Stephanie Danler - Sweetbitter

If I left her here in the basement the restaurant would be thrown into a tailspin. One bad night wouldn’t ruin her, but the staff would talk. It would be a fissure in her power. I ripped the dry cleaner’s plastic off the new shirt, hoping to feel capable again, craving order.

“It’s a funny story actually.”

“I can’t wait to hear it. Another time.” I threw the light-blue stripes at her. “You’re fucked up there, Simone. One more bite of bread, please.”

The fresh shirt hadn’t revived her like I thought it would. She smelled stale, or maybe it was the wine room.

“So 11 is mid-entrée, we’re running way behind for apps on 14 but drinks are down, I sold a Quintarelli, only the Valpolicella Classico, but not the worst sale, I know it’s Italy, but they insisted, maybe if you talk to Chef he can rush the food, I would go straight to 15, Heather was dropping the check for me.” I pulled her hand. She was breathing deeply. They were rough, lachrymal breaths that I knew all too well. “Hey. When are the asparagus coming?”

Her eyes bounced to me.

“With this weather?” she asked, consulting the ceiling. “Three weeks. Minimum.”

“Oh yeah? You think it’s going to snow again?”

I kept asking her questions she knew the answers to. Once she got on the floor she went straight to 15, smiled compulsorily, and snatched up the check.

“We thought you went home,” Heather said. “In the future can I get some warning before you cleanse your spirit, darlin’? I’ll just plan on taking the whole dining room.” Simone didn’t acknowledge, apologize to, or thank her. I watched over Simone all night, but she was fine. Her tattoo faded from my mind as service beat on, relegated to the neglected file of weird, annoying shit about Jake and Simone. She got her normal tip average, an unfluctuating twenty-seven percent. The mechanics never failed.

—

“I THOUGHT YOU guys were such good friends,” Ariel said later that night. She was still halfheartedly punishing me for my absence from Park Bar. I told myself to be patient with her and Will, but I was willing to push it with her tonight.

“Wasn’t Simone like the maid of honor?” Will asked. Vivian was pouring out tequila shots. “You wanna shot?”

“Ugh,” I said. Jake was going to pick me up after he walked Simone home. I had no desire to get drunk, but it was the best shortcut to the reliable Park Bar intimacy. And, looking at them, I felt guilty. I was going to be a server. Howard had no idea how bad it was going to be for me. I couldn’t even imagine asking Ariel to get me something “on the fly” in that harried, bossy way the servers did. She was going to beat the shit out of me. “Maybe in a minute?”

“All My Friends” came on, and Ariel made Terry turn it up. I thought she would grab me like she used to and pull me onto the floor to dance. It was our song when we were heading out into the night — the manic, dizzy piano introduction stretching us. The song was all promise — that this night would be different, or different enough.

“You swallow you cunt,” said Sasha putting a shot in front of me.

“But, hey guys, it’s our song,” I said. No one acknowledged me. Simone’s meltdown made me miss the simplicity of us getting fucked up together with no ulterior agenda. But I had an agenda now — a walk with Jake, a potential breakfast — things to stay sober for. I considered the shot. If I got too drunk I figured I could throw up before Jake got there. I took it and groaned.

“It’s like Samantha represents the life she almost had with Mr. Bensen.”

“Now what if he came in,” Will said, “what if he and his wife came in? That would make tonight look like a nonevent.”

“Abandoning her section midrush — not exactly a nonevent.”

“No, wait, guys,” I said. “Slow down.”

“Oh, Bensen, the Silver Fox, I woulda done him, double shot.”

“And it was like, out in the open, and Simone was putting in her notice without putting it in, like a six-month notice, but still.”

“And what?”

Will shrugged. “How does that phrase go? Married men always leave their wives?”

“Oh,” I said. “That’s not how the phrase goes.”

“Poof be gone,” Sasha said, and snapped his fingers. “You fuck the servant, you don’t take her to Connecticut, ’kay?”

“I think Samantha lives in Connecticut.”

“Bravo, doll,” Will said. “So a few years later, along comes Samantha — she and Simone fall hard for each other, like schoolgirl style.”

“But Eugene and Samantha fall even harder. She wasn’t even here long enough to get a voucher. She and Simone had some bizarre falling-out after the wedding. It just broke Simone for a minute.”

“Wait, Ari,” I said. “Simone doesn’t get broken. Especially by shit like that. She’s not like, looking to get married or get validated by a man. She’s in her own circle.”

Ariel slammed her hand on the bar. “Are you fucking blind?”

“Baby Monster, you need a bathroom break.”

“It’s like you fucking own me,” I said to Sasha, standing up automatically and getting in line with him. I waved to Scott who sat in his corner.

“Back at it?” he said. Mocking and cruel, as if he knew that I didn’t want to be here again, in a cycle of nothing nights.

“Like riding a bike,” I said and turned to Sasha. “What about Jake?”

“What about my Baby Jakey? He picking up all the Simone pieces like always.”

“What about him and Samantha?”

“Why you ask that?” He grabbed my chin and looked in my eyes.

“She mentioned him,” I said. But that wasn’t it. It was that Simone was so upset by Samantha I felt like there had to be more to the story. A black aura of heartbreak shrouded Simone now. Her poems that no one read, her apartment that she could never leave, her expertise so niche it was skeletal. She hadn’t made a choice. Someone else had.

We locked ourselves in the bathroom and he took out his bag. “Sugar Face, you better off just assuming that Jake fucked everyone. Where’s your key?”

“Sasha, when are you going to be happy for me? Also I don’t have a key on me.”

“Oh look who all grown up!” He pulled out his wine key and took a bump and handed it to me. “You know, you the worst kind, you want to marry the artist and live like squalor, but you wait, in five years you be like, Baby Jake why we eat ramen noodles every night? You a hustler, don’t blind me, I see.”

The cocaine was an illumination, the bathroom florid, filtered. When I looked at our reflection in the mirror we looked like a photograph. I could see that we were just playing. The degree to which I took myself seriously was laughable. “God, Sasha, it’s so dark here. You guys are so fucking dark. Do you not see that?”

“Oh, Baby Monster, please show me the light!”

“I’m just saying it doesn’t have to be like this.” I checked his nose and teeth for him and lifted my head for him to do the same. He flicked something off my nose and I grabbed his face and kissed him on both cheeks. “This isn’t Mother Russia. It’s America. We believe in happy endings.”

“Get me the phone, lemme me call my mama, Jesus fucking Christ, ’cause now I really fucking heard everything.”

THE HUNGRY GAP appeared, spreading like a rattled plane in front of us. We extended our use of the word local, bringing up soft-shell crab and asparagus from Virginia, blood oranges from Florida. The guests, the cooks, all of us anxious, still shell-shocked from winter and bucking against the restraints. It wasn’t spring fever, not yet. We didn’t fully have faith that it was coming but we had no choice but to move forward into the protracted promises.