by Leanne Shear
“Tasteless,” Martin sneered.
And yet, here were these two men who, combined, were presumably guilty of adultery, sexual harassment, elitism, and other deviant behavior. Both of their lives were all about self-affirmation and self-aggrandizement. As far as I could see, they were prey to the same (if not worse) pretenses as the members of National.
“Do you like the wine, Cassie?” Dan asked.
“Yeah, it’s great.” He poured me another glass.
“When Lily and I were in for dinner the other night, she had a glass of red and she loved it,” Martin said thoughtfully. “What are you pouring?”
“It must have been the El Coto Rioja that Cassie liked when I had the employees do a tasting a couple of weeks ago. It’s our new wine by the glass,” Dan said, smiling over at me and putting his hand over mine just a touch too long. “What can I say? She has exquisite taste.”
I smiled back, pulling my hand out from under his. I had to admit, inappropriate touching aside, that I liked the fact that he saw me as something more than a bartender, as someone with tastes and opinions to be respected. At Spark I was a commodity, a bartending machine, handpicked strictly for my ability to turn out drinks as fast as possible. If I did have a moment to mention to a customer that I’d gone to an Ivy League school and was an aspiring writer, they didn’t really seem to care. The allure of intelligence just didn’t register on their radar screen the way the possibility of a fuck or even the promise of a drink did. But in the city, in my little Finton’s microcosm, it was different. Dan genuinely valued my knack for intelligent conversation, for astutely managing his customers, and for giving suggestions that enhanced the bar’s appeal.
“Don’t you think you ought to get behind the bar, Cassie?” Laurel had appeared over my shoulder wearing a tight, fake little grimace that I guessed she was trying to pass off as a smile.
“Laurel, the bar’s dead. She can sit for a few more minutes if she wants,” Dan replied.
“That’s okay, I’m going right now,” I said.
“And I posted next week’s schedule in the kitchen,” Laurel snapped as I followed her back to the bar. “You’re on Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, and Saturday.”
Suddenly my dilemma had snowballed. I cursed myself for not being more disciplined over the summer and paying off my debts like I should have. I weighed my options and decided to try a different tack, figuring compromise was always the best way to go.
“Laurel?” I asked timidly on my way toward the bar.
“What?” she spat.
“Um, the promoters at Spark actually asked me to pick up a couple of shifts at a new place they’re opening this fall. I didn’t tell them yes, because I obviously wanted to talk to you first,” I lied. “We could figure out how I could do both. I could do a couple of shifts there that wouldn’t interfere with my schedule here . . .”
“Absolutely not.” Her voice lashed like a whip. “It’s a strict Finton’s policy that no bartender here work anywhere else in the city.”
“But a lot of bartenders work at different—”
“That’s the policy, Cassie.”
I didn’t remember reading that in the Finton’s manual. I settled back behind the bar, sullenly wondering what to do next. I kept forgetting that being honest in the bar world got you nowhere and, in fact, telling the truth usually involved serious repercussions.
“Cass,” Billy called, “a friend of yours is here.”
I looked up and saw Jake studying a menu, sitting on the bar stool directly underneath the television. He was dressed in an oversized hooded FUBU sweatshirt over a T-shirt that read MEN ARE FROM MARS, WOMEN SUCK PENIS. His sleeves were rolled up, revealing thick Pony sweatbands on his wrists. A matching mustard yellow Von Dutch trucker hat was tilted sideways over his disheveled hair à la Ashton Kutcher 2002 (when young Ashton convinced the white male population that a slight tilt of the hat could make even the richest suburbanite look tough).
“What up, Momma?” he called.
“Hey! You’re about the last person I ever expected to see here.”
“Well, I was in the neighborhood.”
“You want a drink?”
“Yeah, what do you have on tap?”
“Guinness, Bass, Harp, Stella, Yuengling, Carlsberg, Sierra Nevada, Newcastle . . .”
“I’ll have a Bass,” he said. I grabbed a pint glass and started filling it, amazed that Jake was being so tame and only ordering a beer.
“Here you go,” I said, placing the beer on a crisp bev nap.
“And a Patrón neat.”
Knowing that Jake would obviously want a double, I grabbed a highball glass and the squat bottle of tequila. I put both his drinks on my comp check (another “pro” on the Finton’s list—I could always buy drinks for my friends as long as I accounted for them on a separate check).
“Do you wanna order food?” I asked him.
“Yeah, I’m starving. I haven’t eaten since yesterday, and I haven’t slept in like three fuckin’ days either.” Typical Jake, I thought, wearing his wanton disregard for sobriety like the Red Badge of Courage. “How’s the burger?” he asked.
“Amazing.”
“Done. Medium rare. Cheddar.”
“You got it.” I punched in the order.
“So Teddy and I just got back from a meeting with the guys that own Rain in Miami, and they’re gonna invest in his new spot. They think they can open it as early as next month, and they want to call it Thunder. Sick, right?”
“That’s great,” I said, biting my lower lip.
“They already have all these parties lined up, and they hired like a thousand promoters. The place is gonna be packed every night. It’s gonna be sick. We’re gonna be able to make like two grand a week working only two or three nights.”
I looked around to make sure Billy wasn’t picking up on his use of the word “we.” The loyalty to Finton’s I’d been feeling only moments earlier was quickly dissolving in Jake’s enticing promises about making crazy cash. Maybe I could finally pay back Alexis’s dad, get rid of the rest of my credit card debt, settle my student loans, and start a savings account. Or more realistically, I could buy that dress I’d been eyeing in the window of C. Ronson for when James and I hit the Manhattan social scene this fall and finance a much-needed vacation to Cabo.
“Man, this place is fucking dead,” Jake said, looking around. “You’ll be lucky if you can scrape together fifty bucks tonight. This sucks.”
“It’s not that bad,” I said. “It’s really relaxed, and we get to do pretty much whatever we want.”
“Yeah, but who cares if you’re not making any money? I mean, you’re not here to make friends.”
“Yeah, but we do okay.”
“Cassie, this place is in the middle of fuckin’ nowhere. Who puts an Irish pub in Little Italy?”
“I know. It is in a weird location. I think a lot of people have trouble finding it.”
“Don’t sweat it. You got one more month in this place, and then Thunder will open and you’ll start making money again. And the best part is, you get to work with me, and we’ll kill it. We’re the fuckin’ franchise, baby.”
Despite Jake’s relentless attempts to look and sound hard core, his messy hair and swollen eyes, coupled with the wide-eyed enthusiasm that took over when he talked about our new gig, made him look like a baby recently woken up from an afternoon nap. He really wasn’t a bad guy.
“Hey, Billy, come down here and meet Jake,” I called. “He’s my partner at Spark.”
“Good to meet you, bro’,” Jake said.
“You too, man,” Billy said.
In his pressed white shirt, ironed slacks, red tie, and apron, Billy was a perfect foil to Jake’s Bacchus. It occurred to me that I was witnessing the life cycle of the career bartender evolving right before my very eyes. Billy was an older, more seasoned manifestation of Jake. They were both behind the bar for the long haul, with no discernable aspirations other than wiping dow
n bottles and serving cocktails. But Billy had obviously grown out of the stage where he stayed up every night, drinking his face off and drugging even harder. I looked at them both, and the characteristics they had in common came into focus. Both of them were mired by separate addictions: Billy smoked a pack of cigarettes a day and could down a liter of Jameson without blinking his sexy blue eyes, and Jake was a cokehead with a Patrón problem. But in their own way, they were both charming and sexy, and women loved them. There was something undeniably chemical about them, and they were redolent with the allure of the nocturnal underworld. Then again, maybe I found them both oddly fascinating because I was afraid of sliding down the same slippery slope they pioneered.
Fifteen
____________
SLOE
COMFORTABLE
SCREW
Like hardened icing on a cupcake, the parched sand crunched under my bare feet, its brittle shell giving way to softer, smoother sand as I followed the sound of steel drums along the shore. A hundred yards from the parking lot at Atlantic Beach in Amagansett, three white tents framed by tiki torches protected an army of porcelain-skinned Pearls Girls from premature aging due to the harmful UV rays of the late August sun. I’d never seen so many Pearls Girls in my life—all of them dressed in a rainbow of brightly colored Tracey Feith dresses. Their laughter tinkled like bells in time with the glasses being passed, and they struggled to balance their Sauvignon Blancs as their four-inch stilettos sank into the sand. To avoid sinking myself, I’d decided to remove my new Prada heels in the parking lot and carry them dangling from my hand, praying every single Pearls Girls would notice the letters inscribed on the insole declaring PRADA in bold black letters.
I’d already been introduced to the Hamptons caste system at the Southampton Country Club, the Bridgehampton polo match, and the Maidstone. But none of those experiences quite measured up to the perfection on display before me. The tiki torch flames danced along to the licks of the ocean breeze, and the soft thrumming of the steel drum band seemed to move in time. And if all this wasn’t enough to clue me in that this little event was a sizable step up from your average rustic New England clambake, my hunch was confirmed by the elaborate lobster buffet set up underneath the central and biggest tent of all. Chefs in crisp white uniforms complete with tall white hats were presiding over each station armed with tongs and oversized spoons to dispense the fruits of the sea to the young preppy crowd. There would be no holes dug in the sand for a fire pit, no metal garbage cans filled with seaweed, and no eating with your hands at this clambake.
As I grabbed a white plate that looked like genuine bone china and got in line for an appetizer of mussels and French peasant bread, it suddenly hit me that it was Labor Day weekend, and the summer was almost over. I looked out at the water, realizing that in a few days I’d be back to living full time in the concrete jungle with no ocean escape to look forward to at the end of the week. It had been a whirlwind summer: I’d fallen in love, worked at one of the biggest clubs in the world, written a screenplay, and now I was waiting on line for bread at the upper-crust event for young up-and-comers in New York society.
The irony that a Pearls Girls charity event was being held on Labor Day, the signature holiday of the working class, was not lost on me. One look around this posh party assured me that the only working-class people I’d be seeing (aside from me) would be the ones serving food and drinks.
“Hi, Cassie,” a soft soprano voice cooed behind me. I turned around and saw Abigail approaching me, sipping a glass of white wine.
“Hi,” I said.
“I love your dress. It’s beautiful,” she said, fingering her pearls with her perfectly manicured fingers.
“Thanks,” I replied, shocked. I couldn’t remember another time when Abigail or the other girls had complimented me on anything, and finally, after all these weeks of trying to withstand their obvious disapproval, one of them had actually said something nice.
“Is it new?” she asked.
“Yup,” I said, reveling in her admiration. I’d been eyeing the soft azure dress in the window of Saks on Main Street in Southampton for the last few weeks and had finally broken down and bought it for the clambake. I was $750 poorer, but I rationalized the purchase by promising myself I’d wear it a lot. The only problem was that it was pastel, and I’d figured that one of the Pearls Girls would probably have me arrested by the fashion police if I wore summer colors after Labor Day.
“I love it, it’s so bright and feminine,” she purred, taking another delicate sip of her wine.
“Thanks,” I said, still not quite believing I was having this conversation at all. Normally, the girls only talked to me out of obligation when James was around. But James had left my side and was now talking to a young banker type I’d seen a couple of times at Spark, so I couldn’t figure out why Abigail had approached me of her own volition. I wished Annie was there; she would’ve died to witness this conversation, but she’d had to fly home to Brazil for her cousin’s wedding.
“So who’s going to be there tonight?” I’d asked James earlier. He looked effortlessly handsome in his baby blue Lacoste sweater, white button-down with the sleeves open and rolled up over the sweater, and crisp beige pants. We were speeding down Ocean Avenue toward the clambake, running late because I’d been tearing apart my room for the last forty-five minutes looking for my notebook, which I couldn’t find anywhere. I could tell James was annoyed at the delay, but I was sick to my stomach at the thought that I’d lost it or, worse, that somebody else would find it.
“Everybody,” he’d said tersely.
“Will any of the kids that the charity benefits be there?”
“Nope.”
“I was thinking it would be nice if Rosalind and the girls were forced to mingle with underprivileged children—give them a little dose of reality,” I’d teased.
“Cassie, come on. They’re not that bad,” he said. I looked over at him, confused and a little hurt. Only a week earlier he’d been going off about how high-maintenance they were, and now he was sticking up for them. Then again, as everyone was fond of reminding me, they had been his friends since birth.
“James, I was just kidding,” I’d reassured him.
“I can’t believe we’re so late,” he’d groused, consulting his platinum Patek Philippe watch. In the end, I’d chalked his irritation up to stress—he was, after all, part of the clambake committee, and he wanted the event to be a big success for the charity. And being late because of my disorganization probably hadn’t helped.
“Red or white, miss?” My thoughts were interrupted by the mussel chef who stood over two steaming metal pots of shellfish. One was full of mussels marinating in a tomato garlic chutney, the other mussels stewing in a white wine and saffron bath.
“White, please,” I said, thinking that red sauce and a pale blue dress could be a lethal combination. He dutifully shoveled mussels onto my plate. “Thank you.”
“I’m going to go place some bids at the silent auction,” Abigail told me, of course declining to take any mussels of her own. “Charlotte and I are trying to win the month at a vineyard in the Chianti region. I’ll see you later. It was lovely chatting with you.” She waltzed away and vanished into a sea of blond hair, pink pashminas, and pearls.
I dipped my crusty bread into the mussel broth and relished the briny flavor. Since the curtain was drawing to a close on my Hamptons summer, I decided to leave the shelter of the tent and savor my last dose of sun. On my way out, I found James sitting at a table draped in Battenberg lace talking with two elfin blonds I didn’t recognize.
“There you are,” I said.
“Hey,” he answered, rising from his seat. “Ladies, I’m going to get some dinner. It was great catching up with you.”
“You too, James,” the blonds purred in unison.
“Who were those girls?” I asked.
“Just some friends of the family.”
“Why didn’t you introduce me?”
>
James tugged at the collar of his sweater uncomfortably. “To tell you the truth, I don’t remember either of their names,” he confessed.
I looked at him deliberately, studying his eyes. They looked like tiny pieces of a Fabergé egg. He seemed distant. “You’re not mad at me, are you?” I couldn’t help asking.
“No,” he said, startled. “What are you talking about?”
“Nothing. I don’t know, you just seem a little distracted. And you disappeared right when we got here . . .”
“I was gone for like five minutes,” he protested.
He had a point. He wasn’t gone that long. Why was I acting like such an insecure freak? “You’re right. I’m sorry. I guess I just missed you.”
“Let’s get something to eat,” he said, taking my arm.
“The mussels are delicious,” I raved as we headed back toward the buffet line.
“Did you have any lobster?”
“No, not yet.”
At the head of the lobster line, there was a station that supplied plates, metal crackers for the shells, tiny oyster forks, Wet Naps, and lobster bibs. “Oh, I love these,” I said playfully, donning the plastic bib with a bright red cartoon lobster depicted on it.
“Don’t do that.” He grimaced, yanking the bib off my neck and looking around as though he were concerned that somebody might have seen.
“I was just playing around,” I said flippantly. “What’s the big deal?” But beneath my laid-back exterior, I felt like I’d swallowed a spiny lobster whole and it was stuck somewhere in my throat. “I’m going to go get a drink,” I muttered, turning away quickly and leaving the tent.
I made my way across the sand, allowing the breeze from the ocean to clear my head. I walked up to the tan bartender standing behind the only bar set up in the sun. He was wearing Ray-Ban sunglasses and enjoying some downtime as most of the crowd had opted for the bars set up in the shade.
“Hey! How are ya?” he asked, tossing a shot glass up into the air and letting it spiral a few times before he caught it behind his back.