Sweetbitter (27 page)

“None matters the least bit,” I repeated.

It was bright in Park Bar. Terry should have dimmed the lights. It was all too exposed, including my beleaguered insights, which began with old-fashioned nausea. Then a suspicion that Sasha was lying. I could never tell with him and cruelty wasn't out of his purview. Then a confirmation I had never known how to articulate: Simone had broken something in Jake—there was anger buried under his attachment. My compassion for that golden-eyed bartender was total in that moment. I thought, If only I had known…Then I laughed out loud. I don't know that it would have mattered, even if it was true. None matters the least bit. Sasha kept right on talking.

Apathy blanketed me in the middle of a life I had constructed never for an instant to be dull. It was an unexpected comfort. I didn't even want the cocaine that Will and Ariel offered me when they came out of the bathroom. We talked shit to each other for a while. Good songs came on, then forgettable songs.

Terry was from Jersey, the pretty part. Will came from Kansas. Ariel came from Berkeley, Sasha came from outside of Moscow. What did I know about them? We would occasionally remember each other, laugh thinking about how fucked up we used to get. I saw it all, how we had failed to penetrate each other's hearts. I couldn't blame the drugs. I blamed the job, how it made everything feel temporary and unpredictable. We never had the time to say anything that mattered. The Owner had said, “You can't train a fifty-one percenter, you were born that way. Our job is to recognize it.”

The jargon, the tenets, the manifestos—it wasn't just to make the guest feel better about spending their money. It was for us. To make us feel noble, called, necessary. They would miss me for a week. At most. Perhaps the biggest fallacy I subscribed to was that I was—that
we
were—irreplaceable.

IT WASN'T UNTIL
I walked into Howard's other office later that night that I recognized—and I mean knew with my whole body—that I had been operating my entire life upon the assumption that most men wanted to fuck me. Not only had I known it and encouraged it, I had depended on it. That did not mean I understood the actual transaction of sex. I only knew how to control it until the point of penetration. After that, I treated my body like a sieve—it all passed through me. With Jake, I wasn't a sieve but a bowl. Whatever he gave me, I could hold. When he filled me, I expanded.

It was said that Howard was a great lover. I didn't know what “great lover” meant. But he was not embarrassed by his age. He did not turn off the lights. We had a drink and he put his hand on my thigh at the end of an innocuous sentence. When he started a new one I slid my thigh toward him. His hand went higher. That was all. A sentence, a hand, a sentence, a thigh. These are the axes upon which we are balanced.

He only unbuttoned his shirt. His chest was covered in dark hair. He stripped me with authority. He seemed less impressed than charmed by my breasts, my thighs, my ass, my shoulders. A plaything. He spent a good amount of time warming up my body before he had me face away from him and toward the bookshelves in the auxiliary office with my jeans around my ankles. Jancis Robinson's
World Atlas of Wine, The Wine Bible, A Cheesemonger's Guide to France.
The novelty was valid, his clean, soft hands, the arrogance with which he positioned me. My only thoughts were: I could come if it was a different position, or a different room, or different lighting, a different night, a different man.

It was quick and he didn't ask me if I'd finished. I didn't think about a condom until he pulled out and I wondered if men were supposed to ask before they came inside you. I remembered when Jake gave me Plan B after that first night, how he passed it to me without comment. I had saved it because I had gotten my period. At the time I had thought Jake was considerate, responsible. Howard handed me a Kleenex that was hidden behind a stack of books and I thought, Why hide the Kleenex?

They would find out. I would never tell anyone, but I was acquainted with the way information trickled down at the restaurant. No one saw me enter and no one would see us exit but someone, somehow, would know. Simone would be furious, irrationally so, unable to explain to herself why. Everyone would sense it and avoid her during service. Jake would be shocked. Not because I was with another man. But because I had hurt myself, humiliated myself beyond the ways in which he had humiliated me. And he would understand how terrible it was that he hurt me. I had wanted to take some power away from him, but—my chest tightened as I threw the Kleenex away—I had made myself so small to do it that I was unrecognizable.

“I was like you,” he said, zipping up his pants.

“In what way, Howard?”

“When Simone first started, she used to tell the filthiest jokes. Old fisherman jokes, absolutely unrepeatable, they made me blush. She wouldn't flinch while she told them but then you would see her shoulders start to twitch with laughter.” He looked at me while he spoke, but he wasn't seeing me. “I was very serious about her. And I didn't understand the two of them. They repulsed me.”

“And?” I clipped my bra.

“Well, it hurt. It hurts, doesn't it? When Fred Bensen came into the picture I suffered terribly. Jake and I had something in common that day when she announced she was leaving us. I often wonder if we didn't drive him away. He really just…vanished. She never told me what happened. I thought it might soften her.” He shook his head.

“I get it. Now you fuck young girls to punish her?”

“No, Tess. I fuck young women because they taste better. I don't need to punish her. She built her own elaborate prison here. All I have to do is not fire her.”

“Jesus.” I had been holding on to the idea that Howard was not one of us. That he was impervious to our schemes and pettiness. I think at that moment I knew I had lost, completely.

“Time passed,” he said, finishing the buttons on his shirt, folding up his tie and tucking it into his pocket. “And I realized she did me a great favor. I think you will feel the same way.”

“You know what I dislike? When people use the future as a consolation for the present. I don't know if there is anything less helpful.”

“You're delightful, Tess,” Howard said, sitting on the desk.

“You think so?” I tucked my hair behind my ears. I leaned back on my arms and regarded the empty space between the desk and us. “I think you're strange, Howard. I always have.”

“Do you think maybe you're strange also?”

I nodded. My vision blurred around a stain on the carpet under the desk.

I thought that once I got to this city nothing could ever catch up with me because I could remake my life daily. Once that had made me feel infinite. Now I was certain I would never learn. Being remade was the same thing as being constantly undone.

We heard footsteps and Howard shrugged on his jacket. I sat in the chair and folded my hands on my lap as he opened the door to the hallway.

Nicky yelled out in shock, “Jesus fuckin' Christ, Howard, you almost gave me a fucking—”

Then he saw me. We met eyes before I looked away. I saw his mouth harden. I saw his lack of any confusion or faith in extenuating circumstances. Nicky was nothing if not a realist. I saw his disappointment. I covered my face with my hands.

“A bit late isn't it, Nick?”

“Yeah,” he said. He held up a stack of bar mops. “Finishing up.”

“Tess, we can conclude our discussion tomorrow. You can go out the back.”

I nodded. The adults were taking care of it, dispatching me into the night. I wondered what kind of look passed between them, masculine, implicit. I envied them their effortless understanding of the world.

“Sorry, Nick,” I said right before I shut the door.

THE NEXT MORNING
the blossoms on the trees blew down like paint chips off desiccated buildings. I stood in the Sixteenth Street window and stared at the park. It was a violently windy day, the trees bent, clouds skipping through a blue sky.

“It's like it's snowing again,” I said, but no one heard me. Small flags plastered to the windows, an onslaught of petals.

I WAS IN
the wine cellar organizing, a job that had become mine gradually then definitively. No one cleaned up after themselves because they knew I would do it. Simone knocked on the door, holding a boat of potato chips and a dewy bottle of Billecart, and I knew I was being fired.

“Do you have a minute?”

I put down the box cutter and arranged three stacks of boxes in the shape of two stools and a table. The boxes had been so heavy. Now I could lift two at a time. I could toss them.

“It looks great down here.”

“I try.”

“I thought we could have a treat,” she said, shining the label of the bottle at me.

“A treat indeed. It's been a minute for me and the Billecart.”

“That's a sin.” Simone opened the bottle with the barest whisper. She conditioned two glasses with small pours and then filled them gently, looking at me the entire time.

“I'm into rosé right now,” I said. “That Tempier…oh man, it's divine.”

“The Peyrauds are wonderful people. We're staying with them in Bandol.” Her eyes darted to me but she kept going. That woman had no fear. “If people can have terroir, they have it. Salt of the sea, joy of the sun. They come in when they visit the city, next time I—”

“Ah.” I stopped her lie. No Bandol for me. And there would be no next time.

“I spoke with Howard.”

“I imagined you would.”

“You're getting a promotion. Much deserved.”

“Am I.” I meant to say, Am I? but couldn't.

She sat across from me and I knew her face better than my own. I had studied her so intently. I was sure that nothing—not the passage of time, not distance—would disrupt this intimacy. Thirty years could pass and when I walked into this restaurant I would know its rhythms, its secrets, in my bones. I would know her anywhere.

“You're going to the Smokehouse.”

It took me a minute to absorb it. I sipped the Champagne and stopped.

“Sorry, cheers.” I touched her glass and then drained my own.

“Of course I'm not going to the Smokehouse.”

“Tess, at least consider—”

“Oh Simone!”

I had yelled, it bounced back to me from the bottles. “Barbecue, burgers, and beers? Giant TVs? Why are you going through this charade?”

“The servers make excellent money.”

I put my hand up. “Shut up. Let's make this easier. I'm not going to the Smokehouse. I quit. I will stay for two weeks but prefer to go as soon as possible. Now can we have a real conversation?”

“As you wish.”

Champagne and silence—the only resting places in the world. I sighed. I wavered audibly in the end but kept it together. I took another full inhale and exhale.

“Those are good breaths,” she said.

“Shut up.”

She nodded and I spent some more time breathing.

“I got in over my head, I will admit.”

“It's perfectly normal.”

“It's going to be boring after this.” I looked at her, her red lips and unforgiving eyes. I thought, I will miss you.

“Boredom can be incredibly productive. It's the fear of boredom that's so destructive.”

“You were bored,” I said. “You're bored out of your mind. That's why you fucked with me.”

She blinked a few times. “No, Tess. I know why you want to tell yourself that. But it's not so simple. I believed it too—that we were a family.”

I didn't know if she meant the whole restaurant or the three of us. It didn't matter. I bit into a potato chip and it crackled. My mouth flooded. The bare bulb palpitated at the same pace as my heart.

“You will be fine,” she said. She ate a chip and considered her last statement. “You weren't going to be here forever. You can get a real job now. A real boyfriend. Live in real time. Don't roll your eyes.”

“I'm thinking about wine. Like retail, there's a shop off Bedford I like.”

“Yes, that's wonderful, you'll be fine there. I know someone at Chambers, I would be happy to make a call. Howard will provide an excellent reference as well.”

“I fucking bet he will.” I wanted to feel anger at all of them, I wanted to feel used, but it never coalesced. “I have some money. I'm going to take some time.”

“That's smart,” she said. We both took a chip. “You will be fine.”

I don't know if she repeated that for my benefit or hers. I saw this from above, our chips and Champagne. I saw the kitchen, family meal being set up in the dining room, the locker room where I would gather the trash and residue of my locker and put it in a plastic bag in case something became important enough to keep. Eventually nothing would be important and I would throw it all away.

The salt off the chips stuck to my fingers and I tapped them together, the salt breaking off, and I heard someone roll a hand truck through the dining room above our heads. The lingering taste in my mouth was of chalk and content, disarray and lemons. There wasn't a hint of regret. I spoke slowly, not knowing what was coming but knowing it was final. I looked at her. “Of course, I'll be fine. I will never be anything but grateful.”

I DIDN'T REMEMBER
the right things, let me try again: the herds of Hasidic children on the South Side street corners at midnight, the calls of the Empanada Man walking on Roebling while I napped, Empanada, Empanada, hours lost walking in circles on artless blocks with Jake, while he punctuated his thoughts with a cigarette, all of us running outside to the middle of Sixteenth Street to watch that bloodred sun drop into the Hudson, drinking beer out of paper bags with Scott while we hopped the bars on Grand Street, Will teaching me karate moves on the subway platform, the gorgeous, orange, abraded tongues of uni that we spread on toast, Ariel and me on the bridge at sunrise, singing, the commuters pushing against us and we knew a secret that they didn't, which is that life didn't progress unswervingly, it didn't accumulate, it was wiped as clean as the board at the end of the night and if we kept our spirits up, it meant we were inexhaustible.