Stephanie Danler - Sweetbitter

Carlos was in front of me, gleaming, his shoes shined, his hair slicked with pomade, his diamond earrings, which he insisted were real. They were his grandmother’s in the Dominican Republic, they were on loan because he was her favorite. He and I had grown closer since I’d sold him my car for $675. It was the exact amount I owed the city in overdue parking tickets. I was pretty sure he’d flipped the car for more money, but I got discounts on my bags so it seemed a fair deal.

“Where are you from again?” he asked.

“Have you seen Jake?”

“Which one is Jake?”

“The bartender. Always looks homeless. Crazy eyes.”

“Yeah, yeah, your bartender over there. The one that used to hook up with Vanessa.”

“Ha,” I said. “Yeah, yep, that’s Jake. Funny you say that because I was just thinking about the women Jake has fucked and I was thinking we should form a band or something, maybe a book club. Maybe all go on a vacation even.”

He held his hands up. “I know nothing. I don’t even know when that was.”

“Of course, no one knows anything, let’s not get involved, let’s not have a real conversation with dates and facts and names and places because we might be held accountable and that, that, would be a catastrophe for some of us, we would have to remove our sunglasses, or lipstick, whatever, the apparatus, and we would have a proper trial, with judges and evidence and verdicts, and some of us would be clean and some of us would be dirty.”

“You’re pretty up there, huh?” He whistled and it sounded like cuckoo.

“I’m done, I’m fine. I can wait it out.”

“You want something to help?”

“I don’t do hard stuff. Like heroin, I don’t do heroin.”

“Yeah, I know, none of you rich kids do heroin.” He winked at me.

“Why would we when you keep us up to our eyeballs in shitty coke? Don’t fucking wink at me.”

“Girl, you are mouthy tonight!” He smiled and handed me another cigarette. I hadn’t realized I was gripping the leftover filter, pinching it. “I like it, you got your teeth bared and shit. I was talking about Xanax, niña, shit your mama gave you when you got nervous about the SATs. I never seen you so tense.”

“My mother never did that,” I said. My bones were sharp, my skin wasn’t thick enough to hold them, but I enjoyed Carlos and his kitschy moves. Thank god for Carlos. “I will take a Xanax, actually. How much?”

“First time’s always free, niña.”

“Oh Jesus, you’re really going to make me feel filthy about this aren’t you? What is that? It doesn’t look the same.”

“It’s a Xanibar. Just take a small piece. Should last you a few days depending on what kind of fiesta you’re on.”

“I’m not on a fucking fiesta, I’m in fucking hell.”

“Still works the same.”

“My friends will kill you if I die.”

I broke off a piece and chewed it up. I grabbed someone else’s fairly full beer from inside the open window and chased it. We looked back through the windows. Will, Ariel, Sasha, Parker, Heather, Terry, Vivian — all listening to Nicky hold court on one of his rare forays to Park Bar. I couldn’t face him like this, with my clenched, throbbing molars, my twitching hands. Everyone was there — except Jake and Simone, of course — telling and retelling the story of the inspection, speculating about what had really happened, what would happen. Normally I excelled in that gratifying, circular talk, hours slipping by while we filled space with drinking and reinforcing the same stories, never coming up with different endings.

“I think your friends forgot about you,” Carlos said.

“You think that. But I’m their pet. Their puppy. They need me to follow them around.” I ran my tongue over my lips and they were serrated. I tasted blood, I thought of him. “Actually we don’t even have to call them my friends. Let’s call them the people I spend time with. Or actually — this is funny — let’s call them my coworkers. It’s just dinner!”

“I heard about your place. That’s really fucking crazy. If we got shut down—”

“We didn’t, we voluntarily closed to perform repairs—”

“Steve would have our throats. I mean it, I would be sprinting out the door, never look back.”

“The Owner came by.”

“Oh shit — who got fired?”

“No one.” I thought back to the reverence, the hush, and it was as if I saw him pulling his hands together to calm us and I calmed. “He thinks we’re wonderful.”

Carlos shook his head. “You drank the Kool-Aid, huh?”

I nodded. Everything. Felt. Better. “I love the Kool-Aid.”

I leaned against the windowsill and sipped my beer. The weather was schizophrenic, appealing one minute, aggressive the next, frenetic, like water breaking from a dam.

“Ohio,” I said. “Thank you for asking.”

“I got cousins there.”

“You don’t.”

“Ay, niña, I got cousins everywhere. Speaking of, one of them is picking me up, we got errands. But he’s holding some grade-A shit.”

“Enticing. But I think I’m finally becoming happy. I think I mastered life, right here on this windowsill. I don’t want to move too much.”

“You sure? Where you meeting your man? We could drop you.”

“My man?”

Jake was quicksand. Hours ago my plan had been to talk to him rationally, he had promised. Maybe he hadn’t bought the tickets yet, maybe he wouldn’t go for the whole month, maybe I could meet them. But at that moment I didn’t want him. The man I was totally and completely devoted to was going away with another woman, and I was so fucking blind and tolerant that they thought I wouldn’t have a shred of feeling about it. Or perhaps they simply didn’t care. Finally — facts not colored by the weather or the voices and visions in my head. I didn’t want anything: not a drink, not a line, not a snack, I didn’t even want to fidget. It was the freest I’d felt in months.

The city does sleep, the windows darken and the streets vacate. New York dreams us. Wild, somnambulistic creatures, we move unhurried toward our own disappearance at dawn.

“Tess, that’s not your beer.” Will’s voice was far away. He was inside the plush noise of the bar and holding a spotless beer in his hand.

“I can’t hear you,” I said. I reached my hand out to touch the glass between us. I touched his face instead.

“Are you okay?” He grabbed my hand. The day rushed back to me. I fell backward, slapping the ground.

“I’m fine.” Will’s hands, Carlos’s hands, lifting me. “No more man hands.”

“Come inside,” Will said. I squirmed but his hand was stuck on my back.

“Carlos, are you going east?”

“You’re not going with him,” Will said, and now his hand was stuck to my shoulder. “Are you crazy? You can’t get into a car with a drug dealer.”

“Don’t be racist Will, now please leave me alone. I’m going east.”

“Donde, niña?”

“Ninth between First and A.” As I said it a black car with tinted windows pulled up. The front window rolled down when Carlos approached. I pulled my purse out of the bar through the window and put my beer inside it.

“Hi Carlos’s cousin,” I yelled out. “Simone’s house, please.” I opened the door and climbed over the seats with astonishing grace.

THROWING UP mostly water. Throwing up curds in mostly water. Throwing up in your lap. Throwing up in your purse. Men yelling. Red and green blistered lights out the window. Gravitational forces on you instead of a seat belt. Your face smashing into the seat back. You tried to hold on but you were thrown like a doll.

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