Sweetbitter (14 page)

At some point I leveled out. Everything stopped being embarrassing.

Y
OU WILL KISS
the wrong boy. It was an easy prophecy. They were all the wrong boy. The night before Thanksgiving was a drinking holiday you didn't know about until you moved to the city. The streets in the Village were clogged with people, server people, the shops closed, orange- and yellow-papered windows darkened. No one had anywhere to go. A celebration ensued, mildly destructive, mildly bored—it was a night of driftings and nowheres.

YOU THREW UP
and kept drinking, pulled the trigger and doused the trigger. Throwing up was effortless, like nothing, kissing like nothing. Your head full, then emptied, ready to be kissed.

YOU WERE ON
Will's lap, staring at his buttery lashes. You knew you shouldn't be but his arms enclosed you while he told you about the latest movie script he had written. He modeled the superhero after you. You: in red patent-leather boots. You: able to jump buildings and shoot lightning out of your eyes. Sunrise came like an undisclosed verdict. The wind was salient, persistent, and you shivered. You were blown out on cocaine, sitting on a rooftop and he tasted like a malt shop. Every time you pulled away, his eyes were welling like puddles in his face. You opened a beer warmer than the air, spilled your beer on your shirt. The sky rushing up now, anxious, and you knew you were doing something wrong. You kissed him harder and the sky abated. When you had sex you were totally dry and it felt like scratching. For one second, every face you'd ever seen, you forgot.

Pigeons flew in diminishing waves between the low buildings. The sun rose. It said, Now that you've done this, you can never have that. Now that I'm like this, I can never go back.

THE FIRST TIME
I came into work really hungover—
ill
hungover—my shoes were gone. It had a muddled logic that I accepted. When I woke with my head rattling I knew that every step of my day would be harder than normal. It was the day after Thanksgiving. I was the three p.m. backwaiter, but the trains were running irregularly, and while I had heard one sighing into the station as I ran down the stairs, my card was out of money. Which is to say, I was late.

I had seen the sun come up. Two mornings in a row actually, I had watched in real time as the night weakened and the authoritative blue of morning, flat as a sheet, hung itself in the east. There are many romantic reasons to watch the sunrise. Once it started, it was hard to leave. I wanted to own it. I wanted it to be a confirmation that I was alive. Most of the time, however, it felt condemning.

The door to the locker room opened but I didn't look up. I was on my hands and knees looking for my clogs. Server clogs were indestructible with a utilitarian ugliness. They were built for labor, for standing on tile for fourteen hours. They were not cheap.

“You're late,” he said. I turned to Will and he looked as sick as I felt or maybe it was the bleak light in the locker room.

“Will, I can't talk, I can't find my shoes.”

“I can't, I can't, I can't.”

“Please.”

“When in your life did you get so good at disappearing?”

“Will. The sun was up. I had been saying I needed to leave for hours.”

“You said you were going to the bathroom.”

“I meant the bathroom in my apartment.”

“You seemed like you were having a nice time.”

“Please, let's not talk about this.”

“I was having a nice time.”

“Yes.”

“It's funny because you laugh like a little girl one second—”

“Will, stop.”

“Is your phone broken?”

I started opening every unlocked locker.

“I texted you yesterday. We had a big dinner. With turkey and all the stuff.”

“I was busy.”

I had spent Thanksgiving Day napping, masturbating, ignoring phone calls from distant relatives who probably didn't even know I had moved, and watching all three
Godfathers.
I had pad Thai for dinner. As a gesture of holiday goodwill they turned on the heat in my building. Every ten minutes the radiator sounded off like a firecracker and within an hour I had to open all the windows. My roommate had invited me to his mom's house in Armonk. It was a pitiful moment, in that he pitied me enough to invite me, and I pitied him for having familial obligations. I probably would have been a nice buffer and we could have had a real conversation for the first time. But the parade of it, the shallow, ancient family dramas, the hours of being polite. I waved him off happily.

Scott texted me that the cooks were going out in Williamsburg. It was already ten p.m. but he promised to pay for a car home if I came. So I brushed my hair. They were raging when I got there, drinking whiskey hard, like taking bullets to the throat. I couldn't keep up, I kept up. Scott ladled me into a car at seven a.m.

“My shoes are gone,” I said, incredulous.

“Maybe we can grab a beer tonight. Take it easy.”

“I'm not drinking again. Ever.”

“You just need hair of the dog. Ask Jake to slip you something. Or wait, he's gone.”

“Lovely,” I said under my breath.

Will squatted next to me as I looked in the dark space under the lockers. I wanted to hit him. You did this to yourself, I said, my eyelids twitching.

“But you
did
have a nice time the other night.”

I didn't answer. Was I going to get written up for being late? I had worn my Converse to work, there was no way I could wear them on the floor. Ariel and Heather were both on the schedule later, so I couldn't steal their shoes, and Simone's were too big for me.

“I wore them literally two days ago,” I said. “I wore them, I put them in the corner, under the coats.”

“But that's not where they go, doll, they go in your locker.”

“But they make everything in my locker dirty.” My teeth hurt. Something in my back felt broken. “I
usually
put them by the coats.”

“You went out with the cooks last night?”

“How do you know that?”

“Scott told me you were wasted. He said you fell down in the middle of a crosswalk.”

“He was wasted,” I said. I didn't know if that had happened. It might have happened. When Will said his name, I faintly remembered making out with Scott, and felt injured.

“You're cute when you're hungover.”

I took a deep breath.

“Will. I am very sorry. For any misinformation. I mean, misleading. I mean I'm sorry if you have ideas. It's been a very…tipsy week.”

“What does that mean?”

“It means I don't quite feel I'm in control of my life. I've been hitting it a little hard, you know?”

“Okay,” he said. He thought about it. “You can lean on me.”

“No, that's not what I'm saying. I'm sorry if I did anything.”

“Sorry you did what? Which part?” Will thought we were flirting. I didn't know when exactly my guard had lowered with him, it had been high since his confession in the Park Bar bathroom, but it had been whittled away by time, cocaine, and beer. And work had been lusterless since they left.

“I don't even know, Will. I don't remember a thing.”

“Ah,” he said. He stood up. “Chef threw them out.”

“What?”

“Yesterday. Every year whatever is left out over the holiday gets thrown out. There's a note on the bulletin board. Check the trash cans in the alley. Maybe the garbage hasn't been picked up yet.”

I stared at him as he left. “Sorry,” he said, “you should have told the maid.”

And there they were. Three bags into my search, with curdled milk and clotted food and disintegrating paper towels.

THE FLOOR DRAIN
under the sink was the fountainhead. Decomposing fruit, crusts of bread, wine dregs, and general backwash congealed to an opaque gray slime. It seemed ridiculous that we didn't know about it sooner, as water barely passed through it. This slime, this primordial sludge, was the home base for all sorts of insects that weren't allowed in the restaurant. Namely the fruit flies.

They weren't so menacing in and of themselves. But they had a disturbing blind tenacity when they landed. They moved away in thick clusters when you swatted them and then settled again in the exact same spot. I had nightmares about them landing in my hair, covering my face.

I told Zoe the first time. She nodded and nothing happened. Then it was my turn again for the drain side work and I marched up to the office where she was picking at a filet mignon of tuna.

“Zoe, I can't clean that drain.”

“What drain?” she asked.

“The drain. The one I told you about, the disgusting one where the fruit flies live.”

“You never told me that.”

“Yes I did, it was like weeks ago.”

“No one said anything to me.” She stood up, annoyed, and straightened her blazer. “We can't solve problems if we don't work together. I need you to perform your side work, and inform management if you're not able to.”

Never once had I thought of her as a real authority figure. She was Howard and Simone's puppet, the poor desk slave who made sure the drop was correct and had to arrange the server schedule every week. Which meant everyone hated her.

“I'm very sorry, but I did inform management. You can't pay me enough to touch that.” I laid the yellow gloves down. “You should see for yourself.”

Maybe it was because Simone was gone, or maybe I was worn a little thin. I thought for a second she would write me up. But she shrugged her shoulders and shook them, like she was warming her body up. She picked up the yellow gloves.

“The bar sink?”

When we got downstairs Nicky was rinsing down and wiping out the speed rack, one of the last steps of closing. He saw Zoe's gloves and said, “I wouldn't disturb them. Can this wait five minutes?”

“No, I've been informed of a serious situation.”

“Yeah, like a month ago, Zoe—”

“Enough.” She put a hand up. She went behind the bar and grabbed a flashlight and a fork. I don't know what the fork was for—protection? She sank down and two seconds later, she screamed, covering her face. They soared up in a cloud and I sprinted back into the kitchen.

SOME NIGHTS
if Terry was feeling particularly loose, he let Ariel put on her music while we cut lines on the bar and helped him put up the stools.

“Did I tell you the one about polar bears?” he asked. I finished my line and passed him my cut-up pen.

“Yes, the canned peas.”

“Shit, you need to get a new bar.”

“You need to get new jokes, old man.”

He passed it to Sasha. Ariel stood looking out the windows, her body tense. Vivian was supposed to meet us two hours ago. I wiped my nose. Every muscle in my body clenched then released and my legs gave out. I sank, and then sat on the floor.

“Whoa,” I said. “It's strong.”

“Who gonna take care of Baby Monster tonight? Not me, I have a date in twenty minutes.”

“You have a date at four a.m.?” Terry asked.

“I say to him four fifteen,” Sasha said, checking the clock. “You think too early-ish?”

“Terry, can we get one more?” Ariel asked. Her eyeliner made black notches in her face.

“Ari, come on, I'm all cleaned up.”

“I'll make it, I'll clean it, come on, Skip here is tripping her face off, we all need to wind down.”

Terry looked toward the street and he and Ariel exchanged a loaded glance.

“I'm not tripping my face off. I'm cool,” I said from the floor. My palms were sweating and it was delicious, running them on the cold, gritty tile.

“Negronis!” Ariel demanded, pushing behind the bar.

“Wait, you guys, wait, show me!” I bolted up. I pulled down a stool, and it felt so light.

“The lesson is thirds,” she said as she poured Campari into a jigger. She locked her eyes on me and said in a low voice, “And of course, it is a lesson of life as well.”

They started laughing.

“Stop guys, don't make fun of her. Thirds is an important lesson! Like a cappuccino,” I said. “I mean, ideally, the perfect cappuccino, it's one-third espresso, one-third milk, one-third foam, but I mean, ideally, you want the foam and the milk to be perfectly integrated, um, aerated actually—”

“There she is,” said Will. He pulled down a stool and sat next to me and I hugged him, generously, an overflow of the love I had burrowed within me and needed the drugs to interpret.

“Now she got diarrhea in her mouth,” Sasha said.

“No, wait, guys, it's a lesson—”

“The lesson of thirds,” said Terry. “I ever tell you guys about the two German girls I took home? It wasn't as fun as you would think. Even before the gonorrhea.”

“One time I took too much Special K and ended up with two fat, ugly motherfuckers, not a good time,” Sasha said and pointed at me. “Don't touch that shit.”

“Threes, threes, the three amigos,” I said. “No, sorry, the five amigos.”

“Jesus, Skip, will you shut up and make a pretty little line.” Ariel scrolled through her iPod. “Then we're done.”

“Are you high?” I asked Ariel. I turned to Will and Sasha. “Wait, are you high? Is anyone high?” I made the line the way she taught me, about the length of a cigarette, evenly distributed with sharp, tapered ends. “I'm
high.
”

Ariel passed me a Negroni and it tasted like cough syrup. “Medicine. Hey guys, I think I hate my job.” They laughed. “No I'm serious, isn't it kinda depressing and dirty in there lately?”

“What you think, everyone look, Alice just wake up and oh fuck, no wonderland.”

“Maybe you should hit the pause button every now and then,” Will said, and I turned away from him.