Cocktail Hour: Guest bartender Travis E. Poling serves up the Ginger Scald

Two versions of the Ginger Scald featured in Scott Lynch's "The Lies of Locke Lamora." The one on the left is made with sherry, the one on the right with Marsala.

Guest bartender Travis E. Poling drinks beer and reads books, and every now and then he writes books about beer. The latest is San Antonio Beer: Alamo City History by the Pint with co-author Jeremy Banas. Poling has been a journalist in the San Antonio area for nearly 30 years and is at work on his third book on beer, researching a historical novel and serving as guest curator for an upcoming museum exhibit on brewing in Texas.

It wasn’t until reading about the upcoming fourth novel in the Gentlemen Bastards cannon that Scott Lynch came to my attention. The premise from this Wisconsin fantasy writer was intriguing, so I shopped my own home library and to great delight found Lynch’s debut novel The Lies of Locke Lamora.

The setting for this 2006 debut fantasy is the city of Camorra, reminiscent of an Italian city-state with the canals of Venice, a ruling Duke and a peerage protected by the Secret Peace from a hierarchal thieving class ruled by the ruthless Capa Barsavi.

We meet Locke Lamora as a newly orphaned thief in training and follow him through his unconventional upbringing in revealing flashbacks in between the ambitious con action of the Gentlemen Bastards gang led by the adult Lamora.

This is a caper tale, with deceptions on multiple levels, and a story of revenge served both with calculating cold and hot abandon. The character of Locke is as likable as he is cunning, making him at ease posing as a brandy merchant from far lands in a long con of the Don Lorenzo and Doña Sofia. His team, through multiple talents and disguises, brings the falsehood to life.

Beginning, middle and end are all satisfying with numerous twists including a threat to the Camorri underworld by the mysterious Grey King, who is picking off the underbosses. And while this novel wraps nicely, there are enough hints throughout to tease future plot lines. There are mentions of an absent female member of the team, who may have been a love interest of Lamora, lands across the sea from Camorra, and the mysteries of the long-gone alien race that built the mostly indestructible bones of the city on which Camorra was built.

It isn’t often that a fantasy novel includes instructions for a cocktail, but since Lynch provided instructions on a Camorri drink sipped while wealthy spectators watched nasty sea beasties tear prisoners apart as punishment and amusement, I thought I’d give this monster a go (with some substitutions, of course. Here is the description in the book:

“Cont? moved adroitly to fill [the Don’s request for a Ginger Scald], selecting a tall crystal wine flute, into which he poured two fingers of purest Camorri ginger oil, the color of scorched cinnamon. To this he added a sizable splash of milky pear brandy, followed by a transparent heavy liquor called ajento, actually a cooking wine flavored with radishes. When this cocktail was mixed, Cont? wrapped a wet towel around the fingers of his left hand and reached for a covered brazier smoldering to the side of the liquor cabinet. He withdrew a slender metal rod, orange-red at the tip, and plunged it into the cocktail; there was an audible hiss and a small puff of spicy steam. Once the rod was stanched, Cont? stirred the drink briskly and precisely three times, then presented it to Locke on a thin, silver plate.”

Here’s my variation on the drink using a French ginger liqueur as the spicy base. To recreate the fictional ajento I tried infusing the wine with radish, but the concoction became a bit sulfurous after a few hours. The muddling imparted a cleaner flavor.

GINGER SCALD

1.5 ounces Domaine de Canton ginger liqueur
1 ounce Laird’s Straight Apple Brandy
0.5 ounces Poire (pear liqueur)
1.5 ounces Sweet Marsala wine
3 dashes Angostura aromatic bitters
1 radish

Pour first three ingredients in a fluted glass. Remove a 1/8-inch slice from the center of the radish and set aside. Chop the rest of the radish and muddle it with the wine (for a different take, use sherry instead of Marsala). Add the bitters to the wine, strain and top off the drink. Stir three times with a heated rod (I used a metal kabob skewer heated on a gas burner). Garnish with the slice of radish on the rim.

 

Cocktail Hour: The Next in Line (Inspired by Ray Bradbury’s story of the same name)

The Next in Line cocktail takes its name from Ray Bradbury's tale of the mummies of Guanajuato.

Ray Bradbury wrote some truly terrifying fiction over the years, and for my money, “The Next in Line” is among his creepiest.

The story was the result of his 1945 visit to Guanajuato, Mexico, where he saw the city’s famed mummies. Relatives of the dead were required to pay an annual grave tax to keep their dearly departed underground in Guanajuato. Fail to pay up, and your loved one’s corpse would be dug up to make room for new arrivals in the crowded cemeteries. When they began to exhume bodies, however, the authorities discovered that many of them had naturally mummified in the arid soil.

Guanajuato, of course, saw another revenue opportunity. It stood the mummies in a line and lets tourists gawk — provided they pony up a few pesos.

“The Next in Line’s” middle-aged American couple, Joseph and Marie, are on vacation in Mexico. Joseph is eager to check out the famed mummies, but Marie wants nothing of them. They couple has already witnessed a funeral procession for an infant and the morbid scene has left her feeling rather uneasy.

That unease builds into terror, and because this is a horror story, Joseph naturally drags her into a face-to-face viewing of the mummies. When she does, Bradbury invokes powerful descriptive language to give us the creeps as well.

They looked as if they had leaped, snapped upright in their graves, clutched hands over their shriveled bosoms and screamed, jaws wide, tongues out, nostrils flared.

And been frozen that way.

All of them had open mouths.  Theirs was a perpetual screaming.  They were dead and they knew it.  In every raw fiber and evaporated organ they knew it.

She stood listening to them scream.

The "Next in Line" is available in Bradbury's October Country collection.

While plenty of horror writers can describe dead bodies, Bradbury’s story sticks with the reader because he so effectively taps into Marie’s mounting dread. Every tiny sign of illness, every symbol of death, becomes an awful and foreboding drumbeat in her own funeral procession.

We also realize that Joseph is a sadist who mocks her morbid fixation, at one point buying a Day of the Dead candy skull and eating it in front of her. Naturally, he makes sure she notices that the skull is decorated with her own name.

If you’ve read “The Next in Line,” you know exactly why Marie has reason to be terrified. If you haven’t, I won’t give it away. Either way, why not pick up Bradbury’s October Country collection and give it a read with its namesake cocktail in hand?

Tequila seems to be the obvious liquor for a story taking place in Mexico, and in homage to the American couple, I borrowed the other ingredients from a whiskey cocktail called the Brown Derby, the namesake drink of the famed restaurant in Bradbury’s L.A. hometown.

It’s just the kind of easy-sipping cocktail that would go down easy in the Guanajuato sun. And like nasty Joseph, it’s got a bite that sneaks up on you.

THE NEXT IN LINE

2 oz. anejo tequila
1 oz. freshly squeezed graprefruit juice
1/2 oz. honey
1/2 tsp lemon juice
Twist of lemon rind for garnish

Place all the ingredients in an ice-filled cocktail shaker and shake vigorously for about 20 seconds. Pour into a couple glass and garnish with the twist.


 

Cocktail Hour: The Nightflyer inspired by George R.R. Martin’s novella “Nightflyers”

The cover of the 1985 TOR edition of Nightflyers

Before the HBO series, the best seller list and the late night talk show appearances, Game of Thrones/Song of Ice and Fire author George R.R. Martin penned science fiction that was every bit as dark and rewarding as his epic fantasy. Some, including the 1980 novella “Nightflyers,” was dark enough to drift in that chilling stretch of space between sf and horror.

“Nightflyers,” available in Martin’s Dreamsongs: A RRetrospective, opens by describing an ancient alien race, the volcryn, who have been traveling the universe for millennia without direct human contact. “When Jesus of Nazareth hung dying on his cross, the volcryn passed within a light-year of his agony, headed outward,” the story’s unnamed narrator explains.

We learn that a man named Karoly d’Branin has assembled an underfunded research mission to seek contact with the volcryn. His motley collection of academics travels on a starcraft called the Nightflyer to reach the enigmatic aliens. Strangely, the ship’s sole crewmember, Royd Eris, hides behind the bulkheads, limiting his contact with the passengers to his intercom and a holographic image.

After some deadly and suspicious accidents, the team begins to suspect Royd is an artificial intelligence who’s covering up for a menacing inhuman presence stalking them on the ship. The rising body count and growing paranoia make for a ripping tale of deep-space terror. Think Alien shaken with Scanners and served with a 2001: A Space Odyssey chaser.

The Nightflyer cocktail is complex and mysterious yet easy to drink.

Martin masterfully builds tension during the novella’s hundred pages by throwing one difficulty after another at the research team. Beyond unraveling the nature of the ship’s inhuman presence, they must stave off the craft’s destruction, deal with an undead menace and be prepared for their pending encounter with volcryn. That’s a lot of balls to keep in the air — especially with one character after another perishing under increasingly grisly circumstances.

The fear is also heightened because we’re never sure who will be next to be blown apart or shot into space. It’s clear Martin began honing his no-one-is-safe philosophy decades before using it to keep fans riveted to Game of Thrones. Don’t expect any of the characters to be as vibrantly drawn as those in GOT, though. Probably because Martin is throwing so much into so few pages, none ever seems to be more than the sum of his or her quirks.

All told, though, “Nightflyers” is a worth your time if you enjoy the darker end of the sf spectrum. (If you like the novella, you also might want to search for the 1987 low-budget movie it inspired. Just be prepared to dig out your VCR; it’s never been released on DVD.)

This week’s cocktail attempts to capture “Nightflyers'” dark, cryptic feel by bringing together the complex flavors of gin with the complimentary floral notes of creme de violette, a liqueur made from violet flowers and a brandy base spirit. Orgeat, a sweet mixer flavored with almonds and rosewater, also adds another intricate layer of flavor. Together the ingredients make for a mysterious, slightly sweet and incredibly drinkable cocktail with a lingering floral complexity. The eerie lavender color is part of the appeal.

Nightflyer

2 ounces gin
1/2 ounce creme de violette
1/2 ounce orgeat
1/2 lemon juice
Lemon twist for garnish

Shake the liquid ingredients over ice and strain into a chilled coupe glass. Garnish with the lemon twist.

Cocktail Hour: Smoke Ghost (inspired by Fritz Leiber’s short story of the same name)

The Smoke Ghost cocktail brings a touch of smoke to the Manhattan.

Although best known for his Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser sword-and-sorcery series, many horror fans get their first exposure to Fritz Leiber via his oft-anthologized short story “Smoke Ghost.”

First appearing in the October 1941 issue of Unknown Worlds, “Smoke Ghost” is noteworthy as one of the first works to shift the ghost tale away from the drafty mansions and castles of 19th Century Gothic fiction. Its title apparition could only manifest amid the filth, violence and alienation of a large, modern city.

On his way home via a commuter train, neurotic businessman Catesby Wran spots an amorphous black shape lurking among the urban rooftops and smokestacks he passes. Soon, the sighting becomes an obsession, and Wran fears the shape — an embodiment of all that is dirty and frightening about the modern world — is pursuing him, attempting to taint him with its grime.

As the story unfolds, Wran finds physical evidence of his haunting, mostly in the form of soot he believes the ghost leaves behind. Although the reader is left wondering whether anything supernatural is actually taking place, we understand how Wran interprets it as the residue of “the frustrated, frightened century in which he lived, the jangled century of hate and heavy industry and Fascist wars.”

The leap is easy to follow because Leiber’s prose taps so perfectly into Wran’s paranoia. The story’s language is not evocative of the bumps and drips of the previous century’s ghost tales but of the hard, gritty prose of noir detective fiction. By emphasizes the setting’s filth and seediness, Leiber taps into his protagonist’s fear of the grim, grimy century in which he finds himself.

The opening page of "Smoke Ghost" as it appeared in Unknown Worlds.

It’s easy to see how “Smoke Ghost” left an imprint on horror works that followed — from Ramsey Campbell to the darker urban fantasy writers. A raft of movies from “Dark City” to “The Machinist” also seem to owe it a heavy debt.

“Smoke Ghost” is a landmark in the evolution of modern horror — and one worthy of raising a glass to. In its honor, this week’s cocktail introduces the element of smoke to one of the most iconic of urban cocktails, the Manhattan.

Smoke Ghost

2 1/2 oz Smoky Whiskey, such as Ranger Creek Rimfire Mesquite Smoked Texas Single Malt Whiskey
3/4 oz Red Sweet Vermouth
1 hefty dash Angostura Bitters
1 Maraschino Cherry

Combine whiskey, vermouth and bitters with a few ice cubes in a mixing glass. Stir gently until the mixture is chilled. Put the cherry in the bottom of a chilled coupe glass and strain the mixed drink into the glass.

 

Cocktail Hour: The Tooth Fairy (Inspired by Graham Joyce’s novel of the same name)

Graham Joyce's The Tooth Fairy works both as dark fantasy and as a coming-of-age novel.

The Tooth Fairy, the 1996 novel by late British author Graham Joyce, is the kind of dark fiction that eschews quick, easy scares for something more disquieting. Its pervading feeling of unease sticks with you long after you finish.

Central characters Sam, Terry and Clive are regular kids growing up in a working class town in 1960s England, prone to the boredom and silliness you’d expect. Things take an odd turn for them, though, the day Sam loses a tooth and sticks it under his pillow, expecting the usual compensation.

Sam awakes as the Tooth Fairy sneaks in through an open window. But unlike the creature he expected, this fairy is a nasty little trickster who smells of horse’s sweat and chamomile and threatens Sam and his family.

After that first chilling encounter, the entity continues to drift in and out of Sam’s childhood and adolescence. Of course, Sam’s the only one who can see the fairy, whose sex, appearance and moods change seem to change in lock step with his growing pains. For much of the book, we’re left wondering whether the being is real or a figment of his fragile psyche.

Unlike most speculative fiction, The Tooth Fairy isn’t plot-driven. Instead, it’s structured like a literary novel. The book traces the growth of the characters through a series of episodes during their formative years. We laugh and wince as Sam and his buddies engage in petty vandalism, are bullied by older boys, discover masturbation and, ultimately, girls.

And that’s what makes The Tooth Fairy so memorable. It works as both as creepy dark fantasy and as a coming-of-age novel. Joyce brings Sam and his friends to such vivid life, one wonders how many of the experiences were his own. The characters feel real and we identify with them, which makes the supernatural threat all the more disturbing.

The Tooth Fairy cocktail: Chamomile but no horse sweat.

A great novel with great characters deserves a great drink, so let’s toast Graham Joyce’s The Tooth Fairy with a worthy cocktail of the same name. This one, inspired by the Earl Grey tea-infused Lady Grey cocktail, doesn’t smell of horse’s sweat, but it does combine chamomile with that most English of spirits: gin.

The Tooth Fairy

2 oz. gin
1 oz. lemon juice
1 oz. chamomile-infused simple syrup (see below)
3 drops of orange bitters
Stip of lemon peel

Shake gin, lemon juice, chamomile syrup and bitters over ice and strain into a coupe glass. Garnish with a strip of lemon peel.

Chamomile-Infused Simple Syrup

1/2 cup sugar
1/2 cup water
1 tsp dried chamomile

Bring the sugar and water to a boil over medium heat. Add the tea and let it continue to boil for a minute or so. Remove from heat and continue to steep for an hour. Cool and strain syrup into a jar. It keeps refrigerated for up to a month.

 

Cocktail Hour: The Budayeen (Inspired by George Alec Effinger’s When Gravity Fails)

The Budayeen: It's like boozy baklava.

A memorable setting can make an already good novel positively sublime.

Take, for example, George Alec Effinger’s 1987 cyberpunk classic When Gravity Fails. While Effinger’s sharp, Chandler-inspired prose and well-drawn characters succeed on their own, the book’s Middle Eastern setting remains one of its most endearing features and something that set it apart from the flood of Gibson- and Sterling-inspired sf that flooded bookshelves at the time.

Gravity takes place in the Budayeen, a gritty-yet-glamorous criminal quarter of an unnamed Middle-Eastern city. It’s the 22nd Century and the Arab World is ascendant while the old Western superpowers have fallen into Balkanized disarray.

Enter Marid Audran, a youthful freelance fixer who prefers his wits to a weapon. The Budayeen’s 200-year-old godfather drafts Audran to track down a serial killer. The madman is terrorizing the ghetto, driven by bootlegged cartridges that plug into his brain and feed him the personalities of seasoned killers from James Bond to a sadistic torturer named Khan.

Audran soon learns his subtle approach may not work against this new adversary. His wits-alone code gets its ultimate test when he’s forced to get his own implants before the final showdown.

Gravity is a dirty, dangerous ride and Effinger wisely leads with his setting. The opening lines reel us in with the promise of peril:

The 1988 paperback cover of When Gravity Fails.

“Chiriga’s nightclub was right in the middle of the Budayeen, eight blocks from the eastern gate, eight blocks from the cemetery. It was handy to have the graveyard so close-at-hand. The Budayeen was a dangerous place and everyone knew it.”

Effinger’s descriptions of the Budayeen are so vivid, I was surprised to learn he wasn’t a seasoned traveler to the Middle East. Turns out, he modeled the district on his home town of New Orleans. While his sensory descriptions lend a similar seaminess, Effinger’s use of the Arab world’s intricate rituals of conduct, its religious details and ethnic tensions ultimately provide the greatest level of authenticity.

Of course, it’s best to explore any red light district, real or imagined, with a drink in hand. May I suggest this week’s cocktail: the Budayeen.

The Budayeen riffs on the Ramos Gin Fizz — a famous concoction from Effinger’s home town — by incorporating cinnamon and black walnut flavors to the orange blossom water for a Middle Eastern twist.

It’s like drinking boozy baklava. And far safer than anything served up at Chiriga’s.

THE BUDAYEEN

1 1/2 oz. gin
1 Tbsp. cinnamon-infused simple syrup (See recipe)
1 oz. fresh lemon juice
1 fresh egg white
1 oz. heavy cream
1/4 tsp orange flower water
3-4 drops black walnut bitters
1 oz. club soda, chilled

Combine all ingredients except the club soda in a shaker without ice and shake to combine. Add a generous number of ice cubes and continue shaking for another minute or two. Strain into a glass and top with club soda. Stir and serve.

CINNAMON SIMPLE SYRUP

1/2 cup sugar
1/2 cup water
1 cinnamon stick

Bring the sugar and water to a boil over medium heat. Add the cinnamon stick and let it continue to boil for a minute or so. Remove from heat and continue to steep for an hour or so. Cool and remove the cinnamon stick. It keeps refrigerated for up to a month.

Cocktail Hour: The Spacer (Inspired by Samuel Delaney’s “Aye, and Gomorrah…”)

The Spacer blends ingredients that riff on the exoticism of the other in "Aye, and Gomorrah..."

When I first read Samuel Delaney’s “Aye, and Gomorrah…” as a teenager, I had no idea what to make of it.

Most of the sf I’d read up to that point was about big ideas, big action and big conflict. People saving or destroying planets, besting alien adversaries and exploring new dimensions. And here was a short story deemed important enough to win the 1967 Nebula award that was simply about a woman propositioning the protagonist for sex — or something like sex.

What was I missing? Turned out, a lot.

In Delaney’s story, interstellar travelers — dubbed “Spacers” — are neutered before puberty to null the effects of the radiation they encounter during their travels. They grow into sterile, androgynous adults whose original sex is the subject of guessing games. Enter the “frelks,” a group of fetishists aroused by the Spacers, primarily it’s suggested, because the sexless space travelers are unattainable.

The story begins with a group of Spacers on a Kerouac-esque road trip that whisks them from France to Mexico to Texas to Turkey, drawing gawks from the populace along the way. We learn the Spacers are hustling for frelks, seeking compensation for their desirable androgyny and sterility. We also get the sense that while they’re superficially respected by Earth people, they’re still lonely outsiders.

About midway through the story, the unnamed Spacer protagonist ends up making eye contact with a pretty Turkish student, who invites him to her apartment. The rest of the story plays out largely in dialogue as they spar over the Turkish woman’s interest in Spacers and she tries to convince her pickup to stay, even though she can’t come up with any lire to make it worthwhile.

Delaney, who is gay, points out the story was “written three years before Stonewall and half a dozen years before anyone was aware there might even be a disease like AIDS.” It’s clearly a commentary on what it means to be a sexual other, and it makes the powerful argument that sexuality is not a choice — an idea not widely accepted 50 years ago.

‘“You don’t choose your perversions,”‘ the Turkish student tells the Spacer. ‘”You have no perversions at all. You’refree of the whole business. I love you for that, Spacer. My love starts with the fear of love. Isn’t that beautiful? A pervert substitutes something unattainable for ‘normal’ love: the homosexual, a mirror, the fetishist, a shoe or a watch or a girdle.”’

The story works in part on the strength of the prose, which whips along with a  playful rhythm. Delaney doesn’t beat us over the head with long-winded explanations about who the Spacers or frelks are and how this future society works. We pick up those details gradually, through dialogue and action, as the story unfolds.

Even though its powerful message about sexuality not being a choice may not be as revelatory today (for many of us, anyway), “Aye, and Gomorrah…” has additional resonance because it recognizes that human sexuality evolves with technological change. Who’d have thunk back in 1966, for example, that people would be so willing to commit mutual masturbation in front of computer screens halfway around the globe? And consider the number of fetishes — from latex clothing to extreme body modifications — that are the outgrowth of technological advances.

I don’t know about you, but all that analysis has left me with a powerful thirst. May I present this week’s cocktail, the Spacer?

The Spacer riffs on the fetishized outsiders of “Aye, and Gomorrah” by giving exotic flavors a boozy boost. The ingredients also give a nod to the story’s Turkish, Mexican and Texan settings. The tequila and tamarindo are a perfect border combination, sweetened by the pineapple juice, and the mint spins us halfway around the world to Istanbul’s Flower Passage.

THE SPACER

2 oz. reposado tequila
2 oz. fresh pineapple juice
2 oz. or more of chilled tamarindo (tamarind soda available at most Latin American markets)
Fresh mint leaves
1/2 tsp sugar

Muddle six to eight mint leaves with the sugar in the bottom of a cocktail glass. Fill the glass with ice and pour in the tequila and pineapple juice. Still until condensation appears on the outside of the glass and top with the tamarindo. Garnish with another sprig of fresh mint.

 

Cocktail Hour: The Night Manager… Inspired by Bentley Little’s The Store

The Night Manager combines tequila, Kahlua and China China liqueur.

Some of the most effective horror stories ask us to look at what happens when we become willing participants in evil.

Bentley Little’s The Store is one of those. The 1998 novel unfolds the tale of a mysterious big box store that arrives in a small Arizona town and seems to corrupt everything it touches, starting with the pristine natural landscape where it’s built.

It doesn’t take long for The Store to drive a wedge between protagonist Bill and others in town, including his own daughter, who lands a job there. Bill and a handful of contrarians worry about the new outlet’s effect on the area’s environment, its way of life and its mom-and-pop business owners.

But most folks, reeled in by the promise of jobs, upward mobility and a greater variety of consumer products, just go along.

Soon The Store stitches up a virtual monopoly and drives the town’s small businesses into insolvency. Anyone who dares speak up is whisked away by the mysterious Night Managers, the corporation’s shadowy, and possibly supernatural, secret police.

And that’s when things really get creepy.

It’s easy to read Little’s satirical horror novel as simply a condemnation of Wal-Mart and other big box stores, but I suspect he wants us to think deeper. Little shows how willing most of us are to make excuses for the excesses of no-holds-barred capitalism, so long as we’re promised short-term benefit — whether it’s the illusion of choice or the prospect of a better job.

Bentley Little's The Store mixes satire and horror.

The truth at the The Store’s center is powerful and subversive: It’s not Big Brother that poses the biggest threat — for government is bumbling and bureaucratic — but Big Business. Few of us, it seems, are able to resist the temptation of its creature comforts.

“It’s the corporations we have to worry about,” one of the characters conveniently explains. “They’re the ones with the money. They’re the ones who can afford to hire the best and the brightest, to competently carry out their plans.”

Prescient sentiment from a book worthy of its own cocktail, the Night Manager.

Since the novel is set in the Southwest, tequila seemed like the natural star for the Night Manager. I added Kahlua coffee liqueur to impart an appropriately dark hue. (The book’s Night Managers, after all, are garbed in Gestapo black.)

Bigallet “China-China” Amer, a French orange-based liqueur, brings sweet and aromatic notes to the cocktail, along with spices including anise and gentian. Those flavors add a sense of mystery and provide a good foil for the earthiness of the tequila and coffee.

THE NIGHT MANAGER

2 oz. tequila blanco
1 oz. Kahlua
½ oz Bigallet “China-China” Amer liqueur

Fill a small cocktail glass with ice. Pour in the ingredients and stir until condensation begins to appear on the outside of the glass and serve.

Cocktail Hour: The Springheel Jack

The Springheel Jack, inspired by Stephen King's "Strawberry Spring," features... wait for it... strawberries in a starring role.

I first read Stephen King’s short story “Strawberry Spring” more than 30 years ago, back when he’d released just one short-fiction collection, Night Shift.

I’ve reread it multiple times since then, impressed by the economy of its prose (it’s a scant 3,500 words) and its masterful twist ending — one of those that makes you slap your forehead, grin and say, “Dammit, I should have seen it coming.”

“Strawberry Spring” opens with an unnamed narrator reflecting on events that transpired eight years ago, when he attended a small New England college. March 1968 brought a strawberry spring, a “false” spring much like an Indian summer, to the area. That early warmth ushered a thick fog onto the campus, and along with it a serial killer locals dubbed Springheel Jack.

The narrator recounts the paranoia that gripped the college and the way the killings ceased when winter returned. As the story closes, though, we learn the killer has picked up his bloody work where it left off. And…

Let’s just stop there.

When I reread “Strawberry Spring” recently, the thing that struck me most was its pervading feeling of melancholy nostalgia. That same longing for a disappearing small-town New England runs through much of King’s work, but it seems especially profound here and works through with just a handful of deftly painted passages.

“The unwary traveller would step out of the juke-thumping, brightly lit confusion of the Grinder,” King writes, “expecting the hard clear starriness of winter to clutch him . . . and instead he would suddenly find himself in a silent, muffled world of white drifting fog, the only sound his own footsteps and the soft drip of water from the ancient gutters. You half expected to see Gollum or Frodo and Sam go hurrying past, or to turn and see that the Grinder was gone, vanished, replaced by a foggy panorama of moors and yew trees and perhaps a Druid-circle or a sparkling fairy ring.

“The jukebox played ‘Love Is Blue’ that year. It played ‘Hey, Jude’ endlessly, endlessly. It played ‘Scarborough Fair.'”

Great writing. Just the kind to inspire this week’s cocktail, the Springheel Jack.

"Springheel Jack" first appeared in the University of Maine's literary journal, but was later collected in King's Night Shift.

This drink is the kind that hits the spot when it’s warming up outside (even if it’s the warmth of a false spring). And strawberries get a starring role — here in a shrub, an easy-to-make concoction of fruit, sugar and vinegar. The shrub, which you’ll need to start on the day before, lends the drink a sweet and sour character not unlike the nostalgia King evokes in the story.

Be warned, though, after a few Springheel Jacks, you too may become lost in a fog.

THE SPRINGHEEL JACK

3 oz. bourbon
1 oz. strawberry shrub (see instructions below)
½ oz lime juice
Fresh mint leaves
1 tsp sugar

Place 6-8 mint leaves in the bottom of a pre-chilled, 12-ounce cocktail glass. Add sugar and bruise the leaves with a muddler to release their flavor. Pack the glass with ice and pour in the bourbon and shrub. Stir briskly until the glass gets frosty. Garnish with a mint sprig.

To make the shrub:

Cut up a cup of strawberries and mash in a bowl. Pour a cup of granulated sugar over them and stir until the fruit and sugar are well integrated. Cover and place in the refrigerator overnight. The next day, add the contents to a saucepan, along with a cup of red wine vinegar. Cook over medium-low heat until the sugar dissolves. Do not bring to a simmer, as you’re just looking for enough heat it to make sure the sugar is no longer grainy. Strain through a fine mesh strainer into a glass storage vessel and allow to cool. Use the leftover mashed strawberries on your breakfast toast or over ice cream.

Cocktail Hour: A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night

A Girl Walks Home Alone at Nigh highlights Persian flavors.

When a horror film is called A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night, we’re trained to think the girl in question is the one facing the dire threat. But in Ana Lily Amirpour’s 2014 debut feature film, the girl is the the predator, not the prey.

The nameless young woman, played by Argo actress Sheila Vand, wanders the nighttime streets of a fictional Iranian town called Bad City, populated by pimps, prostitutes, punks and junkies. She’s draped in a black chador which can make her appear anonymous or ominous, depending on the situation.

We learn early on that the girl is a vampire, and we see her savagely dispatch the local pimp, the first of several killings that make us wonder whether she’s simply quenching her thirst for blood or acting as a feminist avenger. When her path continues to cross that of the film’s protagonist, a small-time hood played by Arash Marandi, a new question haunts us: Does she actually have feelings for him or is she toying with him, amusing herself before the kill.

Amirpour does a great job humanizing the vampire without explaining too much about her. The girl’s ’80s-inspired clothing, the teeny-bopper posters on her wall and the synth pop she plays on her record player hint at who she was before she became undead. And those trappings also help us understand she’s more than just a murderous apparition.

Be careful of what lurks beneath the chador in A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night.

The movie’s stark black-and-white photography and effective use of silence probably owe as much to the influence of Iranian New Wave cinema and early Jim Jarmusch as they do F.W. Murnau. A creepy atmosphere pervades, but the movie isn’t without humor. The vampire girl acquires a skateboard and uses that to glide along the street for much of the film, and we catch occasional glimpses of street signs warning motorists to watch out for women in chadors — an image that takes on a double meaning here.

A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night doesn’t deliver the kind of bump scares and roller-coaster thrills of a Hollywood-style horror film, but it’s refreshingly clever in the way it humanizes its monster and draws us into a dream world that borrows details from horror, Spaghetti Westerns and art house cinema.

That’s why it’s the inspiration for this week’s cocktail.

Lime, cherry and rosewater are all ingredients that figure prominently in Persian cuisine, and they all figure prominently in this cocktail. The cherry is doubly appropriate here because of a Persian saying that we taste cherry when we die. Our final reflection on life is that it’s been both sweet and sour.

The cherries’ sourness is augmented by the lime in this drink, while the gin and rosewater lend an aromatic dimension. Like its namesake movie, this cocktail is refreshing and complex without being cloyingly sweet.

A GIRL WALKS HOME ALONE AT NIGHT

2 oz. gin
¾ oz. Luxardo Maraschino liqueur
½ oz lime juice
½ oz rosewater (available at most Middle Eastern and Indian groceries)
Maraschino cherry

Shake all the ingredients, except the cherry over ice. Place the cherry and a little of its syrup in the bottom of a chilled coupe glass then gently pour the mixed cocktail over top, allowing the red syrup to drift upward like drops of blood.