Sweetbitter(14)

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.