The Woman Who Drank Margaritas

She was the woman who drank margaritas. Whether it was mid-morning or early afternoon or that dreary, gray hour sometime just before dinnertime in late September, she could be found with a frosty margarita in hand.

She didn’t let anyone get to her when it came to the recurrent margarita commentary. The sardonic comments from those who would appoint themselves the margarita police. The risk of margarita-shaming was just part of the hand you were dealt when you were the woman who drank margaritas.

The woman who drank margaritas cast a jaded look in the direction of Fuente, the part-time custodian. He was mopping up something from the floor that might or might not have been left by a bar patron who wasn’t nearly as practiced in their beverage consumption as the woman who drank margaritas.

“Tell me something, Fuente,” she said, letting her vivid peach margarita glow from its own inner fire as she held it beneath her experienced chin. “You look like a man who’s seen a lot of margaritas being drunk.”

Fuente mumbled something incoherent in Spanish. Despite her dedication to margaritas, the woman who drank margaritas was ignorant of the language of their home culture. She was a dedicated liquidist, not a dedicated linguist. She waited until Fuente trailed off into silence.

“You got it, Fuente. A world of amateurs. If I had my way, those pikers wouldn’t be permitted to lay their hands on a margarita. They haven’t earned it.” She took another generous swig from the peach margarita and slammed the empty glass on the bar. She motioned to Parra, the rotund, balding bartender who was cleaning out beer mugs beneath some tired-looking streamers. “Make it a Cadillac this time, Parra.”

Parra laughed his generous, large-man’s laugh, the kind of laugh that would’ve made the laziest burro perk up from half a mile away and look to see where the booming roll had originated, “Cadillac. Cadillac Margarita, ey?”

“No, a Cadillac Manhattan. You’re a card, Parra. The Comedy Closet missed out on a real purveyor of wit when you went down the bartending path.”

“Went down the bartending path! Ha! You’re a riot!” Parra roared out a laugh, then went to work industriously on the Cadillac Margarita, wielding the bottles and glass with the practiced motions of a man who was as much a part of the bar’s equipment as the tonic water hose or the automatic dishwasher. Within a few seconds, he slid the luminescent, pale drink across the bar to the woman who drank margaritas.

She studied it for a moment and made an infinitesimal sign of approval with her flawless left eyebrow. “Did I ever tell you the story of why I drink margaritas, Parra?”

“No, you never did.”

“And I never will.”

He hit the bar with one hand and laughed loudly and appreciatively, “You’re a real margarita drinker, for sure! No lie!”

She was there almost every day, taking in the clientele with her weary gaze. The beer drinkers, the wine drinkers, the vodka drinkers, and even the whiskey drinkers. All of them making their occasional foray into the world of the margarita, but seeming always to fall back, descend to the less exalted realm of the simpler beverages. The woman who drank margaritas had no patience for their lack of fidelity, their lack of dedication. She remained true to her complex drink, grasping each margarita with the firmness owed to a beverage that demanded purity and commitment.

One early afternoon, she settled onto her barstool with practiced ease and lifted her chin to make the ritual call out to Parra. But the rotund bartender was nowhere to be seen. Instead, a thickly mustachioed, red-cheeked figure she’d never seen before smiled at her like a mindless cultural border cliché welcoming a foolish tourist. “Senorita, what can I get for you? May I suggest our special pineapple margarita?”

The woman who drank margaritas held back her scoffing, her instinctive sardonic comeback. The man was clearly some fresh substitute, someone ignorant of her dedication, her command of the margarita repertoire. He didn’t know who he was addressing. It was unfortunate that Parra hadn’t filled him in, but she told herself to be patient. The man was clearly just ignorant, not ill-intentioned. “I am very familiar with the pineapple margarita and all of its features. But today, I’ll begin with the cantaloupe margarita.”

“Oooh, tasty!” said the ridiculous bartender. The woman who drank margaritas was losing patience with him by the moment. His asinine comment showed no awareness of the richness, the depth, the conceptual wholeness of the cantaloupe margarita. She barely trusted him to make a proper margarita at this point. She looked away from the bar while he clumsily went at the process, bumping into pitchers and glasses, training her gaze out onto the nearly deserted patio, where lime and raspberry colored umbrellas stood sentry over gum-speckled concrete.

After a seemingly interminable process of beverage mixing, the absurd pretender to the bartending throne, slapped the drink onto the bar, sending a huge cantaloupe splash sloppily onto the wood. “Canteloupe margarita for the lady!” he shouted far too loudly. He grinned his vacuous grin, “Enjoy!”

Enjoy, thought the lady who drank margaritas. What a superficial conception of what one did with a margarita. The true margarita aficionado accomplished so much more than mere enjoyment. As though to show him the gravity with which she took her margarita-drinking, she fixed him with her serious green-eyed gaze and lifted the margarita, downing half of it in one tremendous swallow.

He lifted his eyebrows like a ludicrous cartoon figure. “Wow, lady, you must be thirsty!”

The lady who drank margaritas was about to make a cutting retort to this tiresome comment, when she was seized with a dizziness and nausea such as she’d never felt. She wobbled and spun on the stool and as she tilted and slammed disastrously onto the floor, Fuente the janitor ran up in dismay. He cast an accusatory look at the bartender.

“What?” he responded. “She asked for a margarita!”

“That’s the lady! The lady who always drinks virgin margaritas!”