Sweetbitter (12 page)

“Thank you,” I said. I put it to my forehead. “I don't think I can be in here tonight.”

“Suit yourself, Skip. Tell me before you leave.” She looked back and forth between us. “So I know you're safe or whatever. Vivian's dying up there.”

I gulped the beer. Wait out the silence, that was my plan. He would say something.

“We can split this,” I said. He took the bottle, tilted it, I watched his Adam's apple, and he handed it back to me. His eyes were asking me a question. I nodded.

“You never talk to me,” I said.

“I don't?”

“No. You don't seem to like me.”

“I don't?”

His eyes colorless, cloudy, collected. His teeth wine stained. He leaned in. “You're very affected by things. A gust of wind throws you. You take everything seriously.”

His breath like malt and violets, gripping.

“I do,” I said.

“I like that.”

“But you don't seem to take anything seriously.”

He scanned the room and his eyes came back to me every few seconds when someone bumped into us.

“Sometimes,” I said, “I feel like we're talking. But we're not talking.”

He reached out and grabbed a piece of my hair. He twirled it around his finger. I was not breathing.

“How's that bruise?”

“It's fine,” I said. I turned my cheek away even though it had nearly faded. He dropped my hair. “I'm going to sue. Those stairs are idiotic.”

He nodded, patient. Wolfish cheekbones, angular, ascetic face. Rings on long fingers, a rose, a half skull, a gold Mason seal.

“Is that Yorick?” I asked, pointing to his skull ring.

“That's a problem,” he said. He took the beer from me. “I don't flirt with girls who read.”

He smiled, knowing he had me. Something expert and sadistic in him, wrapping and unwrapping me. I looked away, I looked back. I started to say something, stopped. I moved toward the bathroom but didn't move. He passed the beer back to me and I took a gulp.

“You're confused,” he said. “I can see it all over your face.”

What to say? Duh? “I'm just trying to do a good job.”

“In life?”

“Yes, in life.”

He took the beer back and finished it in a long pull, looking me up and down. Was it my ripped jeans and gray T-shirt? My Converse? Where was everyone else?

“I want…I mean, I want more than to do a good job. I want to take each experience on the pulse.”

“Ha!” He slammed the wall above me. “She's quoting Keats to you? You're too malleable to be around her.”

“I'm not a child,” I said, but felt cheated.

“You're not a child,” he repeated. “Do you know the difference between wanting experiences and having them?”

“You don't know me,” I said. But I wanted him to. I tried to drink the beer but there was nothing there. My hairline prickled in sweat. I pulled my scarf off, choking myself for a second. With the air on my neck I felt careless. I pushed my chin up, dropped my head back, and blinked at him.

“Your eyes. It's unmistakable,” he said. He thumbed my cheekbone. “Veiled melancholy has her sovereign shrine.”

His hand moved up my cheek, flushing me, into my hair, where he tugged, his fingers dry, nonchalant. His other hand pressed into the bruise on my thigh, as if he could intuit the blood below the skin.

When he kissed me I said, Oh my god into his mouth but that, like everything else, was swallowed up.

AT THAT MOMENT
there was no Jake, no restaurant, no city. Just my desires running flagrantly, power-drunk, through the streets. Merciless, all of them. Was I a monster or was this what it felt like to be a person? He didn't just use those absurd, softly sketched lips, but his teeth, his tongue, his jaw, his hands pressing me down, eventually grabbing my wrists, compressing me. I fought back. I grunted. I hissed.

I don't think it was pretty kissing. When it was over I felt like I had been beaten. Dazed, angry, still itching. He went into the humid crowd to get a beer and didn't come back. I stood there staring at the boxers in the painting for I don't know how long, until Scott asked if I was hungry and I said, “Starving.”

WE STREAMED THROUGH
the door of the Sichuan place in lower Midtown. I looked for a clock on the wall and luckily couldn't find one. Nothing to bear down on the plastic tablecloths, nothing to remind me that this night would end.

The restaurant was fairly full, a mixed crowd for so late in the night, some of them looking respectable, some of them looking like us, used up and nervy. None of the diners met each other's eyes, following a law of anonymity built into brightly lit, late-night places.

Yes, we were starving. Scott waved the menus away and we got the waiter's attention—he proceeded to order an obscene amount of food off the “real menu,” which wasn't printed.

Two-dollar beers that tasted like barely fermented, yeasty water. We salivated. There was no coursing—in ten minutes plates started pounding the spinning tray at the center of the table and we fought among ourselves. Conch in a hallucinatory Sichuan oil, a nest of cold sesame noodles, a wild, red stew that Scott called ma po tofu, cold tripe (“Just eat it,” Scott said, and I did), crackling duck, dry-sautéed green beans, skinny molten eggplants, cucumbers in scallion oil…

We sweat, we breathed harder, our eyes ran. More napkins. The sauces ran. More rice. I touched my lips, numb and electrified. My stomach bloated out, a hard alien ball. I thought about throwing up so that I could eat another round.

“What would your last meal be?” I asked suddenly. That was a night when I thought it would be all right if my life ended.

“A really long omakase. Like at least thirty-four courses. I want Yesuda to cook them himself. He puts the soy sauce on with a paintbrush.”

“Salmon pastrami from Russ and Daughters. A ton of bagels. Like three bagels.”

“In-N-Out double double.”

“I'm thinking about a Barolo, something really ripe and dirty, like from the eighties.”

“ShackBurger and a milk shake.”

“My mom's was veal scallopini and a Diet Coke.”

“Nonna's Bolognese—it takes eight hours. She makes the pappardelle by hand.”

“A roast chicken—I would eat the entire thing by hand. And I guess a DRC. When else would I taste that kind of Burgundy?”

“Blinis, caviar, and crème fraîche. Done and done. Some impossible Champagne, Krug, or a culty one like the Selosse, drunk out of the bottle.”

“Toast,” I said, when my turn came. I tried to think of something more glamorous, but toast was the truth. I expected to be mocked. My suburban-ness, my stupidity, my blankness.

“What on top?”

“Um. Peanut butter. The raw kind you get from the health-food stores. I salt it myself.”

My clumsiness. My dullness. Instead they all nodded. They treated my toast reverentially. Which was exactly how I thought of it when I made it in the morning. I ate it standing up in the narrow kitchen, which had one pan, paper plates, and a toaster. A small window at the end where I could scan the buildings and watch pigeons on telephone wires. Sometimes I had two pieces. Sometimes I ate it naked, leaning up against the window.

“I'm going to throw up.”

We all agreed.

“Nightcap?”

We all agreed.

The bill was nothing and the table was destroyed. We left a pile of cash on the spinning tray and rolled ourselves into the ample night.

J
AKE ACTED LIKE
nothing had happened, so I acted like nothing had happened harder. One evening we were alone in the glass-and-cardboard labyrinth of the wine cellar. I could hear him moving behind a stack of boxes higher than my head. I heard an unconcerned grunt. His knife tore into the tape. Scrape of cardboard on cement. Taps of glass on glass.

How easy it would be to say, Hi. To say, Hi, do you remember me? To say, Can you help me find the Bricco Manzoni? To say, Oh geez, this place is a mess. To say, Kiss me again like that, right now.

Footsteps above us loosening dust from the ceiling. I stopped doing everything and listened to him. He left carrying six bottles of wine in his hands, ducking at the low door. Beware of Sediment, I would have said, if he had looked at me.

I woke in the mornings inwardly hysterical at the possibility of seeing him. I took great pleasure in subduing it. I practiced composure. He was teaching me a previously unknown patience. It was about him, but it was also not him. I longed for satiation but was terrified of it. I wanted to live in this queasy moment of fantasy for as long as possible. My body was agitated and possessed, but I found the Bricco, I broke down the case. I held it in my body—the precarious balance between the quotidian and Technicolor madness.

“AMATEUR NIGHT,”
Ariel yelled. Park Bar was filled with lumpy women strapped into flammable dresses, grown men in faded face paint. A pair of vampire fangs in an empty glass with lime rinds. A gold-chained, clown-shoed pimp sat in a corner, around him all the usual tarnished whores. Will, our own Peter Parker, had morphed into Spider-Man. He asked me to cover his Halloween shift, saying that it was his favorite holiday, and I thought he was being sarcastic. Not only had I not participated in Halloween as a child, I found adults who clung to it especially odd. But he owned a full costume and had been drinking with his friends Batman, Robin, and Wolverine since the early afternoon. He crouched on a bar stool and shot webbing at me, ignorant of how the red fabric clung to his beer belly.

Vivian was indecent. I had spent many nights appraising her with Ariel, who was critical by default, but also smitten. Sometimes I forgot Vivian was like me—a person, perhaps soulful, ambitious, or something. Tonight she was “tit soup”—that's what she called it. She overflowed everywhere, the waistband of her fishnets cutting into her hips above little black shorts.

“What are you, sweet pea?” she asked over the bar.

“I'm inoffensive,” I yelled back. She didn't hear me but pretended like she did and said, “Cool.”

“This is kinda sad, no?” But Ariel wasn't paying attention to me either. She threw a cocktail cherry at Vivian, who was midconversation with a knight and princess. She caught it and popped it in her mouth and winked at Ariel.

“Cunt!” Ariel yelled and laughed.

Vivian laid out tequila shots and a bowl of candy corn on the bar. As soon as I took my shot my stomach gurgled. It had been hours since I had eaten. I was doomed.

“Total amateur night,” I said, chewing a slimy handful of candy corn. “Is someone getting a bag or what?”

“I think Spidey has plenty.”

Will was talking to Scott and the kitchen guys in the corner, wringing his hands. We all had our tics when we were high: Will wrung his hands, Ariel blinked rapidly, and I said, “No, wait,” over and over again. They mimicked me all the time. “No, wait, guys,” and I always sounded like the slow child when they did it.

“Nice costume,” said Scott. “Are you a teenage boy?”

“In your dreams, Scott.” I tapped Will on the shoulder. “Willy babe, do you have treats for me?”

“Trick or treat!” he yelled and slid his arm over my shoulder. He followed me, babbling, into the bathroom line.

“What are you saying?” I flipped on the lights and locked the door. It smelled like shit. “God, someone destroyed this place.”

Will was sweating, his face greenish against his red suit. His eyes chased light around the bathroom. He looked frightening.

“Sit down, babe,” I said, putting him on the toilet.

“You never watched that movie.”

“I'm getting to it.” I held my hand out and he started wringing his hands.

“You're too busy now.”

“I'm not, Will, I'm getting to it. Are you going to share or what?”

“I'm a sharer,” he said. “I have five brothers and sisters.” He reached into his sock and his head fell into the sink.

“Ouch.” I grabbed his forehead and straightened him up. “I know. You have five brothers and sisters and you are right in the middle. You hold it all together.” I kissed him on the forehead and took the bag.

“Most men lead lives of quiet desperation.”

I looked at the bag—it was nearly empty. “Okay, okay, Thoreau. You're out.”

“You should watch that movie.”

“Did you do this all yourself?”

“Nah, I'm a generous guy.”

“That's true, darling. No one would argue with that. I'm going to finish this.” I took out my compact—there was just enough for a serious line. I looked at myself in the mirror as I came up. The truth was that sometimes I felt nothing. I did the coke and told myself that I was high but I was just numb. That's why I looked in the mirror. When I was really flying I couldn't stop searching for my eyes in any reflection. I thought I was beautiful, I thought my eyes had secrets. That night I looked plain. I picked my eyelashes in the mirror and I saw Will staring at me, his eyes bulging out.

“Are you okay? Do you need air?”

“I'm in love with you.” The words smashed together when he said it, but it was one of those unmistakable phrases. It was built that way so you could never take it back.

“Excuse me?”

“I'm in love—”

“God, no, never mind, don't say it again.”

He put his hand over his mouth and fell backward, hitting the toilet handle. It flushed profoundly.

“Don't be stupid, Will.” My voice sounded angry. I looked in the mirror and my eyes were vibrating. “You're a fucking nightmare talking like that.”

“I'm sorry,” he said. His head wilted on his neck.

“Don't be sorry,” I said. Of course tomorrow I would pretend like nothing had happened. Jake had taught me about that. I would be kind. But as I hit him on the back, I realized I was actually angry. “Don't be sorry, just don't be stupid, okay?”

I guided him out and dropped him on a bench near the door. He sat calmly, swiveling his head around as if he had just woken up. I sat on a bar stool next to Ariel and concentrated on my fingernails kneading into the wood on the bar.

“Did you ever read Djuna, I forget,” she said, totally coherent, chewing on a cherry stem.

“Yes.”

“I gave
Nightwood
to Vivi. I'm trying to get her to read more.”

“That's good.” There was a tequila shot in front of me and I took it. “That should fuck her up for a minute.”

Ariel smiled. “You finished the bag, huh?”

A stethoscope on the bar. A cape hanging on a stool. Costumes wearing away then finally discarded as we approached another harsh morning. I listened to everyone, peeling back the black paint from the bar in strips. I could do it, if I wanted to. That's what I was thinking. I could talk about Billy Wilder and Djuna Barnes and the new bone-marrow dish at the gastropub in the West Village and whether you knew so-and-so from that university, oh it's just a little school called fucking Harvard, and isn't it sad how the city is changing, every day for the worse, and of course radicalism is the only vehicle for change, and oh yes, revolution is intrinsically violent, but what is violence anyway, it all boils down to pheromones, we are just chemical mixtures, but when you meet that person you just
know,
you know?

“Fake,” I yelled. No one looked at me. Maybe I hadn't said it out loud. “We're all just waiting around to become real people—well guess what Vivian—we're not. Remember the phonies?” She nodded, her face like a sequin. “You don't remember. You need to read more.

“Fuck you,” I said to a man I didn't recognize. “You want to repeat the names of things? You want to make out?”

That person disappeared.

“I serve people!” I yelled out above the music.

“Sasha, you think my life is easy 'cause I'm pretty? It's not. I get a fucking door opened for me now and then. Being pretty…well…”

“I wanna fuckin' record this shit right now.”

“It sucks.”

“Baby Monster, how 'bout you shut your face 'fore I break your face.”

“I hate you,” I said to Will, but he was asleep on coats.

Maybe it was that he'd said it in the bathroom. Was that me now? The Park Bar bathroom with its one dreary bulb and scratched-out mirror, scummy faucet, and STD-infected walls? A bathroom where I ran the water and threw up on countless occasions? Love?

But it was Jake, really. Will and Jake were friends, or friendly, as much as Jake could be friends with anyone. They drank together, acted like old comrades, had their safe subjects to chat about (rare Dylan recordings and Vietnam War trivia). But Will gossiped like a teenager. Everyone at the restaurant did. It was entirely possible—likely even—that Jake and Will had discussed this “love,” a word now irreparably tied to the Park Bar bathroom. Perhaps Jake had told Will to express his feelings. Perhaps Jake had told him I wasn't worth it. What Jake certainly hadn't said was, Stop, I like her.

“Ari,” I yelled. She turned away from her conversation. I shot back more tequila and reached behind the bar for the bottle. I heard glass shattering as I pulled it up. “Look, skulls.” I pointed to the bottle. “It's spooky. Get it? Death.”

Ariel pinched me hard on the underarm but didn't yell at me. “What's wrong with you?”

“Can we share a cab home? I'm about to be really drunk.”

I shut my eyes and she patted my head.

“Sure, Skip. Whatever you want.”

I picked my head up and looked toward the door. Just leave, I thought. It was bitterly cold that night and the wind knocked on the sealed windows. Instead of my reflection there was a spiteful, sparkling face floating in the dark window, looking at me with a tightened jaw, judging.

THE PARK BECAME
threadbare as the vendors thinned out at the Greenmarket. The farmers made bets on the first frost. The windows in my room were always shut, old T-shirts stuffed into the cracks. I tapped at a decrepit, cold radiator, watched it like an oracle. But what really signaled the change in the seasons was that the bugs moved inside. The fruit flies first. They hovered around the lids of the liquors at the bar, around the sink drains. Fruit flies dispersing when you picked up a damp rag. A spray of black specks on the cream-colored walls. Zoe addressed it at preshift and assigned everyone extra side work.

“Fruit flies are an emergency,” she said and struck her fist forward for emphasis.

That was what had me with yellow gloves on up to my elbows, holding a roll of paper towels and a nameless spray bottle of blue. I shuffled toward Nicky and the bar sink.

“You look great, Fluff, now down on your hands and knees.”

“I don't understand,” I said, but what I meant was, Why me?

“You're a woman, I thought cleaning was intuitive.”

He poured the watery remains of a cocktail into a glass and handed it to me.

“Liquid courage.”

“What's under there?” I took the drink down.

“You think I know? The last time I cleaned under that sink was in the late eighties.”

I sighed and knelt. As I descended the air changed. Dank, uncirculated, a whiff of citrus.

I peeked in under the sink. It was dark.

“I can't see anything.”

Nicky handed me a flashlight. A drain is made of two drains, Zoe told me. The first was in the sink, and the second was in the floor. There was a gap between them. That air gap was called a stopgap I found out later. It prevented water, sewage, anything from the pipes from backing up directly into the sink.

I pointed the light and saw pens, wine corks, foil, scraps of paper, forks, coins. I swung the light, looking for the floor drain. When I found it I gasped and clicked the light off.

Nicky was leaning on the bar, looking at me.

“What'd you find?”

“Nick, this is bad.”

HIS “BEHIND YOU”S
became demonic. The best-case scenario was that it was the start of his shift, late afternoon, and he was still groggy, grumpy, avoiding eye contact. I could pretend to ignore him. It was worse if he was caffeinated. If he had been sipping on the Crémant, if his appetite had awoken.

“Behind you,” Jake said. I froze at the back bar, where I was dusting the aperitif bottles. Feather duster on Suze. Eyes on Lillet. Tributaries of dust sparkling beneath the hanging lamps.

First his shoulder, then the indolent expanse of his chest. His thumb grazed my elbow. I held my breath until the whole thing was over.

“Behind you,” he said. I froze at the pass, where I had been stacking clean quart containers. It was a narrow passage. The butane flames clicked in front of me. Behind, the staccato hits of knives on plastic cutting boards. My arm was raised and I collected it to my side and waited.

He placed his hand on my lower hip, or my upper thigh, or along the bottom seam of my underwear. He pushed me, moved me, and caught my hip with his other hand. Anyone else would have allowed me to move. Anyone else would have waited. He scraped roughly by.

“Excuse me,” he said. I did not have the weapons to fight back.

“DON'T STRANGLE
the bottle, my love,” Simone said. She sat at an empty table in the mezz, her hair unfastened, the remains of a Burgundy in a glass in front of her, a gift from one of her tables. I had helped her finish her side work and now I opened wine while she watched. I relaxed my grip.