Andrew Baumgartner
The French 76
The recipe called for a lemon. Looking around the kitchen, there was no lemon. There should have been. There had been a lemon in his hand; small, no larger than a toddler’s fist. It had been perfectly rounded, except for the small bump at the top where it must have grown on the tree. The yellow rind had been perfectly smooth, he could remember running his hands over the surface, testing the firmness to determine—rather arbitrarily—the promise of juice inside. He had the shaker. He had the coupe glass. He had the champagne. He had the sugar syrup. He had the vodka. But he had no lemon to yield the twenty milliliters of juice he needed for the recipe. No yellow fruit to slice into and squeeze out the tart yet semisweet juice that the lemon had promised to provide. Looking around on the granite countertop, he scoured the kitchen landscape for the missing lemon. It was not sitting on in the bowl where fruits usually remained. It was not in the grocery bag, nor was it in the refrigerator—not even in the crisper. The lemon was… gone. There was one fruit supplanting the place of the lemon. It sat in the bowl alone, as if mocking his lack of yellow citrus. The tangerine was smaller than the lemon had been. It was orange, not yellow. It had a smooth outer skin imprinted with small pebble indentations, which gave it dark freckles. It was squat, not perfectly round as the lemon had been with its treehanging top bump, but round in the sense that said it had once been perfectly round until a small dog sat on it, or something of the like. It had no bump where it had once swayed from a tree, but instead had a small crater where the stem of the tree had once been. The skin was puckered where it had grown against the now missing stem.
Andrew Baumgartner
Most of all, however, it was not a lemon. With hesitation, he picked it up and peeled it. This was also different; you would end up with a pulpy mess if you tried to peel a lemon. The rind of the tangerine peeled away easily, revealing contained, separate segments. He bit into one. It was sweet and not at all tart and sour. With a frown, he looked at the recipe. He looked at his glass and his ingredients. He then looked back at the peeled tangerine. With a resigned shrug, he began to pull apart and squeeze the segments one at a time until he had twenty milliliters of tangerine juice. Not lemon juice. He poured the vodka, the syrup, and the tangerine juice into the shaker filled with ice. He shook the ingredients up. He poured them into the coupe, and topped the mixture with champagne, all as the recipe ordered. Except for the lemon juice. Raising the glass to his lips, he sipped at the concoction. He sipped again, to reassure himself of the taste. He looked at the drink and sighed. He really needed that lemon.