The Perfect Manhattan

by Leanne Shear

  “Sorry, ladies,” Annie interjected, sidling up beside me and blocking my path. “But today’s our day off. If you really want a martini, you can make it yourself. It’s not that difficult, really. Didn’t they teach you to make the perfect cocktail in charm school?”

  The girls erupted into insincere laughter. “Oh, isn’t she adorable? What’s your name again?” Abigail asked.

  “Annie,” Annie said with an equally insincere smile, taking a step closer toward them. I put a restraining hand on her forearm, praying she wasn’t about to punch one of the Pearls Girls in her Rembrandt-white teeth.

  “Hey, guys.” James’s voice cut through the overwrought air from the kitchen doorway like a shotgun blast. All of our puffed-out peacock feathers slowly settled back into place and the cat fight was averted, at least temporarily. With his slightly rumpled Polo shirt and tousled hair, he looked like he’d just woken up. I felt a happy rush of relief and anticipation—not only did he look as adorable as ever, but I couldn’t wait until the moment the Pearls Girls realized that there was something going on between us. If I was good enough to be James’s paramour, then I was good enough for them.

  “James!” Rosalind trilled, mincing over to him and presenting her cheek, which he dutifully kissed. Buffy, Abigail, and Charlotte flocked behind her. He kissed them all on their cheeks and then made his way toward me and Annie.

  “Hey, Annie,” he said, also kissing her on the cheek. Then he finally turned to me. “What’s up, Cass?” he said, planting a generic kiss on my cheek and then brushing past me and shouting to Tom at the grill, “There better be food left. I’m starving!”

  I stared at James’s back in disbelief as he walked over to where Tom was manning the grill. He’d barely even looked at me. Only that morning we had been kissing on the beach wrapped up in each other’s arms. But now I felt like we were strangers. What had happened? Had he heard my exchange with the Pearls Girls? I looked at Annie, speechless. She gave me a sympathetic look and shrugged her shoulders.

  “James, did you get a chance to talk to Elisabeth last night?” I heard Rosalind ask him excitedly as she followed him over to the grill.

  “Yeah, I hung out with her for a while,” James said. “It was so good to catch up. I haven’t seen her since Marbella last summer. She told me her dad’s finally closing on that Aspen house for her.”

  “I know! Isn’t it exciting? It’s literally down the road from my family’s house. This winter’s going to be the best one yet!”

  Marbella? Aspen? James and Rosalind were casually mentioning places I’d read about in People magazine as the most exclusive celebrity retreats as though they were the Red Roof Inn in Albany. I stood around awkwardly, feeling stupid. I certainly had nothing to add to their conversation. How did I ever think I’d be able to ever fit into his world?

  Suddenly Charlotte put down her wineglass. “Oh my goodness, what time is it?” she asked, alarmed.

  Rosalind consulted the platinum Cartier watch that hung delicately on her slender wrist. “Oh my gosh!” she cried. “It’s almost five-thirty. If we don’t leave now, we’ll miss the Luxury Liner and be stuck taking the Jitney or the train!”

  Without another word, they all sprang into action, gathering their belongings, which were neatly piled on lounge chairs beside the pool. In a shahtoosh-filled flash of air-kisses and Chanel quilted bags, they were headed for the door. As I watched them leave, I overheard Rosalind say to Abigail, “I don’t understand why they invited those bartender girls in the first place. . . .”

  Annie, who thankfully hadn’t been privy to Rosalind’s final dig, rolled her eyes, laughing incredulously. “Are you fucking kidding me? What the hell is the Luxury Liner?”

  I breathed a sigh of relief. I didn’t care how Rosalind and her friends had departed, just so long as they were gone.

  “Hey, girls,” Tom called. “There’s lobster left over if you want some.”

  “Come on,” Annie whispered. She grabbed my hand and marched me determinedly toward the grill, where Glen was drinking a Stella, and Tom and James were seated at the table, busily cracking open lobster tails and dipping them in drawn butter.

  To my surprise, James pulled me into his lap. “Here,” he said, lifting up a forkful of fluffy lobster meat. “Have some of mine.” I took a dainty bite. He leaned in and gave me a buttery kiss—on the lips this time. “I’m so glad you came.”

  “Me too.” I smiled back weakly. It felt so good to be snuggled in his lap here in this lushly landscaped yard, being hand-fed lobster as the sun sank lower in the sky. Still, I couldn’t shake the awkwardness of the rest of the afternoon and his obvious coldness toward me in front of the Pearls Girls. Was it my imagination, or had he warmed up to me the second they’d disappeared? As I accepted another bite from James’s fork, the sumptuous flavor of the rich delicacy mingled with the bitter taste in my mouth.

  Seven

  ____________

  SUGAR DADDY

  “Nice tan,” Billy said as I pranced behind the bar.

  “Thanks.” It was another slow Wednesday night at Finton’s, and I was already counting down the hours (thirty-six to be exact) until I left for the Hamptons.

  “Did you make good money this weekend?”

  “Yeah, I made great money. Everyone out there runs six-hundred-dollar bar tabs on their black AmExes and tip like two hundred percent,” I crowed. Now that I’d finally figured out the significance of the black AmEx, I was eager to drop the term casually in conversation. The night before Alexis and I had been lounging on our couch in the living room, sharing a red chenille blanket, watching Cocktail, and I’d seized the opportunity to conduct a little research.

  “Lex, I know the difference between the green American Express card and the gold and platinum ones, but what about black? Everyone in the Hamptons has one.”

  “Well, a black AmEx is the highest one, and the hardest to get,” she explained, taking a dainty scoop of Ben & Jerry’s Phish Food directly from the pint. “It’s called the Centurion. You have to be invited to get one—you can’t apply or anything. And there’s some ridiculous yearly minimum, like you have to charge at least $250,000 a year on the card. But you get all kinds of benefits, like this amazing concierge service that can get you into any restaurant in the world at a moment’s notice. At least that’s what my dad told me. Basically, almost anyone can have a gold card or even a platinum one, but you have to be really rich to have a black one.”

  “Wow,” I said, marveling as Brian Flanagan and Doug Coughlin executed flawless bottle-tossing choreography to “The Hippy Hippy Shake.” “Martin Pritchard has one. And James has one too.”

  “He does? What does his father do?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “You mean you never asked?”

  “No. It never came up.”

  “Well, aren’t you dying to know?” she asked incredulously.

  “Why? So I can tell him that my dad’s a fireman who moonlights as a plumber, and I grew up ‘summering’ at the town pool? He probably comes from serious old money, and I’m not even new money—I’m no money.”

  “Don’t even worry about that, Cass. He obviously likes you. And if that’s what matters to him, then you don’t want him anyway. Besides, it’s going to come out sooner or later.” Her eyes returned to the movie.

  Now, as I stood behind the bar at Finton’s, I tried to stop obsessing over the striking gap between our social backgrounds. “So, did you do anything besides work all weekend?” Billy asked as he grabbed the bottle of well gin and poured it into a metal shaker along with some pineapple juice, grenadine, and bitters to make that night’s $5 special: the sugar daddy martini.

  “Yeah, Annie and I went to the beach, and we met these guys at work, and they invited us to their barbeque at this unbelievable house right on the water. It was really fun.”

  “Yeah, it’s a great time out there, but I think I finally just got too old for it. It gets really tiring going back and forth and
working all those late nights. By the end of the summer, you’ll know what I mean.”

  The door chimed to punctuate our conversation, and when I looked up, I thought I must be hallucinating. James was strolling toward me. “I didn’t expect to see you until Friday,” I said, beaming.

  “Yeah, well, they let me leave the office for a dinner break, and I heard the bartender here was pretty cute, so I thought I’d stop by.” He pulled me in for a kiss.

  Brimming with elation, I propped myself on my elbows and leaned in so I was as close to him as I could get with a three-foot-thick piece of wood in between us. Nothing was sexier than James in a suit—he looked so powerful and in charge. “Can I get you a drink?”

  “I’ll just have an Amstel.”

  “You got it,” I said, grabbing his beer and flipping off the cap with a sassy flair. I handed him a menu.

  “And I’ll have the burger, medium, with cheddar, please,” he said after glancing through it quickly.

  “Coming right up,” I said, punching the order in on the computer. “So how was your day?”

  “Not that exciting,” he said, taking a sip of beer. “I’m working on this merger . . .”

  “Hi, Cassie,” Dan interrupted. I hadn’t even noticed him come up to the bar.

  “Hey, Dan. James, this is Dan Finton, the owner of Finton’s. Dan, this is James Edmonton.”

  “Hi,” Dan said coolly, extending his hand officially, like a politician.

  “Nice to meet you,” James said. “I think you know a good friend of my father’s, Martin Pritchard. This is his favorite place. He talks about it all the time.”

  “Yes, I’ve known Martin for years,” Dan said. Then he turned and vanished back down the stairs.

  I spread out a white napkin on the bar in front of James as a place mat, and placed a folded napkin and silverware neatly on top of it.

  “So have you been getting any work done on your screenplay?” he asked.

  “As a matter of fact, I worked on it all afternoon,” I said proudly. That morning, for the first time since graduation, I’d woken up before ten o’clock and, after hitting the gym for a spin class, opened my computer. I sat typing for hours, buzzing with energy from the weekend, and trying not to check my cell phone every ten or fifteen minutes to see if James had called.

  “See, what did I tell you? Starting is always the hardest part,” he said.

  José delivered James’s burger, and I grabbed a handful of his fries, perched on the metal cooler, and started munching as he dug in.

  “So, any new developments with your production company?” I asked. But Dan’s voice crackled over the intercom before he could answer.

  “Cassie, I need you downstairs,” he said brusquely.

  “I’ll be right back,” I promised James, hopping off the cooler and descending the stairs two at a time until I arrived at the office. Laurel didn’t look up from her paperwork. Dan stood in the doorway.

  “Follow me,” he said. His terse tone startled me. My stomach tightened as I followed him past the tunnel where we stored the wine and through a storage closet to a door I’d never noticed before. He punched a combination into a keypad and opened the door. I stepped inside and almost fainted at the sight of what seemed like twenty monitors mounted on the wall, showing every single angle of the bar. On one camera I saw an extreme closeup of the small mole on Billy’s cheek as he blew his nose in a bev nap. On another screen I saw José polishing silverware, and another showed the guys in the kitchen washing vegetables. Other screens showed images of customers eating in the dining room and drinking in the lounge. There was even some footage of the streets outside of Finton’s.

  “This is the surveillance room,” Dan said evenly. “I’ve been watching you at the bar, and I must say your behavior so far tonight has been totally unacceptable.”

  For a moment, I was speechless. I’d gotten used to the idea of cameras at Spark, but I’d never dreamed there were cameras at Finton’s. And yet there I was in an elaborate observation chamber where my every move was being examined. “What are you talking about?”

  “I don’t mind if you have friends come into the bar, and in fact, I encourage that. It promotes business.”

  “Okay,” I said, unsure of where he was going.

  “What I don’t like is when you throw yourself at your boyfriend and flirt with him all night when there are other customers at the bar. That’s highly unprofessional, and I expected more from you.”

  Again, I was too stunned to react immediately. “Dan, I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I finally said. I could feel my face getting red and my sweat glands kicking into overdrive. “First of all, there were no other customers at my side of the bar, and second of all, I didn’t throw myself at him, and . . .”

  “Cassie. I saw it right here on this screen,” he said, indicating the central monitor, which was larger than all the other screens. “I can play it back for you if you’d like.”

  “That won’t be necessary,” I said, suddenly feeling very violated—the same creepy feeling I had when I learned that there were cameras in the dressing rooms at Bloomingdale’s.

  “I don’t like my employees dating the customers,” he said plainly. “Because then if things don’t work out, the customer will never come back.”

  “But that doesn’t make any sense,” I protested, trying not to lose my cool. “If it wasn’t for me, he wouldn’t even be a customer.”

  “You’re missing the point. As a bartender in my bar, it’s your job to entertain the customers and make sure everyone is having a good time. You can’t do that if all of your attention is being monopolized by your boyfriend.”

  “He’s not even my boyfriend yet,” I countered lamely.

  “Well, he’s certainly been monopolizing your time all night.”

  “He’s only been here for fifteen minutes!” I cried, exasperated. “And there’s no one else at the bar!”

  “Cassie, I don’t want to argue with you. You work in my bar, and you have to respect my rules.”

  I took a deep breath, held back tears, and forced myself to remember that my job was on the line. “Fine,” I said. “It won’t happen again.” I walked out, mustering every ounce of self-control to keep from slamming the surveillance door behind me.

  By the time I arrived back upstairs, James was almost done with his burger. “Is everything okay?” he asked, offering me a French fry.

  “It’s fine.” I sighed. “I just sometimes don’t think I have the stomach to work in this business.”

  “You’ll be okay,” he said, reaching over the bar and taking my hand. I quickly looked around to make sure Dan, who’d followed me upstairs and taken a seat in the dining room, hadn’t witnessed the affectionate gesture. “Just remember, you’re not doing this forever, just until you get your screenplay out the door.”

  I looked into his sympathetic eyes and tried to smile. His confidence in me threatened to spark the tears I’d been successfully holding back.

  “So, what time do you think you’ll get off tonight?” James asked as I cleared away his plate and put it in the bus pan we kept under the bar.

  “Not until at least two,” I said.

  “I’ll probably get out of the office around one. Maybe I can come back for a nightcap and keep you company.”

  “That’s okay, you should probably just go home. I don’t want to make you sit here. Besides,” I added, busying myself washing dishes, “Dan’s been a little grumpy about us entertaining personal friends.”

  “Okay,” he said. “That’s probably better anyway. I have an early meeting tomorrow about the Kmart/Sears merger. But how about dinner tomorrow night?”

  “I can’t, I have to work,” I said.

  “Well, what about Friday?” he persisted. “We can do JLX in Sag Harbor. It’s Jean-Luc’s other restaurant.”

  “I have to work then too,” I said, disappointed.

  “Okay, well, don’t worry. We’ll figure something out. I guess
I should get back to the office.” He leaned over the bar and kissed me on the cheek. Paranoid, I looked around to make sure Dan hadn’t been watching. “I’ll call you,” he said, and headed for the door.

  Around ten o’clock, my cell phone rang. I knew better than to answer it, since talking on cell phones behind the bar was strictly forbidden and I now knew that my behavior was being closely monitored. But I couldn’t resist checking the caller ID, hoping that it was James. Instead, it was a 917 number that I didn’t recognize. When my phone beeped to signal that I had a new message, I called my voice mail from the landline at Finton’s.

  “Hey, Cassie, it’s Teddy, give me a ring: 917-555-4342.”

  The bar was entirely empty except for Maya, the new girl Billy was seeing, who’d arrived a few minutes before and was now leaning over the bar playing with Billy’s hair. I noted that Billy wasn’t getting called out by Dan on his demonstrative behavior.

  “Billy, I’m going outside for a second to make a phone call,” I said, clandestinely slipping my cell into the back pocket of my pants and making my way to the door.

  “Hurry back, it’s swamped in here,” he joked.

  I walked outside and turned left onto Grand Street, walking a few blocks until I was sure I was out of the cameras’ reach. Then I dialed Teddy’s number.

  “Hello?” he answered on the first ring.

  “Hey, Teddy, it’s Cassie.”

  “Cassie, hey. I need to go over a couple of things with you,” he said, quick and businesslike. “First, I need you to come to work a little early on Friday, because there’s a private party for Jessica Simpson’s makeup line and we need to have everyone in by eight-thirty to set up.”

  “Okay,” I said.

  “And another thing,” he continued, “We’re switching things around a little this weekend. I’m moving you to the back bar and trying a new girl out in the front.”

  I felt like the wind had been knocked right out of me. “A new girl?” I asked. “Why?”

  “Well, to be honest, Cassie, your rings just weren’t that high this weekend, and we know we can be making more money up there. We just finished going over all the reports for both Friday and Saturday, and Jake more than doubled your sales.”