a number and more a state of delicate negotiation. She stood at her mid-century chrome-and-teak bar cart, a ritual she had perfected over the last three Tuesdays. The cart was her grandmother’s, a relic from a time when ladies wore gloves to lunch and drank cocktails before dinner without apology. On it sat a small crystal mixing glass, a jigger, a bar spoon with a red glass jewel on its end, and three bottles: a dry gin from a small Portland distillery, a blanc vermouth she’d discovered on a trip to Lyon, and a vial of orange bitters. She measured the gin carefully, watching the clear

Jenni looked at her cocktail glass, now half-empty, the borage flower floating forlornly on the surface of the melted ice. “I’m practicing,” she said. Tomorrow, she thought, she might try a Sazerac