A girl receives a bedtime visit from a drunken party guest, who will haunt her fantasies for years. A young mother discovers underneath the wallpaper a striking portrait that awakens inconvenient desires. A divorced man distracts himself from the mess he's made by flirting with a stranger. These intimate, immersive stories explore life's watershed moments, in which seemingly insignificant details-a pot of hyacinths, a freshly painted yellow wall-and the most chance of encounters come to exert a tidal pull. Set in the swinging sixties and each decade since, Cocktail reveals the schism between the lives we build up around us and our deepest hidden selves.