Sweetbitter

by Stephanie Danler

  “I’m sorry,” I said again, groping for the first plate. “I’m just going to…if you don’t mind…” I pushed my shoulder between them and the girl twisted in her seat, sighing. PR? I thought. Assistant to an assistant? Gallery front-desk girl? What the fuck do you do for a living? I pulled the largest plate first. I grabbed the silverware off the others and stacked them next to the lamb chop bones and gratin grease. Someone bumped into my back and I clenched my teeth. But nothing budged.

  I leaned into the boy as I reached. I gave him a helpless look and he stacked two far plates on top of his plate and moved them toward me.

  “Careful,” the girl said, “or you’ll end up working here.”

  It’s never too early for the c-word, I thought. The boy put his hands in his lap.

  We weren’t allowed to half clear, everything had to go at once. I took his stack, but they were uneven, since like me, he didn’t understand how to clear. I knew it was too many plates—not for Will or Sasha, but too many for me. My arm started burning. I made a lunge for her bread-and-butter plate. The knife, still buttered, slid onto her lap and she screamed.

  “Oh god, I’m so sorry. It’s just butter. I mean, I’m sorry.” She looked at me, mouth open, horrified, as if I had assaulted her.

  “It’s silk!” she wailed.

  I nodded but thought, Who wears silk while they eat? She threw the knife back up on the bar, and I saw the grease sinking into the fabric. I couldn’t grab it, my hands were fully loaded. The song ended. I swiveled to look for help.

  Two plates slid off my stack and hit the floor. The precise, unmitigated snap of breaking. The room halted, no noise, no motion.

  Sasha was next to me, smiling like he had found me at a crowded party.

  “Pop-tart made a mess,” he said under his breath. “Who taught you how to clear?”

  “No one,” I said, and shoved my plates at him. “Where were you?”

  He went past me toward the couple, offering her club soda, napkins, a business card, and promising to take care of the dry cleaning. I picked up the pieces of the broken plates. The man in the navy suit who had called me Isabel caught my eye, and I moved my shoulder up in front of my face.

  “Butterfingers, huh?” said Scott when I went to the broken-glass bin. “Pick up.”

  “I’m sorry. I’m not good at clearing. I told him.”

  “Pick up!”

  Ariel flew into the kitchen and yelled at the dishwasher, “Papi, vasos, vasos, come on.”

  Will came up the stairs from the cellar with flattened boxes, a broom, and a full dustpan.

  “Don’t worry about the wine room,” he said to me. He pushed the broom into my hands. “The maid will get it.”

  “I was coming back for it,” I said. “I’m sorry.”

  My breath jumped hurdles. Each one shook me. My eyeballs vibrated and I couldn’t hold on to an emotion: rage, shame, exhaustion, dehydration, hunger—a cradle of twitching wires in my chest. I kept blinking, not knowing if my eyes had dried out or if they were about to run over. There was a hand on my back and I had a vision. I was going to throw this person up against the pastry cart with superhuman strength. I would hold a knife at their throat and scream, Don’t fucking touch me. It would roar out of me. And everyone would have to listen, and nobody would ever touch me again.

  “Breathe,” she whispered. “Your shoulders.”

  Simone’s hand smoothed the line from my neck to my shoulders, like she was smoothing out a tablecloth. She squeezed and it shot pain into my elbows.

  “Pick up!”

  “Will you inhale? And now out.”

  When I exhaled I thought I might black out.

  She said into my ear, “You need to stop apologizing. Do not say you’re sorry again. Practice. Do you understand?”

  “Pick up, are you fucking deaf?”

  I ran a bar mop over my face and nodded for Simone. She squeezed again and gently moved me forward. I covered my hands with the bar mop.

  “Picking up.”

  —

  THE DAY I COULD three-plate-carry came and went. It wasn’t some sort of victory. No one congratulated me. We started from zero at the beginning of each service, and wiped the board clean at the end. But movements became sleeker, elongated. I became aware of being onstage. I gave a trail of my fingers as I set down each plate, as if performing magic.

  I became aware of the ballet of it. The choreography never rehearsed, always learned midperformance. The reason you felt like everyone was staring at you when you were new is because they were. You were out of sync.

  The way Jake used his foot to catch the sliding glass door of the white-wine fridge, or how Nicky tapped the pint glasses apart when they stuck together from the heat of the dishwasher and flipped them in his hand before he started a drink, the way Simone poured from two different bottles of wine into two different glasses and knew when each glass was full, how Heather flew through the Micros screens like she had written the program, the way Chef absentmindedly slapped the silent printer and it burped up a ticket, the way Howard could direct us with his eyes from the top of the stairs, how everyone ducked under the low pipe going into the basement.

  “You’ll know you have the job when it becomes automatic,” Nicky said to me early on.

  We said, “Behind you,” and the person nodded. They already knew. The “behind you” was more for the guest, a formality. We tracked each other’s movements with touch, all of us all over each other. If I fell out from under the spell, I went with one of Sasha’s tenets that I overheard him declaim to a sixty-year-old woman at table 52.

  “I’m sorry about the mess,” she’d said, sweeping bits of food off the table.

  Sasha shone down on her. “You and me, darling? We the beautiful people. We don’t never apologize.”

  IV

  FIGS IN MY LOCKER. Four of them, in a small brown basket. They were gilded like an offering. A slap from another sun-soaked world. I pushed them to the back and laid an old New Yorker over them. I knew that no one was supposed to see them.

  When my shift was over I put them gently in my purse. I felt like I had stolen something. I paused at the service bar and looked at him. He was talking to Flower-Girl at the entrance, where she was replacing branches that weren’t going to last the weekend. Normally she bothered me—she was girlish, her bicycle had a basket, she always wore dresses and a beribboned headband. I had no doubt she had been in a sorority. But I had figs and an entire evening. No, I had a secret.

  “You. Want a drink?” he asked, tucking a bar mop into his belt loop. I searched his face for anything—amusement, annoyance, affinity.

  “What goes well with…?” I almost said it. What goes well with figs? I suddenly understood how saying something out loud could murder it. That the privacy was what made it voluptuous. That the silence was a test.

  “The sunshine,” I said. “I want to take it to go.”

  He nodded with barely raised eyebrows and reached for a bottle of sparkling and I knew the figs were from him.

  “In my personal opinion, the wine should never get in the way.” He poured the Crémant Rosé into a to-go coffee cup. “Of the sunshine.”

  “I think Simone would say that a wine that isn’t in the way isn’t really a wine.”

  “Who cares what Simone would say?”

  “Um…” I searched his face. “Me?”

  “What would you say?”

  “I don’t know.” I sipped the wine through the plastic lid. It tasted like sparkling Capri Sun. “This is delicious. It will be perfect with the sun. Thank you.”

  Look at me, I thought. Parker came up and started asking him about beers and he was gone. But we had a secret. As I walked out, Flower-Girl was gazing up at her arrangement.

  “I’m glad you fixed that,” I said to her. I put my sunglasses on. “They looked terrible.”

  —

  I ENDED UP walking home. That to-go cup. The ambrosial twilight tumbled off the cliff-sides of buildings,
pooling on sidewalks. Every face I met, hypnotized, facing west. When I got to the park I found a bench and held my figs. Each one with a firm density that reminded me of flesh, of my own breasts. There was a teardrop at one end and I put it on my tongue. I felt undressed.

  I tore them apart. They were soft, the pink interior lazily revealing itself. I ate them too quickly, rapaciously. I got up, tossed the empty cup and basket in the trash can. At that moment a chubby little girl and her mother came up the subway steps into Union Square. The girl put her hand to her mouth.

  “Oh mama, oh mama!” she yelled and pointed to the sky.

  “What do you see?”

  “I see a city!”

  I decided to walk.

  Dreadlocked men playing chess and nodding to themselves, dogs slumped against dead-eyed kids with tears tattooed on their faces, the bursts of commuters up from the subways, dilating into the streets, the garbage cans overflowing with plastic water bottles and trashed New York dailies, a woman screaming into a cell phone while adjusting her bra, three blond men on a corner holding a map between them, speaking German, the sidewalk quaking as the N, Q, R trains ran in and out of the station underneath, a smoky, acrid cloud next to a gyro cart, tables laid with paperbacks, cheap leather, bulk T-shirts, the leftovers of lives, and then dehydrated carnations, left in the middle of the sidewalk, fossilized in plastic, irradiated with light. Everyone stepped around them, tenderly. I moved out of their way as well.

  As I walked, I repeated the street names like they had the permanence of numerals: Bond, Bleecker, Houston, Prince, Spring. Lust rubied my blood, gave me the gait of an uncaught criminal, and I felt like I could walk forever.

  —

  “MAYBE I’LL STAY HERE,” Jake said. I heard him from around the corner of the hutch and his tone was barbed so I stopped.

  “Well of course you’re not staying,” Simone said.

  “You don’t listen to me—”

  “That’s because Thanksgiving is not optional.”

  I thought about circling back, but they were silent and I had the impression that they were mouthing words to each other, or they had stopped talking because they knew I was there.

  I entered and put my water pitcher down. I looked between them. Heather came in right behind me and went to the silver.

  “Everything okay in here?”

  “I’m good,” I said cheerfully, keeping my back to Jake. “Simone, I have a question. Will you show me who eats here?”

  “Ooooh, she’s hunting,” said Heather. She handed me her lip gloss and I put it on, confused.

  “She’s not hunting.” Simone stared at me.

  “Hunting for what?”

  “You’re too young for that,” said Jake.

  “Youth is a prereq for wife-number-two, Jakey. She’s going to peak real soon,” Heather said, rubbing her lips. “You wouldn’t be the first to marry up.”

  “You’re just trying to get fucked by an old guy?” Jake asked.

  “You guys are terrible,” I said, getting hot and wondering what I had walked into. “Never fucking mind.”

  “No,” Simone said. She walked away from Jake and I thought I saw a trace of annoyance on him. I assumed that expression was for me. “I have a moment if you’re ready.”

  I nodded.

  “But no talking. And grab an extra napkin.”

  “For what?”

  “The Eriksons just sat on 36. You’ll see. Let’s start a sweep.”

  —

  WE STOOD at the top of the stairs, surveying the expertly coiffed heads of the guests spread below us.

  “In the early years the restaurant was surrounded by publishing houses and literary agencies that had moved down here for the cheaper rents. The Owner befriended them and we became the de facto headquarters for their lunch meetings. Many have moved elsewhere, chased out of here by inflated rents. But they have remained loyal, and we treat them accordingly.”

  She made tiny motions with her chin and eyebrows and directed my gaze toward different tables in the room. “Editors are soigné, midlevel employees you want to take note of. They generally ask for the same table as their bosses but we’re not always able to accommodate.

  “37, Richard LeBlanc, he’s an original investor, with his own venture capital firm. He’s more important because he and the Owner were roommates in college. 38, the architect Byron Porterfield with Paul Jackson, architecture critic for The New Yorker. 39, a sort of general Condé Nast table, today those gentlemen work at GQ. The man in sunglasses at 31 is the photographer Roland Chaplet, and the man whose eyes keep rolling back into his head is his gallerist Wally Frank. 33, Robert and Michael, you will notice a Vieux Télégraphe on the table, it’s Michael’s, never pour for Robert, he doesn’t drink. They just adopted a little girl from India, they bring her on Sundays, she’s an angel. 34, Patrick Behr, former editor at Saveur, incredible food writer, hmm, I hope Parker told Chef, they are drinking the…” She paused, having met Patrick’s eyes, and left me. My head spun.

  “Now the napkin,” she said when she returned. She led me toward table 36. “Good afternoon, Deborah, Clayton. What a pleasure. I’m glad we didn’t lose you to California.”

  “Always nicer leaving LA than arriving,” said Clayton, a fat man with an orange tan. His wife was long necked, razor thin, and wore big sunglasses.

  “Simone, tell me, is it possible to get the burger without the bun? Or have you come up with a gluten-free alternative?”

  “Deborah, let me see what I can do. Last time you had it wrapped in lettuce.”

  “In LA they call that ‘protein-style,’ ” she said.

  “Before you make any decisions, may I tell you about the specials?”

  While Simone pointed out the specials, Deborah took her napkin and put it on her lap. Simone handed her another one without pausing her recitation.

  “I don’t get it,” I said when we got back to the hutch.

  “She doesn’t eat. When service is over both napkins will be in the bathroom trash can, full of food.”

  “No way.” I looked back at the woman. “But…I mean…why come here? Why spend the money?”

  “Are you not listening to me?” Simone asked while entering orders into the computer. “Everyone is here because everyone else is here. It’s the cost of doing business.”

  —

  SIMONE’S TOUR further enforced that I was on a pedestal at the center of the universe, and perhaps Deborah Erikson’s extra napkin was the first stranger’s secret that I learned how to carry. The life of this woman was so insidiously but totally disturbed—and she was buffered from it by a staff of people, of which I was now one. After service I went to the tiny front bathroom and dug through the trash. French fries, four gnocchi, wilted lettuce, and an entire rare burger, the napkin stained with blood.

  —

  I STARTED WRITING letters to no one. I thought I was writing toward the center, a place that did nothing but receive. After I wrote them in my head I floated them toward the bridge and left them there for the wind to carry the rest of the way. They weren’t interesting enough to write down. It was just the feeling of conversation I was after.

  —

  I CURSED NICKY under my breath while I unloaded the boxes of glass-bottled water that we got from Italy. The bottles were shapely, green, exotic, weighed a ton. The offices were quiet and the door to Chef’s office was ajar.

  He was sleeping with his jaw cracked wide, head hanging off the back of his chair. A glass of brown liquor was in his lap, nestled against his stomach. It jiggled with each breath. He was red-faced and perspiring even in repose. His desk covered with yellow and blue invoices. A half-empty bottle of George T. Stagg bourbon was perched on his desk, still with the bow on it.

  Next to him was a stack of the night’s expired menus. He changed the specials every day. The mornings were filled with printing, with changes, edits. Behind him was a paper shredder, the bin half removed and overflowing. A four-foot-high trash can touching
the desk was full of paper. And here he was at midnight shredding what he had spent all day creating. I was touched by his sleep. The scope of his job expanded, it filled up the room. I leaned in farther and saw more, clusters of shredded dinner menus all over the floor, tumbleweeds, as tangled as hair.

  “I think it’s really good,” I said, and I closed the door.

  —

  WHEN I FELL DOWN the stairs I didn’t see it coming. There are falls that address you directly: You, young lady, are about to eat shit. The warning provides some opportunity for correction. This fall gave no such dispensation. It was predetermined and fact.

  I fell down the fucking stairs. As I stepped, my foot went through the stair as if it were air. There I was, full of momentum, carrying stacked plates in both hands, and hugging a mess of linens in my armpit. I stepped like I owned the stairs, until they disappeared. My clogs flew up and out. The load I was carrying meant I didn’t brace or catch myself.

  I came down hard and bounced to the last step. A full flight. I saw darkness. Gasps erupted all over the restaurant, chairs scraping the floor. When I opened my eyes the couple on table 40 looked at me with pity, but also an unmistakable resentment. I was an interruption.

  “Oh fuck,” I said. “Those fucking stairs.”

  Later I was told I screamed it.

  I tried to stand but my left side was completely numb. My breathing gave way to crying. I burrowed into it, like a child, self-pity and anger merging.

  Surrounded: Heather, Parker, Zoe, Simone. Even Jake’s absence wasn’t a consolation. Hands on my back. Santos with the broom and dustpan. Questions flying at me, someone telling me to quiet down. When Simone pulled strands of linguine out of my hair, I got up and limped to the guest bathroom. I slammed the door and lay on the floor and I said while crying, Enough.

  —

  “TERROIR?” Simone repeated. She lifted her eyes sleepily from her glass to the wine bottles that lined the back bar. “Earth. Literally, it translates into land.”

  “But it’s something else, whenever I look it up it’s always like this magical designation.”