Sweetbitter(15)

“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…”

The beer shook in Will’s hand, and the head rose an inch out of the glass. A hush. It kept rising but didn’t spill.

“I’m a pro,” Will said.

“Misery,” said Ariel. She put two bottles of rye on the bar and pulled out the stool on the other side of Will. She was in a black slip, or maybe she thought it was a dress. Her bra was neon yellow like a traffic sign saying Proceed with Caution.

“Hm…what is open?” She tucked her legs under her and reached into the speed rack behind the bar.

“Can you animals get off my bar? I’m trying to clean.”

“Is that Gigondas still good? When did we open it?”

“Two nights.”

“Pushing it.”

“Worth considering.”

Nicky put up a glass and a black bottle with an insignia at the top and went back to his cleaning.

“Self-service tonight? You poured for the new girl.”

“Ariel, I’m not fucking around, you barely stocked. She doesn’t even know her head from her asshole yet and I think she could have done a better job. You’ve put me back twenty minutes.”

“It looks like you picked the wrong night to be bartender, old man.” Ariel emptied the wine into her glass, smelled it, and flipped open her cell phone.

If Nicky had spoken to me like that I would be flattened. But nothing happened. There wasn’t even residual tension. Nicky yelled, All clear, into the kitchen and the porters sprang from behind the doors. They ran bags down the line behind the bar, an endless caravan of black bags to the curb. They propped the door open and the hot, dark air rushed in, as sticky as fingers running over my face. Misery. I drank my Riesling. Medicine.

“It’s been really hot,” I said. Nobody responded.

“Summer,” I said.

Droning came in from the streets, then a rustling. For a second I thought it was the claustrophobic noise of the cicadas from my childhood. Or the wind bending branches. Or the moans of cows in fields. But it was cars. I wasn’t used to it yet—the elimination of nature, the brimming whine of overheating machinery.

I shifted a little toward Will, wanting to seem open in case anyone talked to me. Will and Ariel were on their phones and Nicky was cursing to himself behind the bar. I thought about taking my phone out. It was new. I had left my old one on my dresser back home. I wondered what my father had done with it, with the boxes of books. Though I was also fairly certain he hadn’t opened the door to my room. When I got my new phone, the area code felt like a badge: 917. I dutifully copied everyone’s contact information into it. But I didn’t have missed calls or messages. No one even asked me to cover shifts yet.

“I don’t have an air conditioner,” I said.

“Really?” Will shut his phone and turned to me. “Seriously?”

“They’re expensive.”

“Misery,” Ariel interjected. She leaned around Will and looked at me inquisitively. “What do you do?”

“Oh, I have big windows and a fan. When it’s really bad, like that stretch last week, I take cold showers to get the sweat—”

“No,” she said. Her eyes said, You fucking idiot. “What do you do? In the city. Are you trying to be something?”

“Yes,” I said. “I’m trying to be a backwaiter.”

She laughed. I made Ariel laugh.

“Yeah, after that the sky’s the limit.”

“What do you do?”

“I do everything. I sing. I write music. I have a band. Willy here is trying to make a film. A claymation version of à Bout de Souffle.”

“Okay, that was one idea, it’s not the worst idea.”