Sweetbitter (13 page)

“You're twisting the label away, keep it toward me.”

“I'm not turning it.”

“In Sicily you're cursing a person when you hold the wine with the label turned away from them. Stop staring at it, look at me.”

“It's not that turned. It's better than before.”

“I don't care about better than before, I care about correct.”

I grabbed a new bottle. I took the knife of my wine key and ran it around the lip.

“I can't wait until everything is a screw top.”

“Bite your tongue. You're twisting it again.”

“How do I get the knife all the way around without twisting it?”

She took the bottle from me and demonstrated, swiping the knife clockwise, then flipping her wrist open, the knife going from inside to out, and finishing the cut. The foil top popped off. She grabbed another bottle of the Bourgueil Cabernet Franc. We had a bottle of each of the house wines so I could really practice.

“Why do you know so much?”

“I've been doing this a long time.”

“No, everyone here has been doing this a long time. You know what I mean.”

“I find it impossible to do anything without investing in it. Even server work.”

“This job was supposed to be easy.”

“All jobs are easy for people averse to using their brains. I'm in a slight but stately minority who believes that dining is an art, just like life.”

I had made the cut. The foil cap came off in one perfect piece. I looked at her expectantly.

“Again” was all she said.

“But it's not just that this job is hard. Most mornings I wake up thinking, I need an adult.”

“That's you. You're the adult.”

“No, you're my adult,” I said and she smiled. “I don't know. I haven't done laundry since I moved here. I'm not lying.”

“That can happen in the beginning. Drop it off, pick it up.”

“I used to work out. Run at least.”

“That happens too. Join a gym.”

“I never go to the bank, I lose all my cash tips.”

“That's just Park Bar, little one. Balance,” she said, gesturing toward the bottle I held almost horizontally. I leveled it, “floated it,” as she said, in midair.

“You could talk to Howard.”

“Excuse me?”

“You can schedule a one-on-one with Howard. All the managers have mandatory meetings but Howard opens it up to the servers as well. You can review your progress, or just vent about work. Ask him life questions.”

“Um…” I looked at her, trying to see what she meant. I felt like I was standing at the edge of something, or maybe back against something, and I remembered what Will had said about Simone and Howard. I thought of that anorexic hostess, Rebecca. I couldn't even remember her face, all I recalled was her name on the schedule. “That's a little weird, right? Besides, that's why I have you.”

“I'm serious. He could advise you in ways I can't.”

“Why can't it be you?” I put the bottle down. “I don't want to talk to him.”

“I see how hard it is for you to open up to people, but Howard is someone that could help you.”

“Help me what? Get all my friends in trouble? Have a nervous breakdown and move back home? Get transferred to another restaurant?”

Howard wasn't so terrible. But his indifference with Rebecca, the way he erased her, upset me. And it felt like Simone was sending me away.

“Oh,” she said. She cooled considerably. “I wouldn't go in for gossip. He has mentored a lot of girls like you.”

“Girls like me?” I looked at my hand, where a cut on my index finger had reopened.

“Young women, I'm sorry. Young women like you who have moved to the city and…” She waved her hand in the air.

“And what?” It came out loudly. Will looked up from the dining room below and I waved.
And what?

“Listen, I will set it up for you, you can talk to him while I'm gone.”

“I don't want to, Simone,” I said. My tone changed and I saw it affect her. I was telling her I wouldn't. She touched her hair.

“Of course,” she said. “Well, you will need to continue working on your form for wine service. May I at least ask that you practice that?”

“You're going somewhere?” Had she said that? They let Simone leave the restaurant?

“Yes, it's that time.”

“What time?”

“Little one, it's nearly Thanksgiving. Jake and I are going home.”

Jake and I, Jake and I, Jake and I disappear.

“Jake kissed me,” I heard myself say, like a stranger was telling on me. I had been so restrained. Of course, I wanted to tell her immediately. I wanted to see if she already knew. But it was like the figs, the oysters. More than anything I wanted to accumulate moments between
us
—just Jake and me.

“Yes, he did.” She regarded me with a passive reception to my words. I couldn't find any causes for the cloud of tension that had grown during the lesson, but there it was, coloring the room.

“I don't know,” I said. Shut the fuck up, I told myself. “I don't know what it means.”

Simone sighed. She was silent a long time looking at me. “What do you think it means?”

I shrugged. Anything I thought of to say out loud would be juvenile when it landed in front of her.

“A woman needs to be in her right mind to be kissed. I tell him that all the time. Otherwise all hell breaks loose.”

People hear what they want to hear. I heard, I tell him that all the time. All the time, all the time, Jake and I. My finger was bleeding and I put it in my mouth.

“Have a great trip, then,” I said. I gripped the rails and started down the stairs.

“Enjoy the holiday,” she replied when I was halfway down.

LET ME TRY
to say it again: sometimes when he spoke to you he mumbled. You had to lean in to hear what he was saying. He repeated himself often. We were drinking the last quarters of open bottles of Cabernet Franc, and Jake poured them over ice cubes and it tasted like thyme and cranberries, and I said, When do you head home for Thanksgiving? And he said, Soon. I leaned in and said, When? He turned, lined me up in his sights, and said, Soon. I said, nearly falling off my stool, When? We should hang out before you go, and his arctic eyes said to me, Babe, I've already gone.

I WAS POLISHING KNIVES
at the front hutch when I heard my name. It sliced me, my name that I hadn't heard in months. Suddenly I saw the version of myself who had never come to the city, never fallen down the stairs, or said anything stupid. She was safe and as good as dead.

It was a kid I had gone to college with. I couldn't remember his name. He was in a suit. They always wore a suit when they came in with their parents. Or at least a sports jacket and tie. My instinct was to run into the kitchen and pretend I hadn't heard. But I thought Simone might be watching. I smiled warmly.

“You work here?” he asked, incredulous.

“Yes. Yes, I do.” I tried to see my new self. All I could see was the red and white stripes of my shirt. Why did I wear the red one, which always reminded me of Waldo and clowns? I split and watched us from the top of the stairs, I split and watched us from the ceiling, I split and watched us from halfway across the country.

“That's so funny!” he said.

“Yeah, it's hilarious.”

“Do you live here?”

“Not in the restaurant.”

“Ha, yeah. That's so cool you moved here. You live in the city?”

“In Williamsburg. It's a neighborhood. In Brooklyn.”

“Oh, I've heard of it. It's like the hip spot, right?”

Not the part I live in, I thought. But I knew what I was supposed to say. “Yes. Lots of…”—the words wouldn't come together—“artists, very…up and coming.”

“What else are you doing?”

Inevitable. Why hadn't I practiced this situation? Was it possible that I had ferociously recited menu ingredients to myself on the subway, but had never come up with a tagline about my life? Had I completely erased the world outside these walls?

What else am I doing? I am learning about food and wine and how to taste terroir and how to pay attention.

“I'm doing this,” I said. I paused. His expectation hung on me. “And I'm working on some projects.”

“What kind of projects?”

Jesus, his curiosity was baffling. Other industry people knew when to let it go, they understood the subtext.

“Mixed-media stuff. You know, all the different mediums. Um. Fragments. The human condition. The failure of language. Love. I'm at the gathering stage right now.”

“Fascinating,” he said, smothering me with his earnestness. “This must be the perfect place to gather material.”

I wanted to say, My life is full. I chose this life because it's a constant assault of color and taste and light and it's raw and ugly and fast and it's mine. And you'll never understand. Until you live it, you don't know.

Instead I nodded and said, “Yeah, it's perfect.”

“Yeah…that's great.” When he said
great
it sounded like
sad.
I steeled myself. The only way out of this was hospitality.

“Are you dining with us?”

“Yeah, I'm in the back with my dad and uncle. I was just looking for the bathroom. We're in from Philly for the afternoon. This place is his favorite. It's really famous, you know that?”

I smiled. “Well I'll come say hello. And I will let Chef know you're here. Please, let me show you the restrooms.”

I walked him over and he seemed to understand that it was time for me to return to my glamorous life as an artist who was accidentally polishing knives in a stripy pirate's blouse.

He started to leave but turned back and said, “Hey, do you think you could be our waitress? That would be so fun!”

So fun! If only I knew how to tell him I wasn't even a fucking waitress.

I NEVER WOULD HAVE
recognized him. I didn't belong to his world anymore. We called them the Nine-to-Fivers. They lived in accordance with nature, waking and sleeping with the cycle of the sun. Mealtimes, business hours, the world conformed to their schedule. The best markets, the A-list concerts, the street fairs, the banner festivities were on Saturdays and Sundays. They sold out movies, art openings, ceramics classes. They watched television shows in real time. They had evenings to waste. They watched the Super Bowl, they watched the Oscars, they made reservations for dinner because they ate dinner at the normal time. They brunched, ruthlessly, and read the Sunday
Times
on Sundays. They moved in crowds that reinforced their citizenship: crowded museums, crowded subways, crowded bars, the city teeming with extras for the movie they starred in.

They were dining, shopping, consuming, unwinding, expanding while we were working, diminishing, being absorbed into their scenery. That is why we—the Industry People—got so greedy when the Nine-to-Fivers went to bed.

“YEAH,
you in the marge now,” said Sasha. He had watched the whole interaction with unconcealed delight. “What, you think you like your friends? You never be like them again, honey pie. Look at you—you think you dip your toe in the pool? No bitch, you in the pool. You drowning in the pool.”

“I'm in the marge.”

“Yeah, like you in the marge with the fatties and the fags and the freaks and that guy that sleeps on the bench.”

“You mean I'm in the margins of society?”

“Yeah, what you think I fucking mean? Well, whatsoever, you an old hag now, just like me.”

I SAW HIM
that night at Park Bar. When I looked at the schedule I saw that they were both off for the next two weeks. Flower-Girl was there in a turtleneck dress and tights and riding boots, looking fresh from some polo match, but otherwise it was just us. Everyone else was filmed in oil and dust. I ignored him bowed against the wall talking to Will. I went to join Ariel and Vivian at the bar and as soon as I sat I felt it: he was gone. Every beautiful animal knows when it's being hunted.

I sat down next to Terry—it wasn't busy enough for two bartenders. Ariel and Vivian were bickering so I turned to him. He was drunk. He leaned into me, winking, his voice as fuzzy as his stretched-out cotton sweater.

“Hey, new girl. You know the straw that broke the camel's back? Is that the same thing as the last straw?”

He touched his fingers to mine. I don't know if he meant to. I put my hands in my lap. My beer was flat but I knew I would drink all of it.

“Absolutely. It's absolutely the same straw.”

He nodded, impressed that I knew.

NOT BEING ABLE
to swipe into the subway when people are backing up behind you. Waiting for him at the bar. Leaving your purse open on a stool with a mess of bills visible. Mispronouncing the names while presenting French wines. Your clogs slipping on the waxed floors. The way your arms shoot out and you tense your face when you almost fall. Taking your job seriously. Watching the sex scene from
Dirty Dancing
on repeat and eating a box of gingersnaps for dinner on your day off. Forgetting your stripes, your work pants, your socks. Mentally mapping the bar for corners where you might catch him alone. Getting drunker faster than everyone else. Not knowing what foie gras is. Not knowing what you think about abortion. Not knowing what a feminist is. Not knowing who the mayor is. Throwing up between your feet on the subway stairs. On a Tuesday. Going back for thirds at family meal. Excruciating diarrhea in the employee bathroom. Hurting yourself when you hit your head on the low pipe. Refusing to leave the bar though it's over, completely over. Bleeding in every form. Beer stains on your shirt, grease stains on your jeans, stains in every form. Saying you know where something is when you have absolutely no idea where it is.