Sweetbitter(44)

“Fake,” I yelled. No one looked at me. Maybe I hadn’t said it out loud. “We’re all just waiting around to become real people—well guess what Vivian—we’re not. Remember the phonies?” She nodded, her face like a sequin. “You don’t remember. You need to read more.

“Fuck you,” I said to a man I didn’t recognize. “You want to repeat the names of things? You want to make out?”

That person disappeared.

“I serve people!” I yelled out above the music.

“Sasha, you think my life is easy ’cause I’m pretty? It’s not. I get a fucking door opened for me now and then. Being pretty…well…”

“I wanna fuckin’ record this shit right now.”

“It sucks.”

“Baby Monster, how ’bout you shut your face ’fore I break your face.”

“I hate you,” I said to Will, but he was asleep on coats.

Maybe it was that he’d said it in the bathroom. Was that me now? The Park Bar bathroom with its one dreary bulb and scratched-out mirror, scummy faucet, and STD-infected walls? A bathroom where I ran the water and threw up on countless occasions? Love?

But it was Jake, really. Will and Jake were friends, or friendly, as much as Jake could be friends with anyone. They drank together, acted like old comrades, had their safe subjects to chat about (rare Dylan recordings and Vietnam War trivia). But Will gossiped like a teenager. Everyone at the restaurant did. It was entirely possible—likely even—that Jake and Will had discussed this “love,” a word now irreparably tied to the Park Bar bathroom. Perhaps Jake had told Will to express his feelings. Perhaps Jake had told him I wasn’t worth it. What Jake certainly hadn’t said was, Stop, I like her.

“Ari,” I yelled. She turned away from her conversation. I shot back more tequila and reached behind the bar for the bottle. I heard glass shattering as I pulled it up. “Look, skulls.” I pointed to the bottle. “It’s spooky. Get it? Death.”

Ariel pinched me hard on the underarm but didn’t yell at me. “What’s wrong with you?”

“Can we share a cab home? I’m about to be really drunk.”

I shut my eyes and she patted my head.

“Sure, Skip. Whatever you want.”

I picked my head up and looked toward the door. Just leave, I thought. It was bitterly cold that night and the wind knocked on the sealed windows. Instead of my reflection there was a spiteful, sparkling face floating in the dark window, looking at me with a tightened jaw, judging.

—

THE PARK BECAME threadbare as the vendors thinned out at the Greenmarket. The farmers made bets on the first frost. The windows in my room were always shut, old T-shirts stuffed into the cracks. I tapped at a decrepit, cold radiator, watched it like an oracle. But what really signaled the change in the seasons was that the bugs moved inside. The fruit flies first. They hovered around the lids of the liquors at the bar, around the sink drains. Fruit flies dispersing when you picked up a damp rag. A spray of black specks on the cream-colored walls. Zoe addressed it at preshift and assigned everyone extra side work.

“Fruit flies are an emergency,” she said and struck her fist forward for emphasis.

That was what had me with yellow gloves on up to my elbows, holding a roll of paper towels and a nameless spray bottle of blue. I shuffled toward Nicky and the bar sink.

“You look great, Fluff, now down on your hands and knees.”

“I don’t understand,” I said, but what I meant was, Why me?

“You’re a woman, I thought cleaning was intuitive.”

He poured the watery remains of a cocktail into a glass and handed it to me.

“Liquid courage.”

“What’s under there?” I took the drink down.

“You think I know? The last time I cleaned under that sink was in the late eighties.”

I sighed and knelt. As I descended the air changed. Dank, uncirculated, a whiff of citrus.

I peeked in under the sink. It was dark.

“I can’t see anything.”

Nicky handed me a flashlight. A drain is made of two drains, Zoe told me. The first was in the sink, and the second was in the floor. There was a gap between them. That air gap was called a stopgap I found out later. It prevented water, sewage, anything from the pipes from backing up directly into the sink.

I pointed the light and saw pens, wine corks, foil, scraps of paper, forks, coins. I swung the light, looking for the floor drain. When I found it I gasped and clicked the light off.

Nicky was leaning on the bar, looking at me.

“What’d you find?”

“Nick, this is bad.”

—

HIS “BEHIND YOU”S became demonic. The best-case scenario was that it was the start of his shift, late afternoon, and he was still groggy, grumpy, avoiding eye contact. I could pretend to ignore him. It was worse if he was caffeinated. If he had been sipping on the Crémant, if his appetite had awoken.

“Behind you,” Jake said. I froze at the back bar, where I was dusting the aperitif bottles. Feather duster on Suze. Eyes on Lillet. Tributaries of dust sparkling beneath the hanging lamps.

First his shoulder, then the indolent expanse of his chest. His thumb grazed my elbow. I held my breath until the whole thing was over.