Sweetbitter (7 page)

“Never mind, doll,” he said. He finished his beer, and I knew I had to decide if we were staying for another round. It felt like a mistake to get drunk before four p.m., but it would be worth it if I could get him to keep talking.

“Maybe you softened her up,” he said and his eyes went past me. “Speak of the devil. I forgot this was her neighborhood.”

I turned and there she was, in a black shift dress, looking so petite I would have looked right past her. I flipped back into the booth, chafing. This wasn't Park Bar; this was my day off. I wanted Simone to think I was nude modeling for painters or drinking absinthe with musicians, or at the Guggenheim, where she'd told me to go, or even that I was alone at a bar with a book being sophisticated. How could I have been stupid enough to be drinking with Will?

“Do you think she heard us?” I whispered. “We should go.”

“What? You were just saying—”

“I'm sick,” I said. “I mean, I don't feel well. This beer isn't sitting well. I have to go home.”

“Are you okay?”

“Will, I'm sorry, we can do this again, but I—” I could feel her eyes on us, there was no way to miss us in the four hundred square feet. I took a breath and felt a hand on my shoulder.

“Aren't you two a lovely pair.” She held a paperback book with a French title in her hand and smelled like gardenias. I wished Will would die.

“We're not. We were just talking about work stuff,” I said. “Sorry, hi Simone. I like that dress. Lovely to see you too.”

“So you're off today, huh?” Will said, a little coolly, I thought.

“Yes, I'm just meeting a friend. And I think Jake will be by later.”

I finished my beer. “I—”

“I finally got her outside of work,” Will said, showing me off.

“Oh, is she so elusive?” Simone said with a derisive smile.

“I'm not.” I stood up. “I'm just, upset, I have an upset stomach, I mean.” I pulled up my purse and put five dollars on the table. “Will, I'm sorry, next time.”

I did not look back. Once I hit Second Avenue, I threw my arm up. I understood why taxis were so essential to life in the city, even with those of us who couldn't afford them. Desperation.

AS I STARTED
up the stairs to find more straws, Jake was coming down. He brushed the back of his hand against my hand. I stared at it, but my hand looked the same. There had been an explosion, but no collapse. I spent the next five hours sleepwalking, wondering whether he had touched me with intention.

EVERYTHING WAS
over my head. The senior servers, the bartenders especially, had doctorates in talking shit to guests. They could skim any topic. You couldn't stump them. The briefness of these interactions meant their casual expertise was never exposed as groundless.

As I overheard it, to be good at this job you needed to know the city, but also how to leave the city. Which was hard for me to imagine, since I found the idea of traveling to the Upper West Side daunting. Everyone had a cursory knowledge of the East Coast weekend retreats: not just upstate and Connecticut, but unlisted antiques stores in the Hudson Valley, small towns in the Berkshires, lakes in the Northeast Kingdom. Beaches were their own category, divided mainly between the Hamptons and the Cape, and again, the specific towns were identity badges.

You knew which shows were at which galleries, and it was a given that you attended the museums regularly. When asked whether you had seen Manet's execution paintings (and you were going to be asked by someone taking a late lunch after visiting MoMA), you were either on your way or had already seen them in Paris. You had opinions about opera. If you didn't, you politely implied it was too bourgeois. You knew what was playing at Film Forum, and you corrected anyone who lumped Godard and Truffaut together.

You knew trivia from the guests' lives: where couples got married, where men traveled for business, what kinds of projects they were working on and the deadlines. You knew where they'd gone for undergrad and what they'd dreamed of doing while they were there. You knew names of the towns where they kept their mothers in Florida. You asked about the absent colleague/husband/wife.

You knew the players on the Yankees and Mets, you knew the weather, more about predicting the weather than any meteorologist. You were a compendium of disposable information that people burned up while they drank and escaped their lives.

And the most peculiar part was how none of it mattered to them. One push through the kitchen doors and they were back to food, sex, drinking, drugs, what bar had opened, what band was playing where, and who had been drunkest the night before. Once I saw someone throw a rag in Scott's face over a spaghetti carbonara dispute, but I don't know if anyone held a political belief.

They were so well versed in that upper-middle-class culture—no, in the
tastes
of upper-middle-class culture—they could all pass. Even most of the cooks had gotten an Ivy League education at Cornell before they spent a second fortune at CIA. They were fluent in rich people.
That
was the fifty-one percent of it.

SCOTT AND HIS COOKS
sat on a lowboy postshift, drinking beer. Scott was bitching about Chef: how threatened Chef was by his food, how out of touch Chef was with what was happening in Spain, how Chef had dried up a decade ago. Chef called Scott's food “subversive” and it was clear that Scott wanted us to see that as a compliment. Jeff and Jared nodded, worshipping. As I eavesdropped I felt an unexpected swing of loyalty toward Chef, toward his food and the restaurant he'd built, even if was “hopelessly out of date.”

The back of house had separate kitchen beer, which sat all night in an iced-down bus tub. One of the interns drained and refilled the ice during service—that task was actually in his job description, I asked him. The beer was genius. The boys could be cut, burned, or crying, but within their line of vision was a bucket of beer that was just theirs.

“New girl, come here, Santos likes you.” They had the newest prep guy that I hadn't met yet. His skin was stretched and skinny, like a child in a growth spurt's. He didn't look much past fifteen.

“Be nice, guys,” I said. I jumped up on the lowboy.

Jared put his arm around Santos and said, “I love Santos. He's our new friend. Show the new girl that dance we taught you. The dance like a pollo.”

Santos smiled but looked at the floor and didn't move.

“Ah he's being shy now. Want a beer?”

Santos took one and they gave one to me as well. I swung my heels against the door. I saw Santos slipping under a fence at the border. Making himself as thin as a coin and rolling through a crack in the wall. They had told me it was so expensive they could only pick one to go. And that once that one landed, it was too dangerous to ever go back.

“Cuántos años tiene?” I asked.

“Dieciocho,” he said defensively.

“No es verdad? Eres un niño. De dónde eres?”

“Mexico,” said Scott. He finished his beer in three gulps and opened another. “You know I'm not hiring any more filthy Dominicans. Right, Papi?”

Papi was the troll-like man who had spit at me the first day. He nodded with hooded eyes and a vacant smile.

Santos said timidly, “Hablas español?”

“Sólo un poco. Puedo entender mejor que hablar. Hablas inglés?”

He looked at the kitchen boys to see their reaction.

“Not impressive,” said Scott. “Everyone speaks Spanish here. Bueno, yes?”

They opened new beers and Jared said, “Papi, do the pollo dance.”

Papi knocked out his elbows and flapped them like a chicken and yodeled. He spun in a circle and the boys clapped.

“One more time, Papi, show Santos how the pros do it.”

Scott saw that I wasn't laughing and seemed embarrassed. His eyes said, These are the rules here. “He's wasted. They steal bottles of whiskey and hide them in the dry goods.”

“Oh,” I said. We drank our beers. Until that moment I'd been the girl they tricked into dancing like a pollo. Santos looked at me with grasping, runny eyes, the kind of eyes that take in everything and have no defenses. I knew how badly he needed a friend. I shook my head and asked for another beer. I looked at Santos appraisingly and said to the boys, “He's brand-new, isn't he?”

Y
OU WILL STUMBLE
on secrets. Hidden all over the restaurant: Mexican oregano, looking cauterized, as heady as pot. Large tins of Chef's private anchovies from Catalonia hidden behind the bulk olive oil. Quarts of grassy sencha and tiny bullets of stone-ground matcha. Ziplock bags of masa. In certain lockers, bottles of sriracha. Bottles of well whiskey in the dry goods. Bars of chocolate slipped between books in the manager's office.

And people too, with their secret crafts, their secret fluency in other languages. The sharing of secrets is a ceremony, marking kinship. You have no secrets yet, so you don't know what you don't know. But you can intuit it while holding yourself on the skin of the water, treading above deep pockets, faint voices underneath you.

THEY FOLDED NAPKINS
and I refilled pepper mills on table 46. They talked as they did every day. I listened in my trance as I did every day. Up front, at the café tables, Howard and a young woman sat in interview fashion. I kept thinking about my cardigan, and how they must have all been there that day but I'd seen no one. I couldn't remember the interior of the restaurant besides the hydrangeas and Howard's hands that sat on the table. This one was not wearing a cardigan.

“They can't be serious, interviewing her.”

“Maybe she got lost on her way to Coffee Shop.”

“Or that place in Times Square where they wear bikinis.”

“Hawaiian Tropic, don't hate.”

A few peppercorns slipped through my fingers when I tried to funnel them. They bounced on the floor, popping when the servers walked over them. Fine, spicy gravel around my feet.

“They make crazy money there.”

“You wear a bikini. It's one step away from a strip club.”

“But an important step.”

“Listen, I will personally volunteer to train her.”

“I bet you will.”

“When she looked in the mirror was she like, This is an interview outfit?”

“Does she think her tits look real?”

“Jealous?”

“I bet Jake fucks her first.”

I dropped more peppercorns, they scattered. I took a new handful and they stuck to me.

“No, she's kitchen material.”

“Not Asian enough.”

“Why don't they put a sign up that says you must be
this
much Asian to enter?”

“She's straight off the boat.”

“But what boat?”

“Ask Sasha if she's Russian.”

“There's no way Zoe will let Howard hire her.”

“Please, Zoe's interview outfit wasn't much better.”

“I bet this girl has a lot of experience.”

“Yeah, at what would be my question.”

“Enough,” I said. I stood up and wiped my palms off on my apron. They all turned to me, surprised I was there. “Don't be mean. We can just be honest. I'm sure she's a very nice girl, but she's too pretty to work here. She'll never make it.”

Jake behind me. I felt him like a few degrees of temperature change, a prickling. He said into my shoulder:

“That's what we said about you.”

“THIS IS
the glory month, hmm?” Simone said, transfixed over a crate of chanterelles. They were sheathed in dirt, her fingers streaked with it.

Yes, those were luminous September days. The afternoon light pearling, the mood alert, turned-on, compassionate. Out in the Greenmarket people circled patiently, holding cartons of prune plums, ears of the last silken corn, thin-skinned lavender eggplants. The air vibrated like the plucked string of a violin.

“I knew from those rains last week, I just knew it. Look at these.” She passed one to me and I inhaled. She wiped the tip of my nose and I drew closer to her. Simone unheated, unrigid, as if we had no work to do. The crease of concentration between her brows ironed out. Her attention felt like a warmer current of water.

“I've put together a stack of books for you, including that wine atlas you're always peeking at in the office. You can have an old copy of mine, you should have one at home. I've been meaning to bring them but perhaps you can come by my apartment, since it seems you're in the East Village on your days off.”

I cringed again at being caught with Will on the outside. “I'm happy to come. Whenever.”

“And it's time for you to open a bottle of wine.”

“Not for a table!” I saw myself being pushed overboard, Simone with a knife at my back, the sea black, turbulent, bottomless.

“God no. Not for a table. We can practice tonight after close.”

There was a low white fridge that they called the cheese larder. Next to it sat the day's cheeses. Orange spotted rinds, ashy cones, teal-veined cheeses all breathing under a mesh dome. She took a wood-handled spade and dug into them. I looked around to see if we would be caught, but the kitchen was miraculously empty. She went around a corner and came back with a cluster of grapes. Their musk was a solo performance—all the other scents dimmed.

“Spit the seeds.” She spit two black seeds into her hand. I had already bitten them, bitter and tannic.

“Mine didn't have any.”

“One of the three fruits native to North America, that distinctive Concord musk. The great irony of our country is that we produce the greatest table grapes in the world and yet can't seem to figure out how to make wine. Arturo?”

A dishwasher was going by, carrying a bus tub of muddlers, cocktail shakers, strainers.

“Arturo, do you mind asking Jake to make an Assam? He knows how I like it. Thank you.”

Arturo smiled and winked at her. This was the same man that growled at me when I asked him where to put the recycling. I hadn't seen Jake come in—did he just appear when Simone needed her tea made? His effect must have shown on my face.

“Did you want one?”

I shook my head though I very much wanted Jake to make me tea the way I liked it.

“Ah. Well. Do you know what abundance is?”

I shook my head again and plucked another grape.

“You have been taught to live like a prisoner. Don't take, don't touch, don't trust. You were taught that the things of the world are flawed reflections, that they don't demand the same attention as the world of the spirit. It's shocking, isn't it? And yet, the world is abundant—if you invest in it, it will give back to you tenfold.”

“Invest what?”

She spread some cheese on a cracker and nodded while she chewed.

“Your attention, of course.”

“Okay.” I looked closely at the cheese, the grapes. The grapes had a veil of dust on them, the cheese a veil of mold, reminders of the elements that shaped them. The kitchen doors swung open. Jake had not only made it, he'd brought it himself.

“One Assam,” he said. He had brewed it in a tall water glass and lightened it with milk.

“Thank you, darling.”

He surveyed the food Simone had laid out and smirked. He took a grape.

“Is school in session?” he asked, looking between us.

“We're just having a chat,” she said smoothly.

“A chat over Camembert.” He spit the seeds onto the floor next to my feet. “I wouldn't trust it, new girl.”

“My love, aren't you needed?”

“I think I ought to stay put to protect this one. She's already got quite an appetite for oysters. Ten more minutes with you and she'll be reciting Proust and demanding caviar for family meal.”

My heart stopped. I thought those oysters were ours. But Simone betrayed nothing. She wore the same satisfied face she had when she accepted compliments from guests at the end of the meal. He was fearless with her. I couldn't imagine anyone else in the restaurant teasing her to her face.

“I don't need protection,” I said suddenly. Stupidly. They turned on me, and I shrank.

The same thin-lipped, austere smiles. But through Simone's eyes, as she appraised him as having the potential to be related to her, I saw a streak of adoration pass and land on him—it was so unmistakable it was almost hued.

“Sometimes I feel like you guys are related or something.”

“Once upon a time,” he said.

“Our families were close,” she explained.

“She was the girl next door—”

“Oh Jesus, Jake—”

“Now she's my warden—”

“I'm quite benevolent—”

“And omniscient, omnipotent—”

“Yes, it's quite a burden—”

“And now I've got a classic case of Stockholm syndrome.”

Their laughter was closed, held back from me, laughter that ran along a private line. He left abruptly and Simone looked at me.

“Where were we?”

“You're the girl next door?”

Any lingering lightheartedness faded. That was reserved for him.

“We're from the Cape. We grew up together in a way.”

“Okay,” I said. “Do you like his girlfriend?”

“Jake's girlfriend.” She smiled.

“Yeah, that Vanessa or something.”

“I do not know a Vanessa or something. Jake's a private man. Perhaps you should ask him.”

I reddened and put my hands in my apron, mortified. “I just thought it must matter. If you thought she was cool or whatever. 'Cause you guys are close.”

“Have you thought about what you want from your life?”

“Um. I don't know. I mean, honestly…”

“Do you hear yourself?”

“What?”

“ ‘Cool or whatever,' ‘Um, I don't know,' ‘I mean, honestly.' Is that any way to speak?”

God, I was melting. “I know. It's a problem when I'm nervous.”

“It's an epidemic with women your age. A gross disparity between the way that they speak and the quality of thoughts that they're having about the world. They are taught to express themselves in slang, in clichés, sarcasm—all of which is
weak
language. The superficiality of the language colors the experiences, rendering them disposable instead of assimilated. And then to top it all, you call yourselves ‘girls.' ”

“Um…I don't know what to say now.”

“I'm not attacking you, just calling your attention to it. Isn't that what we are discussing? Paying attention?”

“Yes.”

“Did I scare you?”

“Yes.”

She laughed and ate a grape.

“You,” she said. She grabbed my wrist and pressed two fingers onto me as if taking my pulse and I stopped breathing. “I know you. I remember you from my youth. You contain multitudes. There is a crush of experience coursing by you. And you want to take every experience on the pulse.”

I didn't say anything. That was in fact a very eloquent expression of what I wanted.

“I'm giving you permission to take yourself seriously. To take the
stuff
of this world seriously. And to start
having.
That's abundance.”

I waited for her to go on. Nobody had ever spoken to me like that in my life. She cut me a piece of the cheese and handed it to me—“The Dorset,” she said—and it tasted like butter but dirtier, and maybe like the chanterelles she kept touching. She handed me a grape and when I bit it I found the seeds with my tongue and moved them to the side, spit them into my hand. I saw purple vines fattening in the sun.

“It's like the seasons, but in my mouth,” I said. She humored me. She cracked whole walnuts with a pair of silver nutcrackers. The skins on the nuts felt like gossamer wrappings. She brushed the scattered shells onto the floor, with the grape seeds, the pink cheese rinds.

LET'S BE GENEROUS
and say that I understood about seventy percent of what Simone said to me. What I didn't misunderstand was the attention that she gave me. Or that by being close to her, I was always in proximity to him. There was an aura that came from being under her wing, with its exclusive wine tastings and cheese courses—the aura of promised meaning.

When she touched my pulse I felt so vulnerable, like she could stop it if she wanted to. I had an awareness that I would die. I hid from that thought, as I had trained myself to do, but it came back to me when I was walking home from the train late that night. The silent purples of the warehouses and oily black of the river seemed to be watching me. The streets seemed to be breathing, then they seemed to be disappearing. I could see them being erased. I had that feeling of never having existed at all, which I could only call my sense of mortality. It inflamed me. More. That was the result:
more
got into my bloodstream and ran rampant.

“HEY, FLUFFER,
come get the list,” Nicky said. Some nights that man came in here to play, his hair newly shorn, his ears sticking out, looking like an eight-year-old wanting to be chased. And some nights he clocked in looking so tired he was gray. “Never have kids” was all he said to me when I asked if he was feeling okay. But tonight he had run around with an impish smirk on his face as if he'd just gotten laid.

“What did you call me?”

“Fluffer. That's your name. You look like a Fluffer.”

“My name is Fluffer.” I stated it, confused.

“It fits.”

I took the list from him. “Like a fluffer in a porno? The girl that sucks dick in between takes to keep the guys hard?”

“There she is!” He clapped his hands. “See, you're not so new after all. So let's go, Fluff, I don't wanna be stuck here all night.”

I put my head down. I was about to walk away, but I had a sensation I hadn't felt in weeks. I started laughing. Really laughing. It came up from my feet.

“You're saying I make you hard, Nick?”

He pulled his glasses down his nose and regarded me.

“Nah, you're not my type. But you kept me going all night, that's for sure.” He winked at me. “You did all right tonight.”