Sweetbitter (11 page)

I stopped polishing and sipped the glass she poured for me. The wine surged like an electrical current. My lips like I kissed sparks. Jake came out of the kitchen in his street clothes and sat in my former seat next to Will, clapping him on the back. The wine, barbed, invigorating.

“And yet,” she continued, “what is it an expression of? It's a multibillion-dollar corporation, you're tasting a brand. There are no plots, no vintages. What is this wine doing to express the irregularities of the place, its complications, the difference in the topsoil between Reims and Aube? What are these wines doing to express the differences in the way the individual growers take care of their grapes?”

“Why don't the growers make their own wine?”

“Exactly!” She looked proud of me. “There is a small movement, a contingency of farmers and growers that are making estate-bottled Champagne. It's a very small production and they don't have the funding to compete with Moët and Veuve. They are still hard to find here, but”—she poured us more—“it's only a matter of time before the quality speaks for itself. Before the terroir speaks for itself.”

Jake, Will, Sasha, and Nick were looking at us. Simone smiled at Jake and said, “Champagne is a trick. You think you are tasting the essence of a place, but you're being sold an exquisite lie.”

“What are you two talking? Whatsoever nobody gives a fuck,” said Sasha, blowing perfect Os of smoke. He said in a falsetto, “Hello, look at me, I'm the Queenie and the little Princess and we whisper terror in the corner.”

“You think people have terroir?” I asked. I was thinking of her and Jake and their Cape Cod and the oysters I had tasted. I heard a hiccup and turned.

“Oh dear,” she said.

“Stop,” Jake said and held his hand up. Had Jake hiccupped? Not possible, I thought. It was too human, too accidental. He stared at his beer in front of him, meanly, and the room turned sour. We all waited to see if he would do it again.

“Hey, I've got this method,” Will said, putting a hand on his shoulder. Jake shook it off immediately and kept looking at his beer.

“In Russia, there is only way—”

“No,” he said. I looked at Simone to see if it was a joke. It was the fucking hiccups. She was watching him. He hiccupped again and shut his eyes.

“No listen, dude, it's easy. First you hold your breath.”

“I can handle this,” Jake said seriously.

“Is this a joke?” I asked.

“It's just hiccups, Jake, my kid gets them all the time,” said Nick.

“I don't like them.”

I turned to Simone and whispered, “He doesn't like them?” and she shook her head and whispered back, “It's from when he was a child. It's about not being able to catch his breath.”

He was obviously having trouble holding his breath and we waited. Sasha reached behind the bar and said, “Hey, old man, get me the juices from the little pickles. My grandma taught me.”

“Just swallow three times.”

“No,” said Nick, pouring sugar onto a teaspoon. “Take this.”

“You drink a cup of water upside down,” I said inaudibly.

“Jake,” Simone said and he held his hand up to her again. He hiccupped and his whole chest shook. She bit her lip.

“Stop being a pussy,” Will said.

Jake hit his hand on the bar and we froze. Then he gripped the bar with both hands and shut his eyes, taking long breaths. Nicky walked away. He hiccupped again.

I took my flute and walked off like I was going to the kitchen. But I turned once I was past him. My reason fled, my sense of propriety. As I started creeping back I saw Simone shake her head at me. And I thought, Perhaps your way is not the best way. Maybe the two of you have grown too serious if he can't handle the hiccups.

I moved with purpose, with stealth. I crouched down to a squat and inched behind his stool. Once I was close enough to see the hairs on his arms, I sprang.

“BOO!” I said, and slammed my hands onto his shoulders. I laughed. I stopped when he turned his face slightly. He was not laughing. He looked murderous.

“Sorry,” I said. I went back to the kitchen, busing my flute, growing more ashamed with each step. The only comfort I had as I changed my clothes was that someday I would be far, far away from the restaurant and I wouldn't remember how I had acted like a child. He should be embarrassed, I said. The fucking hiccups, what a narcissistic little boy.
He
should be the one running away. But no, it was me, hiding in the locker room until I was calm.

When I came back down he and Simone were gone. Relief.

“Such a moody little bitch, right?” Sasha said, shaking his head.

“You want one more?” asked Will, turning the stool next to him.

“That was stupid,” I said.

“Let's shut it down,” said Sasha, picking up the plates holding everyone's ashes.

“Park Bar?”

I hesitated.

“Come on, Fluff, you won this round.” Nicky shut off the lights and said, “He didn't have another one after that. You cured him.”

THE RAMIFICATIONS OF
my fall down the stairs appeared on my left hip, my lower back, my cheek from where the entrée plate hit me. The bruises bubbled to the surface of my skin before they colored. My skin like that of a nearly liquefied nectarine, the pulp rolling around under the thin surface. If you bit it, the whole thing would burst.

T
HEN ONE DAY
I learned that there was an invisible ravine running up the city, as deep as the Grand Canyon, narrower at the top. You could walk in tandem with a stranger on the sidewalk and not realize that he or she was not on the same cliff-side as you.

On one side, there were the people who lived there, and on the other side, terminally distanced, were the people who had made homes there.

The first time I saw a home was on an Indian summer day when I took up Simone's offer to let me borrow her
World Atlas of Wine
and a few other books she thought might be helpful in my ongoing quest to speak of New World versus Old World; to identify when Brettanomyces is to be encouraged or when it is to be abhorred. She lived in the East Village, on Ninth between First and A.

I had been in New York long enough to know that servers, even the senior ones, didn't make enough to live alone in the East Village. Simone had been in the same apartment for over twelve years. I didn't understand exactly how rent control worked, but I gathered that if you stayed in the ghetto long enough, eventually you would be living for free, or something like that.

An old, ornately fire-escaped and charred building. Four flights of stairs. I clocked details like I was assessing it to move in, imagining taking the garbage out, or my laundry. I thought that Simone and I might be making the essential transition—daytime, both of our days off—and I imagined the invitations she would bestow on me: Let's go to the Russian baths together and gossip. Or we can get a pedicure and read trashy magazines. Or, best of all, she would ask if I had eaten—I hadn't on purpose—and she would say, Let's grab lunch, and take me to a hole in the wall in Alphabet City where they spoke French and she would order couscous and we would drink cheap white wine, and she would explain the difference between the crus in Beaujolais again but when she did she would be telling me about her life, thinly veiled, and I would respond, constructing stories of my own terroir for her, all my experiences clicking into order around her words.

“Oh hello you,” she said softly. She seemed surprised to see me, as if I were unexpected. She wore a short, patterned robe over men's briefs and a wifebeater. Simone's legs. Simone's loose, low breasts. It always surprised me how small she was when she wasn't at work. Simone's smells: coffee, powdery night-blooming flowers, unwashed hair, and the barest trace of cigarettes. I moved minutely past the doorway, afraid to breathe.

I could take it all in from the threshold. It was a tiny studio with a wall of windows onto Ninth Street, which light had already passed over by midday. In front of the windows was her living space, although study would be a more appropriate term. There was no couch, no television, no coffee table. There were bookshelves halfway up the walls and then books horizontally stacked on top. Dominating the center of that area, framed between the windows, was a massive round wood table. More books stacked on that table, empty wineglasses, vases of flowers in various states of bloom and decay. A mortar and pestle amid white pillar candles. A motley mix of chairs surrounded it and in the corner a cracked leather club chair that had two blankets, one in a Native American pattern, one the loose cotton weave found in Amish shops. There were collections of papers in portfolios next to the chair, metal filing tins filled with papers torn out from magazines and newspapers. The walls were painted a light gray and covered in framed prints, the most notable a nude woman reclining. I moved instinctively toward the woman, wondering if it was her, though I knew at the same time Simone wasn't the kind to put herself on the wall. She dropped a record-player needle into place, and jazz startled the room into the present tense.

“Did you run here?” she asked, gesturing toward my blouse. My shirt was soaked through.

“Kind of. I walked.”

“That's lovely.” I wanted her to recognize that I had walked over the bridge, that I lived just across the river from her. I wanted her to ask me about my house, which now had to exist in relation to her house. “Water? Coffee?”

“Both please. No couch?”

“Couches make people lazy. I'm sure if I had one I would never get anything accomplished.”

Just what is it that people got accomplished on their days off? She seemed like a writer—her apartment had the worn aura of a writer's apartment or a painter's if I could find some canvases, but she never spoke of specific projects. And she never spoke of writing, of sitting down with pen to paper. While she was at work that was where she existed completely, never half in her head. She spoke often of art, she spoke often of food, she spoke often of books.

“Are you a writer?”

“Hmm. A writer. I try to engage in the task of setting something true on paper. But if you take art too seriously you wind up killing yourself. Do you know what I mean?”

I love you I wanted to say. I grunted. She padded into the kitchen, which was miniature. The ceiling was lower because of a lofted, hidden bed, and everything seemed shrunken to accommodate it. The refrigerator was diminutive as well. Next to it, a row of hanging tarnished copper pans.

“Wow. You really have it,” I said. I walked past her to a large cast-iron tub that sat on the far side of the kitchen, against a window into the air shaft. The air turned humid although Simone didn't seem damp at all. There was a clothesline of lingerie drying, and bottles of detergent mixed with her shampoo and Dr. Bronner's soap. The tub had two curtains that were pulled back and a handheld showerhead that had been mounted to the wall. I remembered him. I looked at the clever but amateurish way the shower had been constructed and I knew he had been there. I wished his handprints would show themselves, develop all over the apartment.

“Ah. I must admit I still love it. When I saw the place the landlord was telling me he could enclose it all, make it into a proper bathroom, tear out the tub. And I insisted on keeping it. I was very romantic back then. I thought I would drink wine in the tub, drink coffee in the tub, hold court in the tub. I knew I had to have the place. It's the only one left in the building that's still like this. The landlord apologizes every time he sees me.” She laughed and handed me a glass of water. “It's maybe a little sad that it still gives me so much pleasure?”

“You really drink wine in the bath?”

“I've had many wild nights in that tub. Wild nights, wild nights, my luxury.”

“Isn't that dangerous? What if you passed out?”

“I don't think I drink as much as you, my love.”

“Ha ha,” I said and I felt an echo of our work selves, our banter. I knew she was magic. I had known from the first time she spoke to me. I was right, her lips were still quite red though she was unmade.

“You look so excited, little one—do you want to get in it?”

I'm not sure what she meant but I jumped in the empty tub under a garland of lace underwear. I lay back and surveyed the scene. Simone was filling the kettle, absorbed in whatever coffee ritual she had.

“This place is amazing. You can't ever leave,” I said. It felt like nothing in the apartment had ever been transient—it had all been born here. The gray walls were a curtain, and the city felt remote, like a city in Europe, not the one where I did trivial, daily battle. My mind stilled. All at once I was exhausted, every switch in me went to Off. My eyelids flickered, then dropped.

I OPENED THEM
after what I assumed was a few seconds but a pot of coffee sat on the counter in a Chemex and I could hear her talking softly on the phone, sitting on her windowsill. I sat up, my head pounding, and felt like I might pass out. She got off the phone. I saw a mug had been poured for me. Next to it sat a small pitcher of milk and a bowl of brown sugar with a spoon. The mug was garish turquoise and said Miami.

“I'm sorry. That was weird.”

“Not at all. It's a nice tub. Aren't you glad I kept it?”

She started moving through her books with her eyes and hands, as if she were tracing a pattern in the air. She was in jeans now, but still in the wifebeater, and she had her glasses on. The coffee was hot and the light had shifted. I had no idea how long I'd been out but the light told me I had overstayed. The spell of softness had broken. She pulled books from the shelves and stacked them on the table.

“Miami?” I said, hopeful, holding the mug out.

“How much can you carry?”

“I'll take the L back, so whatever you want.” I was dazed. “It's only one stop.”

“Hmm…”

“Do you want to go to lunch?” I asked too loudly. “I mean, do you want to go to lunch with me? I mean, take you out to lunch. For the books. For having me over.”

“That sounds lovely, but I'm afraid I have plans today. Another time.”

I wanted to cry. “Well, I'm going to have lunch. Is there a good place for me? By myself. To have lunch.”

“Um…” She seemed distracted. Lunch, Simone! I wanted to scream. Food! Take me seriously. “There's Life Café on the park. You might like that. You can sit outside. It's nice out—is it nice out? God, it's getting late.”

She nodded at the stack, six books, two larger than any textbook I had in college. She went to the kitchen and got plastic grocery bags. She tapped her lips, scanning the room, concentrating.

“And here.” She skipped to a shelf and pulled a slim volume.

“Emily Dickinson?”

“It's time to revisit the patron saint of wild nights.”

“Emily Dickinson?”

“Just enjoy it. And really look at those maps of France. Nothing will teach you about the wine but the land. Keep an eye out for stories—wine is history, so look for the threads.”

“Okay.” I couldn't move. Her energy was pushing me toward the door but I didn't want to go. I looked around the room, grasping.

“Well, thank you for the coffee. What kind of coffee is that?”

“It's excellent, right?” She opened the door and stood to the side. I stepped into the hallway.

“Can I come back?”

“Of course, of course,” she said but it was too enthusiastic. “Soon. And for a proper meal.” When she said
Soon
it sounded like
Never.

“See you tomorrow.”

She was already shutting the door. I made it to the bottom flight of stairs before I started crying.

Sometimes my sadness felt so deep it must have been inherited. It had a refrain, and though I evened out my breathing by the time I got to First Avenue, the refrain wouldn't leave me. It was guttural and illogical and I repeated it endlessly like a chant: Please don't leave me, please don't leave me, please don't leave me. All the way home, against the bored, anorexic kids on Bedford Avenue, against the lurid tinkling of bodega music, and the dull thunder of the J train on the bridge. I heard myself say it out loud when I got into my bedroom. I kicked the mattress that lay on the floor. That's when I realized how far away I was. I saw the ravine. I had traveled a great distance, just one stop away. Please don't leave me. I guess it made sense—I had never felt more alone.

ON MONDAY MORNING
Flower-Girl came armed with cinnamon sticks, bay leaves, and waxed apples. The cooks came out of the kitchen on fake errands so they could look at her. Her voice was like a Disney princess's when she said hello to me. Birds twittering. But the arrangements turned out understated and, it pained me to say, beautiful.

I walked the Greenmarket stalls during my break. The leaves were riotous but I couldn't focus on them. I only saw apples. Stacked, primed for tumbling. Empires, Braeburns, Pink Ladies, Macouns. Women in tights, men in scarves. Vats of cider, steaming. I bought an apple and ate it.

Did I understand the fragrance and heft? The too-sweetness of the pulpy flesh? Had I ever felt the fatality of autumn like my bones did now, while I watched the pensive currents of foot traffic? A muted hopelessness pressed on me. I lay under it. At that point I couldn't remember the orchards, the blossoms, the life of the apple outside of the city. I only knew that it was a humble fruit, made for unremarkable moments. It's just food, I thought as I finished it, core and all. And yet it carries us into winter. It holds us steady.

JAKE CHECKED
the lights twice, swaying as he came up. He threw on his leather jacket, it thudded onto his shoulders. One lapel had a massive pin, a gold anchor. Then everyone in unison put on leather jackets. I imagined them calling each other, saying, Today's leather jacket day. Where did they get them?

“Are you going for one?” someone asked him.

“One sounds all right,” he said.

We went outside. The air tasted of steel knives and filtered water. An actual chill like a warning.

The bar was four deep. The crowd was different—loud, blandly preppy and undergraduate. We walked into a dank cloud of perspiration. I split off from Will and Ariel and made my way to the back corner. Limbs in my face, my hands wedging into the crowd. Someone grabbed my fingers. I yanked my arm back and when I threw my purse on the floor I turned and yelled, “I can't breathe.”

I forgot how tall he was. When I turned Jake was up against me like it was the subway during rush hour, my nose lined up with his clavicle. The leather blotted out my vision. Someone pushed him from behind and my nose touched his chest. Bergamot, tobacco. I looked up at him. Shit.

“Hey,” I said.

“Hi there,” he said.

I sucked in my lips. He didn't move to go anywhere. Not to the bar, to the bathroom, not even to remove his coat.

“Excuse me,” someone screeched and pushed him again. He braced his arms above my head. His sweat, his smell.

“Don't say I never did anything for you,” said Ariel, shoving through and handing me a beer.