by Leanne Shear
Most nights I met Annie, one of the waitresses, for a postwork drink at Spring Lounge. Annie was a five-foot-nine blond Brazilian bombshell, who immediately after work swapped her boring black Finton’s outfit for brightly colored, ruffly short skirts, tight camisoles, and dangly beaded earrings. It was necessary to have a friend with whom I could rehash the night’s misadventures—from married men asking us to meet them at their hotel, to jealous girls shirking on tips if their boyfriends paid too much attention to us. After being on my feet all night, running around behind the bar, I was so wound up at 3:00 A.M. that sleep wasn’t in the cards. All bartenders, I learned, needed a wind-down drink—anything to prolong the party.
After José, the waitresses were the second lowest on the totem pole. (The bartenders were the second highest, directly behind the manager or owner.) Waitresses had to ask the bartenders for every single drink and made about half the money that we did on a nightly basis. They did, however, have more access to the food. Annie and I worked out a mutually beneficial system—I gave her drinks, and she snuck me food from the kitchen when my stomach was growling at 2:00 A.M.
Shifts seemed to fly by when I worked with Annie. When the bar was quiet we huddled around the service end and chattered. Laurel would furiously disperse what she called our coffee klatch, but since she spent most of her time downstairs in her office, we spent the majority of our time deep in conversation, occasionally to the annoyance of customers waiting for drinks or to place food orders.
I’d met Annie on my second night of work. “It’s Cassie, right?” she’d asked as she dexterously balanced six Bikini martinis on her tiny cocktail tray. The turquoise cocktails were Finton’s Friday night special, and Sean had just taught me how to make them: 1 ounce of Stoli Vanilla, 1/2 ounce of Liquor 43, a splash of lime juice, and just a drop of Blue Caracao to give them their electric color.
“Yeah,” I said, extending my hand foolishly, before realizing that she couldn’t accept it without losing a martini.
“I’m Annie,” she said brightly.
“Nice to meet you.”
“You too! I’ll be right back, I just gotta deliver these drinks.”
I watched as Annie smiled playfully at the six Suits—straight out of an ad for Today’s Man—who’d ordered the drinks, tossing her curls and tilting her head to the side.
“These aren’t very manly drinks, gentleman,” she said with a flirtatious smirk, while gracefully bending over and placing a martini in front of each one. They erupted in laughter, clamoring and competing for attention from their pretty cocktail waitress.
“Don’t worry, beautiful,” one of them said, “I usually drink scotch, but Roger over here insisted we try these.” Roger started to protest, but Annie was already strutting back toward the bar.
“What a bunch of losers, huh?” she said to me with an exaggerated roll of her big green eyes. “They were in here last week, and one of them ordered a Grey Goose and cranberry—so transparent. They only order Grey Goose because it’s expensive, and they think they’ll sound cooler—I mean, why spend ten bucks on vodka and then ruin it by adding that syrupy crap from the gun? Anyway, the guy with the eight-dollar haircut was bragging to his friends that he could only drink Grey Goose because he gags if he has cheap vodka. So just as an experiment, I had Sean give him the well shit for his second round, and the idiot didn’t even know the difference.”
I grinned. “Have you been working here a long time?”
She looked up reflectively and seemed to search her brain for the answer. “Almost a year. God save me! I’m becoming a professional waitress!”
“Come on, one year isn’t that long,” I reasoned.
“I know, but when I graduated from Tisch last May, I promised myself I’d only do this for six months while I found a way to become famous.”
“You went to Tisch?” I asked, “What’d you study?”
“I majored in modern dance. How about you?”
“I studied creative writing at Columbia. But I took some screenwriting classes down at Tisch last summer. I loved it.”
“Perfect! You write a screenplay, and I’ll star in it, and then we’ll both be famous, and we’ll look back on our days at Finton’s and laugh!”
“Sounds like a plan,” I said.
Annie was definitely gorgeous enough to be a movie star, and with her slight Brazilian accent, she was evocative of Brigitte Bardot. Her olive skin contrasted sharply with her golden hair, and her full lips could morph from an alluring smile to a sexy pout without missing a beat.
“I’ve been just dying to break into acting,” she went on.
“You never stop acting,” Billy said wryly. He had a habit of suddenly materializing over my shoulder.
She gave him her best pouty smile and then laughed. “I guess you’re right, but it’d be nice to start getting paid for it. Why won’t someone just discover me? I wouldn’t forget all my friends slinging drinks back at Finton’s—” Her words drew to an abrupt halt as her eyes trained to a tattooed man with a shaved head walking in the door.
“Oh my God!” Annie moaned, throwing half of her body on the bar and shielding her face with her hand.
“What?” I asked.
Billy looked over at the guy and smiled impishly as his face lit up with recognition.
“That’s L.A., isn’t it?” he whispered.
“Yeah,” Annie croaked.
“Who’s L.A.?” I asked.
“Oh, I’m sure Annie can tell you all about him,” Billy teased.
“Shut up!” Annie hissed.
“What’s going on?” I asked in a low voice.
Annie quickly jerked her head to the right, indicating I should follow her into the dining room. The expression on her face let me know that it was urgent.
“Are you okay?” I asked after we were both seated at table twelve, a two-top nestled in the back of the dining room.
“No!” She put her head in her hands. “Did you see that guy that just walked in?”
“Yeah, I saw him.”
“Well, he’s the guitar technician for Metallica!” she said, her eyes widening. “Isn’t that insane?! He came in a couple of weeks ago and stayed all night, and we had sex in the kitchen right on the countertop.”
I made a mental note not to eat any of the vegetables that were chopped and prepped on that counter.
“Anyway,” she continued, “I kind of like him, but I don’t know what to do, because Allen is coming in any minute.”
“Who’s Allen?” I asked.
“One of the guys I’ve been seeing. I really like him too. And Marc is supposed to come in later if he gets out of work before I’m done. Marc’s the guy I met at Marquee last week. This is a fucking mess. You need to help me.”
“Okay,” I said. “What do you want me to do?” I twisted around to look over my shoulder. I was waiting for Laurel to realize I’d left my post behind the bar and march up and hand me a pink slip. She usually insisted that we remain caged back there for the duration of the night.
“I’m going to take L.A. downstairs, give him a blow job, and send him on his way.”
I burst into incredulous laughter. “Are you serious?”
“Yeah! Did you see how hot he is? And his dick is enormous.”
I’d never known any other Brazilians, but if Annie was any indication, they seemed to have a tendency toward too much information. “But if Allen comes in while I’m gone—Marc definitely won’t be in until much later—I need you to tell him I’m downstairs doing inventory, and keep him occupied until I come back up.”
“But I’ve never even met Allen. I don’t know what he looks like.”
“Billy does. He’ll show you,” Annie said confidently. She had an answer for everything.
“Okay,” I said, regretting the word as soon as it came out. I’d only just met her five minutes ago and was already heavily entrenched in her histrionics.
“Thank you so much!” she exclaimed as she threw her long arms ar
ound my neck. “I owe you one.”
Annie disappeared downstairs with L.A., and I returned to my station at the service end of the bar, where a pyramid of dirty glasses had piled up. Ten minutes later L.A. emerged from downstairs looking like the cat who just ate the canary and slipped stealthily out the front door. A minute afterward Annie appeared, straightening her short, pleated skirt and rearranging her bouncing curls.
“Looks like you need a shot, you Brazilian nut,” Billy called as he arranged three shot glasses on the service bar and filled them with Jameson Irish Whiskey, the only acceptable shot at Finton’s.
“Staff shots,” I had quickly realized, had a funny way of keeping us from our duties. Billy was usually the ringleader, and on a half-hourly basis he would line up three shots of Jameson for me, Annie, and himself. It was a bonding ritual that started our nights with a bang and fueled us intermittently through the hours of trying customers, boredom, cheesy songs, bad pickup lines, and, in some cases, depression.
“God, that was like my ninth shot tonight,” I wailed, after I’d knocked it back and felt the smooth burning on my tongue and down the back of my throat where it spread warmly in my stomach. “I’m becoming an alcoholic.”
“Give me a break, kiddo,” Billy said. “These are baby shots. We only fill them up about a quarter of an ounce, so if you do nine shots, you’ve actually only had about two. Plus you’re on your feet all night burning them off quick.”
That made me feel a lot better. I’d never been a shot girl—even when my college friends had been fans of the $2 Kamikaze specials at happy hour hosted by Night Café, our college dive. I could chug Bud Lights with the most notorious of frat guys and would indulge in the occasional rum and Coke or vodka tonic, but for the most part, I didn’t do well with hard liquor.
When my friends came into Finton’s, they too took full advantage of staff shots. That night was no different. “Cassie!” I heard Alexis bellow from amid a pack of young trader types in suits.
I looked up from the paying customers I was busy serving.
“Give us another round of shots!” she yelled from across the bar.
I smiled at her through clenched teeth as I mixed her eighth round of shots, which she’d long ago stopped offering to pay for. I’d only been working in the service industry for a few weeks, but had already been indoctrinated to the importance of always offering to pay for your drinks and, more important, tipping the bartender—even when that bartender is your best friend. I of all people knew how much disposable money Alexis had, but she never left me a tip, and I felt too uncomfortable to say anything.
I’d taken to keeping my notebook behind the bar, as each person I talked to—mainly the Finton’s regulars, but also my friends and their drunken alter egos—were providing plenty of good script material.
I was learning that a lot of people came to Finton’s because they needed somebody to talk to, but I didn’t feel qualified to offer advice when my own life was still so unsettled. In many cases, I found, drunks just wanted to hear themselves talk and have someone else absorb their problems. Even if I’d been Dr. Phil, they wouldn’t have taken my words of wisdom. It could get depressing watching the same person come in night after night and drink twelve Ketels—on the rocks—one after the other while telling me the same sob story.
Steve Mitchell, one of the regulars, always came in at around 2:30 A.M. on weeknights, precisely when Billy and I were closing up the bar. We couldn’t lock the door on him because we felt guilty, but it was also more than that. I hated to admit it, but we knew that Steve, without fail, always left a huge tip: $50 or more. And at the end of a slow night, the difference between making $100 or $125 each had a real impact on our finances. Bartending was a quid pro quo.
“Hi, Cassie,” Steve would say dejectedly. He was a tall, gaunt man with sunken eyes rimmed in black circles and the worst comb-over since Donald Trump. Every night he wore a battered T-shirt tucked into jeans that should have been retired along with Debbie Gibson in the late 1980s.
“Hi, Steve,” I said. I tried not to cringe, but I always suspected that my annoyance was noticeable. “How are you?” I asked dutifully.
“Not so great,” he said, looking at me expectantly.
“What’s the matter?”
“Things at work aren’t going so well—my pension hasn’t gone through yet—Dawn isn’t returning my calls. She just doesn’t appreciate me . . .” He sat, slumped and forlorn, as I mixed his usual, Tanqueray and tonic.
Another night a short, overweight man with a reddish beard that matched the color of his cratered nose approached the bar and ordered a martini up with olives. After I made the drink he said, “I’ll give you a hundred dollars if you suck on those olives and then spit them into my glass.”
For a moment I’d actually entertained the idea, mesmerized by his hundred-dollar bill. I hated needing money that badly. When I hungrily gathered all the singles thrown on the bar to stash in my tip jar, I felt like the stripper I’d seen on Howard Stern, who, when her song was over, had to clamor on her hands and knees picking up the crumpled bills that had been thrown at her. When I reflected on all of this, I realized that, bizarrely, I was relating more and more to the heroine of my screenplay.
“What’s your name?” the crater-nosed man had asked.
Still feeling like I had to be polite to everyone, I responded, “Cassie,” and gave him a neutral smile, but I inched farther down the bar and farther away from him.
He stayed at the bar all night watching me. I became hyperconscious of my movements. I tried my best to ignore him, but every time I looked up I seemed to catch his eye. It was disturbing. You never know what kind of person you might come across in New York City, and I didn’t know if he was just a harmless, lonely man or a potentially dangerous stalker. Sometimes I felt trapped behind the bar—anyone who wanted to could come in, order a drink, and sit and stare at me all night, and there was nothing I could really do about it.
Edward was another regular who felt it was his duty to pay me a visit every time I worked. He drank Jack Daniel’s neat with a Carlsberg back (which meant he ordered the beer to soften the blow of the whiskey) and was tolerable compared to the rest of my needy coterie. He seemed to have his act together, and he usually didn’t monopolize my time with mundane drivel, preferring instead to try his best to worm his way into Annie’s skintight pants.
All that changed one Saturday night when he trudged into Finton’s at 4:30 A.M., just as Billy, José, and I had finally finished our cleanup after a long night of work. His drawn face bore the telltale signs of recent crisis coupled with too much booze and a need to talk to someone.
“Sorry, Edward,” Billy said. “We’re about to walk out the door.”
“Please don’t close,” he pleaded. “My wife just left me, and I have nowhere else to go.”
Hours later, when I was tucked safely into bed, my mind still awake and racing from the night’s activities, I fumbled for a pen on my nightstand and reached for my notebook.
There are so many lost souls drifting around Manhattan, and they all seem to gravitate toward bars. It’s a lot to deal with at 4:30 in the morning.
Martin Pritchard, Dan Finton’s art dealer friend whom I’d met my first night, returned often, and before he could order, I was always ready with his gently stirred manhattan.
“Another perfect manhattan,” he said one night after savoring his first sip. “Billy, I think Cassie’s a keeper.”
“You know, you might be right. Surprisingly, she’s turning out okay,” Billy said, smiling at me.
“Dan and I were just talking about how great the two of you look together behind the bar,” Martin went on.
As my skills had improved and Billy and I were both able to relax, it had become clear we had great chemistry. But I didn’t have any delusions about it translating to the other side of the bar. There was something about the environment of a bar as a workplace—everything became concentrated in such a small space and, as a
result, somehow intensified. Within just a few weeks, Annie had become one of my best friends, I had become a shrink to regulars (privy to secrets they wouldn’t tell their own spouses), and Billy and I had developed a public flirtation that was all at once a calculated performance yielding bigger tips and sales and a reflection of what happens when you stick two red-blooded people in a confined space together for an extended period of time—and add a little alcohol into the mix.
“Thanks,” I said, regarding Billy with a smile. “How are you, Martin?”
“Fine, dear. Getting ready to head out east in the morning.”
“Where’re you going?”
“I have a house in Southampton.”
My ears perked up. The Hamptons—the exclusive Long Island retreat for every New Yorker who “was somebody.” I’d been hearing about it since my first days at Columbia. From the details I’d consumed from New York magazine, I had conjured up images of a mythical Avalon in my mind.
“The Hamptons” is the general term used to describe the towns encompassing the stretch along the Atlantic Ocean on the “south fork” of Long Island, starting about a hundred miles east of New York City. They were named after Hampton Court, the summer retreat of the British Royal Family. Hampton Bays and Westhampton were the farthest west and, according to Alexis, the least exclusive. However, she’d reluctantly admitted, “If that’s all you can afford, at least it’s better than the Jersey shore.” Just a little farther east on Route 27, Southampton started the string of towns that housed those with money, both old and new.
Martin’s cigarette smoke burned my eyes (pesky rules like “No Smoking in New York City Bars” apparently didn’t pertain to him). I blinked, reaching for a bev nap to take some of the sting away.