Sweetbitter(53)

And I knew he wouldn’t leave, not like the other nights at the restaurant or Park Bar when I turned my back and he was vacuumed out by the night. No.

Unplanned, unmediated, this was a regular Thursday night, with no shift at the restaurant behind or ahead of me, and Jake and I were at the same place. A cool place, where cool people went—the pressure was lifting, I started dancing again—and I screamed for the band because I knew this song, it was my song, and I felt the source of the city’s adrenalized, fatal energy. It was me.

“You’re really sweating,” he said when I came up to the bar. “You’re kind of a crazy dancer.”

“I am,” I said, flatly. I meant to say coquettishly, I am?

“You’re into them?” he asked. He gestured toward the band. I nodded and shrugged, a subtle look that meant either (a) they’re so overrated or (b) they are like God. The look depended a lot on what Jake thought.

“What are you doing here?” He gave me back that same amorphous shrug and nod. As if to say, I go places. I wanted to ask, What places?

“Did you work today?” Banal. I couldn’t think of anything else to say. A song started and I turned toward the stage.

“Let’s go.”

“What?”

“Let’s go. Come on, if you keep dancing you’re going to hurt someone. Or yourself.”

“Let’s go?” I held my hand to my ear. All I heard was that he had been watching me dance.

“Ari’s good, she met up with her people.”

“Her people?” I yelled.

He shook his head at me like I was a fucking idiot, which I was, a deaf bobblehead trying to hear him, trying to see the tattoo on his collarbone. He had his glasses pushed up on top of his head, his hair suspended, a scientist pulled out of the laboratory. He grabbed me by the back of the neck and moved me toward the exit.

It was pattering rain outside, translucent, needle rain, pricking my cheeks, collecting like quartz on my wrists where the light hit them, our two exhalations coming in cold clouds.

“Do you have an umbrella?”

“I don’t believe in them,” he said. He walked over to his bike, chained against a tree. There was a plastic bag over the seat.

“But you believe in protecting your bike seat?”

Almost had him. Almost had a laugh.

“I didn’t know it was a choice to believe in umbrellas.”

“All beliefs are a choice,” he said. He rolled his bike and I walked next to it.

“That’s really deep, Jake.” I loaded it up with sarcasm, but what I thought was, You’re romantic.

Raindrops perched on his eyebrows, on the lenses of his glasses, on his ears. I was suddenly very sober and scared.

“Are we going to Park Bar?”

“Is that the only bar you’ve been to?”

“Um, no.” Yes, more or less.

“I’m taking you to dinner.”

He’s taking me to dinner. I watched my feet until my laughter made it impossible, and I covered my mouth.

“I am,” he said, “why are you laughing?”

“You’re taking me to dinner?”

“Are you a fucking parrot? Stop repeating everything I say.” But he couldn’t finish it. He laughed.

“Jake, I would looooove to go to dinner with you.” Heads down, frizzy rain, rocking with laughter. It wasn’t funny but it took some time to stop appearing that way. When it ended we looked away from each other and I stared into ground-floor apartments. I bumped into the bike.

I wondered if we were going to the restaurant. All the servers got vouchers, monthly allowances that you could spend or accrue. I would get one too after I’d been there six months. It was such an incongruity to see your coworkers sit at the bar. They treated themselves like royalty with their fake money, ordering everything on the menu, rubbing elbows with the regulars, sharing their bottles of Burgundy. It scared me to think about—watching from the other side. Watching the bar tickets drag, knowing that Chef was screaming at someone about my entrée, watching Howard, or god forbid Simone, going over my order with the server, while I was drinking or talking with my mouth full.

But what if Jake opened the door for me? What if the hostess’s eyes flashed when she saw him, and then settled on me? Her disappointment would be so satisfying. I would let Jake order. I watched the oyster plate drop down in front of us, Nicky bringing out two Negronis. Then that anchovy-and-escarole salad everyone talked about, Chef would probably send out the foie gras torchon with candied kumquats, Simone would want us to drink Sauternes with that, she always dropped off half glasses to her soigné tables. Every time I rose from my seat a backwaiter would come and refold and fan my napkin, and Jake would look marvelously unkempt without his stripes, like a wealthy degenerate and I would be— “I have a thing about shitty diners,” he said. He stopped in front of the plate-glass windows and gaudy lights of a diner somewhere on Sixth Avenue. He pulled open a door and said, “I love them.”

A half-moon, radiating yellow, revolved above us, but the sign had so much sparkling plumage I couldn’t read the name of the place. There were a few others inside, a nondescript trench coat at the bar, an older couple in a booth. Jake took me to the counter, to the corner, and jumped on the stool while I tried to flatten my hair. He pulled off his soaked green army jacket and his shirtsleeves were short enough that I could see tattoos. There was the key on the inside of his biceps, which I saw now was heavily scarred, the bottom of a buffalo that I assumed covered his shoulder. The tail fins of what I assumed was a mermaid descending down the back of his right biceps.