Stephanie Danler - Sweetbitter

Freshly tilled earth, fields of manure, the forest floor after a rain. I smelled berries, upheaval, mold, sheets sweated through a thousand times. Absolute sex.

That was why it took me some time to see the snow falling in the window at the end of the bar. Whispers rose among the guests, they pointed to the street. Their heads turned in a reverent row. Thin shards of truffle drifted down and disappeared into the tagliatelle.

“Finally,” said Nicky, and replaced the truffle. He leaned back on the bar, wearing a handsome, self-satisfied smile. “You never forget your first snow in New York.”

The first flakes lingered in the window, framed. For a second, I believed they would fly back up to the streetlights.

—

I CAME TO LOVE the Williamsburg Bridge, once I learned how to walk it. I was mostly alone, a few all-weather bikers, a few heavily bundled Hasidic women. I walked either in some dusky circumference of gray light or some blotchy, cottoned afternoon. It never failed to move me. I paused in the middle of the filthy river. I stared at the trash eddying in currents and clinging to docks like wine dregs cling to a glass. Simone had mentioned the orphans’ dinner at Howard’s to me. I thought of them all up there at Howard’s on the Upper West Side. I thought of Jake in a Christmas sweater. I told them I was busy. Remember this, I told myself. Remember how quiet today is. I had the newspaper, which I would keep for years, and I was on my way to lunch in Chinatown by myself. As I contemplated the skyline this double feeling came to me as one thought, pressing in from either side of the bridge, impossible for me to reconcile: It is ludicrous for anyone to live here and I can never leave.

SOMETIMES I SAW all of service condensed, as if I had only worked one night that stretched out over the months.

I kicked the kitchen doors open with the toe of my clog, I came up the stairs and Jake and I met eyes. I looped the dining room in sweeping, elongated arcs, both my biceps and wrists tense. I saw myself without a time lapse, the images still and laid on top of each other. All the plates of filet mignon of tuna streamlined into its essential form: the filet mignon of tuna, lapidary. All the napkins I ever folded in a totemic monument. And running through these still lifes, an unmistakable straight line, was the gaze with which I watched them, a gaze in which sometimes Jake or Simone would join me. That’s all I remembered — these few images and watching them all from afar, a huge stillness, a giant pause. When I felt like this it was the easiest and most beautiful job in the world. But I knew it was never still, that it was always flawed and straying from the ideal. To romanticize it was to lie.

I heard it turn midnight from the wine room. A beckoning din came through the ceiling. Thumping on the floorboards, whistling. I ran up the stairs and there was a crowd at the service bar, where flutes were lined up. The regulars had left their stools to cheer with us. Simone brought me a glass of the Cuvée Elisabeth Salmon Rosé Champagne. I shut my eyes: peaches, almonds, marzipan, rose petals, a whiff of gunpowder and I had started a new year in New York City.

—

“YOU. In a dress.”

That’s what I wanted him to say. He didn’t end up saying it, but I said it to myself many times as I greeted my reflection in the buildings going up Broadway. My high heels rocked me like roller skates, my hair that I had spent time blow-drying was whipped up, I was suddenly vulnerable to the weather, to uneven sidewalks. I nodded to the iron wedge of the Flatiron like a prestigious acquaintance. The dress was half a paycheck. A short, black silk tunic. I was still confused about the power of clothes — nobody had taught me how to dress myself. When I tried it on and looked in the mirror, I was meeting myself decades from now, when I had grown unconquerable. All in a dress. I nearly returned it twice. I saw myself in the dark-green glass of a closed bank. I turned to my reflection: You. In a dress.

—

THE OWNER CLOSED the restaurant on New Year’s Day. He rented out a bar and we all got to drink there with one giant, miraculous, unending tab. From the stories everyone had been rehashing, bad behavior abounded. Someone was going to get too drunk, and though Will and Ariel were both betting on me, I was determined to stay on the soberer side of wasted and had brought my own bag of coke to ensure it.

I had forgotten that there would be adults there. The Owner and his wife stood at the entrance, beaming down authority and warmth. Even they must have been hungover, but they were flawless. A small line had formed to greet them, and as he shook each person’s hand his eyes didn’t scan the room. His wife looked charitable and flashed a smile that drew you out of the ground.

I tiptoed around the line. I couldn’t say hello. What if he didn’t remember me? What if I started crying? I remembered orientation and I still couldn’t believe that they had chosen me.

—

IT WENT MORE or less according to plan. Baby blinis with caviar, foie gras crostini, broiled mussels in the shell, crab dip, oyster shooters — decadent and finger-sized from the Owner’s new catering company. We greeted each other tentatively, checking each other out, marveling at the transformations of dress-up. Ariel in a miniskirt and a sweater she had cut into a crop. Will in a lavender button-down. Sasha in all black and sunglasses. We clung to the bar nervously, trying to get a little tipsy, suddenly scared to talk to these strangers. An hour into it, the entire room relaxed and laughter rang out coarsely from all over the room and the DJ turned up the music. Then the Superlatives started.

Of course I had voted. Zoe made sure we all voted when she passed out the ballots at preshift. There were some usual suspects: Prettiest Eyes, Cutest Couple. And there were the industry-specific prizes, Most Likely to Start a Restaurant. I figured it was another code I had to break — every category had a natural winner. Starting a restaurant — it had to be Nicky, he talked about ditching us and opening up his own bar all the time. Person You Want to Wait on Your Mom was Heather because she looked and talked like a doll. As they announced the prizes I was the shallow spectator I had been in the beginning. Biggest Prankster was Parker — I had put Nicky for that one as well because I wasn’t sure Parker even knew how to speak. Apparently he had been pranking the people he liked for years. I had yet to fall into that category. Most Likely to Make It to Broadway was Ariel. She stuck her finger in her throat and retched. Will went and got the award for her. Then Howard, in a top hat no less, said, “And the Person You’d Most Like to Be Stuck in an Elevator With…is…Tess!”

A polite smattering of applause and a wolf whistle. I clapped too. Everyone stared at me. It dripped into my head, from some neglected faucet, thickly, painfully, that I was Tess.

I had chosen Simone, after a thorough consideration. This is your elevator person, I told myself. It’s not the person you made plans with, it’s not where you thought you’d end up, but bam — the elevator sticks. Your life, a luscious pause, dictated by chance. All the tasks of the day are tossed away. You can’t know when you’ll make it out, but unlike the desert-island scenario, with the elevator you can be assured of an eventual exit.

Of course, I’d thought about Jake. There he was, all to myself. I thought of him pinning the four corners of me to the wall with his body. But the flaming center of my fantasy wasn’t the sex. No, what I wanted to get to was after. We would still be trapped in the elevator. He would look at me. There would be no bar tickets, no crowds, no phone calls, no stripes. He would be forced to recognize me. I knew that if I could get him to see me, then both of us would stop being lonely.