Merritt Tierce - Love Me Back

The handler goes everywhere with the Bishop. In the magazine I will read how he is a right-hand man out of antiquity, a vizier and appointed prophet, in the form of chief accountant and public relations manager. The Bishop is never seen without him. When they come into The Restaurant the handler will take the server aside at the beginning of dinner to explain how everything is to work — questions of the Bishop will be addressed to the handler, the Bishop is never to see the bill, the Bishop’s plate must touch the table first on every course. The handler is the Bishop’s personal photographer, too, and after everything goes down I can’t think how he could have forgotten such a serious-looking camera unless he was as excited as Calvin about the Professor.

Calvin was on such a high when he left and I am buoyed a bit by his infectious joy, but my night wore me down. I waited on the people who typify our clientele, the people who’ve made work for the Professor all these years. They seemed to be attorneys, and over dessert one of them was advising another in a loud drunk way about case strategy and he said, Listen, Jack, they’re like girlfriends — it’s best to have backup, you know what I mean? As they were paying out they were trying to decide where to go next and settled on Silver City, to the disappointment of one of the younger ones who had tentatively suggested that he knew some girls they could call, which was shot down by the one called Jack who said Oh, is this a you buy em you break em type deal? Cause if not I’d rather just have my scotch and look at some titties and call it in. We have a long day tomorrow.

They don’t know Danny spends so much money and time at Silver City that they could get VIP treatment just by mentioning his name. There are a few male servers who might discreetly apprise Danny of their table’s intent to go over there, and if Danny feels like it he might make a call, and then the server could go back and lean over next to the one who paid the bill, the one who said it was best to have backup, and the server might whisper to him that the GM had them all set up over there, and there would be an exchange of Man, you didn’t have to do that, and No, it’s my pleasure, and Thanks, pal, and Don’t mention it, just come back, and Oh we definitely will, and You should ask for me, I’ll take care of you and Sure, man, you take care of us we’ll take care of you, that’s how it works right? And that server would have scored a call party and maybe a little extra in a handshake. I can’t do it, I mean I don’t want to but it would come off wrong from a girl anyway.

I am tired and I want to go home and take off my boy suit, the vest and the double Windsor-knotted tie and the button-down shirt. I want to take a shower. But you don’t interrupt Danny. Even Ana, who’s six, knows this, has known it from the first time I brought her up to The Restaurant on payday and Danny shook her hand and looked her in the eye and said How are you tonight ma’am. When she tells me she wants to work in a restaurant when she grows up I don’t tell her this wasn’t my ambition when I was her age and it still isn’t. I just say to myself Don’t fuck up. If I don’t cross Danny and I don’t let any of it get to me the money is so good I can turn it into something else, something honorable.

Sanchez is trying to say that he really has no idea how to work the camera or any camera at all ever, No sé, jefe, no sé, he is repeating with his hands in the air as Danny shouts over him, Don’t fuck with me, I know you’re fucking fucking with me, Sanchez, don’t do it, but the closing valet comes into the bar to drop off the liquor rep’s keys because his is the last car in the lot. If he were famous or rich they’d wait around for him but he’s like one of us now. The valet’s entrance distracts Danny from his harassment of Sanchez. Hey, he says to the valet, I met your sister tonight, we bought her and her friends some appetizers and drinks, I think they had a good time. The valet says Yeah, she’s visiting from L.A. so I told her she should come up here and check it out. Thanks for doing that for her. You want me to lock up? he asks.

This is sharp of him, to know that Danny likes to lock the front door after the valets leave, and to offer to do it for him. Danny notices if you go out of your way. The valet is in a bad hurry to get home after such a long night, just like the rest of us, to get to whatever it is he has waiting for him, probably weed or coke, maybe just a beer or a woman, and whatever that thing is it starts to pull on you hard late at night. When your shit is done you jet. Danny has his own habits that must be taken up nightly but not until he has closed the place down, and the valet’s gesture lets him stay at the bar and pour himself another shot. He pours one for the valet too and tosses him his keys. Here, he says, holding out the shot, Thanks buddy. Just leave my keys by the office on your way out the back door. Tell your sister come back anytime. They down the tequila and Danny throws his shot glass on the floor where he pissed. It shatters and he turns back to Sanchez.

Fuck it, Sanchez, I’ll deal with you later, he says, but he picks the camera up off the bar and slings the strap over his shoulder. I’m goin to Silver City soon as I get this bar drawer counted. Roman’s already there. You wanna come? he asks the liquor rep. Now that the valet is gone he starts telling the liquor rep about the valet’s sister. You can tell she’s got something in her, he says. She’s real pretty but she has — you know, her hair’s different and shit, so I asked her where she’s from. She says Oh I’m from Jersey, and I say, So … where are your parents from? And she says, My mom is German and my dad’s American. And I say, American! There’s no American! What do you mean American? Well, he’s from Houston, she says. Houston! I say. So? I’m from New York but that don’t mean nothing, I’m Italian -American. And finally she says, Well my dad’s African-American. Oh! Danny says to the liquor rep, so her dad’s black! But she wasn’t that pretty, I wouldn’t fuck her.

Danny has me do various administrative tasks for The Restaurant because he hates the tedious paperwork side of the business, so I’m in the office paying some invoices the next day when he shows up in his street clothes, rather than the $2,000 handmade Italian suits I’m used to seeing on him. His after-hours hip-hop accessorization used to perplex me but I’m starting to get it. If you want to be a gangster you have to look like one. The spotless puffy white sneakers, the hoodie, the huge black tinted-window SUV, the playing of serious games. At all moments he defies you to underestimate him.

The office is an unventilated fire hazard, a closet of a room that has accumulated various computers and filing cabinets and broken-down pieces of The Restaurant like busted chairs and menus whose leather spines have torn. Banker’s boxes of outdated cashouts encroach on the safe and the copier so when you want to get paid or reprint the wine list it’s like one of those strategy puzzles where you move one piece and you have to move a dozen others to get the next where you want it. It is not surprising to me that the camera Felipe found last night is sitting precariously on top of the paper shredder. I pick it up by the long lens and ask Danny if he figured out whose it was. He lets out a huge low belch and says No, but whatever fucker left it now has some prime footage of the silverback gorilla in the wild.

What if they come back for it? I ask. You’re just gonna give it back to them with that on there? What if it’s somebody we like?

It don’t show his face, Danny says, just his cock, so what are they gonna do? I think it’s pretty fucking funny.