Sweetbitter(74)

“Perhaps you didn’t develop a palate, little one,” Simone said. “Perhaps you recovered it.”

We moved the plates onto the table and Simone pulled the fourth chair, covered in scarves, books, junk mail, and old New Yorkers to the side. Jake put on a new record and propped the cover up—Charlie Parker’s sax ran into the room. Someone had told me that when he soloed he referred to the melody only by omission—he implied it. It sounded exactly like New York was supposed to sound.

“Tess.” Simone snapped with her fingers toward a bottle of wine on the counter. I had already been eyeing it, the Puffeney Arbois, an eccentric wine on our list, and one of her favorite recommendations for her more intellectually inclined guests. She said it was a wine that stuck in the mind.

“Jura!” I said. “I’ve been dying to try this!”

“He’s the pope of Arbois. That’s the Trousseau.”

“Moni, where did you find that?” Jake asked, skeptically, grabbing the bottle from me. Moni?

“I have a friend at Rosenthal,” she said.

“So many fucking friends!” he said and then to me, “This is delicious.”

“Have you been there, Simone? The Jura?”

“Of course.”

“I want to go,” I said, inspecting the bottles clustered on the counter. It was a modest collection but I assumed she had more in the fridge.

“Where the fuck do you think you’re going?” Jake said into my neck. He rested his chin on my shoulder and I never wanted to move.

“I don’t know. The Jura? I spend all this time studying these maps and I want to see the land.”

“You’re done with New York already? On to Europe?”

“I’m a quick study,” I said. I moved to lean against him but he was gone.

“You absolutely should go,” Simone said.

“I couldn’t go alone,” I said and looked at them. Jake was kneeling, looking into the oven, pressing buttons, and she hovered above him.

“Moni, the light’s broken in here again.”

“Darling, what do you want me to say? I am not blessed with your amateur electrician skills.”

“I’ll do it tomorrow,” he said.

“Where’s your wine key?” I asked, waving the bottle.

“Oh no, you’re not performing tonight. Jake will open it for us.”

I sat and Jake laid a dish towel over his arm and came up to me.

“Mademoiselle, the Puffeney Arbois, 2003.” He opened it roughly, in a manner I could never get away with, a bartender opening cheap bottles on the fly. He and Nicky could get a bottle open in seconds.

He poured a taste and I swirled it. The wine was the color of cloudy rubies, washing up the sides of the glass, audaciously fragrant and crystalline.

“So pretty when it’s unfiltered….It’s perfect,” I said. Disintegrating outlines all around, the glass, my skin, the walls, a blur of satisfaction that was totally foreign to me. I felt like I had arrived in a room that had been waiting for me my whole life, and a voice in my head whispered, This is what family feels like.

“A toast,” said Simone, holding her glass aloft. “The way of life is wonderful; it is by abandonment.”

“Emerson,” Jake whispered to me, but he was playing too, his glass held up in the air.

“This is to our little Tess. Thank you for joining us.”

I laughed at her use of restaurant jargon, the phrase we used as a welcome and a farewell. I always wondered who this ceaselessly festive “us” was, why exactly we were thanking the guests, as if they had provided a service, a contribution. I wondered how it felt for them to be sent back into the embittered, poorly lit outside world.

“Thank you for having me.”

We were quiet, passing the plates around. Part of me had expected that they would entertain me. But coming into her home this time, I wasn’t spit back out onto the street. I was becoming necessary.

“I had a strange feeling today,” I said, tentatively, wondering how people started conversations. Would it always feel like I was intruding with nonsense?

“Did you? Regarding what?”

“I was walking around Williamsburg…and it felt…ominous.”

“Was it the condos?” Simone said, concerned.

“I can’t even go over there anymore,” he said, mouth full, holding a chicken leg in his hand. He was going to finish his plate before I had my first bite.

“It’s happening so much faster than I anticipated,” said Simone. “When they changed the zoning laws in 2005, we knew that the end was coming. Friends lost their lofts left and right, but the speed with which it all disappeared…”

“2005. So I just missed it,” I said. “I thought so.”

“We always just miss New York. I watched it with this neighborhood. When I moved here everyone was mourning the SoHo of the seventies, Tribeca of the eighties, and already ringing the death knell for the East Village. Now people romanticize the Alphabet City of Jonathan Larson. We all walk in a cloud of mourning for the New York that just disappeared.”

“Okay, okay, but I love Rent, is that terrible?”

“I’m going to ignore that comment forever,” Jake said.

“Treacherous,” said Simone. “That kind of singsong nostalgia.”