Here’s some advice: You need a restaurant manager as a close friend. Why? Because when you go to his restaurant, he’ll tell the chef to send out all sorts of delightful little plates of things and an extra dessert or two, none of which you will pay for. You have 10 lawyer friends; they’ll all charge you. Twenty doctors? Not one lousy discount. But one restaurant manager? Suddenly you’re Auntie Mame – "Life’s a banquet, and most poor suckers are starving to death!"

Our Fire Island housemates, Ian and Frankie, are both (as Ian put it) "lifers in food service." Ian’s the quiet one, Frankie the Big Flaming Mary. Dan and I had dinner last week at Frankie’s restaurant, Capryce. We ordered the pumpkin soup; out came peekytoe crab mini-tacos from the chef. Dan ordered the hanger steak, I the paella, but we also got a chef-sent plate of glazed duck, foie gras and Asian-spiced carrots.

Frankie kept coming over to our booth to chat. Capryce was jammed. Hoards jostled in the entryway, but Frankie found in us a rapt audience and casually handed the pesky crowd control problem to his panicking assistant. Frankie was busy telling us about a baroque wedding he and Ian had gone to in Brighton Beach. Once populated mainly by Jewish refugees from WWII, it’s now Moscow on the Atlantic. (Yes, the southern boundary of Brooklyn is the Atlantic Ocean: a real beach, with white sand and surfers. If you’re lucky, you’ll see a hot surfer dude carrying his board on the subway.)

The wedding was an over-the-top spectacle as only Russians think up. The reception began with a dramatic caviar bar; multicolored spotlights hit the different iced bowls of roe while sexy little Russian-American kittens crisscrossed the room with trays of Veuve Cliquot. For the main course, tuxedoed waiters paraded flaming meats around the room on swords before carving and serving them. For dessert there were sharlotkas and zapekankas galore, all a mere prelude to a vast, gaudy wedding cake that featured – Frankie wasn’t kidding and neither am I – a most realistic portrait in icing of Zac Efron. High School Musical was the 19-year-old bride’s favorite film of forever. (Note to self: when gay marriage is legal in N.Y. State, order cake with icing rendering of Janet Leigh being stabbed to death in the shower.)

"And the whole time... What?... I’ll be back." Frankie flew off like a hyper parakeet. He returned minutes later. "Sister Rose Gertrude – that’s what I call Carl, the sous chef – set the kitchen on fire. He’s an ex-Marine. Anyway, there were bottles of frozen flavored vodka on each table, and the first table that finished one got some weird Russian prize. Everybody was snockered. Huh? Gotta go. Don’t order the shortcake – it’s poo-sniggles."

For once, my mind wasn’t on dessert. I was contemplating frozen vodka. I work too hard mixing drinks, I concluded. Guests arrive, I’m making a three-course dinner, and suddenly I’m fielding cocktail orders and getting multiple shakers going. What’s wrong with me?  From now on we’ll have Absolut Peppar in the freezer, and if somebody wants a drink, I’ll say "We’re having La-Z-Boys." "What’s that?" "It’s a classic Russian cocktail enjoyed by czars and Bolsheviki alike. There’s a bottle of flavored Absolut in the freezer. Help yourself. Budem zdorovy!"

Lenivbli Malioik, or The La-Z-Boy

Stick a bottle of flavored Absolut in the freezer. Serve.

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.

Ed Sikov is the author of Dark Victory: The Life of Bette Davis and other books about films and filmmakers.