The following is an excerpt from the novel The Bartender’s Cure by Wesley Straton. The Bartender’s Cure is available now from Flatiron Books.

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You’ve seen bars like this. It’s New York City, the center of the universe, and you’ve seen everything. Speakeasies, dives, pubs, wine bars, beer bars, tiki bars, bars in restaurants and hotels, in breweries and distilleries, in cafés, in grocery stores, in basements, on rooftops, on boats. Bars with twelve seats and two hundred. Bars that serve nothing but cocktails, bars with no liquor license at all.

Joe’s Apothecary is one of many, and yet, there is nowhere else like Joe’s. It’s small, with white walls and exposed brick, big windows looking out onto the street, a scattering of high-tops in the front, a handful of tables in the back. The bar itself a golden gleam in a dim room, a ten-seater ell built out of wood and brass, lit by Edison bulbs and candlelight. A cocktail bar, at its core, though not pushy about it, though there are regulars who come in for top-shelf Scotch and Narragansett alike. It’s a true neighborhood bar, the kind of place that is harder to find by the year in this city, the kind of place that could only possibly exist on this block, in this neighborhood, in this borough, under these exact unlikely circumstances.

It’s June in New York and the city is awash with kids in robes, blue and black and purple, the class of 2018 on the streets and the subways, double-parked in front of dorms and apartment buildings, and if I close my eyes I can pretend to be one of them, pretend the last two years never happened and I’m twenty-two again, fresh out of Columbia, a Bachelor of the Art of english literature, cum laude, thankyouverymuch. The world my oyster, waiting to be plucked and shucked and swallowed. Pretending I’m not flat broke and sleeping on my best friend’s couch and painfully single and so far jobless, although this last is about to change, I’m hoping, standing outside this lovely bar, ten minutes early for a trial shift, peering in through those front windows with a wine key in my pocket and my hair tied back in a ponytail and my stomach tied up in knots. Brooklyn is still dusky rather than dark, but I can see the flicker of candles inside, a dim warm glow. I crack my knuckles, try to remember the feel of a cocktail shaker, the heft of a tray. I have, as you can probably tell, some reservations.

Go to Joe’s, Gina said. Gina, the beautiful, heavyset, heavily tattooed owner of Hayley’s favorite bar, a thirty-something angel who took pity on me, who, she would insist later, saw something in me, and sent me to the other bar she owned, which is to say, this one. Carver’s short-staffed, she said, and I’m tired of helping them out every weekend. And I wasn’t looking for a bar job—I am not looking for a bar job—but I was in no position to say no, especially not in front of Hayley, and so here I am.

The bar is busy already, no time for a tour or any real orientation, just quick handshakes with the men behind the bar—Carver, the manager and Gina’s protegé (her word), a classic Brooklyn bartender type, stocky and tattooed and sporting a dark beard best described as luxuriant; Olsen, a blond Californian like myself; and Han, a lanky East Asian guy with a man-bun and a grin so wide you think it’ll break his face open.

You’re just in time, Han says, as if I have wandered in by coincidence and not at exactly the hour appointed. You can make the Snaiquiris.

Excuse me?

Baby daiquiris, Han says, brandishing a bottle of rum at me. It’s a Friday night tradition.

We don’t really have time, Carver says, and I can understand why; the place is packed, every table taken, no seats free at the bar, dirty glasses for days back by the glasswasher. Han pulls a face at him and drags me over to one of the bar stations. You know how to make a daiquiri?

It’s a question that’s not a question. The daiquiri is one of the basics, the bare necessities of cocktail bartending, the simplest of simple sours: light rum, lime juice, simple syrup. If I don’t know that, I don’t know anything.

There’s a shaker already sitting on the bar-top, and I lift up the rum first, and go to pour.

Oh, no, Carver says. Not like that.

He takes the shaker back, dumps it out. No free-pouring at Joe’s, he says. And he nudges me out of the way and makes the drinks himself. Pours it, cloudy and faintly green, into four elegant little glasses, and mine is heavy in my hand as I lift it up. To Sam, Han says, who I’m sure had better things to do with her Friday night.

I didn’t, but I let them toast me anyway. It tastes like summer.

Having failed my first test, then, I am relegated to the glasswasher. Han and Carver resume their roles behind the bar, and Olsen is out on the floor. The glasswasher is a noisy, scuffed steel contraption that cleans and sanitizes and expels tray after tray of hot, gleaming glasses, which I am supposed to polish and put away. Joe’s is the sort of place that polishes everything—wineglasses, of course, but also coupe glasses and rocks glasses and water glasses and Collins glasses and even the beer glasses, although those need only the most cursory of wipes. I use brightly colored cloths and I am thorough, if not as quick as I would like to be. Scott the Scot never made me polish anything.

The washer is in a corner behind the bar, the back corner, far away from Olsen as he works the floor, far from Han as he works the point, near only to Carver, who keeps his back to me as he bangs out drink after drink after drink. I watch the Dans as I work, their rhythm behind the narrow bar, the quickness and ease of movement, the economy. Olsen’s speed and agility on the floor. I’m not an asshole; I know that working in the service industry requires certain skills. I can tell that everyone here is good at what they do, that I am the odd one out and not only because I have the wrong name and the wrong gender and not only because I’m younger and less experienced. None of this surprises me. What surprises me is that I feel a small pang of envy.

But then, this is how I’ve always been: incapable of half-assing anything. As a general rule, I do things very well, or I quit. I am aware that I did not invent this breed of intensity; I come from Palo Alto, and in Palo Alto, people who are not perfect jump in front of trains. It’s quick, unless it isn’t, and after each sacrifice, vigils are briefly held, support groups briefly formed, crossing guards briefly employed to counter the copycats. Parents who do not wish to think that they are part of the problem donate scads of money to various suicide prevention organizations. Reporters circle, psychologists and sociologists confer. The same conversations unfold, worn as old maps: How can we take this pressure off our children? How can we teach them both to strive for greatness, and to accept goodness? Or even, god forbid, mediocrity?

How can we wash the blood from our hands without rescinding the prizes they cling to? The fancy degrees, the good jobs, the handsome partners, the well-compensated domestic help, the new electric cars, the publication credits, the profiles in Forbes and Wired and Better Homes & Gardens?

May one be pardoned and retain the offense?

Mine is not a glamorous job, it is dull, repetitive work, and not at all what I expected, although I will admit that for long, pleasant stretches it becomes meditative, even soothing. A couple hours in, Carver comes over with a pair of coupes, and he sets these down to the right of the washer with the rest of the dirties, and then he puts a hand on my arm and he shakes his head.

Not like that, he says. I have a wineglass in my hands, stem in the left, bowl and polishing cloth in the right. I can’t tell you how many bartenders I know who have sliced their wrists open like that. You snap the stem and next minute we’re rushing you to the emergency room.

He shows me how to do it properly, carefully, but it takes longer and the glasses don’t get as clean and I’m getting further and further behind, when I was keeping up just fine before, without injuring myself, and Carver leaves his bar station and comes back and starts polishing again. I’m sorry, I say. I’m just not used to doing it like this. I’ll get quicker.

Just let me do the stemware for now, he says, and then he doesn’t say anything and I polish everything that doesn’t have a stem as quickly as I possibly can. I’m not sorry. I’m annoyed. I’m wondering if this is what working here is like, being micromanaged by this unfriendly stuck-up hipster who treats me like I’m stupid. My chest feels tight and I feel hot all over and the silence is stretching on and on and thicker and thicker but I don’t know how to break it. And then after fifteen minutes or so I’m caught up, and Carver walks away again without a word.

At a normal job, like, say, the gig your best friend’s mom gets you at her law firm, you have a résumé. You have references; you have an interview, maybe a couple. In the service industry all of these things are true, too, sometimes, but then nine times out of ten you have an extra step, a trial shift, which means you work for free in an attempt to prove that you’re not a total idiot. There is an innate awkwardness to this; you don’t know anything about the bar’s policies or practices, you don’t know that they use jiggers or that the manager has some kind of stick up his ass about how to polish glasses. It’s like walking into a stranger’s apartment and using their kitchen—you’ve cooked before, I hope, but you don’t know where they keep all the pots and pans or how sharp their knives are or what they have in the pantry. Plus then it has been a long time since I last worked in a bar, and that bar was much less nice than this one, and I am flushed and raw and nervous and I am also desperate to succeed, and not sure how likely that is. I am so broke that I walked the hour to get here rather than taking the subway, trekked in the ninety-something heat and the ninety-something humidity from Hayley’s apartment down through the Disneyland sheen of Williamsburg, through the Orthodox neighborhoods with the women in wigs and the school buses painted in Hebrew, past the projects, down into Bed-Stuy. Showed up drenched in sweat and so thirsty, and my feet are sore already, and I need this job, because I need to be able to afford the subway, and new shoes, and eventually my own apartment, too. Did I mention you don’t get paid for trial shifts? I polish another wineglass and I wonder if it might be a better idea to cut my arm open just how Carver said and sue.

Back in San Francisco, I worked in an entertainment law firm, which, at first, I liked. Hayley’s mother was a partner there, and if most of my tasks were menial—fetching files and coffee, data entry, transcription—at least I felt like I would be getting something in return, something besides my paltry entry-level pay. Experience, guidance, mentorship. I had always liked Jackie, and she had always been kind to me, taken an extra interest after my mother’s death that summer, welcomed me into the Kane family as the Fisher family fell apart. The plan was, I would get some work experience at her firm, take a break from academia, and then go to law school, and then my life would be perfect.

It was a solid plan, and in those early San Francisco days, it seemed like everything was coming together for me. Greg and I were happy playing house in our Pac Heights apartment, IKEA furniture, Target kitchenware, the biggest TV I’d ever owned a housewarming gift from his parents. Greg was a Palo Alto native, too; in fact we’d gone to high school together, though we hadn’t really known each other then, Palo Alto High being a large school, Greg being much more popular than me—varsity track, rich parents, hot girlfriend. Me being the awkward nerd with the dead mother and only one friend. But now that we were dating, I was welcomed into his social circle—his childhood friends who had ended up in San Francisco, too, all of them working in tech now, and what we called the Girlfriends Club, which was exactly what it sounds like, and which adopted me as one of their own. Me feeling like a cool kid for the first time in my entire life. A cool kid with a good job and a steady boyfriend and a clear, straight path into her future.

But the job soured soon enough; I loved Jackie, but she didn’t have much time for me, and without her, I was only a paralegal, the hierarchy sharp and unforgiving, and I began to retreat into myself, drinking my burnt office coffee and avoiding eye contact and listening to London Calling over and over again on those same donut headphones, so bored and frustrated and lonely that if it were not for the sweet guitar work of the great Mick Jones I would surely have hurled myself from one of the enormous windows. Listening to “Koka Kola” like being a cynic about the corporate world made me somehow less complicit, as if I could remove myself through the sheer force of my disdain. And after that soured, it was only a matter of time before everything else did, too.

And then it’s eleven and Joe’s Apothecary is all but empty. Funny, these service industry tides; the bar will be busy again before the night is over, though the biggest wave is behind us. Our daywalkers are gone, either home or to rowdier places, and our nightwalkers are yet to arrive. We reset the bar: Carver and Han wipe down wet and sticky surfaces, clean the sinks, replenish the stacks of square black bev-naps on the bar-top; Olsen and I restock beer and liquor and wine from the stores down in the basement. When we return, Carver has disappeared, and Han is the very image of relaxed, leaning against one of the ice wells with a glass of water in one hand and his phone in the other, though he puts the latter away, now, and straightens, and says, All right, Samantha. Let’s make a cocktail.

He waves me over to his side. He smells like sweat and ethanol and he is a good half foot taller than me and he looks down with deep brown eyes and the same toothy grin as before, and he asks me, What do you drink?

I guess my go-to is a martini, I say, and we get to it.

Han stands half a step behind me as I work, looking down over my shoulder, and I hope I’m not blushing, but I probably am. I’ve made martinis before, of course, but he talks me through it like I haven’t, and I let him. The first thing, he says, is to keep everything cold. That’s easy enough: the mixing glasses are kept in a freezer under the bar, and the coupes are, too, and I pull out one of the former, setting it gently on the bar mat. The second thing, Han says, is vermouth.

There’s a famous quote from Hitchcock, or Churchill, depending who you ask, about how much vermouth to put in a martini: to paraphrase, a dry martini should consist of gin stirred over ice while looking at a bottle of vermouth. This, Han says, is bullshit. It’s a two-ingredient cocktail, he says. If you leave out the vermouth, it’s just gin in a cup.

Nothing wrong with gin in a cup, Olsen says, and Han shrugs.

Sure, I guess. But don’t call it a fucking martini.

Vermouth first, because it’s cheaper, and you use less of it, and as a general cocktail-making rule, Han says, you should start with the cheaper ingredients and the smaller pours, so that if you fuck up the drink early on, you’re not throwing out the expensive stuff. It’s all booze in this case, so the order matters less, but still. Vermouth first, then gin.

Gin: a neutral grain spirit infused or distilled with aromatics, with the primary flavor being juniper. The name, Han tells me, comes from “genever,” which is Old English for “juniper,” and also Dutch for “juniper,” and also the name of the Dutch liquor from which modern gin derives: a malty spirit that they, the Dutch, introduced to the English way back during the Thirty Years War. Another name for gin is Dutch Courage.

After the juniper you can put pretty much whatever you want in it: herbs, spices, citrus. Han pours us a series to demonstrate the range, little sips of pine and lemon lined up behind the bar. It’s always best to taste things side by side, he says; you get much more out of it when you have some basis of comparison.

Careful, Sam, Olsen says. Han’s trying to get you drunk.

The next lesson: stirring. You want that mixing glass to be full up with ice, and if you are using big cubes, like they have at Joe’s, you’ll want to crack some of them to fill the gaps. There is a tool for this called, cleverly enough, a tap-icer, a plastic, lollipop-looking device that will break ice up nicely, if you know how to use it, which I don’t, and the first time I hit my hand and the second time I crack the ice only to immediately drop the shards back into the well, and now I know I’m blushing, but Han doesn’t say anything about it, just waits beside me as I try yet another time and manage the great feat of cracking a couple cubes, and now all I have to do is slide a long, spiraled bar spoon into the glass and stir until everything is cold and diluted just the right amount.

Ideally the ice should stir as one, almost silent, but mine clatters around horribly and I’m thinking of Scott the Scot, who never said anything about filling the glass all the way or tap-icers or stirring silently, who used the small, chipped ice from the old machine in the kitchen, the technical term for which, I will soon learn, is bodega ice if you’re polite or shitty ice if you’re not. On top of this he shook his martinis most of the time anyway, and nobody ever complained.

I wish I were working with him again.

I know better than to say any of this out loud.

How long do I stir? I ask. How many times?

You get a feel for it pretty quick, Han says, but that’s not an answer. What do I do until then? He tells me that when he started, he always just counted to twenty-three and then tasted.

Twenty-three, Olsen scoffs. What kind of arbitrary hipster nonsense is that?

It was Michael Jordan’s number, you philistine, Han says, and Olsen is surprised into laughter. I finish stirring and Han leans in close, and he straw-tests, which is to say he dips a long steel straw into the drink, covers the top opening with a finger so that through the joy of science, the straw holds a sample of the drink steady as he lifts the business end from glass to mouth, releases the finger, tastes.

Just a couple more, he says, and I do it, and he tastes again. Perfect, he says, and I strain it out into a coupe, garnish with an olive from one of the jars on the bar-top, and then I hear Carver’s voice and I jump a little, I wonder how long he’s been watching, realize belatedly that this is another test, that everything about tonight is a test, and not the kind I’m good at.

Let’s talk, he says, and he tells me to wait for him in the back room, and I’m so nervous I feel sick.

I sink into a wine-red banquette, exposed brick behind me, more Edison bulbs and tea lights and a couple old Art Deco liquor advertisements framed on the walls. Cliché, I think, and I want to be cynical, but like many clichés, it works. The music is quieter back here, the light dimmer, and I can’t hear well enough to eavesdrop properly, and I feel generally like I’m in the world’s sexiest oubliette. I trace my finger along the dark grain of the table and then I weave my fingers together and then I make a circle around one of my wrists with my thumb and middle finger, measure my slender bones, see how far down my forearm the loop will go.

I drop my wrist when Carver reappears. He sits down across from me, his expression unreadable as ever, and he says, Tell me about your experience.

I run through it with him, start to finish, more or less honestly. It doesn’t take long. My first service industry job, a high school summer in Palo Alto, clearing tables at a café run by a friend of Hayley’s mother—easy enough, high margin for error, nothing fresh or hot to be carried out, just detritus to be taken away. Later, technically an adult, acne mostly gone, people skills slightly improved, fresh-faced at the host stand at an upscale Thai-fusion joint in Midtown Manhattan. Then there was the pub, with the aforementioned Scott the Scot, just a runner at first, clumsy with three plates but young and cute enough to get away with it, mostly, plus even if you’re not great at your job, you can get pretty far on a good attitude and an anathema for being late. Promoted to server, clumsy again with trays full of beers and cocktails, at which point Scott the Scot got me behind the bar on quiet nights, which is on my résumé as, simply, bartending.

I’m not a total neophyte, I say.

Neophyte, Carver echoes. He looks down at my résumé then, back up at me. What about the last two years?

I had an office job, I say. I say nothing about the months in the Arizona desert after that. I say nothing about the specter of grad school looming on the horizon, fifteen months away, not that I’m counting. Carver’s eyes are gray and grave, crow’s-feet gathering at the corners. I realize with a rush of cold blood that he does not want to hire me; that I am not good enough; that this, too, will be added to my lengthening list of missed and squandered opportunities. That I will have to go back to Hayley and say, Still no.

Plus I can tell Carver doesn’t like me, and that irks me. It’s not that I don’t believe anyone could dislike me—I left San Francisco pretty universally reviled. But Carver doesn’t know about any of that. He’s only just met me. So why doesn’t he like me?

How do you make your Manhattan?

It takes me a second to realize he’s talking about the drink and not the borough, to realize that I am being quizzed. Manhattan, though, that’s easy; Scott the Scot taught me that ages ago. Whiskey, sweet vermouth, Angostura bitters. Cherry garnish.

Can you name a tequila cocktail that isn’t a margarita? he asks, and that’s harder, but I remember one from my favorite bar back in San Francisco, something sweet that Greg liked, an El Diablo, and when I say the name Carver looks surprised and almost impressed.

What’s in a French 75? he asks, and this one stumps me. I have never heard of a French 75. Um, I say. Cognac?

Maybe, Carver says, which I think is him being a dick, though I will later learn that there is some disagreement as to whether a French 75 calls for gin or brandy and so, yes, maybe cognac.

Carver is quiet for a moment, staring down at my résumé as if there were anything illuminating on it. Look, I say. I’m not a rock star mixologist or whatever. But I’d like to learn. I’m a quick study. And I’m nice, and I’m always on time, and I’m a good hard worker. And Gina—

Fucking Gina, Carver says, which shuts me up. He sighs and rubs the back of his neck with his fingers and he says, Well. Olsen likes you. And Han says you make a great martini. His eyes meet mine again. He looks tired. Defeated, even. What’s the rest of your week look like? he asks, and I tell him it’s open.

Let’s get you training with Han and Olsen on Sunday, he says. And we’ll go from there.

Great, I say, and he smiles, but it doesn’t reach his eyes. He stands up, shakes my hand.

Oh, he says. And don’t say mixologist. And then he’s gone.

I walk back out to the bar like an astronaut readjusting to gravity, and I wonder if I should just go home, if it’s weird for me to hang out here, but Olsen is pulling out a stool for me and Han is grinning from behind the bar and I sit down, and they make me a drink. French 75, Han says. Carver’s orders.

French 75: a classic, pre-Prohibition drink enjoyed by the likes of Ernest Hemingway, named after a specific French field gun used in World War I. Drink and weapon alike known for efficacy and strength. Some argument, as we mentioned, about whether it was, originally, made with gin or cognac, but the other ingredients consistent: sugar, lemon, champagne.

Our next bar lesson, then. As a general rule, anything with citrus gets shaken, and the French 75 is no exception. At Joe’s they use tin-on-tin shakers, two stainless steel cups in different sizes. Scott the Scot used Bostons—same general idea, but you replace the larger of the tins with a pint glass—but Han says the tin-on-tin is pretty much industry standard these days.

Build your drink in the smaller of the tins, cheaper ingredients first again—simple syrup first, then lemon juice, gin last. Don’t shake the champagne; that will end badly for you. Fill the whole tin with ice—again, all the way up. Seal it with the bigger tin, at a nice angle, the outside edges flush on one side, like a wide-based obtuse triangle. Shake it hard, harder, see how the tin is frosting over. How long you do this depends on the size of your ice, and on how the drink is served—you can pour it a little stronger if it’s going on ice, whereas if it’s going up it should be diluted to precisely where you want it. A French 75 gets a short shake: just enough to chill and mix.

There are all kinds of different fancy shakes out there, Han says, but as long as you’re getting the drink cold and aerated and mixed together, the form of your motion is really just a matter of aesthetics and ergonomics. He says this, and yet I can’t help but admire the sharp fierce form of his shake, the forceful elegance of it.

Hit the base of the triangle, crack it open. Strain the drink through a Hawthorne strainer—that’s the funny-looking one with the spring around the edge—and if you’re serving it up, which we are, a mesh one, too. This gets the ice chips out. Before Joe’s I never considered ice chips in a cocktail offensive, but Han assures me that they are. Aesthetics again, but also because they will further dilute the drink, and you have, presumably, diluted it perfectly already.

Top with champagne, pass to your eagerly awaiting guest.

This is the most delicious thing I’ve ever tasted, I say, and Han bows.

How do any of us end up working in bars? Some become bartenders on purpose—Han, Gina, Scott the Scot. But more often we stumble into it, in moments like these. Because our shiny degrees have not delivered the futures we were promised. Because we are night owls in a world that prizes early birds. Because we are tired of staring at screens, of sitting in unending meetings, of working for companies that do and make nothing. Because something marked us in our lives, or we marked ourselves, as somehow unfit for the office, for the classroom, for the nine-to-five. Because we descended, and found that once we had drunk the nectar of this particular netherworld, we could never go home.

I hear we get you on Sunday, he says, and I like the way he says it, as if this were a privilege and not a pain in the ass. I nod. Come in at eight again, Han says. I’ll run you through closing.

The door opens then, a group of noisy women descending on one of the high-tops, Olsen hurrying over with menus and water. The late-night wave beginning, me alone with my French 75 and a feeling like a fever breaking. The bar-top before me is cool, dark brass, dulled and stained with rings from past glassware, splashes of Angostura bitters, streaks of green. Every bar-top has its scars: warped wood, scuffed marble, scratched plastic. Part of the charm, Scott the Scot used to say; you want your bar to feel lived-in.

Even tarnished I find this one particularly lovely.

How you doing there, kiddo?

It’s Han again, leaning over to refill my water, gesturing to my French 75, which I am surprised to realize I’ve finished. Can I get you another?

But I shake my head. I have to go, I say. The commute to Williamsburg is a real bitch.

You’re living in Williamsburg? He looks horrified. Why, did you lose a bet?

Just crashing there for now, I say. While I look for my own place. True and not true: I have not yet started looking because, until now, I have not had any source of income, have not had any indication that my return to New York would be anything more than a brief, ill-starred visit.

So no, I will not have another drink, and I get up to go, and Han holds up a finger. Calls out to Carver, Olsen. Team meeting, he says, and I’m worried for a second, but by team meeting Han just means shots, whiskey all around, and I pick up my glass, inhale. Butterscotch, I say. Vanilla. Maybe peach?

It’s not a test, Sam, Han says, but isn’t it always?