Sweetbitter (24 page)

Whenever I'd asked him about that key: “It's nothing, it's not the key to anything, a tattoo is just a tattoo, only as permanent as the body.” How I swooned when he spoke to me in that vaguely Buddhist, vaguely nihilist accent. In reality it was a shitty tattoo that was a warning to anyone who looked at them that they were not available.

I kept blinking, my lashes sticking together, my eyes dusty. “Simone, can I borrow your makeup? I forgot my things.”

I stood in line behind Heather in the mirror, thinking about setting fire to the restaurant. So what? I asked my reflection. It's just a month in France. It's just matching tattoos. It's just that they grew up together. How many times had I used the word
just
to explain away something that so clearly needed my attention? My eyes said, Stop. This
is
something.

Everything I had ever learned about the two of them bound them more securely, squeezing out all the air, all the light. Why was I the last one to learn anything, and why when I thought I learned something did the bottom drop out of it?

Simone observed me in the mirror. She was attuned to my shifts in mood. No, she was never blind. I put on mascara. I took out her lipstick and it smelled like roses and plastic and was cold when I dragged it into place. My reflection said to her reflection, Yes, I make you look old.

I handed her the cosmetics bag.

“Can I talk to you?” I asked again.

“Can it wait?” She walked away without waiting for my response.

“No,” I whispered.

The key, the key, a month, a month. Some white-trash tattoo parlor. He had probably been underage and she had probably been his consenting adult. I wondered how she covered her breasts while the needle hit her, whether she and Jake had locked eyes or if he'd turned politely away. A series of men touching it on her and asking, What's this about? She would say, It's nothing. And a series of women all over his body, ending with my idiotic face, asking, Why a key? Never an answer, never a clue.

When was that? Where were you?
The questions they didn't tolerate. The two of them imprecise and evasive. I saw him living in her apartment, hitting his head on the ceiling when he rose from the bed in that lofted space, reworking the electrical wires. I saw her Miami mug and his Miami magnet, this phantom Morocco they both mentioned, the two of them in every corner of this restaurant, watching me with reserve, which isn't something, Tess, some things are nothing, but suddenly not these things.

And now this: the two of them sitting next to each other on a plane, the way she would drowsily drop her head onto his shoulder when the plane took off, thirty cafés au lait and croissants, thirty bistros, thirty languorous afternoons, thirty caves du vin, and Simone's French smothering the rooms they would stay in. My visions of our June vanished. I would long for the two of them to give the days significance, to show me how far I'd come, to reflect my progress, and they would be gone. I would wake on his birthday, and on my anniversary of arriving, alone. These weren't masochistic daydreams, this was the reality I would have to live through.

Simone's voice came back to me, but now it also sounded like my voice, a maxim she had pronounced during my endless, deranged training: “You need to do more than keep an eye out for incongruity. You have a blind spot for the unraveling whole.”

THE DINING ROOM WAS
wrong, misshapen, crude. Howard was texting in the corner where the tables were unmade and pushed together. The restaurant would sit, an empty space anchored in me no matter where I went or what I did.

Jake was at the bar in street clothes. He and Nicky were counting out the drawers for Howard to put in the safe. Nicky said something and Jake laughed. Nonchalantly. And didn't he do everything nonchalantly—he mixed a drink, he kept his sunglasses on indoors, he flipped a knife out of his pocket, he got his stripes wet when he cleaned the sinks, he put on a record, he ordered for you, he ordered you, took down his guitar, held your lips between his teeth like he had been doing it for years, with no effort, with nothing at stake.

“Jake.” I leaned on the bar, my voice sedate. “Are you going to Old Town? I heard that's where everyone is going.”

“I'll meet up with you later.” He didn't turn around. He didn't even stop counting.

“Okay. But I might be busy later. Do you want to make a plan?”

Nicky looked between us. The bills flew through Jake's hands.

“I'll meet you at Park Bar.”

“When? Aren't you going to eat? Everyone is going to eat.”

“I'm walking Simone home. I'll probably eat with her. I'll meet up with you later?” He didn't even glance backward. I wadded up a bar napkin and threw it at the back of his head.

“You can at least turn around when you speak to me.”

“What the fuck is wrong with you?” His eyes had gone lethal.

“Hey, hey,” Nicky said. I was ready to climb on the bar and slap him. “Jake, you wanna step outside for a minute? Fluff, be quick, we've still got shit to do.”

Outside the air had lost its potential. I crossed my arms over myself defensively.

“I'm sorry,” I said. “But you were being rude.”

His nostrils flared. The wind battered us. I tried again.

“I'm sorry I threw that. But I need to talk to you.”

“Tess, I will see you at Park Bar. I've got to walk Simone home. You don't know her like I do.”

“No one knows her like you do!”

“What's wrong with you?”

“Me? No, it's what's wrong with you guys. Simone is a grown woman, Jake. Maybe she could occasionally walk herself home, or cope with some difficulty without you.”

“Do you not notice that Simone is…” He grunted hesitantly. “Overinvested in this restaurant?”

“She's overinvested in a lot of things, Jake.”

“I don't have time for this shit, this is a real situation.”

“A real situation? It's like free vacation! You love vacation right? We're going to take a vacation? You and me, no parents, no chaperones?”

“You're a fucking child. You know the Owner closed down one of his spaces in Madison Square Park? Do you have any awareness of the industry you work in, of how your paychecks work? You think this is great for business? What do you think Simone will do if this place really shuts down? Where would she go?”

“Where would
I
go, Jake?” Simone could go anywhere, I wanted to say. Then I thought of her being trained in some generic, tableclothed space and I knew what he meant. She had overqualified herself for her own line of work. The thought of her in another uniform was offensive.

“Simone and I can't just put on a skirt and work at Blue Water, Balthazar, Babbo. Make half the money for double the hours, let a bunch of slimy dudes press up against us in the hutch. I know you'll be all right with that. Or maybe you'll finally become a Bedford Avenue barista, your dream—”

“Fuck you!” I screamed. “Your cruelty doesn't turn me on anymore.” Suddenly he had me by my shoulders squeezing me, crushing me. I pushed him away and yelled, “I know you're going to France with her.”

“So?” he said. He did not miss a fucking beat. He even shrugged his shoulders.

So.
It all came down to this insulting, one-word question.

I had been holding on to the hope that Simone was delusional. After all, it wasn't his handwriting. But it was me: I was delusional.

At least he was consistent—his enunciation, his expression said that it was nothing. I was too sensitive, dramatic, hysterical. His certainty always disabled my thoughts, like in this moment when I searched for my words, for my anger, and found a void where my reason had been. Something about how Simone was trying to separate us? Something about how he should be going to Europe with me? The only thing that came to me was, “It's not right.”

The wind came up again like a knife in my back and I was disoriented, Sixteenth Street felt foreign.

“We can talk,” he said, assessing me. “I will see you later.”

I wanted to say, No, I can't wait, but I nodded. He kissed me, unexpectedly, on the lips. We had never touched at work. Never hugged, never held hands under the table at family meal. I was more affectionate with Papi the dishwasher than I was with Jake. He thought it would pacify me, but it was so pedestrian. A trinket offered in place of jewels. God, how many times I had accepted that.

“Jake,” I said. “You know that key tattoo you have?”

“Are you serious?”

“Okay, okay. Just please find me tonight?”

“I promise.” He held my shoulders and inspected my face. Make it easy, I begged him with my eyes. Fix it. He said, “Take that shit off your lips. You look like a clown.”

“WHERE YOU FROM?”
Carlos asked me while I smoked outside Park Bar, all my joints soldered together, my body swaying in one monolithic piece. I had a blundering, lost feeling, as if I had been digging tunnels, not knowing if I was going up or down, only that I had no other option but to keep going. My night had gone terribly astray.

I checked my phone again. No texts, just the time. Six hours of drinking, the last four of them at Park Bar. I was accidentally too high, waiting for him, waiting for him. I was sore from the bolts of cocaine flexing my muscles, I was smoking, my nose, throat, and ears burning, he's not coming, he's not coming. Too high for talking, my thoughts elbowing each other out of the way, crowding to the front, to a spot on my forehead I kept touching to try and still them. I understood that the boxers in the painting were a metaphor for consciousness, the way the mind divides, combats, and destroys itself.

Carlos was in front of me, gleaming, his shoes shined, his hair slicked with pomade, his diamond earrings, which he insisted were real. They were his grandmother's in the Dominican Republic, they were on loan because he was her favorite. He and I had grown closer since I'd sold him my car for $675. It was the exact amount I owed the city in overdue parking tickets. I was pretty sure he'd flipped the car for more money, but I got discounts on my bags so it seemed a fair deal.

“Where are you from again?” he asked.

“Have you seen Jake?”

“Which one is Jake?”

“The bartender. Always looks homeless. Crazy eyes.”

“Yeah, yeah, your bartender over there. The one that used to hook up with Vanessa.”

“Ha,” I said. “Yeah, yep, that's Jake. Funny you say that because I was just thinking about the women Jake has fucked and I was thinking we should form a band or something, maybe a book club. Maybe all go on a vacation even.”

He held his hands up. “I know nothing. I don't even know when that was.”

“Of course, no one
knows
anything, let's not get involved, let's not have a real conversation with dates and facts and names and places because we might be held accountable and that,
that,
would be a catastrophe for some of us, we would have to remove our sunglasses, or lipstick, whatever, the apparatus, and we would have a proper trial, with judges and evidence and verdicts, and some of us would be clean and some of us would be dirty.”

“You're pretty up there, huh?” He whistled and it sounded like
cuckoo.

“I'm done, I'm fine. I can wait it out.”

“You want something to help?”

“I don't do hard stuff. Like heroin, I don't do heroin.”

“Yeah, I know, none of you rich kids do heroin.” He winked at me.

“Why would we when you keep us up to our eyeballs in shitty coke? Don't fucking wink at me.”

“Girl, you are mouthy tonight!” He smiled and handed me another cigarette. I hadn't realized I was gripping the leftover filter, pinching it. “I like it, you got your teeth bared and shit. I was talking about Xanax, niña, shit your mama gave you when you got nervous about the SATs. I never seen you so tense.”

“My mother never did that,” I said. My bones were sharp, my skin wasn't thick enough to hold them, but I enjoyed Carlos and his kitschy moves. Thank god for Carlos. “I will take a Xanax, actually. How much?”

“First time's always free, niña.”

“Oh Jesus, you're really going to make me feel filthy about this aren't you? What is that? It doesn't look the same.”

“It's a Xanibar. Just take a small piece. Should last you a few days depending on what kind of fiesta you're on.”

“I'm not on a fucking fiesta, I'm in fucking hell.”

“Still works the same.”

“My friends will kill you if I die.”

I broke off a piece and chewed it up. I grabbed someone else's fairly full beer from inside the open window and chased it. We looked back through the windows. Will, Ariel, Sasha, Parker, Heather, Terry, Vivian—all listening to Nicky hold court on one of his rare forays to Park Bar. I couldn't face him like this, with my clenched, throbbing molars, my twitching hands. Everyone was there—except Jake and Simone, of course—telling and retelling the story of the inspection, speculating about what had really happened, what would happen. Normally I excelled in that gratifying, circular talk, hours slipping by while we filled space with drinking and reinforcing the same stories, never coming up with different endings.

“I think your friends forgot about you,” Carlos said.

“You think that. But I'm their pet. Their puppy. They need me to follow them around.” I ran my tongue over my lips and they were serrated. I tasted blood, I thought of him. “Actually we don't even have to call them my friends. Let's call them the people I spend time with. Or actually—this is funny—let's call them my coworkers. It's
just
dinner!”

“I heard about your place. That's really fucking crazy. If we got shut down—”

“We didn't, we voluntarily closed to perform repairs—”