Stephanie Danler - Sweetbitter

She was the artistic director of her apartment. When I came in Jake was already there, there were candles burning, Bessie Smith on the record player, and the fortuitous smell of rendered chicken fat and potatoes. She opened the front windows because the oven made the place steamy, and the mild noises crept in, a swaying spot marking our inclusion and exclusion. She poured me a glass of fino sherry as soon as I walked in the door, and had me sit at the table while she fussed around in the kitchen.

Olives and Marcona almonds sat in patterned dishes (“Tangier,” she said when I asked her where they came from) in the center of the table, but she hadn’t cleared anything away. Books, halves of grapefruits, swiped-out casings of avocados, pens, receipts, kaleidoscopes of candle wax stuck to the table. And there he was, stalking around like a delinquent in a museum, picking up objects, books, papers, and moving them. When I came in, I got an up-and-down scan that told me he noticed my ten extra minutes of makeup. He was at ease in her home in a way I had never seen him in his own.

“The story has pagan origins…but what’s always interested me is that the myth of its opening night mirrors the arc of the ballet, which is a descent into the brutal and the primitive. Her fervor creates the same fervor in the viewer. I mean, honestly, can you imagine a riot at the ballet?”

“Who’d you go with?”

“Hmm?” she sang out, distracted. An apron high on her hips, just like she was at work, but her hair was down, elegant, a white T-shirt tucked into washed-out baggy jeans — and I thought, How brave she is, cooking in a white T-shirt. Her face was bare except for her lipstick, which I wanted to think she had applied just for me.

“Who did you go to the ballet with?”

“A friend,” she said.

“Howard,” Jake said at the same time.

“I’d rather not talk about our coworkers,” she said to Jake.

“Not a coworker, boss, Simone.”

“All right, Jake, will you turn the record over or are you just expecting us to wait on you hand and foot? Your fantasy, right?”

“You and Howard went to the ballet?” I pulled out pewter-handled knives. “These are beautiful.”

“Well, I haven’t been able to make Jake go to the ballet since the millennium, so Howard is kind enough.”

“Was it a date?”

“What a silly question. Of course not.”

“They’re good friends,” said Jake, flipping an hourglass.

“We all have our good friends, don’t we, Jake?” she said swiftly. “Now, Tess, I need you to dress the salad, Jake can finish the table.”

He instead picked up a sterling silver jewelry box and opened it. He picked up a white pill. “The seven-fifties?”

“Yes, dearest,” she said without looking. He popped it in his mouth and took a gulp of his wine. He and Simone had moved onto a Chenin Blanc from the Loire. I couldn’t remember if I had ever seen him take a line or a pill, but it seemed so natural, so absolutely charming, that I wanted one too without knowing what it was.

“Are those treats?”

“It’s for my back,” he said. He picked up a small bust from her bookshelves. He put the face — blandly Grecian and aristocratic — on the counter next to me. “Simone thinks she’s going to die reading Aristotle, she had a dream about it once.”

“One of Jake’s better gifts. You’re welcome to a ‘treat’ as you call it,” she said, shifting a tray of root vegetables in the oven.

“It’s Simone’s perverted candy dish.”

“Be sweet,” she warned.

“I can’t,” I said, taking a sip of my sherry responsibly. “I won’t be able to drink if I do.” I used two forks to turn the leaves in the salad bowl, but they kept falling out onto the counter.

“Don’t be timid,” she demanded. “Use your hands.” She reached into the bowl and started to move the lettuce leaves into the vinaigrette, soothingly.

“Escarole?” I asked.

“Your favorite,” she said and I pulled a leaf out of the bowl and popped it in my mouth.

“True, but I like everything,” I said.

“That means you like nothing.” Jake dropped the silverware into a pile in the center of the table.

“Anchovies?” I asked, tasting the vinaigrette.

“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 Yorker s 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.