Sweetbitter(28)

The smoke.

The dust.

But the sky was so blue.

My buddy was the somm at the restaurant—we came up at Tavern on the Green together.

You guys never talk about it.

I was going into a class called, I’m not joking, Meanings of Death.

I always wondered: If I had been here, would I have stayed?

And I thought, New York is so far away.

My cousin was a firefighter, second-wave responder.

Nothing on television is real.

But am I safe?

Because what else is there to do but make soup?

But I really can’t imagine it.

I was pouring milk into my cereal, I looked down for one second…

I was asleep, I didn’t even feel the impact.

A tide of people moving up the avenues on foot.

Blackness.

Sometimes it still feels too soon.

It’s our shared map of the city.

Then the sirens, for days.

We never forget, really.

A map we make by the absences.

No one left the city. If you were here, you were temporarily cured of fear.



—

IT WAS WELL past two a.m., it was Park Bar, and I needed to stop drinking. The tables were dizzy, I said to them, It’s too early, spinning tables, calm down! Will took my elbow and then we were in the bathroom. He sat on the toilet and pulled me onto his lap.

I took two bumps using my wine key. I took them off the knife that cut the foil so cleanly for Simone. I had been practicing in the mirror. The bottle can’t move, it can’t wobble as you cut, tear, insert, twist, push, spin, twist, pull. Don’t hide the label. Cultivate stillness. Gentility when you remove the cork. Give the wine some grace, some space to breathe, Simone said.

“She can swirl wine in her glass. Without moving her hands,” I said.

“What?”

“Nothing.”

My eyelids dropped, blackness. I felt him rubbing small circles on my back.

“You’re making me sleepy,” I said.

“That’s good,” he said, and I thought I felt his head touch my shoulder, thought I felt him twisting me toward him.

The drip flooded down my throat, dirt, Splenda, sulfur, my eyes ventilated. I sat up and unlocked the door. The tables had resolved themselves. Park Bar had large windows, and on evenings when the temperature of the air complemented the temperature of your skin, they opened them and let the street mingle.

Jake was outside smoking. He was presumably meeting Vanessa, who usually sat at a table with other servers from Gramercy. His T-shirt had once been white and was now nicotined, eroding, neckline torn. He only ever wore the same black jeans that gaped at the knees, the bottoms cuffed high over rough leather boots. The streetlight hit his collarbone. He turned and sat in one of the windows, Vanessa standing above him, her arms crossed, her face turned toward the park. His spine in his shirt, like some ancient draped artifact.

I shook Will off me. He went out to smoke with Jake. I sat next to Ariel and Sasha. We only sat at the bar now that something was clearly going on between Ariel and Vivian. It was just Terry tonight though, unfurling postrush.

“How are you holding up, babe?” Ariel asked.

“Better. I’m probably just tired.” I pretended to stretch my neck and looked at Jake.

“Don’t do it,” Ariel said. I turned back to her, fixed my hair.

“I’m not doing anything.”

“You’re looking for trouble.”

“Look.” I lowered my voice so Sasha wouldn’t hear me. “He’s very attractive. But whatever, right? Why is everyone so afraid of him?”

“Because he’s textbook, that’s why.”

“Baby Monster,” Sasha said, hitting me hard on the shoulder. “You been for reals hungry? I tell you what the fucking problem in America—when I first got here I ate M&M’s for three days, that’s all, I think I’m dying in some fucking hellhole in Queens and rats eat my face. Now I’m a fucking millionaire, but you don’t forget hungry like that.”

I twisted a napkin and sealed my eyes to the black lacquer of the bar. I felt it—Jake’s absence. I stretched my neck again and looked out the windows. Just the wind dusting up the bare street.

“I’d like to read it,” I said to Ariel. She heard me. “The textbook, I mean.”

Will came up, ordered drinks, and looked at me. “You want one more, right?”





II


“FUCK BRUNCH.”

Scott was bloated, red-eyed, but standing. The rest of his crew were walking bent in half.

“It’s not technically brunch,” I said. Chef always said brunch wasn’t a meal, and I loved passing that on to the servers from Coffee Shop and Blue Water who had to stand outside on their patios serving eggs Benedict.

“Fuck lunch.”

“I knew you were in trouble, Scott. I told you it was time to go home. You wanted to stay.”

I had left Park Bar at three thirty a.m. right when the cooks were getting another round of J?germeister shots. I had taken one and thought I might throw up on the floor. Instead I threw myself into a cab and threw up in my own toilet like an adult. I was proud of myself.

I’d volunteered to cut the butter. The hot knife slipped into the chilled sticks effortlessly. The pats clung to the wax paper. It had the same orderly rhythm of folding napkins, repetition and satisfying progression. My fingers were shiny.