Sweetbitter(92)

He called out into the back and his wife came out. She looked at me like I was a criminal. He talked to her in another language and I took pauses between each breath, reassuring myself that I was still alive. The wife made her way around the store: Advil, water, a box of saltines, two apples, tea, a can of lentil soup. She pulled down a bottle of liquid NyQuil, assessed me, and put it back. She came over with the individually packaged capsules instead.

“Only two,” she said.

“Your girls are good girls. He’s so proud of them,” I said to her. He had shown me photos of them many times. The eldest was in high school in Queens, applying to Ivy League colleges. I couldn’t take her pity when she handed me the bag of items with no charge. I accepted because I hadn’t brought my wallet.

“I’m sorry,” I said. “There’s no excuse.”

I don’t know how long it took me to get home. I thought about falling down and waiting for the police to come and take me to the hospital. I thought about screaming out, Someone please take care of me. I pressed against a rolled-down steel gate, spitting onto the concrete. The streets were empty. It was just me. So I said, Fuck, it’s just you. I climbed the stairs cursing, dry heaving. I made the mint tea they had given me. I wrapped an ice pack in paper towels and put it on my forehead and when it got warm I put it back in the freezer. I shook, I sweat, I cried, I held myself, I mumbled in and out of sleep. It went on like that, more or less, for two days.

—

Do you know what I was, how I lived? That refrain ran through my head as I took the train into work. I was a gaunt reflection in the spotty windows, but possessed of a sparkling sense of clarity. That was a line from a poem I couldn’t remember. I don’t know when I’d started quoting poems. I don’t know when I’d started ignoring the flowers as I walked through the Greenmarket.

I stopped in front of the large window on Sixteenth Street, wanting to see if it looked different. Flower-Girl was conducting her botanic orchestra and behind her they were pulling down the chairs. The servers were congregated at the end of the bar, where Parker was making espressos. How much I had taken for granted: being excited to walk through the door every day, making rounds to say hello to everyone, even in the days when no one responded. Flower-Girl singled out a branch of lilac. I had smelled them since I’d come up from the train: cloying, heavy, human—but unripe, like a cold-climate Sauvignon Blanc. That was the full circle, wasn’t it? Learn how to identify the flowers and the fruits so I could talk about the wine. Learn how to smell the wine so I could talk about the flowers. Had I learned anything besides endless reference points? What did I know about the thing itself? Wasn’t it spring? Hadn’t the trees shaken out their greens to applause? Isn’t this what you dreamed of, Tess, when you got in your car and drove? Didn’t you run away to find a world worth falling in love with, saying you wouldn’t care if it loved you back?

The lilacs smelled like brevity. They knew how to arrive, and how to exit.

—

“EVERYONE WAS WORRIED,” Ariel said.

“I came by and rang the buzzer,” Will said.

“I told them we speed-dial police if you don’t show today,” Sasha said.

Whatever changes they had made to the restaurant were barely noticeable. We did have new sinks behind the bar. It was a lunch shift and I didn’t talk much. My head was still in the isolation of my rancid bedroom. I was unshakable.

They did not arrive together, though I suppose they never did. Simone came in first. I went to the locker room and sat on a chair in the corner. I had no plan, but when she came in she was not surprised to see me. We were following a script that I hadn’t seen yet.

“I’m relieved you’re all right,” she said.

“I’m alive.”

She fiddled with her locker combination. I saw her go through it twice.

“I did not receive your texts until much later,” she said, maybe the first time in her life she had been the one to break a silence. “I don’t check my phone at that hour.”

“Of course.”

“I was very worried.”

“Of course. I could tell.”

“I texted you back.”

“My phone is broken.”

“Tess.” She faced me. She buttoned up her stripes and slipped out of her jeans. She looked clownish in that giant shirt.

“There is so much I don’t know. I accepted it. That’s life, right? I mean, what do you guys even really know about me? But I am an honest person. What you see is what you get.”

“Do you think someone has been dishonest?”

“I think you people are so far gone you don’t know what honest means.”

“The idealism of my youth—”

“Stop.” I stood up. “Stop. I see you.”

“Do you?”

“You’re a cripple.” I was surprised at how accurate it felt. “You don’t care about anyone but yourself. You certainly don’t care about him.”

She paused.

“Perhaps,” she said. She went back to dressing.

“Perhaps! You think I’m stupid. I’m not. I was just hopeful.”

She moved to the mirror and took out her cosmetics bag. I watched the concealer go onto the dark circles under her eyes. She pressed the matte paste against her crow’s-feet. She dropped her chin while she put on mascara. How had I never seen how morose her eyes were? She wore the lipstick to distract from them.