Love Me Back

by Merritt Tierce

  He was the one who had it worst for Shaila, even worse than Ahmed. You could tell by how they sat at the table—she’d be leaning back giving off this all-balls safari-guide vibe and Matt would sit forward in his chair to catch the invisible gazelles of wisdom leaping out of her mouth. He was a nervous tense one with those gigantic biceps not good for anything but reps. Probably the only thing whiter than the pure coke Danny got him and made him pay out his demolished septum for was his teeth, which glowed ultraviolet in the bar. He laughed at everything Shaila said and leaned forward more and drank more tea and went to the bathroom to snort more off the key to his Avalanche, which he didn’t valet, because he wanted to keep his keys or because he wasn’t loaded like Shaila’s other fuckems I don’t know. Eventually he’d come back from his latest trip to the men’s room chewing the invisible gum.

  So I did these runarounds for Frank, who had a receptionist and a legal secretary and a junior attorney but still needed someone to handle things like his lunch and shoes for the women he was seeing. He told me he’d been having drinks with Danny and Ahmed at Trece one night when Danny got a text from Shaila. It said what time can I fit you in tonight my love? and Danny was showing it to Frank saying I fucking love this whore she’s such a fine dirtleg always ready when Frank got a text from Shaila: what time can I fit you in tonight my love? Frank was pissed she texted Danny first and Danny was about to go public with his alpha male stock when Ahmed said You cocksuckers it’s just D before F. I got it first. She don’t give a fuck about any of us.

  That’s what’s so great about her, said Frank, and Danny said What do you want Ahmed? Christ. Sweet cunt, no bullshit.

  That is what I’ve tried to give my hateful man but it hasn’t worked out. My hateful man is Ghanaian British and tall and mean and has a gift for hats. The selection of, and the wearing of in such a way as to crack my dumb heart. He plays jazz trombone for a twelve-piece that’s going places and he’s proud of the strong embouchure and extra-muscular tongue he brings me. In bed only is he sweet and sometimes when his fluttering lick releases me I almost cry with the ache for him to be that gentle in the hallway, or the living room. But he’s brushed me back one too many times for me to let him see how much I want that. He doesn’t like for me to sit next to him on the couch, or any nonfucking touching in general, but he’ll tickle me sometimes. He had me pinned to the floor one night and he wouldn’t stop even though I was seriously asking him to and I was a little drunk so I spit on him because I couldn’t move anything else. Suddenly he was very still and he wiped the spit off his face with his right hand. He was a little drunk too and as I was sitting up he hit me across the face with the spit hand so hard my head slammed back into the green chair. Fuck! he said, looking at his hand. It was his slide hand and he had a show the next night.

  To apologize for anything he’d put on a record and share his enthusiasm with me. As if to say Nothing can be all that bad if we’re enjoying this brilliance together. That night it was Coleman Hawkins’ high hopeful Body & Soul, the sax’s silky tremble more human than a voice. My hateful man also made incredible tacos for me no matter how late it was when I got out of work. These may seem like nothing, but even if you yourself can tell how paltry the spread is it’s yours so it glitters and you don’t want to turn away from it.

  My ex punched the wall the one time he wanted to hit me, and I probably deserved it. He had this striking autumn-red beard and warm brown eyes and wanted only to make me happy but I would yell at him for buying the wrong orange juice etc. He would have done anything for me, he even gave me an enema once when I had a strange disease that had compacted my shit so hard I went to the ER. He never minded getting up when the baby cried in the middle of the night and he would change her and bring her back to me. But I slept with everyone at work so he put his fist through the sheetrock and we broke up. He plays guitar at night when he gets home, and he teaches special ed at the middle school. That’s the sort of guy he is.

  I wish I didn’t want the exotic man who knows the entire history of jazz, and instead wanted the teacher, who has his flaws but whose kindness is as rare as genius.

  Frank had me pick up a necklace for the Dangler from this Arab jeweler who owed him. It was a custom-made pendant—a tiny white gold spider with a heart-shaped sapphire on its back. She’d been wearing this choker made of rubies and black pearls that Matt bought her in Cabo, he must have remortgaged his condo for that thing. Frank had me write the note to put in the box with the sapphire spider: To the Dangler, the player with the heart of cold. Dangle this. XO Frank.

  I saw the other dangler again when I was on my way to get Frank’s sandwich and drop off the necklace. Shaila lived in a penthouse on Turtle Creek and I was supposed to put the gift directly into her hands. As I headed up the freeway I looked to my right and there was the white Silverado. The other dangler was in the back again, one hand gripping the side of the bed, her scrawny forearm tendons popping out. The other hand was alternately holding the Mickey Mouse keychained purse close to her and moving strings of hair out of her eyes when the wind lashed her ponytails across her face. She was grimacing—smiling?—and the driver was drumming her ringed fingers on the steering wheel, nodding her head in time.

  Frank had called Shaila’s doorman—he had box seats on the fifty at Texas Stadium he used for leverage if people didn’t need legal tricks—so the doorman keyed the elevator to the penthouse as soon as I got there. Shaila answered the door in a wife-beater—no bra—and cutoff jeans shorts. She could have put on some heels and come into our five-star joint and no one would have said a thing but What’re you having, sister. Her body was like an outfit she never took off. I suddenly felt like I needed a haircut and wished I wasn’t wearing sneakers.

  Hey, she said.

  Two small kids appeared behind her, a girl and a boy. Kids, I thought, Shaila has fucking kids!

  They never told me you had kids, I said like an idiot.

  Yeah I bet they told you everything else though, she said, but not like she resented it or like she was boasting. It was more a comment on Frank and Danny and Ahmed and how she knew them, knew everything they could possibly think of to do or say.

  She turned and hollered Maria! into the penthouse. Go play with Maria, she said to the kids. They ran off.

  What can I do for you? she said.

  This is from Frank and I was told to put it right in your hands, I said.

  Okay, tell him it’s the most beautiful thing anybody ever gave me and I want to suck his huge cock until he dies of coming, she said, shoving the black velvet box into one back pocket of her shorts and pulling her buzzing phone out of the other. Hey sexy, she answered, mouthing Thanks to me with one of those all-expenses-paid smiles as she shut the door.

  Did you give it to her? Does she like it? Frank texted me. She LOVES it, I sent back. Then I figured I should tell him exactly what she said in case she said Did she tell you what I said? later. A woman like Shaila might seem flip and shallow but you could see that she could get you fired if the wrong look crossed her face and the wrong man happened to notice.

  Shaila must have really liked the spider though because she started wearing it all the time instead of the choker Matt gave her. Then Matt started drinking again, vodka Red Bulls, he’d drink double talls until he was out of his mind. One night he swung at Danny in the bar but Danny is an Italian street rat and Matt is just a gym rat so Danny ducked and broke his half-full bottle of Heineken on Matt’s jaw like he’d seen the punch coming for eight years. Danny’s friend Kole was in the bar that night—Kole was a freelance bodyguard who used to be an offensive tackle for the Broncos and was three times the size of Matt. Kole threw him out of the bar and two twenty-bags fell out of Matt’s pocket into the pool of beer on the floor as Kole was relocating him. Jesus, Kole! said Shaila, from her barstool, Don’t fucking kill him! He’s a big boy, he be all right, said Kole. You’re a much bigger boy, she said, searching for the straw of her mojito without taking her eyes off him. />
  Danny picked up the twenty-bags and shook them off and told me to get Niño to clean up that stupid queer fuck-wad’s mess. He bought all the customers in the bar a shot to make nice and then he and Shaila left in the orange Ferrari.

  The next day when I got to work Ahmed was already on his stool.

  Did you hear? he said.

  We used to chat when he’d wait for Shaila, she’d made him so happy he was extra-friendly with everyone, and he palmed me a bill for no reason once. But he hadn’t wanted to talk since she dropped him, so the energy in his voice surprised me.

  No, I said, what?

  That sad fuck Matt ran off the bridge last night, he said. Went right through the construction barrier and hit a guy. Killed him. Can you believe that? Dumb fuck walked away, too. Broken wrist, that’s it. I know it’s all that bitch’s fault. He lost his shit over her.

  Ahmed seemed stunned by this event and also perplexed in a jaded way, as if he couldn’t get why it was the next guy over who’d won the disaster lottery. As if he wished he could have been the one to blow up his life because of Shaila.

  Later that week I heard that Frank was leaning on the prosecutor to get him to drop the DWI since Matt was already up for manslaughter. And Danny became Shaila’s consoler, when she came into the bar he had her drink ready and he sat with her all night long, his arm around her. He tried to make her laugh in a special sensitive way that acknowledged she didn’t want to. When she wasn’t in the bar I heard him playing family therapist on his cell phone, pacing in the lobby:

  It’s not your fault. You didn’t make him do it. He wasn’t a stable person. You were just having a good time and he couldn’t handle it. You didn’t do anything wrong, he said, you didn’t do anything a man wouldn’t do.

  One night he hung up after one of these conversations and said I’m taking her to Baja. I’m gonna fuck her brains out, try and take her mind off it.

  I slept with Matt, when I was on my streak. It was just once but now I keep seeing the ceiling fan in his room. I stared at it while he was going down on me, thinking of how to ask him to be softer. He was so vigorous about it, the same way he stirred his tea, as if delicacy must be avoided above all.

  After all that Kole and Shaila became a thing but Frank and Danny would still drink with them in the bar. Danny told me Kole called Shaila Boo and Shaila called Kole’s dick Baby Bear.

  I won’t ask how you know that, I said.

  Good honey, he said, then I won’t tell you I passed out on the floor of her penthouse and they forgot I was there.

  The hateful man was supposed to come back from Miami soon and was sweet-talking me for a smooth reentry but after everything that happened over the summer I wasn’t interested. I called him and left a message saying he needed to start paying the rent on the storage space for his stuff. I know none of that shit with the Dangler and the other dangler even happened to me but somehow just watching it made me want to kill whatever yearning self I had inside me. Whatever was in me hoping for something from someone, hanging on.

  I was with the hateful man when you got sick. Later I found out it was just a bad cold. But when you are five and you are sick all you want is for your mother to hold you and rock you and I was with him and I didn’t answer the phone when your dad called. He left a message saying you were sick and he needed me to take care of you so he could go to work tomorrow but I didn’t call him back. The hateful man showed me some pictures of Rome and asked if I thought they were any good. I didn’t like them—some trees, some stone. No heart. I drank bourbon with him until it would have been a bad idea for me to drive to you to hold you and rock you. The man fucked me and told me I was drunk like it was a weakness. But his apartment was full of empty bottles. In the morning he drove me home and when he parked in front of my place he said I think I need to fuck you again. As we walked in the door my home phone was ringing. I unplugged the cord. I knelt in front of my loveseat and he got behind me. As he was thrusting he shifted his balance and I tried to adjust to match his position but we went opposite ways and he jammed into me wrong. Fuck! he yelled and doubled over, holding his nuts. You broke my cock! he said. You moved, I said. I’m sorry.

  I should have known you’d trip out if I didn’t make you wait for it, he said. He winced, lying curled up on my floor with his pants half-down. He spent the next ten days icing his balls and blaming me and muttering about how he should have known better.

  I’m sorry, I said again, and I put on my clothes. All I could think about was you, feverish, hurting, wanting me.

  I acquired a reputation as straitlaced in The Restaurant when I started seeing the hateful man. My colleagues interpreted it as some kind of new leaf or intentional maturity that I never went out with them after work anymore. But it was just that I didn’t need that scene to fuck with myself because he did it for me. As the employee roster at The Restaurant was infiltrated by more and more people who didn’t know anything about me, and those who did moved on, quit, or were fired, who I was to everyone morphed into this paragon of good work, consistency, professionalism. An example. I ignored new people until they had lasted for three or four months. I came in at five, rocked my shift the same hard way I did every night, no matter how busy or not, and walked out whenever it was over without looking back. I never left without polishing my tables. Not once. There were many nights when I was so exhausted I’d forget which position I had started at, and have to polish the whole thing again just to be safe. No matter how weary I was though I loved the strangeness of the place when it was empty. That every night we could walk onto a blank stage and invent all that. Take The Restaurant from pristine and silent down to a staggering state of chaotic, deafening, and excessive disarray, and then put it all back together like no one was ever there.

  Roman and the Bishop

  You think we party now, it’s nothing like it used to be, Danny’s telling the liquor rep. We’ve already closed but the liquor rep has a deal with Danny—he gets a free steak and of course free drinks whenever he wants and we get a good rate on the whiskey. But the good rate wouldn’t matter if the liquor didn’t move, and it’s a shitty whiskey that nobody would request. So Danny has us telling our tables about it, that it’s the new Crown Royal, the next classic. Danny knows it’s not and he knows we know he knows. He probably even knows we know this all came about because the liquor rep sent Danny some hookers and high-quality coke on his birthday—Danny said that if the coke’s good enough the hookers will be too. Danny is telling the liquor rep a story about his best friend Roman, the bartender:

  So Roman says Hey honey I’ll give you thirty dollas you come out on the boat with us, come on it’ll be fun. Thirty dollas, all right? Is that cool? You’re so pretty. Come with us. So she’s like All right, all right, and he’s like Baby you got any friends? Hell, I’ll give you fifty bucks. Fifty dollas. Go find some friends and I’ll give em all fifty dollas. We got some guys who wanna have some fun. So she gets her friends and they all come out on the boat and I swear these girls were like seventeen, oh my God it was sick. You have not seen females like these and they were down. No rules there, ya know? We’re all wasted, totally out of our minds, and Roman, this guy has the smallest motherfucking cock you ever saw in your whole life but that don’t stop him—Roman sits down in this chair on the deck and he’s like SUCK MY COCK BITCHES!!! SUCK MY COCK!! and these women take his money and suck his itty-bitty cock and he goes like this (Danny flexes his arms WWF style) and he screams FUCKIN SUCK MY COCK!

  The liquor rep sees me standing at the corner of the bar and cuts a glance my direction as he sips his whiskey, looking back at Danny as if to tell him There’s a girl over there won’t she mind your cocksucking stories, but of course Danny has known I was there all along. What are you having, honey? Danny says to me. You wanna try this new asswater Joey got us? Acts like it’s sweet as pussy juice. Danny doesn’t say anything to address the liquor rep’s unspoken query and he doesn’t apologize to me either. I have seen and heard things and
I have kept secrets, so he doesn’t need to, and he doesn’t give a fuck what the liquor rep thinks.

  I haven’t decided whether or not I want to drink with these two when Felipe the barback’s barback appears behind me. Pinche puta madre! he curses, holding the last tray of hot clean highballs he needs to put away before he’s done for the night. Danny is pissing on the floor behind the bar top, his silver tie loosened and collar unbuttoned. He’s already buzzing hard, after three shots of Patrón—the real Patrón in the cabinet, not the shit tequila we pour for the guests from the Patrón bottle on the display shelf.

  When Felipe turns right around in the doorway to head back to the dishroom Danny realizes he pissed on a clean floor. Aw, fuck, he says in Felipe’s direction, fuck! Fucking Sanchez told me you didn’t mop yet! Where the fuck is Sanchez where did that fucker go! SANCHEZ!! YOU’RE FUCKING FIRED AND I’M GONNA HAVE YOU DEPORTED! THEY’RE COMING FOR YOU RIGHT NOW!

  He doesn’t mean it. If there is an individual in the restaurant for whom Danny would die, it is undoubtedly Sanchez. He is illegal, and his English is not that good, but he is the one. He is the barback and he has that beautiful momentum you see in the best, with his body in constant motion to mix cocktails, pulling the liquors from the well rail without looking, holding a new ticket in his mouth as he shakes a cosmo hard in his right hand and pours an exact six-ounce glass of chardonnay with his left. It’s not any horsing around like you see in the movies, with twirling or flipping bottles—it’s more of a pure dervishness that has on occasion made a fool of me as I called for a drink that was already sitting up straight right under my face.