Sweetbitter (4 page)

If they were in the restaurant together they had one eye on each other and I had one eye on them, trying to understand what I was seeing. It wasn't like they were the only fascinating people at the restaurant. But they were an island if the rest of us were the continent—distant, inaccessible, picking up stray light.

“PICK UP.”

My eyes snapped open but I was the barista today, the kitchen was far away. Howard looked at me from the Micros terminal. He was waiting for me to make him a macchiato but I was overthinking it. I threw the first two shots away.

“I'm hearing Chef scream, ‘Pick up' in my sleep,” I said, swirling the warm milk. It was as glossy as new paint. “Punishing myself I guess.”

“Thanatos—the death drive,” Howard said. He laid a napkin over his arm and inspected a bottle of wine on the service bar. “We fantasize about traumatizing events to maintain our equilibrium. Lovely.” He took the macchiato and smelled it before taking a sip. He regarded me. The other managers wore suits but somehow everyone in the restaurant always knew that Howard was the man in charge—as if his suits were cut from a finer fabric.

“It's compulsive but we actually find the painful repetition pleasurable.” He took another sip.

“It doesn't sound pleasurable.”

“It's how we self-soothe. How we maintain the illusion that we are in control of our lives. For example, you repeat ‘Pick up' in hopes that the outcome each time will be different. And you are repeatedly embarrassed, are you not?” He waited for me to respond but I wouldn't meet his eyes. “You are hoping to master the experience. The pain is what we know. It's our barometer of reality. We never trust pleasure.”

Every time Howard looked at me I felt bare. A coffee ticket printed up and I used it as an excuse to turn around.

“Are you dreaming about work often?” he asked. It felt like he spoke it into my neck.

“No.” I slammed a portafilter to empty it and I could feel him walk away.

But I was. The dreams were tidal, consumptive, chaotic. Service played over in my head, but no one had faces. And I heard voices, layered on top of one another, a cacophony. Phrases would rise then evanesce: Behind You, Pick Up, To Your Right, To Your Left, Picking Up, Candles, Can You, Now, Toothpicks, Pick Up, Bar Mops, Now, Excuse Me, Picking Up.

In my dreams these words were a code. I was blind and the directives were all I had to pick my way through the blackness. The syllables quaked and separated. I woke up talking: I couldn't remember what I had been saying, only that I was driven to keep saying it.

TERROIR.
I looked it up in
The World Atlas of Wine
in the manager's office. The definition was people talking around it without identifying it. It seemed a bit far-fetched. That food had character, composed of the soil, the climate, the time of year. That you could taste that character. But still. An idea mystical enough to be highly seductive.

IGNORE HIM.
That's what I did. When Jake came into family meal late and took his seat next to Simone, when he pulled up on his bike outside the front window, when he called harshly out for bar mops, I looked away.

But I started to hear things, all of it unverifiable and improbable. Jake was a musician, a poet, a carpenter. He had lived in Berlin, he had lived in Silver Lake, he had lived in Chinatown. He was halfway through a PhD on Kierkegaard. They called his apartment “the opium den.” He was bisexual, he slept with everyone, he slept with no one. He was an ex–heroin addict, he was sober, he was always a little drunk.

He and Simone were not a couple though their magnetic, unconscious way of tracking each other seemed to indicate otherwise. I knew they were very old friends, and that she had gotten him the job. Some nights a cherubic strawberry blonde that Sasha called Nessa-Baby came and sat in front of Jake at the bar as service was winding down.

He knew part of his job was to be looked at. He was a quiet bartender. There was a submissiveness to his beauty that was nearly feminine, a stillness that made one want to paint him. When he worked the bar he submitted. Women and men of all ages left business cards and phone numbers with their tips. Guests gave him gifts for no reason—that kind of beauty.

If he rolled up his shirtsleeves, you could see the edges of tattoos that spoke to another private body he kept. It was the sight of his arm resting on the beer tap that changed me. The beer was acting up. The kegs were probably too new, not cold enough. Just foam, no beer. Jake let the foam pour while he talked to a guest. The drain was full of foam, it ran over to his feet, a spreading white pool. His sleeve was rolled up, the tendons of his forearm tensed from shaking cocktails. I remembered that static shock when I touched him. I felt the shock in my mouth. His inappropriate forearm and the foam cascading, his manner too casual, too condescending.

“That's a lot of beer to waste,” I said. My voice surprised me, ringing out over my vow of silence.

He looked at me. Perhaps it was raining that night, a stifling tropical storm. Perhaps someone struck a match and held it to my cheek. Perhaps someone cleaved my life into before and after. He looked at me. And then he laughed. From that moment on he became unbearable to me.

YOU WILL ENCOUNTER
a fifth taste.

Umami: uni, or sea urchin, anchovies, Parmesan, dry-aged beef with a casing of mold. It's glutamate. Nothing is a mystery anymore. They make MSG to mimic it. It's the taste of ripeness that's about to ferment. Initially, it serves as a warning. But after a familiarity develops, after you learn its name, that precipice of rot becomes the only flavor worth pursuing, the only line worth testing.

“PICK UP.”

The tickets came from a printer on Chef's right. They flew into the air like an exclamation and fluttered down in a wave. He yelled: “Fire Gruyère. Fire tartare. Hold calamari. Hold two smokers.”

From that code the cooks on the line went into action. Chef lined up the tickets, bouncing from foot to foot like a child who had to go to the bathroom. He was a small man from New Jersey but classically trained in France. He screamed anecdotes at the cooks, recalling “real” kitchens where chefs would slam you in the head with a copper pan if you couldn't chop the parsley fine enough. Chef's voice was too loud and he couldn't really control it. The servers and managers were always complaining that you could hear him from the dining room. Everyone, even Scott, his number two, kept their eyes averted if he was on a tirade. The man paced the kitchen red-faced, primed for explosion.

The line cooks were a blur of movement while essentially staying in one place. Everything was within arm's reach in their stations. Sweat funneled off their eyelashes. There were open flames or salamanders at their backs and heat lamps in the pass at their front. They wiped the rim of each plate before passing it to Chef, who inspected it mercilessly, eager to find smudges of stray sauce or olive oil.

“Pick up!”

“Picking up.”

I was the food runner, I was next. I covered my hands with bar mops. The plates heated up like irons, I expected them to glow.

“I heard you don't know the oysters yet,” said Will, startling me. Will was Sergeant, the guy who'd been in charge of me on my first day. Even though I had my stripes now, he still seemed to think I was his project.

“Jesus,” I said. “Everything is a lesson around here. It's just dinner.”

“You don't get to say that yet.”

“Pick! Up!”

“Picking up,” I responded.

“Pick up!”

“Louder,” said Will, nudging me forward.

“Picking up,” I said, harder, hands outstretched, ready.

It was all one motion. The roasted half duck had been in the window for going on five minutes while it waited for the risotto, the plate baking. At first, as with all burns, I felt nothing. I reacted in anticipation. When the plate shattered and the duck thudded clumsily onto the mats, I cried out, pulling my hand to my chest, caving.

Chef looked at me. He had never really seen me before.

“Are you kidding me?” he asked. Quiet. All the line cooks, butchers, prep guys, pastry girls watched me.

“I burned myself.” I held out my palm, already streaked with red, as proof.

“Are you
fucking
kidding me?” Louder. A rumbling, then quiet. Even the tickets stopped printing. “Where do you come from? What kind of bullshit TGI Fridays waitresses are they bringing in now? You think that's a
burn
? Do you want me to call your mommy?”

“The plates are too hot,” I said. And then I couldn't take it back.

I stared at his feet, at the mess on the floor. I bent over to pick up the beautifully burnished duck. I thought he might hit me. I flinched, but held it out to him by its leg.

“Are you retarded? Get out of my kitchen. Don't even think about setting foot in here again. This is a church.” He slammed his hands on the stainless steel in front of him. “A fucking church!”

His eyes went back to the board and he said, quiet again, “Refire, duck, refire risotto, on the fly, what the fuck are you looking at Travis, keep your eyes on your steak before you turn it to cardboard.”

I set the duck on the counter next to the bread. The grating noise of tickets printing, of plates being thrown around, of pans hitting burners, it all throbbed with my hand. In the locker room I went to the sink and ran lukewarm water on it. The mark was already starting to disappear. I cried and continued crying while I changed out of my uniform. I sat on a chair and tried to calm down before I went back downstairs. Will opened the door.

“I know,” I yelled. “I fucked up. I know.”

“Let me see your hand.”

He crouched next to me. I opened my palm and he put a bar mop filled with ice cubes into it. I started crying again.

“You're okay, doll.” He patted my shoulder. “Put your stripes on. You can work the dining room.”

I nodded. I put on fresh mascara and went downstairs.

THE MEZZ WAS
seven two-tops on a balcony over the back dining room. The stairs were narrow, steep, treacherous. “A lawsuit waiting to happen,” they told me. I took them one at a time, up and down, and still soups spilled onto rims, sauces slid.

Heather was Debutante-Smile, and she got in trouble weekly for chewing gum on the floor. She was from Georgia, with a delicate southern accent. They told me she had the highest tip average, and everyone blamed the accent. I thought it might be the gum.

“Sweetness”—she snapped her gum at me—“start the stairs with your left foot when you go down. Lean back.”

I nodded.

“I heard about Chef. It happens.”

I nodded again.

“You know, nobody is from here. We were all new. And like I always say, it's just dinner.”

FROM A SECTION
of the handbook I neglected to read: Workers were to receive one complimentary shift drink after they clocked out. Workers were also to receive one complimentary shift coffee per eight-hour shift.

When this translated off the page, quantities increased, entitlement ran rampant. But I didn't know that yet. They wound us up, they wound us down.

“TAKE A SEAT,
new girl.”

Nicky was definitely talking to me. I had just clocked out and changed. I was cracking my wrists and heading toward the exit.

It was still a touch early. Cooks were plastic-wrapping the kitchen, servers swiping the final credit cards and waiting in the hutches. The dishwashers piled trash bags at the exit of the kitchen. I saw them peeking out, trembling like sprinters, waiting for the signal that they could take the bags to the curb and go home.

“Where?”

“At the bar.” He wiped down a spot.

Nicky was Clark-Kent-Glasses. He was the first bartender they hired, and they said he'd be there until they shuttered the place. His glasses were often crooked, and at odds with the crookedness of his bow tie. He met his wife at the bar ten years earlier and she still came in and sat in the very same seat on Fridays. I heard he had three kids, but I couldn't really comprehend it, he seemed half child himself. He had an unpretentiousness and a Long Island accent that had been drawing people to the bar for decades.

“You want me to sit like a regular person?”

“Like a regular old person. What do you want to drink?”

“Um.” I wanted to ask how much a beer cost, I had no idea.

“It's your shift drink. A little thank-you from the Owner at the end of the night.”

He shook the amber, watery remains from a cocktail shaker into his glass. “Or a big thank-you. What do you like?”

“White wine sounds all right.” I climbed onto a stool. Earlier in the night, midrush, Nicky had asked me if I had any common sense. I thought about it all night. I had no idea what to say to him, especially now that I was stripeless, except, Yes. I think I do have common sense.

“Yeah? Nothing particular?”

“I'm easy.”

“That's what I like to hear from my backwaiters.”

I blushed.

“Boxler?” he asked, and poured me a taste. I lifted it to my nose and nodded. I was too nervous to actually smell it. He poured me a glass, and I watched as he left his hand there, the wine surging past the pour line we used for guests. The glass now seemed a goblet.

“You did better tonight,” said a voice behind me. Will jumped up onto the bar stool next to me.

“Thank you.” I sipped my wine before I could undo the compliment. The Albert Boxler Riesling, not from Germany, but from Alsace, one of the high-end pours at twenty-six dollars a glass. And I was drinking it. Nicky had served it to me. To thank me. I rolled it through my mouth the way Simone had taught me, pursing my lips and cupping my tongue and almost making an inward whistle. I thought it would be sweet. I thought I tasted honey, or something like peaches. But then it was so dry it felt like someone had pierced me. My mouth watered and I sipped again.

“It's not sweet,” I said out loud to Nicky and Will. They laughed.

“This is nice,” I said. An hour ago these were incredibly privileged seats, occupied by the kind of people who spent thirty dollars on an ounce of Calvados.

Will had changed his tone with me since my burn. He was careful, or perhaps protective. I thought maybe he wanted to be my friend. He wouldn't make a terrible first friend. He wore a khaki shirt, reminiscent of safaris. He had a long arrowhead nose and bovine brown eyes. He spoke rapidly, nearly slurring. Those first trails I thought it was because he was in a hurry. Now I saw that he didn't want to show his teeth. They were square and yellowed, and the front left one was cracked.

He pulled out a cigarette. “Are we all clear?”

“Yes, sir.” Nicky slid him a bread-and-butter plate. I panicked when Will lit up—I barely had memories of a time when you could smoke inside restaurants. He asked if I wanted one. I shook my head. I glued my eyes to the back bar, pretending to be absorbed in the memorization of the Cognac bottles. The two of them traded incomprehensible insults about two baseball teams from the same place.

“You say hi to Jonny tonight?” Nicky polished glasses from a never-ending pile on the bar. They were stationed like soldiers that progressed to the front only to be replaced by more in the back.

“He was here? I missed him.”

“He was next to Sid and Lisa.”

“Christ, those two. I stayed as far away as possible. Remember that Venice-is-an-island argument?”

“I thought he was going to hit her that night.”

“If I was married to that, I'd do worse than hit her.”

I kept an impassive face. They must be talking about their friends.

“What are you drinking, Billy Bob?”

“Can I get a hit of Fernet while I think about it?”

“This. Is. It,” said Ariel, slamming the glass racks down on the corner of the bar. The glasses jangled like bells and her hair flew up.

“You've got your hair down already?” Nicky asked. His voice was harsh but his eyes playful.

“Come on, Nick, please, I'm done, you know I'm done. Don't I look done?” She ran her fingers through her long hair, scratching at the scalp like she was trying to undo a wig. She flipped her hair to one side and leaned over the bar, feet coming off the ground.

“Come on Nick, snip, snip.” She made a scissors motion with her fingers.

Ariel looked like trouble with her hair down. She had gone from quirky to something from the underworld, her hair well past her breasts, kinky from being knotted up all night. Her bangs were flat on her forehead and slashes of liquid eyeliner that once had swung rebelliously away from her lids were now smudged and battered.

During services Ariel worked with the energy of a bird, through a series of chirps, clicking noises, phrases half sung. She became frantic easily and recovered just as easily, whistling.

“Okay, you're cut, Ari. But I do need two bottles of Rittenhouse and one bottle of Fernet.”

“ 'Kay, I'll bring the rye but homeboy here can get his own Fernet.” She eyed Will's glass, which had a black liquor in it, reeking of oversteeped tea and bubble gum. “You drink it, you stock it.”

“Fuck off, Ari.” Will exhaled smoke toward her.

“Fuck you, darling.” She flounced away. Will shot back his drink.

“What's that?” I asked.

“Medicine.” He burped. “It's for the end of a meal. Incredible…curative properties for the digestive tract.”

He reached over the bar and started to fill a water glass with beer. Nicky stopped working and watched.

“I just fucking cleaned that, Will, if you spill one fucking drop…”