Brooklyn Girls

by Gemma Burgess

  Then I glance up at my reflection in a store window and let out a wail: I am a mascara-stained, puke-puckered sweat rat. Urgh. Why do I only ever see cute guys when I look like an armpit?

  Anyway, I can’t do serious relationships. I haven’t since the whole Eddie meltdown. Even my casual hookups have a tendency to bite me in the ass. (If you know what I … never mind.) I’ve ignored three texts and two calls from Mike since that Sunday. At least Madeleine hasn’t found out about it. (Yet.)

  “Well, if it isn’t Little Miss Whole Person,” says a voice. I look up. It’s Vic, the raisiny old guy who lives downstairs.

  “Hi! I mean, good evening! Mr.— uh—”

  “Vittorio Bartolo,” he says, with a flourish. “Call me Vic.”

  “I’m Pia … Pia Keller. And I’m really sorry, again, about your kitchen ceiling.” I haven’t seen him since that morning; Julia took over as a go-between. “Is it all, um, okay?”

  “It’s perfect. Thank you.” He grins, and all those craggy crevices I noticed last Sunday morning move around his face again. Suddenly I have the feeling he found the whole thing kind of funny. “I’m sorry I called you a half a person the other morning. I didn’t mean to offend.”

  “You didn’t. How’s your sister?”

  “Marie’s fine,” he says. “She’s with her grandkids over in New Jersey. She spends half the week with them, half with me. It makes her feel popular. So, are you going to tell me why you’re huffing and puffing like you’re gonna blow the house down? Oops, sorry. Wrong choice of words.”

  “Ha,” I say. Quite the comedian, isn’t he? “Um, I need a job. I need to make money.”

  “Welcome to New York,” he says amiably. “It’s nothing to cry about. Just get on with it. Your future is waiting for you.”

  “What if I can’t? My life in New York will be over before it’s even started.”

  “Not for nothing, but the way I see it, the only people who make any money in this world are entrepreneurs,” he says. “Come up with an idea for a business, make it work, sell it on.”

  “That sounds doable … except the selling-it-on part. And the making-it-work part. Oh, and the coming-up-with-an-idea-for-a-business part.”

  Vic erupts into a wheezy laugh. For a second I’m scared he’s going to collapse a lung.

  “Actually, when I was fourteen, I tried to start a business,” I say, remembering. “I made one-of-a-kind ripped jean shorts from second-hand jeans I bought real cheap on eBay, and sold them as customized vintage on Etsy.”

  “I don’t know what any of that means.”

  “Yeah, no one did. They weren’t that great. I sold about half of them.” I sigh, remembering the dozens of dilapidated cutoffs falling out of every drawer in my room for months. Angie was supposed to help me out with the customizing part—she’s good at stuff like that—but she flaked out on me. “And when I was eleven I tried to start a kids’ club. We were on vacation in the south of France, and my idea was I’d organize activities for the younger kids staying in the same town.… Kind of like a party planner. But the other parents didn’t believe that I was responsible enough to look after their kids so it, y’know, didn’t take.”

  “Well, that sounds like it would have been a great idea.”

  We grin at each other for a second.

  “You hungry?” he says, pointing down Court Street. “Esposito and Sons. Best rice balls in the neighborhood. We can talk about your career prospects on the way back.”

  * * *

  Esposito’s is an ode to the if-it-ain’t-broke school of décor, and outside the front is a statue of a grotesque pig wearing a butcher’s apron.

  “Wow,” I say. “Old school.”

  “It’s been here since 1922,” says Vic.

  Everyone in Esposito’s sings out “Vic!” when he comes in.

  “Quite the celebrity,” I murmur, almost to myself.

  “I prefer neighborhood personality,” he cracks back.

  Vic orders four pork rice balls, an Italian sub, and a square of lasagne.

  “You got it, chief,” snaps the guy behind the counter. “Marie’s away, huh? How’s your cholesterol these days?”

  “You breathe a word about this to my sister…”

  I grin to myself, looking at the prepared food lined up behind the glass. This must be Vic’s secret vice.

  The counter guy turns to me. “What about you, Miss Pakistan? You want somethin’?”

  “Miss Pakistan?” I repeat.

  “Sorry. Miss World, is that better?”

  Don’t you just love being singled out for the color of your skin? But he’d probably call me Miss Sweden if I was blond. That’s what I tell myself, anyway.

  Counter guy is getting impatient. “C’mon, what’ll it be, sweetie?”

  This is like being in someone’s home and refusing food they prepared just for you. But I haven’t got any money left. Not a dime.

  “Um, no, I’m…”

  “You a friend of Vic’s?”

  “Yes,” I say, at the same moment that Vic says, “Neighbor.”

  “Well, you’re a lucky girl. Vic will look after you. Here you go, sweetie. On the house.”

  Minutes later we’re walking out, a rice ball the size of a grapefruit in my hand.

  “Great place,” I say, taking a bite. “Oh, wow, this is so good!”

  “It’s the best. So, here’s a thing. My nephew Angelo has a restaurant over on Smith. Bartolo’s. My brother started it fifty years ago.”

  “Really?” I say, brightening.

  “He’ll give you a job. It’s a real neighborhood restaurant. People there are good tippers, too. If you walk me up there right now, I’ll introduce you,” he says.

  “Wow, thank you so much!” A waitress! I could be a waitress! My no-manual-labor stance of ten days ago looks pretty stupid right about now.

  “It won’t make you a fortune, but it’s better than sitting on your keister moaning about life. Long as you’re not afraid of a little hard work.”

  “No! I mean yes, I’m not, I mean— Thank you. I’m not afraid of hard work! That would be awesome!”

  We walk slowly up Union Street, passing Rookhaven, toward Smith Street, enjoying the balmy evening.

  “So, how ya settling into the place, anyway?”

  “Um, fine.”

  I’m not sure what he means. I never settle; I just sleep somewhere for a while and then life changes and I sleep somewhere else.

  I gaze up at the Brooklyn brownstones around me, at the trees arching up into the blue sky above our heads. Every house, every stoop, every window, is similar yet unique, with little individual touches from owners past and present. It’s like everyone who’s ever lived here has left their mark.

  “Union Street is so beautiful,” I say. “It feels personal, in a way that most streets never do. Every house is a home.”

  He nods. “It has character. That’s why I never left, even when it was not an area that you’d want to be in, let me tell you.… My parents moved here from a little town called Pozzallo, in Italy, in 1922. A lot of people from Pozzallo came here; they even named a street after us.”

  “No kidding. Your parents moved all the way from Italy?” I say in surprise as we turn right onto Smith and keep walking. “Right here to Carroll Gardens?”

  He grimaces. “Not Carroll Gardens. It’s South Brooklyn, it’s always been South Brooklyn. Not Carroll Gardens, not Cobble Hill, not BoCoCa.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “My mother and father landed on Ellis Island in 1927 when they were just twenty-one years old. The trip was their honeymoon. They lived in the Lower East Side at the start, but got out of there real quick. Eventually, my father bought Rookhaven with his brother. Two families, five kids each, can you imagine? In that house?”

  “No kidding. Then what happened?”

  “Well, my father was killed in France in 1944.”

  “Oh, I’m so sorry,” I say quickly.

  “That’s okay,
it was a long time ago.” Vic gives me his craggy grin. “His brother moved to Jersey. And my mother and her sister turned the place into a boarding house. We took in lodgers, mostly ex-servicemen.”

  “Wow.” I wonder who was in my room. It’s strange to think about decades—centuries, even—of people coming to New York to start their lives, just like we are. It’s like nothing ever changes, not really.

  We pause at Sackett Street and Vic gestures down another idyllic row of brownstones, pointing out where his cousins and friends lived.

  “And my first girlfriend lived there.” Vic points to a brownstone with high bay windows and rosebushes outside.

  “Beautiful roses,” I comment.

  “I gave her that rosebush as a present on our second date.”

  “Nice move! So, what happened? You broke up?”

  “I married her. She died.”

  I try to think of what to say, but can’t, so I just link my arm through his instead. His arm feels a lot stronger than it looks. He must have been a big guy when he was young.

  “And here we are!” he says a minute later. We’re outside a stone-covered restaurant with a sign reading BARTOLO’S in curly 1950s typeface.

  Manual labor, here I come.

  CHAPTER 4

  After three days of working in the restaurant, my back aches, my feet are blistered, my ears are ringing with children’s screams, and my hair smells like garlic.

  But I’m earning money.

  And that’s what I need to do to stay in New York, with my friends, and start my life. I don’t know what’s next, but right now, I need this job to survive.

  I’d never even have considered eating somewhere like Bartolo’s before. And guess what? I love it. The entire place was designed, fitted, and decorated by Vic’s brother and Vic a long time ago. As a result, the floor is uneven and worn, the plates and cups are all mismatched from sets bought long, long ago. There’s a bad hand-painted mural of Italian countryside on the back wall, and Frank Sinatra, Tony Bennett, and Perry Como play on a never-ending loop.

  But the restaurant has that same neighborhood warmth I noticed in Esposito’s. Customers don’t come here just because they’ve been told to by some ad campaign or because it’s the flavor of the month. They come here because they know the food is good and the welcome is warm.

  “Pia!” Angelo runs into the kitchen, where I’m gossiping with his cousins Ricky and Vinnie, the chefs. “Why the heck do I keep finding you in here? I need you on table three!”

  “Sorry!” I flash my best smile.

  “She was just helping us with the arugula salad.” Vinnie finds arugula salad hilarious; it’s the only new addition to the menu in the past decade. Meanwhile, apparently every other restaurant in Brooklyn is breeding organic hybrid lettuce in their backyard.

  Actually, they were telling me all about Jonah, the cute bartender (think cowboy meets surfer, extra blond, extra hot). Tonight’s our first shift together, and we’ve exchanged a few eye-meets, but I’m also detecting a little something between him and one of the other waitresses, Bianca (pinch-faced punk-hipster hybrid with a hot pink buzz cut on one side of her head and attitude to match—the kind of girl who just doesn’t like other girls). According to Vinnie, nothing’s ever happened between Bianca and Jonah. Ricky thinks she made a move last weekend and got rejected. (I swear to God, dudes are the worst gossips. I love it.)

  At table three, a very pretty young mom and dad are sitting with their two kids and finishing up their pizzas. The little boy, who must be about three or four, is telling a story.

  “And then, Mom? Mom? Mom? Mom, there was this dog, and the dog was sniffing”—he’s so excited he can hardly get the words out—“and then he pooped!” He squeaks and falls off his seat giggling. I laugh and bend down to help him up.

  “Oh, thank you,” chorus the parents. They’re both dressed in impeccable Brooklyn chic. I’m pretty sure his jeans cost more than I’ll make tonight and her jacket definitely does.

  “Gabe, no poop stories at the dinner table,” says the mother, fighting to keep a straight face.

  “I can’t believe you just used the phrase ‘poop stories,’” says the father in a low voice.

  The dad turns to the little girl. “Pia, honey, no iPad while we’re eating.” She frowns and ignores him.

  “Is your name Pia?” I say to the little girl, who is older than Gabe and has two little pigtails that look like she tied them herself. She nods shyly. “That’s my name, too! We’re like twins. Would you like to see the dessert menu?” I drop my voice to make it sound like a big secret. She nods again and puts the iPad away. I love kids. For six to eight minutes at a time.

  “Oh, boy! Dessert!” squeals Gabe.

  “Thank you.” The mother smiles as I clear the table and hand them the kids’ dessert menus. She can’t be much older than thirty, I think with a jolt. That means she probably gave birth when she was about twenty-three. That’s next year. Holy shit, I’m running out of time to be a young mom.

  “Table five,” hisses Angelo as I take the dirty plates to the kitchen. “More breadsticks.”

  “Thank you, new girl!” exclaims one of the men at table five, a paunchy guy with a strong Brooklyn accent, just like Vic’s.

  “No more bread for you,” snaps the woman next to him. “Angelo! Easy on the carbs for this one!”

  “I just do what I’m told,” calls Angelo, whizzing past us without stopping.

  “That’s because he remembers me saving him from Conor Barry’s fist back in the fifth grade!”

  Half the tables in here tonight seem to have known Angelo, Ricky, and Vinnie for their whole lives. Brooklyn is the world’s biggest village. Perry Como’s “Papa Loves Mambo” comes over the music system, and I fight the urge to sing along.

  I smile at table five. “Are you ready to order?”

  “We’ll have the sausages and peppers, the chicken romano, the double garlic spaghetti, a big white pizza for the kids—don’t worry, Ricky will know what I mean. Keep the garlic bread coming, and tell Vinnie: extra sage and onion salt.”

  “You got it,” I say. Ordering off-menu in a tiny trattoria. Ballsy.

  “I want juice!” screams the freckled kid next to him.

  “Last time you had juice you started drooling and humping the table,” says Carb Guy. “No.”

  “He’s sugar sensitive!” exclaims his wife.

  “He’s a sugar junkie,” says Carb Guy.

  I struggle not to laugh (waitressing is the best people-watching, ever) and write everything down. I smile at them all as I repeat it, and they smile back. I head to the kitchen to hand in their order with a goofy grin still stuck on my face. I never expected to love waitressing so much. It’s sort of like paid socializing.

  “Miss! Excuse me, miss?” I turn around and see a table waving at me frantically. They’re not in my section, but their waitress, Bianca, has disappeared. I hurry over with a smile.

  Two men, two women, all somewhere in their forties, wearing T-shirts and too-short shorts. They’re surrounded by shopping bags that they’ve tied together with a shoelace—in case someone steals one, I guess? Tourists, without question, staying at a local hotel to avoid the expense of staying in Manhattan. Immediately I steel myself. There’ve been four or five similar tourist-filled tables over the past few days, and each time, they treat me like a second-class citizen. I’ll give you one guess why.

  “How may I—”

  “Menus?” says one of them loudly, a man with “Pete’s Gym” written on his cap. He’s sweating profusely from the energy it takes his body just to exist. “We need menus.”

  “We want to order?” enunciates his wife carefully, a frowsy blonde with a non-ironic fanny pack. She makes a big square in the air with her hands.

  “Menu! Hungry!” says Pete’s Gym again, pointing to his mouth and making a chompy-chomp motion with his jaw.

  I smile tersely, turn around, and grab them some menus. If they’re going to assume I don�
�t speak English, I’m not going to bother to correct them. I drop the menus off with a smile and head back to the kitchen to get the first rounds of garlic bread for table five. Then I run the desserts over to table three, where Pia, the little girl, is now singing a song about mud.

  “Thanks, Pia!” she shouts.

  “No problem, Pia!” I call back.

  I head back to the tourist table, as Bianca still isn’t around. They order, still shouting and enunciating their words as though I’m an idiot. I just smile and write everything down. There is no point in rising to it.

  Then I hear this:

  “Lordy, there are so many of them in New York,” murmurs Fanny Pack. “I wouldn’t feel safe, I really wouldn’t.…”

  They think I’m threateningly exotic-looking, possibly Middle Eastern, probably Muslim, and therefore, I pose a threat to national security. I should be used to it, but my heart starts hammering with anger/anxiety/[insert your extreme emotion of choice HERE], and before I can say anything, I’m bumped out of the way by Jonah, the hot bartender.

  “Good evening, folks! I’m Jonah, and I’m here to take your drinks order. You sir, look like the kind of man who would be in charge of wine.” Jonah’s Texan drawl makes the out-of-towners feel right at home. “Am I right?”

  “We don’t drink.” Fake Nails smiles at Jonah like he’s the second coming of Billy Graham.

  “Four large Diet Cokes,” says Pete’s Gym.

  “No ice in mine,” interrupts the other guy, staring at my boobs. Sheesh, I hate that. “They try to cheat you out of the drink with extra ice,” he adds, not quite under his breath.

  “No ice in any of them,” says Biggest Fattest, winking at Boobs Guy.

  “Very good, sir, and may I say, inspired choice.” Jonah is really oozing Texan charm now. “Aspartame is exceptional this time of year. I’ll send your waitress right over with them.…”

  Jonah grabs me by the waist and hustles me away.

  “Where the hell is Angelo when you need him?”

  “They said … they were—” I’m stammering with rage as we get to the bar.

  “I know. Well, I don’t know, but I can imagine.”