Whenever You Call (11 page)

Since it was only four-thirty in the afternoon, the restaurant was deserted. Ravi introduced me to all the waitresses, then gave me a quick tour of the bar. I’d been nervous about using the cash register, but it turned out to be a cinch. You tapped the screen and the computer did everything. After Ravi left me alone, I moved things around a bit, trying to prepare for a lot of wine orders and martinis. My mind raced with drink recipes, repeating them over and over again until I started to make myself sick.

My very first customer was not, as I’d expected, a party of four who arrived to have dinner. Oh no, of course not. It had already been such a terrific day. Why not keep moving in the same direction?

A guy about my age, with tufts of white hair blossoming over each ear, sauntered into the restaurant and tucked his not-insubstantial gut behind the bar. As I walked over to him, his eye raked up and down, stopping at my cleavage.

Okay, asshole, I said. The asshole referred to myself, not him. What had I expected? This was what happened to female bartenders, particularly if you wore short tight skirts and black heels. Think about the tips, asshole.

I smiled at him, trying for pleasant, friendly, but not flirtatious.

He grinned widely. “You’re new!”

“I am, indeed.”

He held out a hand across the bar. “I am Professor Joel Rabovitch.”

Another rabbit-sound-alike. Also, undoubtedly, a member of the Harvard faculty who was under the misapprehension that he was a big shot. Having been married to Isaac, himself a big shot Harvard professor, I was no longer impressed.

I shook his clammy hand. “I’m Marley—what can I get for you?”

“You is what you can get for me.” He grinned at his own cleverness. “Can you tell I’m a poet?”

Now, here was the thing. I loathed poets. I loved poetry, of course, but I hated the human beings who
wrote
the poems. I had a visceral reaction whenever someone said to me, “I’m a poet.” My dislike was so pronounced that throughout my kids’ adolescence, I lectured them that I’d rather they married a garbage collector than a poet. In fact, I’d made the statement so many times that Elliot finally exploded and warned me that I was virtually insuring his undying love for a poet one day. So I stopped saying it, but not thinking it.

I smiled at the professor. I could tell that the smile was brittle, but I hoped the low light hid that fact from him. “Your drink of choice?”

He opened his hands wide. “You choose something that fits me.”

This was like being told to guess how old someone was. The first drink that came to mind was
flat tepid beer
. “Okay,” I said cheerily, turning around.

He wants you to think he’s hot stuff. So, give him an excellent scotch on the rocks, or a martini. Then you’ll get a great tip. I decided on a Beefeater’s martini. When I was shaking it up, I became acutely aware that my breasts shook almost as hard as the martini shaker. It was becoming clearer by the second that bar tending was a sexual encounter, with oneself and with the customer. That was such an interesting idea that I paused for second, thinking about it.

“Don’t let that ice melt!” the professor called out.

Quickly, I picked up the icy glass and carried it down to where he sat. I tipped the shaker and filled the glass.

“Good choice,” he said. He sipped. “And a very good martini.”

You’re lucky I didn’t cut your face open, Mr. Hot Shot Professor.

I knew I had to work on my attitude. It was just most unfortunate that I got a poet right from the get-go.

A waitress appeared at the end of the bar and I realized that a table of two diners had arrived. I rushed down to her, grateful to have a reason to leave the poet.

The waitress, Andrea, spoke in a rush. “A chablis and a Guinness.”

Okay, that was easy. I could do a chablis and a Guinness. When she came to collect them, Andrea said, “The guy at the bar is a
poet
.”

I stared at her.

She spoke again, as if I was deliberately being obtuse. “Isn’t that cool?”

“Yeah, very cool.”

I glanced at the professor. He was making quick work of that martini. Two women walked in and sat down in the middle of the bar.

“Good evening,” I said. “What would you like?”

They both frowned at me.

“Do you need a few minutes to decide?”

They nodded.

Man, this was a tricky business, no question about it. I’d rushed them. I went to the sink and washed out the martini shaker, plopping it upside down on the draining board. Glancing at the ladies, I saw that they were frowning again. I zipped down the bar and tried to pretend that my feet weren’t
already
hurting.

I smiled at them. They ordered a chardonnay and a light beer. Jeeze. So far, this bar tending gig was too easy.

When I’d served them, the poet said, “Excuse me?” He waggled the empty martini glass in his hand.

I trotted to him. “Another?”

“You bet.”

This time, when I made his martini, I felt something begin to flow through my body, a new rhythm. I oozed down the length of the bar and placed the fresh, icy glass in front of him with nary a bump. Shake, shake, shake. Pouring, dribbles of gin, flecks of ice. I felt him staring at me.

“Don’t I know you?” he said.

Andrea appeared at the end of the bar. I noticed that the dining room had a few more tables of people. Without answering Mr. Poet, but sending him a quick smile, I moved towards Andrea.

“Come back when you have a second,” he called out.

“Two Belvedere martinis and a scotch on the rocks,” Andrea said.

“Any particular scotch?”

She looked at me strangely. “If they ask for a kind, I’ll tell you.”

Ravi obviously hadn’t let on that this was my first time bar tending. Even so, I wasn’t warming to Andrea. She was making me feel stupid, which was easy to do, but that didn’t make me like it.

Do the scotch first
, I told myself. I reached for the cheapest brand of scotch and then hesitated. My hand shifted and took the Dalmore. I grabbed the larger martini shaker and poured enough Belvedere and vermouth for two martinis. I knew I probably didn’t need to be in quite so much of a hurry, but it seemed like good practice and this way both drinks would be nice and cold.

After delivering those drinks, the evening sped up like a movie on fast forward. I completely lost track of the details as I whisked up and down the long bar squirting hoses, shoveling ice, pouring with abandon. I didn’t feel my feet again for two solid hours. When I
did
feel them, I practically screamed. The poet had left in the midst of the fast and furious drink-making, but a couple of other guys replaced him. I stood stock still for a moment and tried to decide whether it would be wise or unwise to ease off my high heels for a moment. I came to the conclusion that it was unwise. Instead, I picked up the diet soda hose and blasted some into a tall glass, which I gulped down.

One of the men said, “You must be tired.”

I glanced at him, away, then back again. For a moment. Naw, I thought, I’m hallucinating. He looked vaguely like Mr. Rabbitfish. Less handsome, but intriguing.

“Do you need a refill?” I asked, checking his empty glass and trying desperately to remember what I’d originally served him.

He gave a large lazy grin. “I want to try something I’ve never had before.”

“Okay!” I sounded completely upbeat, or at least I hoped I did. Inside my head, I was trying not to panic. Probably he’d want some obscure drink I’d never heard of.

“I promise you’ll know the drink,” he said, still grinning.

I shook my head slightly. “I’m pretty new at this gig—,”

He interrupted, “I’d like a Tie Me to the Bedpost.”

Shocked, I shifted my weight unexpectedly and my tired ankles gave way. I fell off my high heels and went sprawling onto the floor behind the bar. I heard the man give a shout and, in despair, I simply closed my eyes and experienced the pain shooting up from my left ankle.

A
FTER
I FELL, I expected to have a slew of people come dashing around the bar with boisterous cries of alarm. Mostly, I anticipated the guy who’d ordered a Tie Me to the Bedpost to leap
over
the bar and come to my rescue. Instead, I lay on the floor and nothing happened.

It reminded me of the time I was six years old and took a dive into the Smith College swimming pool one summer. The pool was open to faculty children for three hours every afternoon, and there was a lifeguard on duty. I must have shoved off from the side more forcefully than usual because I went plunging into the water so quickly that my arms were pushed to my sides by the force of the descent, leaving my head unprotected as I slammed into the pool’s bottom. I knew I’d lost consciousness because when I opened my eyes, it was as if I was waking up from a long sleep
and
my lungs screamed for air. I scrambled to the surface of the water, gasping, horrified at almost drowning. I stared at the lifeguard, whose head was turned in quite another direction. She yawned without covering her mouth.

So, I lay on the floor behind the bar and listened to the noise of dishes and glassware banging together, the clash of silverware, the murmur of voices so soft it was like a lifeguard’s silent yawn. Granted, the restaurant had been nearly empty when I’d fallen. But where was the man who’d caused me to fall? I twisted my head carefully and peered up. No one looked back down at me.

Well, fuck me naked, I thought. With both hands, I pushed gently against the floor and sat up. The shoe had fallen off my right foot. I reached down and wrapped my hand around the ankle, probing. It didn’t feel as badly as when I’d twisted it going down. I slipped the shoe off my left foot and grimaced when the arch contracted. Slowly, I placed both feet flat on the floor and stood up. The ankle was tenuous, but I clearly hadn’t broken any bones. I sucked in a huge breath of air, then exhaled.

On the bar, next to the man’s empty glass, I saw money. I looked more closely. It was a one hundred dollar bill tucked neatly under the glass. I reached and turned and examined it. Then I thought of the napkin. It, too, had been left tucked beneath the glass. The ink lines suggested it was a note. Instead, there was a picture.

It wasn’t clear which way to view it, but I could see from the flow of ink that it had been drawn without lifting the pen, as though the image was somehow deliberate, not idle.

Without my noticing, Andrea suddenly materialized. “Is that a one hundred dollar bill?”

It was still pinched in my left hand, while my right hand grasped the napkin. I held the bill up for better viewing.

“Lucky you,” she said.

“Did you notice the guy sitting here?” I asked.

“I only saw him from behind … longish brown hair?”

I nodded.

She shrugged.

I thought about showing her the napkin, but instead crumpled it in my hand.

“My feet are killing me,” I said. “Do you think it’s okay if I clean up without my shoes on?”

“I guess,” she said.

That didn’t sound too promising. On the other hand, I wasn’t sure that I could traipse up and down the bar in those heels, not with a twisted ankle. And I didn’t want to admit to Ravi that I’d collapsed behind the bar. I was already thrilled that no one, except the mystery guy who’d mysteriously disappeared, seemed to know what had happened. I slipped on the left shoe, then tentatively tried the right shoe. A twinge skedaddled from the ankle and up my calf until stopping at the knee. I took a step. The twinge exploded into major pain. I pulled my feet out of their shoes. No choice.

As I tidied the bar, I found I had to limp slightly and I was happy to realize that I wouldn’t have to work again until Tuesday lunch. Ravi ambled over when I had my back turned, leaning over to return several bottles of open wine to the refrigerator.

“Check the dates on the wine,” she said.

“Okay.”

“Seemed like things went well, especially for a first night,” Ravi said. “What did you think?”

I glanced at her and tried to grin. Unfortunately, my ankle hurt so much that the grin was downgraded to a mere smile. “No major catastrophes, from my point of view.”

She nodded briefly. “I agree.” Ravi whirled away and then turned back just as quickly. “Can you get here early on Tuesday to fill out all the paperwork? Even if we’re fast about it, there’ll still be at least a two-week wait for your first paycheck.”

Fifteen minutes later, I limped out of the restaurant and to my car. I sat behind the wheel and momentarily forgot how to put the key into the ignition. When I finally turned on the engine, I maneuvered the car home carefully, aware that I was exhausted. Once home, I quickly understood the limitations of my crooked little house with its many steep staircases. I mapped out a strategy. Get into flannel pajamas and slippers, make one trip up to the kitchen for a bag of ice, a ham sandwich, and a beer, carry all that paraphernalia two flights down to my basement study where I’d hole up to eat, check e-mail, and elevate my ankle with the ice on it.

When I finally sat down in front of the computer, I wolfed down half the ham sandwich before I checked my mail. Swallowing a particularly large bite, I finally clicked the mail icon and discovered twenty e-mails. I made my way through them slowly: instructions from Alex about the party for Isaac, flight arrival times for Elliot and Noah, and a follow-up from Steph in which she urged me to write “anything at all, but WRITE.” I was zinging through the e-mails, still in a tired daze, when I came to one from Mr. Rabbitfish.

Hope you weren’t seriously hurt. Lemme know.

As usual, he had the singular ability to make me blink. This time, twice. Blink, blink.

I reached toward my pants’ pockets, searching for the napkin with the design on it, and then realized that I’d left the pants upstairs in my bedroom. I shifted my foot and pressed the bag of ice firmly against my ankle. The cold was so fierce that it made the ankle hurt more, but I knew I’d heal faster if I kept the ice on. I closed my eyes and tried to see the face opposite me at the bar. That had been Mr. Rabbitfish, I told myself. The famous Mr. Rabbitfish. He’d been staring right at me and ordered a Tie Me to the Bedpost. His face came to me only briefly, as if it were my own reflection in a pond where someone had thrown a rock so that ripples flashed and then calmed. Another rock. Splash! His face disappeared.

And then a wild excitement whipped through me. I knew it was wrong. I knew there was either something radically wrong with me or with him or with both of us. I should not be excited by Mr. Rabbitfish’s game. He was reading my e-mail, after all. But then, at least he’d come to the bar at The Harvest. Couldn’t that be considered a good thing since it meant he wasn’t hiding? It had been my fault, if anyone’s, that I’d fallen off my high heels. I didn’t like that he’d left a one hundred dollar bill, however. Smacked of paying me for something, though for what beyond his first drink, I couldn’t imagine. And the sketch? I picked up a pen and drew it from memory, fairly sure I got it right. What did it mean?

I heard a binging noise, exited from Mr. Rabbitfish’s e-mail, and saw that I’d received another one from him.

His return address pulsated from the computer screen. Was he obsessed with me in some kind of dangerous way? Jen would say, Absolutely. The difficulty was that I felt quite obsessed with him, too. Did that make it okay or merely doubly dangerous? Now I remembered the light of amusement in his eyes when he’d ordered a Tie Me to the Bedpost. From the beginning, when he’d said writers were too, too (or, I thought it was he who’d said it), I’d been intrigued by the feeling that he was teasing me. Every e-mail had been been like a gentle prodding in my ribcage.
Poke, poke. I’m making fun of you.

True, some of his poking had been made with a sharp object.

I clicked on the new e-mail.

Seriously, are you okay?

I felt he meant it. Call me nuts. I felt he meant it. So, I wrote back.

I broke my leg in three places. I am on my death bed and all I have to eat is a ham sandwich and a beer. And it’s all your fault.

Restless as I waited for his answer, I picked up the ice pack and turned it upside down, then pressed it back in place. I read the rest of my e-mails, and replied to several. I called Al’s cell phone and left a message, asking that he please let me know how he was doing. Also, uh, how sorry I was. Checked my e-mail. Nothing. Slowly, I recognized Mr. Rabbitfish’s usual methodology. Pull me in, then leave me dangling.

I should’ve known.

I walked slowly to the bathroom, and finally headed upstairs to my bedroom. After climbing into bed, I positioned the ice on my ankle, held in place by the blankets. It would be ice
water
within a couple of hours, and I hoped it wouldn’t leak. I only just managed to reach the light switch without dislodging the ice. The dark settled around me and I watched it with wide open eyes, as if prepared to see something like light.

“MOM, there’s no hot water!” Elliot’s voice echoed from the upstairs bathroom more loudly than necessary, given that I was right next door in the kitchen. I didn’t have any idea what he expected me to do about the hot water shortage. Noah had just finished a marathon shower, which was no doubt why Elliot’s was cold. I waved both hands in a mockingly witchy way and muttered, “Hot, schmot, pot, water, pater, martyr.” The word
martyr
at the end of my spell certainly seemed inappropriate, but it was too late to take it back.

Elliot yelled, “Thanks!”

I shook my head, laughing.

Noah lightly padded across the second floor landing and into the kitchen. He wore voluminous flannel boxer shorts that flapped around his somewhat puny white legs. Not that I didn’t adore him, but his legs weren’t his best feature. That would have to be claimed by his hair. Blond and thick and curly, he wore it to below his shoulders, though usually pulled back into a ponytail. If I hadn’t seen and
heard
his prowess with the opposite sex, I’d think he was gay. My sons were proving to me that men were changing: finding their inner girl and still managing to screw the girls, apparently without any angst whatsoever.

He said, “I either need to take a nap or have a cup of coffee.”

I checked the digital clock on the stove. “I promised Alex to get there early, so that means we have to leave here in forty-five minutes.”

“Coffee.” He stared at my pod coffee-maker, obviously perplexed.

“I’ll do it.” I went through the ritual of heating up his mug, then plopping the coffee pod into the machine. “Tell me about your writing if you want to.”

He sat down at the kitchen table, his head turned to look out the window so I couldn’t see his face. “I had another story rejected at
The New Yorker
.”

“You know that’s a long shot.” I put the coffee in front of him and pushed the sugar bowl closer, then watched to see if he still used four teaspoons of sugar. To my surprise, he asked for artificial sweetener.

After he’d stirred his coffee ’round and ’round, he took a healthy slurp. “Yeah, I know.” He gave me a shy look, almost sheepish.

I shook a finger at him. “I told you what to do and you’re just being stubborn.”

“I know,” he said, grinning. “Write a novel.”

“Yup.”

“A lot of pages in a novel.”

I sat down at the table with a small plate of sliced apple, which I offered to him. He picked up a piece and took a crunchy bite.

“Psychologically, this is
the
moment for you to write a novel,” I said.

“What do you mean?” His dark eyes stared into mine.

“The fact that your
mother
was a novelist created an understandable block for you in trying to pursue the same thing. Now that I’m no longer a novelist, the way is open.” I smiled happily. “I’m preventing you from becoming a bartender, but I don’t think you
want
to be a bartender, do you?”

“You’re such a nut.”

I nodded. “I still don’t want you to marry a poet!”

The door from the bathroom opened and Elliot popped into the kitchen with a towel wrapped around his waist. He was large, like his father and, also like his father, already losing his hair. Until the year before, we’d teased him unmercifully about his incipient baldness, but after he’d invested ten thousand dollars in hair plugs, we decided the subject was way too sensitive. Oddly, he had no difficulty with hair sprouting elsewhere on his body. His dark chest hair still glinted with drops of water from the shower.

“You want a coffee?” I said.

He tossed one of the apple slices into his mouth and nodded vigorously. While I made another coffee, Noah asked him about the script rewrite job he was currently working on.

“It’s just the most terrible thing,” Elliot said. “Violent and utterly
stupid
,”

“So why are you wasting your time on it?” Noah said.

Elliot rubbed his fingers together.
Money
.

“How much do you get for a rewrite?” I asked.

“Depends on the project—this has been green-lighted and they’re very hot for it, so I’m getting fifty grand. Have to get it done very, very soon, though.”

Noah shook his head in disbelief.

“I keep telling you to come out to L.A.,” Elliot said.

“I may yet.”

“Okay, guys, we leave in twenty minutes,” I said. “I’m going to change. Can you bring the salmon casserole when you come downstairs? It’s in the ’fridge.”

“Sure, Mom,” Noah said.

I was heading down the stairs when Elliot shouted, “Why are you limping?”

“I fell down on my first bar tending gig,” I yelled back.

I heard Noah mutter, “Jesus,” under his breath and then Elliot’s laugh.

I sort of paddled around my bedroom, going easy on my ankle, while debating what one should wear to the going-away party for one’s ex-husband-about-to-become-a-monk party.

At that moment, Noah screamed down the stairs. “What do we wear to this shindig?”

“I don’t know!”

I settled on a long gypsy skirt in a vibrant Indian print covered with shiny sequins paired with a tight emerald green leotard top. In my bathroom downstairs, I pulled my curly red hair into a ponytail and then twisted it, like I was wringing it out in the wash, and pinning it high off my neck. I did the make-up thing meant to look like I wore no make-up. I think I was fairly successful, although I could be seriously deluding myself. Clunky gold earrings. A veritable hippie girl of indeterminate age. Right.