by Ed Sikov
It was 2:40 a.m., and I was alone. Dan had flown off again – this time to Tucson and Albuquerque – on a zip-trip for some clinical trials his company was running on an Alzheimer's drug in which Dan had no confidence. It was a useless trip for a useless drug, and he was miserable about going. I said, "Forget about it." I ought to know better; of course he didn't laugh. No, he gave me yet another stern lecture about how Alzheimer's jokes aren't funny. "Oh, but they are!" I replied. "As long as you don't forget them."
Anyway, I should be used to sleeping alone, given all of Dan's work travel, but I'm not. I hate it. I don't sleep well without him.
Mostly I toss and turn and then lurch zombie-like into the kitchen and eat what's available. I once scarfed down a whole can of Spam during one endless, hungry night. Hey, I always keep it on hand in case of nuclear attack or dirty bomb. I'm patriotically paranoid, so shut up about Spam.
But that night I wasn't hungry. What I craved was music – one particular song. My iPod was on the nightstand, so I was right on time when I got the earbuds in, found the song and pushed "play":
"It's a quateh ta thwee/
Theh's no one in the pwace/
But you and me.
So set 'em up, Joe/
I gotta wittw stowy/
That you oughta know…"
Yes, it's the great Harold Arlen-Johnny Mercer song, "One for My Baby," as sung in 1959 by the still-a-knockout-at-58 Marlene Dietrich.
Dietrich may be unique in that she appears to be the only Hollywood star to have a classic cocktail named for her. (There are other star-themed cocktails, including the Hi-Ho, named for the Lone Ranger's rallying cry to his horse – but they're scarcely classics.) The Marlene has but three ingredients – lots of rye (or Canadian if you must), a touch of orange curacao and a couple dashes of bitters. But like Dietrich and the allure she created by way of lenses and celluloid, her cocktail is much more entrancing than the sum of its parts. The mini-splash of curacao and the even tinier dash of bitters bring out the rye's gingery quality – a spicy essence rye doesn't have on its own.
And like Marlene herself, the cocktail is easy to make. Billy Wilder ("Sunset Blvd.," "Some Like It Hot") used to get Dietrich going at dinner parties by asking her to talk about her sexual exploits. Well, she'd begin, I did this guy and that gal and this gal and that guy…. Wilder would coax her into revealing extremely intimate details, Marlene was happy to oblige, and the other guests would fall stone silent, too stunned to speak. At which point Wilder, who always had a punchline ready to roll, would ask the table faux-innocently, "Are we boring you?"
So there I was, wistening – er, listening – to Marlene, over and over again, in darkness. Since there was no one in the place but she and me, I made myself a Dietrich and drifted off to sleep as soon as I downed the last spicy drop.
The Marlene Dietrich
3 oz rye (or Canadian)
1/2 tsp of orange curacao
2 dashes of Angostura bitters or to taste
Pour ingredients in a cocktail shaker filled with ice; shake; serve. After midnight, or any time, you can also make it on the rocks, but don't tell anybody.
