Stephanie Danler - Sweetbitter

I shouldn’t have been surprised that Jake and Simone had lived together — I knew she brought him out to the city, it made sense within the narrative I had composed — but it was so directed, the way Samantha said Jake’s name, probing.

“Eugene,” Simone said, turning her back to Samantha, like she had taught me never to do to a guest. “The Dauvissat? We have one bottle of the ’93 hiding downstairs. Howard will be livid, but are you interested? If I can find it, of course.”

Eugene slapped the table, thrilled. “This woman — when was that dinner? Six years ago? She never forgets! Best server in New York City. Don’t get mad, Samantha, you know you weren’t cut out for serving. Bring it out, Simone, but make sure to bring yourself a glass.”

“With pleasure,” she said.

—

DID I DARE to compare them? Of course. My loyalty fierce but not blind. I struggled, wondering what categories they could justly compete in. The physical didn’t seem fair. I wasn’t mistaken, Simone shrank as soon as she greeted the table. And it wasn’t just that Samantha was taller and had posture like a steel rod ran the length of her spine. Simone’s shoulders had bowed like a stone had been hung around her neck. She was wearing her glasses, which gave her a slight but mean squint. The total effect was miserly, as if Samantha had sucked up all the grace in the room.

Simone’s nails — I just noticed — were clean but dull and the edges were bitten. I could feel the jagged edges when they clamped onto my forearm and she said, “Watch my section, don’t move from it, I will find the Dauvissat.”

Her bright eyes seemed peeled away from her head.

“Maybe you should eat something real quick. Just a bite.” She was on day four.

“I would appreciate it if you focused.”

“What if they need something?”

“They’re just guests. Get them whatever the fuck they want.”

—

AS IF I COULD stay away. Samantha took one sip of her full water glass and I materialized beside her to refill it. Heather was touching the table, she must have known them too, and she excused herself on my approach.

“Hello,” she said, putting her hand on my arm to stop me from pouring. Her fingers glittered. “I’m Samantha. You’re a refreshing presence here. Heather says you’re the new girl.”

“That’s what they call me.”

“That’s what we called Samantha once,” Eugene said. “Eugene Davies.”

“You worked here too?”

“No, no.” He smiled politely. “I was a regular. Standing lunch on Fridays, but twice a week toward the end, when I was trying to capture this one.”

Samantha smiled, putting all her buffed white teeth into it. Their pinkies were hooked around each other’s.

“But,” Eugene continued, “when I asked Howard about her — I remember this perfectly — I said, ‘Who is that stunning brunette?’ and he said, ‘The new girl?’ And that’s always how I thought of her.”

“So many years ago, stop!” They laughed, the way guests sometimes laughed or cried because they felt like there was a privacy curtain encircling their table. I was always watching this intimacy, these people revealing their petty, hopeful, or maybe in this case, genuine selves.

“Do you miss it?” I asked.

“The golden handcuffs? Besides the backbreaking labor and turning into a nocturnal zombie and the general cattiness.” She paused and appraised me as if I were about to go up for auction. “Of course I miss it. It’s family.”

“Yes.” I felt a kinship with Samantha. I would with anyone who came in and announced that they had once worked at the restaurant. We shared — even if she had covered it up with jewelry and skin serums — a muscle memory. We had both broken down wine boxes in the cellar, we had both learned how to tell when Chef was heating up, we had the same aches in our necks and lower backs. “I feel really lucky.”

“You are. You’ll never be luckier.” Her and Eugene’s touching pinkies blossomed into holding hands, and I wondered what she thought being lucky was. Their eyes moved off me and I knew Simone was coming back. She had the Dauvissat but something was wrong. On her way back up from the cellar she must have reapplied her lipstick. Just slightly, but definitively, she had veered off the mark.

I backed away as she began presenting, something I had watched her do, wistfully, at all hours and from all angles. I looked at the Dauvissat, the yellowing label, its promise of history, of alchemy, of decadence, and the label was shaking in Simone’s unmanicured hands.

—

WITHIN TEN MINUTES of Samantha and Eugene bubbling out into a taxi Simone’s section was in disarray and she was nowhere to be seen. I got Heather to help me establish order. As soon as I had a second I found her in the wine room, a bread basket at her feet, thermos in her lap, breathing hard and taking little sips.

“Simone, I need help in your section,” I said. “9 is pissed because they wanted the broccoli rabe and polenta sides and Chef doesn’t have a ticket, and I didn’t see it on hold, so maybe they didn’t order it, or maybe you forgot?”

She stared at the wall and broke off a piece of flatbread. She crumbled it up. “It’s funny. The people you become.”

I exhaled. “You need to get back upstairs.”

“You think you’re making choices. But you’re not. Choices are being made against you.”

“Should I get Jake?” It was like car alarms in my head, knowing that her section was falling to pieces, that guests were looking around the room for their server. I saw a red stain down the side of her shirt.

“Did you spill wine ?” My tone exposed my disgust. She was obviously not well. It had to be the cleanse. “Eat that bread,” I said forcefully. “Now.”

She ate a square of focaccia, chewing timidly like a child trying a new food, like she might spit it out.

“I’m getting you new stripes. What’s your combo?”

She wasn’t catatonic — she tracked my words, they just didn’t puncture. The adrenalized immediacy of service, the force that kept the restaurant running, had completely drained from her person.

“06-08-76.”

I repeated the numbers as I ran up the stairs. Only when I started to input them did I think it might be a birthday. It was the 06—I remembered that Jake was a Gemini. I did not remember how I’d come to possess that knowledge. It seemed to have passed to me in the leaky drunken hours when information entered but didn’t adhere. Maybe this was Jake’s birthday — the 76 was a more accurate indicator than my half remembering that he was a Gemini.

I thought of him waking up last June 8, thirty years old, and not knowing that I was weeks away. Neither of them had known I was coming. This June would be a culmination. I’d watch the English peas and sugar snaps come in, maybe I would get a bike and he could teach me how to ride in the city. And his birthday. Simone and I would plan a dinner, and he would be uncomfortable but happy. When I ran back into the cellar Simone was sitting stormily, glaring at the label on a bottle of Saint-Émilion.

“Quick, quick.” I barreled past any formality left between us and unbuttoned her shirt. She let me. I forced it off her shoulders. As I did her arms went up and back and I saw a mark under her bra strap. “What’s that?”

She lifted the band of her bra, dreamily, still unhurried.

It was a tattoo of a key. Matching. Identical. It was in better condition than Jake’s and looked branded into her pale skin. Of course, I thought as I balled up her dirty stripes.

“I didn’t take you for the type.” It looked ridiculous on her, like an accident. But it wasn’t. I wished it had been anything else. A butterfly, a star, a quote from Keats, a flippant tattoo. Now her body was an echo of Jake’s. No — his was an echo of hers. It was the first tattoo I had seen on him, back when he pulled me into the walk-in and opened oysters for me, before that body became familiar, before I could find all his tattoos in the dark. Would Jake and I ever have private moments, just the two of us?