Stephanie Danler - Sweetbitter

But then I reconsidered. Chances are Jake would be in a mood. I had a sense of how he would react to feeling trapped. What if he fell silent? What if he was mean? Or worse, what if I bored him? The nakedness of the scenario scared me. So he was off my list.

With Simone, the mood in the elevator went from erotic to cerebral and I was relieved. Simone would recite Wordsworth, William Blake, or if I was feeling modern, Wallace Stevens, Frank O’Hara. Simone would explain how wines were made in the Jura in the 1800s and how it related to the cheeses. She would remember details of paintings she saw in Florence a decade ago, and the name of the trattoria where she took lunch afterward. She might even tell me a story about their salt-strewn, dune-grass-covered childhood.

I would make fun of myself and make her laugh. I would tell her stories of demented middle America, and how after I first read The Catcher in the Rye when I was ten years old I packed a backpack and ran away from home but returned after neighbors found me sleeping in their toolshed. Simone would unravel the universe and tell me why it was so hard to find meaning in our technological age, why cities rise and fall, why we are doomed only to repeat ourselves. And after all this prolonged contact, I would come away changed, with more of her on me, the lessons would be permanent.

“Tess?” Howard waved a generic certificate that one of the hostesses had decorated with gold stars. I stood up uneasily in my heels. I turned to look for someone, turned to look for someone, turned to look for someone.

I said thank you and took my seat again. But not before I gave my coworkers a real once-over. I tried to meet as many eyes as possible and ask them, Me?

—

“SO DID YOU VOTE for me or what?” I slid myself down the bar to him, simmering, lacy, high. In my shoes I was closer to his eye line. Jake in a muted, worn-out flannel and wool slacks, his hair flat and greasy. Uncomfortable, hunched.

“I hate these things. Every year I say, never again.”

“What’s to hate? Free appetizers.” I looked around the room at the strange group of people who had been chosen by the restaurant. The cliques came magnetically back together after the initial shocks of being out of context. The porters and dishwashers were wearing sports coats and they sat with their heavily made-up, animated wives. The cooks had taken over a corner of the bar, where they sipped on añejo tequila and paused for shots of mezcal. The floor around them was wet from spillage. The hostesses and pastry girls hovered around them like a protective layer of atmosphere.

The real grown-ups were at a table together — Howard had brought an age-appropriate date who did everything at half speed. She chewed each bite to completion before setting her fork down, reaching into her lap, and pressing her napkin to her lips lightly, not enough to disrupt her lipstick. Definitely not a restaurant person. There was Chef and his rather beautiful wife, there was Nicky and Denise, who had her cell phone out on the table — it flashed with updates from the babysitter. Simone had joined the table to talk to Denise, their knees turned toward each other. I thought about them in their twenties, Denise with no kids, just dating a bartender, Simone lighter, more prone to laughter. Parker and Sasha played quarters at our table, Ariel and Will were probably in the bathroom, and Heather was trying to get Santos to dance.

It was so predictable and lovely, my heart struggled to hold it.

“As if I don’t see enough of these people,” he said darkly. “And to be here on my day off. Giant waste of time.”

“Why did you come?”

“It’s not worth the black mark for nonparticipation. Besides”—he shot back his whiskey and nodded to the bartender for another—“free drinks.”

Misha, the hostess we all still made fun of for her inflated breasts, walked by and stuck her arm out to me.

“Tess, congrats! The big win!” She giggled. I looked at my certificate. I had carried it over with me in case I wanted to brag to Jake. But next to him it looked childish.

“So embarrassing actually,” I said. I folded up the award. I nodded to the bartender. “A white? Not too oaky, please, no Chardonnay.”

“You earned it,” he said, taking another drink and looking away from me.

“It’s kind of nice, right?” I said. “People want to spend time with me. They aren’t trying to ditch me in diners. I’m not so terribly annoying.”

When he turned to me his eyes were jagged, slivered, and I was scared. I thought he must be on something. He said, “That’s the biggest whore award. You know that right?”

“Whore?”

“Come on, new girl, don’t play dumb. Your kitchen boys always send it out to whoever they want to fuck. But, oh yeah, congrats! The big win!”

“Um…” I tried to laugh but it died in my throat. Scott saw me from the end of the bar and winked. After so much crying — in bathrooms sitting on toilets, hiding next to the air conditioner in the pastry station, behind the ice machine, into my pillow, into my hands, sometimes simply into my locker — this time I didn’t flee. I stayed and the tears came.

“You…” It wouldn’t come to me. The vicious words I longed for were lost in the flotsam of being humiliated, yet again, like always. “You are mean, Jake. It’s too mean for me.”

His eyes flashed blue and then collapsed.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “Tess.”

I nodded. “Please excuse me.”

As I walked I forced my heels into the ground. My wineglass burned in my hand. Simone’s eyes brushed over me and went to the bar. Yes, I thought, go to him. Comfort him because the new girl with the biggest whore award called him mean.

—

“TESS?”

I picked my feet up off the bathroom floor to hide from her but I had just taken a line and sniffled. She knocked on the stall.

“You can only come in if you do drugs. Drugs-only zone.” I clicked it open. She came in. We were uncomfortably close. We could have stood by the sinks, but she locked the door behind her and sat on the toilet. She gave me her open palm and I put my bag in it. She poured a tiny bump out on the webbing between her pointer finger and her thumb. She inhaled it without taking her eyes off me.

“Please,” she said in response to my expression. “I was young once.”

She touched the end of her nose thoughtfully and I touched mine.

“I thought it was a good thing,” I said. My hands were shaking. “I really thought, oh, here I am, stuck in an elevator, I better pick someone I really…I…I picked you.”

“I’m flattered.”

I pressed toilet paper to my cheeks.

“It’s like we’re exchanging, going back and forth, just playing. And then he hits me too hard. It goes from play pain to real pain.”

“I know.”

“Simone, am I not doing this right? Everything feels like a punishment.”

“What are you being punished for?”

“I don’t fucking know — being stupid?”

“Stop it.” She grabbed my hands unsympathetically. “No one is interested in you playing the victim. Get out of your head. If you don’t you’ll always be disappointed. Pay attention.”

I pulled my hands away and she folded hers into her lap.

“Is it too late?” she asked.

“For what?”

“For you to let this flirtation go?”

“I think it’s more than a flirtation, Simone.”

“It’s not, it’s a fantasy. Jake knows it and you know it. Can you let it go?” She looked at me impassively.

“Okay…I mean…we work together…so.” I paused. “What do you mean Jake knows it?”

“I mean that Jake is aware of this crush.”

“You guys talk about me?” I thought I might vomit.