Sweetbitter (17 page)

She never dealt in pity. I didn't know what to say.

“Your mother must be pretty,” I said eventually. “You're pretty.”

“You think so?” She looked at me from the mirror, unimpressed.

“Why don't you want a boyfriend?” I had made two assumptions before I knew what was happening, first, that she didn't have a boyfriend, second, that it was because she didn't want one.

“A boyfriend? That's a sweet word. I'm afraid I am in retirement from love, little one.”

She barely but definitely softened.

“In Marseille you could walk down to the docks in the mornings. They had urchins, still alive. An offhand exchange, a few francs for this delicacy. The rocks are littered with debris: empty shells opened with a knife, rinsed by salt water, and sucked dry on the spot. Men taking lunch with bottles of their hard house wine, watching the boats move in and out. It's the ovaries—the coral ovaries. They are supposed to transfer a great power when you consume them. Absolutely voluptuous, the texture, absolutely permanent, the taste. It stays with you for the rest of your life.”

She went toward the door, pulling her hair back. She looked at me thoughtfully. “There are so many things to be blasé about: your youth, your health, your employment. But real food—gifts from the ocean, no less—is not one of them. It's one of the only things that can immerse you safely in pleasure in this degraded, miserable place.”

“IT'S EXHAUSTING,”
Howard said as he put on a slate-wool overcoat, a fedora, and leather gloves. He looked like he'd walked in from the 1940s. He gazed toward the exit and smiled at me. “You really have to love it.”

“Yes,” I said. I swirled the milk and splashed it on the espresso. I knew exactly how to make his macchiatos. “It's like, physically tiring. But there is something else that really flattens me every night. I can't put my finger on it.”

“Entropy,” he said. Like I was the sixth person to ask him. He raised his eyebrows at me to see if I knew what it meant, and I raised my eyebrows back to say I was skeptical of his usage.

“Rather it's a case of mismatched desires. The restaurant, an entity separate from us, but composed of us, has a set of desires, which we call service. What is service?”

“It's exhausting?”

“It's order. Service is a structure that controls chaos. But the guests, the servers, have desires as well. Unfortunately we want to disrupt that order. We produce chaos, through our randomness, through our unpredictability. Now”—he sipped and I nodded that I was still with him—“we are humans, aren't we? You are, I am. But we are also the restaurant. So we are in constant correction. We are always straining to retain control.”

“But can you control entropy?”

“No.”

“No?”

“We just try. And yes, it is tiring.”

I saw the restaurant as a ruin. I imagined the Owner closing the place, locking the door many decades from now and the dust and the fruit flies and the grease accumulating, no one working around the clock to clean the dishes and linens, the restaurant returning to its primitive, nonfunctional elements.

“Thank you,” he said and put the cup down.

“You're a free man now?”

“That I am. I have some manly Christmas decorating to do.”

I nodded. It had surprised me, the holiday erupting in the park, in Flower-Girl's ridiculous bar arrangement. It was hung with actual cookies from the pastry department. Even Clem's had strung up lights. I remembered how warm New York had looked in Christmas movies, how benevolent and rich the shop windows were, how everyone's humanity broke through just in time for redemption, just in time for faith. It didn't feel like that when I walked to work. It felt cold and forced.

“I guess I should go see that tree or something.”

“Will you be around for the holidays?” he asked.

I thought, Um, you scheduled me the day before and the day after, where the fuck do you think I'm going to go, but I said, “Yeah. I'm here. Just relaxing. I hear it's very quiet.”

“Well, if you find yourself restless, I host an orphans' Christmas every year. Don't worry, Simone does most of the cooking, I wouldn't subject anyone to mine. But it's a tradition. You are heartily invited. And it's not as boring as I've made it sound.”

“Are you an orphan?”

“Ah.” He smiled at me. “We are all orphans eventually. That's if we're lucky.” He waved to someone at the bar who had spotted him and winked at me before releasing himself from our grip and into the free fall of the evening.

“WAIT UNTIL
the truffles hit the dining room—absolute sex,” said Scott.

When the truffles arrived the paintings leaned off the walls toward them. They were the grand trumpets of winter, heralding excess against the poverty of the landscape. The black ones came first and the cooks packed them up in plastic quart containers with Arborio rice to keep them dry. They promised to make us risotto with the infused rice once the truffles were gone.

The white ones came later, looking like galactic fungus. They immediately went into the safe in Chef's office.

“In a safe? Really?”

“The trouble we take is in direct proportion to the trouble they take. They are impossible,” Simone said under her breath while Chef went over the specials.

“They can't be that impossible if they are on restaurant menus all over town.” I caught her eye. “I'm kidding.”

“You can't cultivate them. The farmers used to take female pigs out into the countryside, lead them to the oaks, and pray. They don't use pigs anymore, they use well-behaved dogs. But they still walk and hope.”

“What happened to the female pigs?”

Simone smiled. “The scent smells like testosterone to them. It drives them wild. They destroyed the land and the truffles because they would get so frenzied.”

I waited at the service bar for drinks and Sasha came up beside me with a small wooden box. He opened it and there sat the blanched, malignant-looking tuber and a small razor designed specifically for it. The scent infiltrated every corner of the room, heady as opium smoke, drowsing us. Nicky picked up the truffle in his bare hand and delivered it to bar 11. He shaved it from high above the guest's plate.

Freshly tilled earth, fields of manure, the forest floor after a rain. I smelled berries, upheaval, mold, sheets sweated through a thousand times. Absolute sex.

That was why it took me some time to see the snow falling in the window at the end of the bar. Whispers rose among the guests, they pointed to the street. Their heads turned in a reverent row. Thin shards of truffle drifted down and disappeared into the tagliatelle.

“Finally,” said Nicky, and replaced the truffle. He leaned back on the bar, wearing a handsome, self-satisfied smile. “You never forget your first snow in New York.”

The first flakes lingered in the window, framed. For a second, I believed they would fly back up to the streetlights.

I CAME TO LOVE
the Williamsburg Bridge, once I learned how to walk it. I was mostly alone, a few all-weather bikers, a few heavily bundled Hasidic women. I walked either in some dusky circumference of gray light or some blotchy, cottoned afternoon. It never failed to move me. I paused in the middle of the filthy river. I stared at the trash eddying in currents and clinging to docks like wine dregs cling to a glass. Simone had mentioned the orphans' dinner at Howard's to me. I thought of them all up there at Howard's on the Upper West Side. I thought of Jake in a Christmas sweater. I told them I was busy. Remember this, I told myself. Remember how quiet today is. I had the newspaper, which I would keep for years, and I was on my way to lunch in Chinatown by myself. As I contemplated the skyline this double feeling came to me as one thought, pressing in from either side of the bridge, impossible for me to reconcile:
It is ludicrous for anyone to live here
and
I can never leave.

S
OMETIMES I SAW
all of service condensed, as if I had only worked one night that stretched out over the months.

I kicked the kitchen doors open with the toe of my clog, I came up the stairs and Jake and I met eyes. I looped the dining room in sweeping, elongated arcs, both my biceps and wrists tense. I saw myself without a time lapse, the images still and laid on top of each other. All the plates of filet mignon of tuna streamlined into its essential form:
the
filet mignon of tuna, lapidary. All the napkins I ever folded in a totemic monument. And running through these still lifes, an unmistakable straight line, was the gaze with which I watched them, a gaze in which sometimes Jake or Simone would join me. That's all I remembered—these few images and watching them all from afar, a huge stillness, a giant pause. When I felt like this it was the easiest and most beautiful job in the world. But I knew it was never still, that it was always flawed and straying from the ideal. To romanticize it was to lie.

I heard it turn midnight from the wine room. A beckoning din came through the ceiling. Thumping on the floorboards, whistling. I ran up the stairs and there was a crowd at the service bar, where flutes were lined up. The regulars had left their stools to cheer with us. Simone brought me a glass of the Cuvée Elisabeth Salmon Rosé Champagne. I shut my eyes: peaches, almonds, marzipan, rose petals, a whiff of gunpowder and I had started a new year in New York City.

“YOU.
In a dress.”

That's what I wanted him to say. He didn't end up saying it, but I said it to myself many times as I greeted my reflection in the buildings going up Broadway. My high heels rocked me like roller skates, my hair that I had spent time blow-drying was whipped up, I was suddenly vulnerable to the weather, to uneven sidewalks. I nodded to the iron wedge of the Flatiron like a prestigious acquaintance. The dress was half a paycheck. A short, black silk tunic. I was still confused about the power of clothes—nobody had taught me how to dress myself. When I tried it on and looked in the mirror, I was meeting myself decades from now, when I had grown unconquerable. All in a dress. I nearly returned it twice. I saw myself in the dark-green glass of a closed bank. I turned to my reflection: You. In a dress.

THE OWNER CLOSED
the restaurant on New Year's Day. He rented out a bar and we all got to drink there with one giant, miraculous, unending tab. From the stories everyone had been rehashing, bad behavior abounded. Someone was going to get too drunk, and though Will and Ariel were both betting on me, I was determined to stay on the soberer side of wasted and had brought my own bag of coke to ensure it.

I had forgotten that there would be adults there. The Owner and his wife stood at the entrance, beaming down authority and warmth. Even they must have been hungover, but they were flawless. A small line had formed to greet them, and as he shook each person's hand his eyes didn't scan the room. His wife looked charitable and flashed a smile that drew you out of the ground.

I tiptoed around the line. I couldn't say hello. What if he didn't remember me? What if I started crying? I remembered orientation and I still couldn't believe that they had chosen me.

IT WENT MORE
or less according to plan. Baby blinis with caviar, foie gras crostini, broiled mussels in the shell, crab dip, oyster shooters—decadent and finger-sized from the Owner's new catering company. We greeted each other tentatively, checking each other out, marveling at the transformations of dress-up. Ariel in a miniskirt and a sweater she had cut into a crop. Will in a lavender button-down. Sasha in all black and sunglasses. We clung to the bar nervously, trying to get a little tipsy, suddenly scared to talk to these strangers. An hour into it, the entire room relaxed and laughter rang out coarsely from all over the room and the DJ turned up the music. Then the Superlatives started.

Of course I had voted. Zoe made sure we all voted when she passed out the ballots at preshift. There were some usual suspects: Prettiest Eyes, Cutest Couple. And there were the industry-specific prizes, Most Likely to Start a Restaurant. I figured it was another code I had to break—every category had a natural winner. Starting a restaurant—it had to be Nicky, he talked about ditching us and opening up his own bar all the time. Person You Want to Wait on Your Mom was Heather because she looked and talked like a doll. As they announced the prizes I was the shallow spectator I had been in the beginning. Biggest Prankster was Parker—I had put Nicky for that one as well because I wasn't sure Parker even knew how to speak. Apparently he had been pranking the people he liked for years. I had yet to fall into that category. Most Likely to Make It to Broadway was Ariel. She stuck her finger in her throat and retched. Will went and got the award for her. Then Howard, in a top hat no less, said, “And the Person You'd Most Like to Be Stuck in an Elevator With…is…Tess!”

A polite smattering of applause and a wolf whistle. I clapped too. Everyone stared at me. It dripped into my head, from some neglected faucet, thickly, painfully, that I was Tess.

I had chosen Simone, after a thorough consideration. This is your elevator person, I told myself. It's not the person you made plans with, it's not where you thought you'd end up, but bam—the elevator sticks. Your life, a luscious pause, dictated by chance. All the tasks of the day are tossed away. You can't know when you'll make it out, but unlike the desert-island scenario, with the elevator you can be assured of an eventual exit.

Of course, I'd thought about Jake. There he was, all to myself. I thought of him pinning the four corners of me to the wall with his body. But the flaming center of my fantasy wasn't the sex. No, what I wanted to get to was after. We would still be trapped in the elevator. He would look at me. There would be no bar tickets, no crowds, no phone calls, no stripes. He would be forced to recognize me. I knew that if I could get him to
see
me, then both of us would stop being lonely.

But then I reconsidered. Chances are Jake would be in a mood. I had a sense of how he would react to feeling trapped. What if he fell silent? What if he was mean? Or worse, what if I bored him? The nakedness of the scenario scared me. So he was off my list.

With Simone, the mood in the elevator went from erotic to cerebral and I was relieved. Simone would recite Wordsworth, William Blake, or if I was feeling modern, Wallace Stevens, Frank O'Hara. Simone would explain how wines were made in the Jura in the 1800s and how it related to the cheeses. She would remember details of paintings she saw in Florence a decade ago, and the name of the trattoria where she took lunch afterward. She might even tell me a story about
their
salt-strewn, dune-grass-covered childhood.

I would make fun of myself and make her laugh. I would tell her stories of demented middle America, and how after I first read
The Catcher in the Rye
when I was ten years old I packed a backpack and ran away from home but returned after neighbors found me sleeping in their toolshed. Simone would unravel the universe and tell me why it was so hard to find meaning in our technological age, why cities rise and fall, why we are doomed only to repeat ourselves. And after all this prolonged contact, I would come away changed, with more of her on me, the lessons would be permanent.

“Tess?” Howard waved a generic certificate that one of the hostesses had decorated with gold stars. I stood up uneasily in my heels. I turned to look for someone, turned to look for someone, turned to look for someone.

I said thank you and took my seat again. But not before I gave my coworkers a real once-over. I tried to meet as many eyes as possible and ask them, Me?

“SO DID YOU VOTE
for me or what?” I slid myself down the bar to him, simmering, lacy, high. In my shoes I was closer to his eye line. Jake in a muted, worn-out flannel and wool slacks, his hair flat and greasy. Uncomfortable, hunched.

“I hate these things. Every year I say, never again.”

“What's to hate? Free appetizers.” I looked around the room at the strange group of people who had been chosen by the restaurant. The cliques came magnetically back together after the initial shocks of being out of context. The porters and dishwashers were wearing sports coats and they sat with their heavily made-up, animated wives. The cooks had taken over a corner of the bar, where they sipped on añejo tequila and paused for shots of mezcal. The floor around them was wet from spillage. The hostesses and pastry girls hovered around them like a protective layer of atmosphere.

The real grown-ups were at a table together—Howard had brought an age-appropriate date who did everything at half speed. She chewed each bite to completion before setting her fork down, reaching into her lap, and pressing her napkin to her lips lightly, not enough to disrupt her lipstick. Definitely not a restaurant person. There was Chef and his rather beautiful wife, there was Nicky and Denise, who had her cell phone out on the table—it flashed with updates from the babysitter. Simone had joined the table to talk to Denise, their knees turned toward each other. I thought about them in their twenties, Denise with no kids, just dating a bartender, Simone lighter, more prone to laughter. Parker and Sasha played quarters at our table, Ariel and Will were probably in the bathroom, and Heather was trying to get Santos to dance.

It was so predictable and lovely, my heart struggled to hold it.

“As if I don't see enough of these people,” he said darkly. “And to be here on my day off. Giant waste of time.”

“Why did you come?”

“It's not worth the black mark for nonparticipation. Besides”—he shot back his whiskey and nodded to the bartender for another—“free drinks.”

Misha, the hostess we all still made fun of for her inflated breasts, walked by and stuck her arm out to me.

“Tess, congrats! The big win!” She giggled. I looked at my certificate. I had carried it over with me in case I wanted to brag to Jake. But next to him it looked childish.

“So embarrassing actually,” I said. I folded up the award. I nodded to the bartender. “A white? Not too oaky, please, no Chardonnay.”

“You earned it,” he said, taking another drink and looking away from me.

“It's kind of nice, right?” I said. “People want to spend time with me. They aren't trying to ditch me in diners. I'm not so terribly annoying.”

When he turned to me his eyes were jagged, slivered, and I was scared. I thought he must be on something. He said, “That's the biggest whore award. You know that right?”

“Whore?”

“Come on, new girl, don't play dumb. Your kitchen boys always send it out to whoever they want to fuck. But, oh yeah, congrats! The big win!”

“Um…” I tried to laugh but it died in my throat. Scott saw me from the end of the bar and winked. After so much crying—in bathrooms sitting on toilets, hiding next to the air conditioner in the pastry station, behind the ice machine, into my pillow, into my hands, sometimes simply into my locker—this time I didn't flee. I stayed and the tears came.

“You…” It wouldn't come to me. The vicious words I longed for were lost in the flotsam of being humiliated, yet again, like always. “You are mean, Jake. It's too mean for me.”

His eyes flashed blue and then collapsed.

“I'm sorry,” he said. “Tess.”

I nodded. “Please excuse me.”

As I walked I forced my heels into the ground. My wineglass burned in my hand. Simone's eyes brushed over me and went to the bar. Yes, I thought, go to him. Comfort him because the new girl with the biggest whore award called him mean.

“TESS?”

I picked my feet up off the bathroom floor to hide from her but I had just taken a line and sniffled. She knocked on the stall.

“You can only come in if you do drugs. Drugs-only zone.” I clicked it open. She came in. We were uncomfortably close. We could have stood by the sinks, but she locked the door behind her and sat on the toilet. She gave me her open palm and I put my bag in it. She poured a tiny bump out on the webbing between her pointer finger and her thumb. She inhaled it without taking her eyes off me.

“Please,” she said in response to my expression. “I was young once.”

She touched the end of her nose thoughtfully and I touched mine.

“I thought it was a good thing,” I said. My hands were shaking. “I really thought, oh, here I am, stuck in an elevator, I better pick someone I really…I…I picked you.”

“I'm flattered.”

I pressed toilet paper to my cheeks.

“It's like we're exchanging, going back and forth, just playing. And then he hits me too hard. It goes from play pain to real pain.”

“I know.”

“Simone, am I not doing this right? Everything feels like a punishment.”

“What are you being punished for?”

“I don't fucking know—being stupid?”

“Stop it.” She grabbed my hands unsympathetically. “No one is interested in you playing the victim. Get out of your head. If you don't you'll always be disappointed. Pay attention.”

I pulled my hands away and she folded hers into her lap.

“Is it too late?” she asked.

“For what?”

“For you to let this flirtation go?”

“I think it's more than a flirtation, Simone.”

“It's not, it's a fantasy. Jake knows it and you know it. Can you let it go?” She looked at me impassively.

“Okay…I mean…we work together…so.” I paused. “What do you mean Jake knows it?”

“I mean that Jake is aware of this crush.”

“You guys talk about me?” I thought I might vomit.

“We don't
talk
about you. It has come up.”