She stared at it, mesmerized by the lovely green bottle so like Christmas with its lovely red emblem in the center. It called to her from across the room.

Could she resist? Tough when she could imagine the scent of pine needles drifting up from a frosty glass.

“Not tonight,” she mumbled to no one. She had promised herself not tonight she’d not be tempted by the tang of that remembrance. Still her mouth watered with the memory.

However, the last time she’d imbibed she woke up the next morning not knowing where she was or how she got there. You put yourself at great risk when you drank too much in the big city. Every day it seemed she read about some woman’s body being found in an alley or under an overpass their bodies mutilated nothing but a vacant stare in their eyes.

She glared at the bottle again. What was it about a bottle of Tanqueray that so enticed her. Many people couldn’t abide the taste of gin, even good gin with lots of lime. It had to have lots of lime.

Christine Howard