by Leanne Shear
He chuckled. “Well, everyone that’s come in tonight’s asked for you. You should run for mayor of this town.”
Eleven
____________
THUG PASSION
My swollen bladder straining against my abdominal wall, I barrelled through the hordes of oblivious dancing bodies in VIP to reach the employee bathroom. Cursing myself for drinking a hundred ounces of water on such a busy night, I pushed the unlocked bathroom door open without knocking. Teddy was inside standing with his back facing the toilet and his pants down. A slender bleached blond, wearing a skintight white Moschino crop top and low-cut Chloe jeans, was on her knees before him.
“Oh my God, I-I’m so sorry,” I stuttered, backing out of the tiny bathroom.
“That’s okay,” the girl answered, wiping her mouth with the back of her hand. “We’re finished.” She rose to her feet as a flushed Teddy pulled up his pants. On her tiptoes she planted a brusque kiss on his lips. “After this little favor, I don’t think I should have to wait on line to get into the club anymore,” she said with a sexy laugh before brushing past me to join her cluster of dancing friends in VIP.
“Teddy, I’m really sorry. I should’ve knocked,” I said, flustered. The air in the bathroom was thick with marijuana smoke, and Teddy slugged the rest of an Amstel Light before straightening his metallic-green tie and squeezing by me. Still overwhelmed by embarrassment, I closed the door and made sure to lock it.
As I made my way back through VIP, I promised myself I would never again barge through a closed door at Spark—you just never knew what lurked behind. I thought of Annie and wondered just how many women Teddy managed to score on any given night. Annie seemed to have tired of him (and Tom, too, come to think of it)—lately she only mentioned the wealthy Mr. Big types who seemed to populate VIP and were always responsive to her charms—but I wondered if she knew what he was up to all the same. Then again, knowing Annie, she probably wouldn’t care. I had a hard time just keeping track of her suitors.
Earlier that night, when Annie and I had arrived for work, a burly bouncer had blocked our entrance. “Sorry, girls, the back of the line is that way,” he’d barked.
“We work here,” I’d said, mildly proud that I wielded a little velvet-rope power, a true mark of distinction in the Hamptons.
I’d noticed that two separate lines had formed in front of the door, and I remembered Teddy mentioning he was bringing in a different promoter to host a Latin night on Fridays. The line on the right side consisted mostly of people of Hispanic origin who were being shepherded through a metal detector administered by unfamiliar security guards and getting frisked before being admitted. The other line looked like the typical Spark clientele: girls in Jimmy Choo stilettos, short Chip and Pepper skirts, and brightly colored Dior tanks; guys in the standard male uniform of Hickey Freeman or Ascot Chang button-downs rolled “casually” to the sleeves, and Cole Haan or Gucci loafers. While one line ended in a cursory guest list check, the other ended in a full body search.
Cassie! Can I get two Ketel cranberries?” Elsie asked. “I would’ve gotten them from the back bar, but they hired some idiot girl when they fired Kyle and she can’t bartend for shit.”
“They fired Kyle?” I asked, dressing her cocktails with limes.
“Yeah. He came in tonight all the way from Hampton Bays and when he got here they told him to go home. Teddy’s fucking some chick and he hired her friend back there. She’s a total bitch.” She put the drinks on a tray and teetered back into the crowd.
Whenever a bartender or waitress was fired, an epidemic of fear infected all Spark employees. Those of us who remained tried to determine the exact reason the employee had been dismissed, in order to avoid getting sacked ourselves. I imagined that the portentous owners had witnessed Kyle blowing lines behind the bar from their cameras at home. Still, with new faces appearing right and left, it was getting so I actually felt comforted when I saw Elsie and the girls—at least they were familiar.
I buckled down and got back to work, my arms and mind moving as fast as they could. I started making watermelon martinis for two “Lawn Guyland” girls—with thick local accents, long pink fingernails, and teased hair. Before I’d even had a chance to get the Pucker Watermelon Liqueur, I looked up to see James and Tom standing right in front of me.
“Hey, guys!” I said, lighting up and abandoning drink-making for a second while I leaned over the bar to kiss James hello. “I didn’t know you were coming!”
“We decided to stop by for a quick drink,” he said. “I don’t think we’re going to stay long. I have to wake up early tomorrow to go golfing with some guys from work.”
I shot him an exaggerated pout as I added vodka to the watermelon mix, and he laughed. “You want a Jack and Coke?” I asked, smiling.
“Sure, thanks. How’s your night going?” he asked.
“Good. It’s busy,” I said, looking around at the masses.
“Yeah, it’s crazy in here tonight,” Tom agreed.
“How was dinner?” I asked, shoveling ice into the watermelon concoction and shaking energetically.
“Good,” James said.
“Where’d you go?” I asked, handing the girls their martinis and accepting their cash.
“Nick and Toni’s,” Tom said. “It was delicious.”
“So . . .” James said, leaning in over the bar.
“Yeah . . .” I said, leaning in even closer so our noses were almost touching.
“I know you’re really busy, but I just wanted to tell you I finished reading your screenplay this afternoon, and I loved it. It was brilliant.”
“Really?” I asked. Time seemed to stop, and for a moment I was utterly unaware of the fact that I was behind a bar in front of hundreds of impatient customers. Ever since I’d given him a copy of my screenplay at Finton’s this past Wednesday, I’d been waiting with bated breath for his reaction.
“Really. I loved it.”
“Really?” I asked again, feeling the blood rush to my cheeks.
“Yes. It was amazing. I’ll talk to you more about it later, but I’m going to make some calls and see what we can do to shop it around.”
“What do you mean?” I asked. I got chills thinking about the possibilities. I wondered how far his connections actually extended in the film world, since in all of our conversations we’d never really talked about specifics. I wondered excitedly if he could actually get my screenplay produced.
“Can I get a drink over here?” a man called from a few feet away.
“Go back to work. We can talk about it later. I just wanted to let you know I loved it.” James turned and disappeared into the crowd with Tom.
I faced the angry rabble with a proud smile. In a matter of weeks I probably wouldn’t even need to bartend anymore.
“Three Ketels and sodas, two Jack and Cokes, a sour apple martini, a glass of champagne, four Amstel Lights . . .” Customers were barking, but all I could hear was “and the Academy Award for best screenplay goes to . . . Cassie Ellis.”
“Excuse me,” a man’s voice beseeched, forcing me back down to earth.
“Hi! How are you?” I asked, turning and smiling brightly at the man, still intoxicated by James’s praise.
“I’m good, thanks. How are you?” He was a grizzly-looking guy, and his red and white checkered button-down shirt was wrinkled and sloppily tucked into furrowed khakis. Not exactly the typical polished Spark fare.
“Great!”
“Can I buy a bottle at the bar?” he asked.
“You sure can,” I said. “What can I get for you?”
“Do you have Ketel One?”
“We sure do!” I bent down to the shelves stacked with vodka reserves and grabbed a bottle of Ketel, all the while dancing along to Donna Summer’s “She Works Hard for Her Money.” Spark constantly rotated in new DJs, and this one was spinning lots of my favorite 1970s and ’80s classics. “Here you go,” I said. “That’ll be two hundred fifty dollars.”
>
“And a Bud for me.”
“Two-sixty.”
“Ten dollars for a Bud?” he asked.
“I know. It’s crazy,” I sympathized. “But it’s the Hamptons.”
The man pulled a slapdash wad of bills out of his pocket and counted out $260 and handed it to me. Then he grabbed my hand and slipped me a hundred-dollar bill. “That’s for you,” he said. “You’re the first person I’ve ever met at these clubs who was nice to me before I dropped five Gs.”
“Thanks,” I said.
“Let me tell you something. I was at Jet East last weekend, and they wouldn’t let me in to the club until I told the doorman I was willing to buy some bottles. He finally sat me at a table, and the cocktail waitress was such a bitch until I ordered three bottles of Cristal and four bottles of Ketel. Then all of a sudden I’m the most popular guy in the club. The waitresses were all over me.”
“Money talks,” I said, tossing the hundred into the tip jar.
“You got that right,” he concurred.
I watched as he walked away, wondering why so few people in the business had learned what seemed to me an obvious secret: that one smile and a little conversation could get you an enormous tip.
James walked back toward the bar and set his empty Jack and Coke cup down. “I’m heading out, Cass. Do you want me to come back later and pick you up?”
“Oh, no, don’t worry about it. Get some sleep. I’m sure Jake’ll drive me home,” I said, suppressing a little bit of surprise and annoyance. True, he’d said he wasn’t staying long, but I didn’t realize that he’d be leaving quite so soon. I attributed my feelings to PMS and put a big smile on my face, playing the role of the ultra-cool girlfriend. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”
“Definitely. I’ll give you a call in the morning,” he said. And with another quick kiss, he was gone.
“Jake! Shots!” I called.
“You got it, babe.” And without missing a beat, Jake pulled the Patrón off the shelf, filled two shot glasses, and we knocked them back in a matter of seconds.
The rest of the night passed by quickly. At around a quarter to four, right before we were about to close, a woman struggling to walk in her six-inch heels hobbled over to the bar requesting seven shots of Jägermeister.
“That’ll be eighty-four dollars,” I stated wearily.
She tossed five twenties in my direction, slurring “Keep it.”
I picked up the money and was on my way to the register when Jake muttered under his breath, “Just throw it in the tip jar.”
“What?” I asked, confused.
“Just throw it in the tip jar,” Jake said, already starting the nightly ritual of gathering the bar mats, and clearing the bar of the cups, bottles, glasses, straws, and napkins.
Never questioning Jake’s authority, I flung the money in the tip jar. A bout of severe paranoia followed. I assiduously avoided looking at the ominous, omnipresent cameras, fearing they had recorded my theft and were at that very moment transmitting my crime to the owners. I wanted to dig $84 out of the tip jar and ring it into the register, but thought it might look even more suspicious if the cameras captured me rooting through the tips and then putting money in the drawer. But then I started rationalizing. Shalina, Teddy, and, by extension, the owners didn’t bother in the least to take care of their employees, firing and demoting us at will. I thought of the $50 shift pay I had gotten at the Fourth of July party, and that put the nail in the coffin of my guilt.
I grabbed the tip jar righteously and sequestered myself, along with James’s hooded Yale sweatshirt and a Bud Light, in the dining room to start counting.
“Your boyfriend left early tonight,” Jake commented as we sat waiting for the waitresses to tip us out.
“Yeah, he has to wake up really early tomorrow to go golf with some guys from his work,” I said, finishing my beer with a gulp.
“What a yuppie.”
I ignored his comment. “Can you drive me and Annie home?”
“Sure,” he said. “I might swing by the Talkhouse anyway.”
After the waitresses finished closing out, Annie and I bundled up our things, grabbed two more Bud Lights, and followed Jake out to the car.
“I think this is the earliest we ever got out.” Annie yawned. “I’m actually going to get a good night’s sleep.” Jake grunted his assent.
“I know, I can’t believe it’s only six,” I agreed, realizing how absurd it was that a good night’s sleep for us meant we’d gotten out of work before 7:00 A.M.
On the way home, I was tempted to ask Jake how often he took money from customers and bypassed the register in favor of the tip jar. But I fought the urge, deciding it had to be something that bartenders never spoke of out loud. See no evil. Hear no evil. Speak no evil.
The sun was rising as we drove down Main Street in East Hampton, and people were already out and about walking their dogs and getting coffee at the Golden Pear. “I can’t believe these people are already starting their days, and we haven’t even gone to sleep yet,” Annie marveled. I looked down at the beer I was holding and felt sick. What was I doing drinking at six in the morning?
We pulled into the Animal House driveway, and Annie and I jumped out. “Crazy night, huh?” I commented to her as we walked across the dewy lawn to the porch arm in arm.
“As usual,” she sighed.
“Oh my God! I forgot to tell you about Teddy!”
“What about him?” she asked, her eyes widening.
“I walked in on some girl giving him a blow job in the employee bathroom,” I said evenly, looking to see her reaction.
She laughed. “Someone’s stealing my bag of tricks!”
“So you’re not upset?” I asked.
“Please, Cassie. He’s like the biggest loser on earth. We were just having fun.”
We approached the porch and stumbled on Travis, who was reclined in a lawn chair, making out passionately with a teeny blond wearing a pink and blue Lily Pulitzer dress that was inched up to the tops of her thighs. Her shoes, bag, and cardigan were strewn on the porch beside the chair, and the first few buttons on Travis’s shirt were undone.
“Good morning!” Annie sang out, chuckling.
“Oh . . . hey.” Travis sat up and shifted around uncomfortably.
“Don’t mind us,” I said, opening the screen door and stepping into the house. Annie and I erupted into giggles once we were inside.
“Did you see his face? He was so embarrassed!” she squealed. “Who was that girl?”
“I don’t know. I don’t think I know her. I couldn’t get a good look at her face.”
Inside, couples were strewn all over the living room floor, most of them curled up, disheveled and passed out.
“What did they have some kind of orgy in here while we were gone?” Annie wondered, noting a condom wrapper on the floor.
From where we were standing, we could hear the unmistakable sounds of a couple in the throes of sexual dealings coming from the direction of the stairs.
“Excuse me,” Annie said, stepping over the tawny-haired meathead and the girl with him. I took a deep breath and followed suit. The couple never stopped gyrating and acted as if we didn’t exist. Armed with her usual kitchen utensil, Annie jimmied the lock open.
“We’re living in a brothel,” I announced, once we were safely inside and turning down our beds.
Annie giggled through a gaping yawn.
“Next summer, when I’m an Academy Award–winning screenwriter, I’m gonna buy us a ten-bedroom house right on the ocean just like James’s,” I said, pulling the covers over my head. “And we’ll laugh about the times we lived at Animal House and had to crawl over couples having sex on the stairs.”
It seemed like the cycle of going to sleep when the sun came up, getting up midday, going to the beach, going for a few preshift cocktails, and then coming to work would never end. Before I knew it, Annie and I were back at Spark, ready for Saturday night’s mayhem. “Hey,” I said, wa
ving at one of the doormen as I walked through the entrance.
“Hey, how are you?” he said, dragging the plush red velvet rope to its rightful position and foiling any fool’s plans for easy entry.
“I’m good. I was wondering if you could do me a favor,” I said, producing a piece of paper from my backpack. Travis and our other housemates had been trying to get into Spark all summer, but were having trouble getting past the ropes. Earlier that morning Travis had told us he needed to get in to impress the new girl he was dating, and Annie and I had promised we’d pull some strings and get him and the rest of the guys on the guest list. “Do not all come together,” I’d warned. “Come two guys at a time—max. And try to bring as many hot girls with you as you can. If you all show up as a big group of guys like you do at the Talkhouse, you’ll never get in.”
“This is a list of some of my friends,” I said, handing over a piece of loose-leaf to the doorman. “Can you make sure they get in?”
He glanced down at the list. “Travis, Brian, Scott, Mike . . . these are all guys’ names. You’re killin’ me.”
“No, there’s a girl on the list.”
He shugged. “You know how it is,” he said, handing it back. “We can’t let a group of all guys in unless they’re gonna get a table and spend a lot of money.”
“I know, but these are my roommates, and they’ve never been here before. Just put them on the list. Just once, pleeease?”
“I’ll do my best,” he said, reluctantly accepting the sheet of paper once more. “But no promises.”
“Thanks.”
I set up the front bar in record time. The doors opened at ten, and Jake hadn’t even arrived yet. Just as I was doing a final beer check, I couldn’t have been more shocked to see Martin Pritchard and Lily promenade into the bar. With the exception of Martin’s rare summer cameos at Finton’s, I hadn’t spent time with either of them since that first weekend in the Hamptons, ages ago.
“Hi, guys,” I said, knowing all too well how they’d gotten in. Lily was definitely attractive, in a conservative Pearls Girls sort of way, and while Martin was old and crusty, I was sure he’d liberally greased the doorman’s palm.