The Perfect Manhattan

by Leanne Shear

  “Animal House?” the voice asked.

  “Excuse me?”

  “111 Montauk Highway . . . we call it Animal House because there’s always someone throwing up on the front lawn or passed out in the bushes,” he replied.

  “Oh.”

  “What time do you need the pickup?” he asked.

  “I have to be at Spark by noon.”

  “I’ll be there at twenty of.”

  I had seventeen minutes to pull myself together. Last night’s makeup remained caked on my eyelids. My eyes looked like two burned holes in a blanket. I tried to shake off my exhaustion, and grabbed some face wash out of my bag. My new summer schedule of working Thursday nights at Finton’s until four in the morning and then rushing to make the 7:25 train to the Hamptons didn’t allow much time for sleeping. I consoled myself with the familiar mantra: I’ll sleep when I’m dead.

  The same plump middle-aged cabdriver picked me up right on time. I could see him better in the daylight. He had untamed gray hair that curled around his ears and a balding spot on the top of his head that revealed a shiny pink scalp.

  “Hi,” I said, climbing into the backseat. “How’s it going?”

  “Make sure the door is closed,” he ordered, pulling out of the driveway. He didn’t seem to remember me.

  As we traveled west on Montauk Highway, I tried to forget about my small “register ring” problem. On Wednesday night I’d asked Laurel what my average nightly sales at Finton’s were, and it turned out that on my busiest nights I rang somewhere between $1,000 and $1,200. With a sinking feeling, I’d realized that I’d exaggerated my ring to Teddy eight times over. No wonder he’d hired me on the spot without so much as glancing at my résumé: he thought I was the highest-ringing bartender in history. I thanked God Annie was coming out to the Hamptons with me. Things were always easier with a partner in crime.

  As if on cue, my cell phone rang. “Cass!” Annie shouted. “I just got off the phone with Teddy, and he said there might be an opening for a cocktail waitress sooner than he thought, which would be soooooooooooo much better than waitressing in the restaurant. He asked me to e-mail him a picture of me, so he can decide if I ‘have what it takes’ to be promoted to cocktail waitstaff. Should I send him one of my headshots? Or I have this really cute shot of me in a bikini in Rio. What do you think?”

  “He asked you to e-mail him a picture?” I asked. With every passing day I was developing a thicker skin with regard to the bar industry’s blatantly misogynistic practices. Still, a big part of me was rankled by men like Teddy who didn’t even bother to try to hide it. At least Dan Finton’s preferences masqueraded as flattery.

  “Yup, so what do think—headshot or cleavage shot?”

  “I don’t know. I think it’s weird that you have to do this.”

  “He just wants to make sure I’m not a total dog, you know? That’s how these big clubs are. Maybe I’ll just send him both. Couldn’t hurt, right?”

  “I guess not.” I sighed. I was too tired to get on my soapbox and start preaching to her about resisting sexual exploitation. Besides, I’d begun to feel like I was walking a fine line myself. “Are you on your way out here for the meeting?”

  “Yeah. I have a separate server meeting, but Teddy told me to swing by the bar meeting afterward, just in case I end up cocktailing.”

  Annie had decided not to take the train with me, because she always took a modern dance class at eight on Friday mornings. Instead, she was taking the 10:00 A.M. Jitney—the ubiquitous green tour bus that ran back and forth between Manhattan and all of the Hamptons—which would drop her off in Wainscott right in front of Spark a little after twelve. I hoped she would be on time since her laid-back Brazilian sensibility always provided room for being “fashionably late.” Though after seeing her in a bikini, Teddy would likely let her skip the meeting all together if she wanted.

  “So how long have you been coming out to the Hamptons?” my cabdriver asked after I’d hung up.

  “Actually this is my first summer out here,” I told him. “I’m going to be bartending at Spark. How about you?”

  “I’ve lived here all my life. I was born and raised in the Springs.”

  Martin had told me that the Springs was the name given to the northern part of East Hampton, known to the elite as “the other side of the tracks.” The real estate was a lot cheaper there and was considered to be a sizable step down from the rest of East Hampton—south of the highway—which was closer to the ocean and where most Manhattanites had their summer homes.

  “So you live here year-round?” I asked, trying to imagine what it was like in February when all of the restaurants and boutiques were closed and the towns were nearly deserted.

  “I do,” he said. “I love it out here in the winter. It’s so quiet and peaceful when all you New Yorkers finally go home.”

  He said the last part with a playful smile, but I could tell he really meant it. The New York magazines and papers loved to expound on the tension—imagined or otherwise—between the Hamptons locals and the city people. Which is not to say it wasn’t a mutually beneficial relationship. After all, the entire economy of the Hamptons would go under if it wasn’t for the crowd of New Yorkers who flocked to the East End during the three short summer months. But I could understand why he and the rest of the residents who lived out there year-round might get sick of the pushy, Hummer-driving housewives and hordes of drug-addled, drunk-driving nightlifers. The minute Labor Day faded into the first unofficial day of fall, the traffic disappeared, the beaches were no longer crowded, and instead of being Manhattan transported to the ocean, the Hamptons were just a constellation of quaint coastal towns.

  We pulled up in front of Spark. “Thanks for the lift,” I said, prolonging my exit by fishing in my bag for an extralarge tip. “I’m sure I’ll see you soon.”

  Iam so fucking tired.”

  “This meeting better not last too fucking long.”

  “I didn’t get any sleep last night, and I’m so fucking hungover I feel like I’m going to die,” bemoaned a chorus of twenty-something girls clustered in one corner of the cavernous main room.

  “I know, I never even slept. I got so fucked up blowing lines after-hours at Green Room that I didn’t leave until it was time to start driving out here at around nine,” confided one, a petite blond with a spiky, pixie haircut.

  “Well, I was blowing Marcus for what seemed like hours, so I didn’t sleep either,” crowed another. She was tall and skinny without being at all lithe, and had ashy skin and black circles under her eyes. Her stringy blond hair looked like it had fallen victim to too much peroxide, and she wore a microminiskirt, high clunky gold sandals, and a tattered sweatshirt that slid off her shoulder revealing a hot-pink sequined bra strap.

  I stood on the periphery of the group, trying to look nonchalant. Annie hadn’t arrived yet. I looked around hoping I would see Jake or Teddy or someone I recognized, but apparently the only people who’d arrived on time were a ragtag herd of strung-out cocktail waitresses with bloodshot eyes and colorless cheeks, shrilly advertising their drinking, drug, and sex habits. They smelled collectively of smoke, stale booze, and dirty hair.

  “You are such a fucking slut!” the same skinny blond with the sequined bra strap yelled at one of the other girls. Her voice had a gravelly quality, like she’d just smoked sixty cigarettes in quick succession. “I saw you flirting with that guy Jason last night when his girlfriend went home. You practically gave him a lap dance when he ordered that third bottle of Louis XIII!”

  “Whatever, bitch, you do it too!” the other girl replied sleepily, her huge black sunglasses obscuring half of her face. She sat slumped on one of the dining room chairs, wearing jeans so low-cut that they exposed her glaring red thong.

  I searched the group, trying to ascertain which one was the least crazy, and if there was anyone I might actually be able to talk to about what to expect from Spark.

  “Who are you?” asked the skinny blond wit
h the sequined bra strap, who was obviously their leader, as I warily approached.

  “I’m Cassie,” I said, forcing a smile. I felt like the new kid in the lunchroom in junior high.

  “I hope you’re not here to cocktail waitress because there are too many of us as it is,” she said defensively.

  “No . . . I’m a bartender.”

  “Oh!” she said, her tone dramatically brighter. “I’m Elsie.”

  “Nice to meet you,” I said, stepping forward. A split second later Elsie pulled off her worn blue sweatshirt to reveal nothing more than her hot-pink sequined bra. “It’s so fucking hot in here,” she breathed impatiently. “I can’t wear this.”

  Her only other “coverage” besides the outrageous undergarment was a shimmering belly-button ring that glinted in the sunlight.

  A few of the girls laughed. “Elsie, put your clothes back on, one of them groaned.”

  “Fuck you!” She laughed, throwing her sweatshirt at the girls. “I can do whatever I want, and I’m too hot to wear that fucking thing.”

  One by one the girls introduced themselves, but I knew there was no way in hell I’d ever be able to tell them apart. They all looked exactly the same: tall and blond with killer bodies and attractive faces, but they wore too much makeup and were generally overprocessed—as though they’d spent all their hard-earned tips on too much plastic surgery, Garnier hair bleach, and Wet ’n’ Wild makeup. They looked tired and used. Most were wearing tight, cut-off shirts that showed off their chiseled abs and Pam Anderson–size breasts. Their legs seemed to go on forever under their tiny micro-miniskirts, exposing brightly colored tattoos on their ankles and inner thighs. One of the girls, the only brunette among them, had blue streaks woven through her hair and a pink studded nose ring.

  “I hope you didn’t think the meeting was going to start on time,” Elsie said. “Teddy’s always late. He doesn’t give a fuck about wasting our time.”

  “Oh,” I said, as one of the girls pulled a pack of cigarettes from her bag and walked outside.

  “Hey, speaking of Teddy.” Elsie leaned in and dropped her voice to a whisper. “How about Meg’s ass-licking last night?” She threw a glance over her shoulder that suggested Meg was the girl by the door with a cigarette. “Yeah, Meg has a little problem with licking the asses of our asshole bosses. She wasn’t even supposed to come out to work in the Hamptons because she doesn’t sell enough bottles in the city, but she went up to Teddy and got down on her hands and knees right in the middle of the club, in front of all the customers and everything, and licked his butt so he couldn’t say no,” Elsie said as she got down on her hands and knees behind one of the girls to mimic the “butt-licking” and started making wild lapping motions like a dog in heat. The rest of the girls all broke into hysterical laughter.

  I stood there silently, wondering what I’d gotten myself into. These girls made Annie’s risqué banter look tame. Two of the girls started talking about their shift the previous night back in New York.

  “. . . yeah, I did so much blow with those guys at table seven from Croatia, or wherever the fuck they were from, that I thought I was gonna wake up and half my face would be melted off,” one of the girls was reporting to Elsie. “I almost had a fuckin’ heart attack.”

  “You should have done some shots then.” Elsie shrugged.

  “I couldn’t even fucking see straight,” the girl complained. “How was I supposed to get to the bar?”

  “Those guys were drinking Grey Goose. You should’ve fucking taken some. It’s the only way to bring you back down,” Elsie said. “How much did you girls end up making last night, by the way?”

  “We walked with about nine.”

  “Walked” was a term used to convey how much money the cocktail waitresses ended up with after tipping out the bartender and busboy. Bartenders made all of the drinks for the cocktail waitresses and customarily got 10 percent of what the waitresses made in tips; the bus boys got their own 10 percent for bussing tables and bringing ice, glasses, and mixers.

  “Nine hundred dollars?” I asked, dumbfounded.

  “That’s nothing,” Elsie said. “At Jet last summer we were walking with at least twelve every Saturday night.”

  “Jet East?” I asked, proud of myself for having remembered the name of the Southampton hot spot from one of Alexis’s Hamptons tutorials.

  “Yup. Where’d you work last summer?”

  I wasn’t about to tell her that last summer I’d been interning for a senior editor at New York magazine, while living in a dorm and going home to Albany most weekends. “I actually didn’t work out here last summer. I stayed in the city.”

  “Where do you work in the city?” she asked, twirling her fluorescent green gum around her taloned finger.

  “I work at a bar called Finton’s. It’s downtown.”

  “Is it a club?”

  “No. It’s a restaurant and a bar. But it gets pretty crowded.”

  “I’ve never heard of it,” she said, popping her gum back in her truck-driver mouth with a loud smack.

  “Where do you work in the city?” I asked, hoping to shift the limelight away from me, which wasn’t too hard with this group of attention-grabbing girls.

  “Pink Elephant, Bungalow, Crobar, Ruby Falls, Marquee, Duvet, Gypsy Tea . . . wherever Teddy and his crew are. We follow them to the different clubs they open up either in the Hamptons or in the city. Wherever there’s Teddy, there’s a lot of fucking money. I won’t work anywhere unless I’m making a grand a night.”

  I hid my amazement with the most disinterested expression I could muster, but inside I was turning somersaults. I’d thought I was doing well when I made $200 at Finton’s. And now I’d lucked into a gig run by one of the hottest promoters in the area. Just as I was starting to get depressed about wasting a month of my time at a slow downtown bar no one had ever heard of, Annie walked through the door.

  “Hey!” I shouted, jumping up and heading over to the door to give her a big hug. Relief coursed through me just at the sight of her. “How was the Jitney?”

  “Not bad at all,” she enthused, dropping her bags. “They give you coffee, juice, the paper, and snacks!” She looked around. “This place is amazing. It’s like ten times the size of Finton’s!”

  “And this is only half of it, Annie. The VIP room is up those stairs, and then there’s a lot of outdoor seating, and the Club is across the walkway. The dance floor is over there.”

  “Ooo, I can’t wait!” she squealed.

  Teddy arrived at twelve fifty-seven with an army of other promoters all wearing dark sunglasses and diamond stud earrings. Before he convened the meeting, I whispered to Annie, “Wait until you get a chance to talk to these girls. They’re crazy.” I slid my eyes toward the group, which had descended on Teddy like a flock of seagulls on an abandoned sandwich. Elsie had literally jumped on him, wrapping her spindly legs around his midsection.

  “That’s Teddy.” I gestured to Annie.

  “Just as I suspected.” She grinned. “Hot as hell. I’ve found my first summer conquest.”

  “Hey, everyone,” Teddy began after Jake appeared on the periphery of the group. “As you can see there are a lot of you here. On any given night we’re only going to be able to use six bartenders—maybe seven on holiday weekends or if it gets really slammed—and eight cocktail waitresses. Tonight and tomorrow you’ll all get to work, because we’re setting up extra bars outside on the patio and service bars throughout the club for the cocktail waitresses. This weekend only, you’ll all get a chance, and we’ll decide who we want to keep and who we don’t. If you’re picked, you should consider yourself extremely lucky to have a job here. This place is going to be sick.”

  A wave of anxiety washed over me. I hadn’t even entertained the thought that this was an audition and not a done deal.

  “I want to introduce you to Shalina,” Teddy continued. “She’s a consultant here and in charge of PR.”

  I was debating whether it w
ould be appropriate to ask exactly why a bar needed a consultant, when an attractive brunette in her early thirties, with a slim body strategically peppered with silicone and collagen, appeared at Teddy’s side.

  “Hello, everyone,” she addressed the group in a clipped British accent. “Welcome. We all want to make a lot of money this summer, and by following a few simple rules, this can all go smoothly.” She spoke rapidly, glancing down from time to time at the list attached to a clipboard in front of her. “First, there will be no smoking by employees on the premises. There will be no use of profanity. There will be no drinking by the employees. Even if a customer should offer to buy you a drink, I expect you to turn them down politely. You will all be handling a lot of money and holding on to clients’ credit cards. And it’s unacceptable to manage such things while intoxicated. Also, if I see any of you eating behind the bar, you will be immediately dismissed. Obviously, there will be no drug use by employees, and if I hear that anything of that nature is going on, you’ll be fired on the spot. Make sure you don’t drink the bottled water, the tap is perfectly fine for you people. And don’t even think about drinking the Red Bull. We switch from restaurant to nightclub promptly at ten-thirty. Bartenders and cocktail waitresses need to get here at exactly nine-thirty. Do we understand each other?”

  We all nodded dumbly. I thought of Laurel and wondered if it was an unwritten rule that all women in charge of managing a bar or restaurant had to behave like drill sergeants. Then I immediately chastised myself for falling into the trap of thinking all women in positions of power were bitches.

  “Additionally,” Shalina went on, “we want to let you know that we’ll have spotters here every night.”

  “What’s a spotter?” I asked Annie.

  Elsie, who had dug a nail file out of her ragged Dior bag and was busy shaping her clawlike nails into perfect ovals, answered me. “Basically a guy who comes up to the bar and acts like a customer, but really he’s a fucking asshole who’s making sure you’re ringing in all your drinks and not stealing money. Usually you can see them a mile away—they stand at the bar by themselves nursing one drink the whole fucking night.”