Undine Spragg is the prototype in fiction of the international cocktail bitch.

                                                Edmund Wilson, Justice to Edith Wharton

I’ve been waiting for Undine to arrive since 5 o’clock, but as usual she is fashionably late.  What’s the point of showing up on time for cocktail hour when, if you spend an extra half hour bobby pinning your hair up in back, you can make a grand entrance after everyone’s seated at the bar, slightly lubricated by the first sips from their drinks?

The bartender is hovering, wondering if I’m one of those guys who’s going to order one light beer and nurse it all night like a colicky baby.  Yes and yes I’d reply if I wanted to reveal my innermost thoughts, but he wouldn’t understand.  Once Undine arrives, I’ll be forced into the higher regions of the bar’s prices by her refined tastes.  Not just a Cosmopolitan, it has to be a Kettle One Vodka Cosmo, thereby adding a $1 surcharge to an already expensive mixed drink.

I hear a commotion near the maitre d’s station, and assume correctly that Undine has arrived in all her glory.

“My baby,” she is saying to no one in particular.  “Has anyone seen my baby?”

“The dingos took your baby,” a busboy mutters under his breath–he’s all too familiar with Undine’s drama queen posturing.

“Over here, Undie!” I say in a voice loud enough to be heard but lacking unseemly volume.

“Ah–there you are!” she says sweeping across the room the way Loretta Young used to do every afternoon before The Mickey Mouse Club and Howdy Doody came on.

“What’ll ya have Miss Spragg?” the bartender says, trying to maintain his placid exterior; despite his best efforts to remain stoical in the face of impending disaster, I know, without X-Ray Specs, that like Gatsby, his heart is in a constant turmoil.

“A Kettle One Cosmo, dahling–as always!”

She says this brightly, but it is like sunshine about to be clouded over by a tornado.

“Coming right up!” the bartender says.

“So–how’s tricks?” she asks, but as soon as the words are out of her mouth, she begins to scan the room.

“The only trick I know is the detachable thumb one,” I say, and I tuck my thumbs under my index fingers to show her.

“Please dear–don’t be tiresome,” she says.  “The first time I saw that gag I kicked the slats out of my cradle.”

The waiter arrives and eases her drink onto the bar gently, carefully, like a 747 landing on an oak runway in a headwind.  She takes a sip and, much to everyone’s surprise, appears to approve.  The bartender is like a dog who’s been rescued from an abusive home by the ASCPA; he flinches involuntarily at first, surprised that he’s not being beaten with his Old Mr. Boston Mixology book.

“Satisfactory,” she says, and the collective sigh of relief around the room is audible.

She replaces her drink on the bar and emits a little sigh herself.  “I’ve had such a horrid week,” she says.

“Do tell.”

“Well,” she begins as reaches into the snackbowl that sits between us, “I took Monday off to wait for the cable guy, they gave me a two-hour window and . . .”

She starts to munch but stops suddenly, her mouth screwed up into an ampersand of disgust.

“Ptooish!” is as close as I can come to the sound she makes as she spits out the contents of her mouth into a napkin.

“Are the snackings not to madame’s satisfaction?” the bartender asks sotto voce, hoping to keep word of his failure from spreading in case there are any restaurant critics present.

“You call these Pizza Flavored Goldfish?” Undine screams.  “I think you must have bought the Costco Giant Economy size–back in the first Clinton administration!”

…………………………………………….

The last time I saw Paris, her heart was warm and gay, as the old song goes.  This time will be different, because I’m squiring Undine Spragg, international cocktail bitch, around town and believe me it’s no pique nique.

We’re supposed to meet at La Grenouille for frog legs before tooling over to L’Arc de Triomphe to watch the steroid-assisted stars of le Tour de France cross the finish line.  I’m filling up on bread sticks, hoping to s-p-r-e-a-d my meager salary as stringer for the Worcester News-Recorder to cover le dejeuner, which I’m sure will turn into le diner complete with escargot, pain au chocolat and a lycee technologique.

“Hello my sweet!” she says to me as she offers me first one cheek, then the other to kiss.  Thankfully she stops at two cheeks–I love her, but I’ve got my pride.

“Bonjour Mademoiselle et Monsieur,” our garcon says.  “May I interest you in an aperitif?”

“Yes, you may,” Undine says pleasantly.  Must be the phase of the moon we’re in, as she has been known to bite the head off a lapin if she’s in a bad mood.  “I believe I’ll have a perfect Rob Roy,” she says, and I sense that her dander is up, even if it is hidden by her cloche.  Her choice signals a challenge to the bartender’s memory and skills–has anybody ordered a Rob Roy in the 21st century, I wonder?  Not Bloody Mary likely.

“Very good,” the waiter says.  I let him off the hook by ordering a simple vin du pays rouge, and he returns in a few minutes.  “For madame,” he says as he places the rare drink in front of her.  She gives it a glance, then a sniff, and looks at the waiter.  “You are quite certain this has been prepared the drink correctement?”

“Mais oui!” le garcon says with self-assurance, and calls the bartender over. 

“I can assure you it is prepared perfectement,” the barkeep says.  “Two-to-one Scotch whiskey to sweet vermouth.”

Undine dashes the drink in his face.  “Not perfectly prepared, a perfect Rob Roy has equal parts sweet and dry vermouth!” she says as she stands up, throws her foxhead stole around her shoulders and storms out.

The waiter and the bartender stare down at me, furious, but all I can do is shrug my shoulders.

“What can I say?” I say.  “She is who she is–Undine Scragg, International Cocktail Bitch.”