Sweetbitter

by Stephanie Danler

  “The plates are too hot,” I said. And then I couldn’t take it back.

  I stared at his feet, at the mess on the floor. I bent over to pick up the beautifully burnished duck. I thought he might hit me. I flinched, but held it out to him by its leg.

  “Are you retarded? Get out of my kitchen. Don’t even think about setting foot in here again. This is a church.” He slammed his hands on the stainless steel in front of him. “A fucking church!”

  His eyes went back to the board and he said, quiet again, “Refire, duck, refire risotto, on the fly, what the fuck are you looking at Travis, keep your eyes on your steak before you turn it to cardboard.”

  I set the duck on the counter next to the bread. The grating noise of tickets printing, of plates being thrown around, of pans hitting burners, it all throbbed with my hand. In the locker room I went to the sink and ran lukewarm water on it. The mark was already starting to disappear. I cried and continued crying while I changed out of my uniform. I sat on a chair and tried to calm down before I went back downstairs. Will opened the door.

  “I know,” I yelled. “I fucked up. I know.”

  “Let me see your hand.”

  He crouched next to me. I opened my palm and he put a bar mop filled with ice cubes into it. I started crying again.

  “You’re okay, doll.” He patted my shoulder. “Put your stripes on. You can work the dining room.”

  I nodded. I put on fresh mascara and went downstairs.

  —

  THE MEZZ WAS seven two-tops on a balcony over the back dining room. The stairs were narrow, steep, treacherous. “A lawsuit waiting to happen,” they told me. I took them one at a time, up and down, and still soups spilled onto rims, sauces slid.

  Heather was Debutante-Smile, and she got in trouble weekly for chewing gum on the floor. She was from Georgia, with a delicate southern accent. They told me she had the highest tip average, and everyone blamed the accent. I thought it might be the gum.

  “Sweetness”—she snapped her gum at me—“start the stairs with your left foot when you go down. Lean back.”

  I nodded.

  “I heard about Chef. It happens.”

  I nodded again.

  “You know, nobody is from here. We were all new. And like I always say, it’s just dinner.”

  —

  FROM A SECTION of the handbook I neglected to read: Workers were to receive one complimentary shift drink after they clocked out. Workers were also to receive one complimentary shift coffee per eight-hour shift.

  When this translated off the page, quantities increased, entitlement ran rampant. But I didn’t know that yet. They wound us up, they wound us down.

  —

  “TAKE A SEAT, new girl.”

  Nicky was definitely talking to me. I had just clocked out and changed. I was cracking my wrists and heading toward the exit.

  It was still a touch early. Cooks were plastic-wrapping the kitchen, servers swiping the final credit cards and waiting in the hutches. The dishwashers piled trash bags at the exit of the kitchen. I saw them peeking out, trembling like sprinters, waiting for the signal that they could take the bags to the curb and go home.

  “Where?”

  “At the bar.” He wiped down a spot.

  Nicky was Clark-Kent-Glasses. He was the first bartender they hired, and they said he’d be there until they shuttered the place. His glasses were often crooked, and at odds with the crookedness of his bow tie. He met his wife at the bar ten years earlier and she still came in and sat in the very same seat on Fridays. I heard he had three kids, but I couldn’t really comprehend it, he seemed half child himself. He had an unpretentiousness and a Long Island accent that had been drawing people to the bar for decades.

  “You want me to sit like a regular person?”

  “Like a regular old person. What do you want to drink?”

  “Um.” I wanted to ask how much a beer cost, I had no idea.

  “It’s your shift drink. A little thank-you from the Owner at the end of the night.”

  He shook the amber, watery remains from a cocktail shaker into his glass. “Or a big thank-you. What do you like?”

  “White wine sounds all right.” I climbed onto a stool. Earlier in the night, midrush, Nicky had asked me if I had any common sense. I thought about it all night. I had no idea what to say to him, especially now that I was stripeless, except, Yes. I think I do have common sense.

  “Yeah? Nothing particular?”

  “I’m easy.”

  “That’s what I like to hear from my backwaiters.”

  I blushed.

  “Boxler?” he asked, and poured me a taste. I lifted it to my nose and nodded. I was too nervous to actually smell it. He poured me a glass, and I watched as he left his hand there, the wine surging past the pour line we used for guests. The glass now seemed a goblet.

  “You did better tonight,” said a voice behind me. Will jumped up onto the bar stool next to me.

  “Thank you.” I sipped my wine before I could undo the compliment. The Albert Boxler Riesling, not from Germany, but from Alsace, one of the high-end pours at twenty-six dollars a glass. And I was drinking it. Nicky had served it to me. To thank me. I rolled it through my mouth the way Simone had taught me, pursing my lips and cupping my tongue and almost making an inward whistle. I thought it would be sweet. I thought I tasted honey, or something like peaches. But then it was so dry it felt like someone had pierced me. My mouth watered and I sipped again.

  “It’s not sweet,” I said out loud to Nicky and Will. They laughed.

  “This is nice,” I said. An hour ago these were incredibly privileged seats, occupied by the kind of people who spent thirty dollars on an ounce of Calvados.

  Will had changed his tone with me since my burn. He was careful, or perhaps protective. I thought maybe he wanted to be my friend. He wouldn’t make a terrible first friend. He wore a khaki shirt, reminiscent of safaris. He had a long arrowhead nose and bovine brown eyes. He spoke rapidly, nearly slurring. Those first trails I thought it was because he was in a hurry. Now I saw that he didn’t want to show his teeth. They were square and yellowed, and the front left one was cracked.

  He pulled out a cigarette. “Are we all clear?”

  “Yes, sir.” Nicky slid him a bread-and-butter plate. I panicked when Will lit up—I barely had memories of a time when you could smoke inside restaurants. He asked if I wanted one. I shook my head. I glued my eyes to the back bar, pretending to be absorbed in the memorization of the Cognac bottles. The two of them traded incomprehensible insults about two baseball teams from the same place.

  “You say hi to Jonny tonight?” Nicky polished glasses from a never-ending pile on the bar. They were stationed like soldiers that progressed to the front only to be replaced by more in the back.

  “He was here? I missed him.”

  “He was next to Sid and Lisa.”

  “Christ, those two. I stayed as far away as possible. Remember that Venice-is-an-island argument?”

  “I thought he was going to hit her that night.”

  “If I was married to that, I’d do worse than hit her.”

  I kept an impassive face. They must be talking about their friends.

  “What are you drinking, Billy Bob?”

  “Can I get a hit of Fernet while I think about it?”

  “This. Is. It,” said Ariel, slamming the glass racks down on the corner of the bar. The glasses jangled like bells and her hair flew up.

  “You’ve got your hair down already?” Nicky asked. His voice was harsh but his eyes playful.

  “Come on, Nick, please, I’m done, you know I’m done. Don’t I look done?” She ran her fingers through her long hair, scratching at the scalp like she was trying to undo a wig. She flipped her hair to one side and leaned over the bar, feet coming off the ground.

  “Come on Nick, snip, snip.” She made a scissors motion with her fingers.

  Ariel looked like trouble with her hair down. She had gone f
rom quirky to something from the underworld, her hair well past her breasts, kinky from being knotted up all night. Her bangs were flat on her forehead and slashes of liquid eyeliner that once had swung rebelliously away from her lids were now smudged and battered.

  During services Ariel worked with the energy of a bird, through a series of chirps, clicking noises, phrases half sung. She became frantic easily and recovered just as easily, whistling.

  “Okay, you’re cut, Ari. But I do need two bottles of Rittenhouse and one bottle of Fernet.”

  “ ’Kay, I’ll bring the rye but homeboy here can get his own Fernet.” She eyed Will’s glass, which had a black liquor in it, reeking of oversteeped tea and bubble gum. “You drink it, you stock it.”

  “Fuck off, Ari.” Will exhaled smoke toward her.

  “Fuck you, darling.” She flounced away. Will shot back his drink.

  “What’s that?” I asked.

  “Medicine.” He burped. “It’s for the end of a meal. Incredible…curative properties for the digestive tract.”

  He reached over the bar and started to fill a water glass with beer. Nicky stopped working and watched.

  “I just fucking cleaned that, Will, if you spill one fucking drop…”

  The beer shook in Will’s hand, and the head rose an inch out of the glass. A hush. It kept rising but didn’t spill.

  “I’m a pro,” Will said.

  “Misery,” said Ariel. She put two bottles of rye on the bar and pulled out the stool on the other side of Will. She was in a black slip, or maybe she thought it was a dress. Her bra was neon yellow like a traffic sign saying Proceed with Caution.

  “Hm…what is open?” She tucked her legs under her and reached into the speed rack behind the bar.

  “Can you animals get off my bar? I’m trying to clean.”

  “Is that Gigondas still good? When did we open it?”

  “Two nights.”

  “Pushing it.”

  “Worth considering.”

  Nicky put up a glass and a black bottle with an insignia at the top and went back to his cleaning.

  “Self-service tonight? You poured for the new girl.”

  “Ariel, I’m not fucking around, you barely stocked. She doesn’t even know her head from her asshole yet and I think she could have done a better job. You’ve put me back twenty minutes.”

  “It looks like you picked the wrong night to be bartender, old man.” Ariel emptied the wine into her glass, smelled it, and flipped open her cell phone.

  If Nicky had spoken to me like that I would be flattened. But nothing happened. There wasn’t even residual tension. Nicky yelled, All clear, into the kitchen and the porters sprang from behind the doors. They ran bags down the line behind the bar, an endless caravan of black bags to the curb. They propped the door open and the hot, dark air rushed in, as sticky as fingers running over my face. Misery. I drank my Riesling. Medicine.

  “It’s been really hot,” I said. Nobody responded.

  “Summer,” I said.

  Droning came in from the streets, then a rustling. For a second I thought it was the claustrophobic noise of the cicadas from my childhood. Or the wind bending branches. Or the moans of cows in fields. But it was cars. I wasn’t used to it yet—the elimination of nature, the brimming whine of overheating machinery.

  I shifted a little toward Will, wanting to seem open in case anyone talked to me. Will and Ariel were on their phones and Nicky was cursing to himself behind the bar. I thought about taking my phone out. It was new. I had left my old one on my dresser back home. I wondered what my father had done with it, with the boxes of books. Though I was also fairly certain he hadn’t opened the door to my room. When I got my new phone, the area code felt like a badge: 917. I dutifully copied everyone’s contact information into it. But I didn’t have missed calls or messages. No one even asked me to cover shifts yet.

  “I don’t have an air conditioner,” I said.

  “Really?” Will shut his phone and turned to me. “Seriously?”

  “They’re expensive.”

  “Misery,” Ariel interjected. She leaned around Will and looked at me inquisitively. “What do you do?”

  “Oh, I have big windows and a fan. When it’s really bad, like that stretch last week, I take cold showers to get the sweat—”

  “No,” she said. Her eyes said, You fucking idiot. “What do you do? In the city. Are you trying to be something?”

  “Yes,” I said. “I’m trying to be a backwaiter.”

  She laughed. I made Ariel laugh.

  “Yeah, after that the sky’s the limit.”

  “What do you do?”

  “I do everything. I sing. I write music. I have a band. Willy here is trying to make a film. A claymation version of À Bout de Souffle.”

  “Okay, that was one idea, it’s not the worst idea.”

  “No, it’s very admirable, a week of sculpting clay to get the right look of boredom—”

  “Ariel, I can’t be offended that you don’t understand anything about art. I blame first, your gender, second, the system—”

  “Honestly though, Will, tell us the truth. You’re just masturbating, right? In that little dark room with your clay Jean Seberg?”

  Will sighed. “I will admit, it’s hard not to.” He turned to me. “I actually am working on something else. I’m writing a feature—”

  “The comic-book one? The hero’s journey? The exploration and reaffirmation of the patriarchal narrative?”

  “Ariel, do you ever shut the fuck up?”

  She smiled and rested a hand on his shoulder. She picked up her glass of wine and was about to sip when she said, “Oops,” and turned to us.

  “Cheers,” she said gravely.

  “Cheers.”

  “No, in the eyes, new girl.”

  “Look her in the eyes,” Will said, “or she’ll put a hex on your family.”

  I looked in her blackened eyes and said cheers like it was an incantation. Our three glasses touched and I pulled a mouthful of wine. The joints in my spine softened, like butter going to room temperature.

  —

  THEN THREE THINGS HAPPENED, seemingly at once.

  First, the music changed. Lou Reed came over the speakers like a mumbling, beloved poet-uncle.

  “You know I saw him once at the Gramercy Park Hotel—have you seen what they fucking did over there? That, my friends, is a rotten omen if ever there was one. So anyway, I’m sitting there and it’s like, Lou-fucking-Reed, and I’m thinking, Thank you for teaching me how to be human, you know?”

  I tried to keep listening. I nodded when Ariel looked at me. But the song was as intimate as a faucet dripping in the night.

  Next, the bar stools filled. The cooks, the closing servers, the dishwashers, all out of their uniforms now, commandeered them. Everyone looked sloppy and criminal without their stripes. To see the scarred hands of the cooks against rumpled polos or old heavy-metal T-shirts, you wondered what it would be like to see one of them on a subway, without knowing they had a secret authoritative life in whites.

  Simone walked down the line, her hair untied. I tried to catch her eye but she went to the far end of the bar with Heather, and who I now understood to be Heather’s boyfriend, Parker, the man who’d initiated me on the coffee machine. Simone didn’t look like a statue of herself anymore. She wore plain leather sandals and she swung one off her foot once she crossed her legs.

  And finally, Chef banged out of the kitchen with a baseball cap and a backpack on. All his rage had melted away, leaving a man who looked like a dad on his way to a minivan. Everyone said, Good night, Chef, in a forceful singsong. He waved without looking. He barreled through and exited the building.

  —

  A CURTAIN CAME DOWN as Nicky reappeared behind the bar in a white undershirt and turned the lights up. The restaurant where I worked turned into a social club after hours. The bartenders weren’t performing bartender anymore. They were mixing drinks with playful proport
ions. The cooks weren’t looking over their shoulders for Chef, or walking numbly into hot pan handles. They were rolling joints, giggling, punching each other. The servers were stretching their arms and shoulders, comparing knots in their necks, stirring drinks with a finger, while complaining in one long, loving torrent about Howard, Zoe, dissecting the guests with a tone of passive contempt. I started to be able to tell when they were talking about regulars, because they would all want to outdo each other, demonstrating that they were the favorite.

  Too dazzled to contribute, I watched them. It was the duality of everyone that floored me. Simone with her simple softness, her tired eyes. Will and Ariel snipping at each other. The talking got louder as the drinks receded. I kept looking at the open door, thinking a stranger would walk in and want a drink, or that the Owner would decide to pass down Sixteenth Street on his way home from an event and catch us and call the police. I’m new, I’m blameless, I would say with hands up. No one else seemed concerned. It made me wonder who really owned the restaurant.

  “Black Bear?” Scott yelled down the bar to Ariel.

  “No, Park Bar. Sasha just texted, he has a corner.”

  “No más Park Bar,” he said. Jared and Jeff, two of his line cooks, started laughing.

  “No you did not fuck the new one—Vivian?”

  “Vivian!” they shouted. They raised their glasses.

  “Full of shit,” Ariel yelled. She turned to me and said, “Fuck. I thought she was gay.”

  “Too slow, Ari,” said Will.

  “Oh we’ll see about that.” She put her hand on top of mine and said into my eyes, “They always start off straight. That’s part of the fun.”

  I laughed. Petrified.

  “What time is it?” I asked. A wall of exhaustion hit me with the drinks. It seemed to be a good moment to excuse myself. I didn’t know who was going to clean this all up so the restaurant would be blank and sterile for the morning. When I looked down the line I saw Simone. She was texting and I thought, It’s too late for her to be texting. That was when I first realized she was older. An image of him hit me in the back of my throat, just from habit. Who did Jake turn into when they turned the lights up? The shift drink—the first liminal space between work and my apartment, a space that I could project onto for hours, a space of inevitability where I would catch up with him eventually.