Sweetbitter

by Stephanie Danler

  Eugene slapped the table, thrilled. “This woman—when was that dinner? Six years ago? She never forgets! Best server in New York City. Don’t get mad, Samantha, you know you weren’t cut out for serving. Bring it out, Simone, but make sure to bring yourself a glass.”

  “With pleasure,” she said.

  —

  DID I DARE to compare them? Of course. My loyalty fierce but not blind. I struggled, wondering what categories they could justly compete in. The physical didn’t seem fair. I wasn’t mistaken, Simone shrank as soon as she greeted the table. And it wasn’t just that Samantha was taller and had posture like a steel rod ran the length of her spine. Simone’s shoulders had bowed like a stone had been hung around her neck. She was wearing her glasses, which gave her a slight but mean squint. The total effect was miserly, as if Samantha had sucked up all the grace in the room.

  Simone’s nails—I just noticed—were clean but dull and the edges were bitten. I could feel the jagged edges when they clamped onto my forearm and she said, “Watch my section, don’t move from it, I will find the Dauvissat.”

  Her bright eyes seemed peeled away from her head.

  “Maybe you should eat something real quick. Just a bite.” She was on day four.

  “I would appreciate it if you focused.”

  “What if they need something?”

  “They’re just guests. Get them whatever the fuck they want.”

  —

  AS IF I COULD stay away. Samantha took one sip of her full water glass and I materialized beside her to refill it. Heather was touching the table, she must have known them too, and she excused herself on my approach.

  “Hello,” she said, putting her hand on my arm to stop me from pouring. Her fingers glittered. “I’m Samantha. You’re a refreshing presence here. Heather says you’re the new girl.”

  “That’s what they call me.”

  “That’s what we called Samantha once,” Eugene said. “Eugene Davies.”

  “You worked here too?”

  “No, no.” He smiled politely. “I was a regular. Standing lunch on Fridays, but twice a week toward the end, when I was trying to capture this one.”

  Samantha smiled, putting all her buffed white teeth into it. Their pinkies were hooked around each other’s.

  “But,” Eugene continued, “when I asked Howard about her—I remember this perfectly—I said, ‘Who is that stunning brunette?’ and he said, ‘The new girl?’ And that’s always how I thought of her.”

  “So many years ago, stop!” They laughed, the way guests sometimes laughed or cried because they felt like there was a privacy curtain encircling their table. I was always watching this intimacy, these people revealing their petty, hopeful, or maybe in this case, genuine selves.

  “Do you miss it?” I asked.

  “The golden handcuffs? Besides the backbreaking labor and turning into a nocturnal zombie and the general cattiness.” She paused and appraised me as if I were about to go up for auction. “Of course I miss it. It’s family.”

  “Yes.” I felt a kinship with Samantha. I would with anyone who came in and announced that they had once worked at the restaurant. We shared—even if she had covered it up with jewelry and skin serums—a muscle memory. We had both broken down wine boxes in the cellar, we had both learned how to tell when Chef was heating up, we had the same aches in our necks and lower backs. “I feel really lucky.”

  “You are. You’ll never be luckier.” Her and Eugene’s touching pinkies blossomed into holding hands, and I wondered what she thought being lucky was. Their eyes moved off me and I knew Simone was coming back. She had the Dauvissat but something was wrong. On her way back up from the cellar she must have reapplied her lipstick. Just slightly, but definitively, she had veered off the mark.

  I backed away as she began presenting, something I had watched her do, wistfully, at all hours and from all angles. I looked at the Dauvissat, the yellowing label, its promise of history, of alchemy, of decadence, and the label was shaking in Simone’s unmanicured hands.

  —

  WITHIN TEN MINUTES of Samantha and Eugene bubbling out into a taxi Simone’s section was in disarray and she was nowhere to be seen. I got Heather to help me establish order. As soon as I had a second I found her in the wine room, a bread basket at her feet, thermos in her lap, breathing hard and taking little sips.

  “Simone, I need help in your section,” I said. “9 is pissed because they wanted the broccoli rabe and polenta sides and Chef doesn’t have a ticket, and I didn’t see it on hold, so maybe they didn’t order it, or maybe you forgot?”

  She stared at the wall and broke off a piece of flatbread. She crumbled it up. “It’s funny. The people you become.”

  I exhaled. “You need to get back upstairs.”

  “You think you’re making choices. But you’re not. Choices are being made against you.”

  “Should I get Jake?” It was like car alarms in my head, knowing that her section was falling to pieces, that guests were looking around the room for their server. I saw a red stain down the side of her shirt.

  “Did you spill wine?” My tone exposed my disgust. She was obviously not well. It had to be the cleanse. “Eat that bread,” I said forcefully. “Now.”

  She ate a square of focaccia, chewing timidly like a child trying a new food, like she might spit it out.

  “I’m getting you new stripes. What’s your combo?”

  She wasn’t catatonic—she tracked my words, they just didn’t puncture. The adrenalized immediacy of service, the force that kept the restaurant running, had completely drained from her person.

  “06-08-76.”

  I repeated the numbers as I ran up the stairs. Only when I started to input them did I think it might be a birthday. It was the 06—I remembered that Jake was a Gemini. I did not remember how I’d come to possess that knowledge. It seemed to have passed to me in the leaky drunken hours when information entered but didn’t adhere. Maybe this was Jake’s birthday—the 76 was a more accurate indicator than my half remembering that he was a Gemini.

  I thought of him waking up last June 8, thirty years old, and not knowing that I was weeks away. Neither of them had known I was coming. This June would be a culmination. I’d watch the English peas and sugar snaps come in, maybe I would get a bike and he could teach me how to ride in the city. And his birthday. Simone and I would plan a dinner, and he would be uncomfortable but happy. When I ran back into the cellar Simone was sitting stormily, glaring at the label on a bottle of Saint-Émilion.

  “Quick, quick.” I barreled past any formality left between us and unbuttoned her shirt. She let me. I forced it off her shoulders. As I did her arms went up and back and I saw a mark under her bra strap. “What’s that?”

  She lifted the band of her bra, dreamily, still unhurried.

  It was a tattoo of a key. Matching. Identical. It was in better condition than Jake’s and looked branded into her pale skin. Of course, I thought as I balled up her dirty stripes.

  “I didn’t take you for the type.” It looked ridiculous on her, like an accident. But it wasn’t. I wished it had been anything else. A butterfly, a star, a quote from Keats, a flippant tattoo. Now her body was an echo of Jake’s. No—his was an echo of hers. It was the first tattoo I had seen on him, back when he pulled me into the walk-in and opened oysters for me, before that body became familiar, before I could find all his tattoos in the dark. Would Jake and I ever have private moments, just the two of us?

  If I left her here in the basement the restaurant would be thrown into a tailspin. One bad night wouldn’t ruin her, but the staff would talk. It would be a fissure in her power. I ripped the dry cleaner’s plastic off the new shirt, hoping to feel capable again, craving order.

  “It’s a funny story actually.”

  “I can’t wait to hear it. Another time.” I threw the light-blue stripes at her. “You’re fucked up there, Simone. One more bite of bread, please.”

  The fresh shirt hadn’t r
evived her like I thought it would. She smelled stale, or maybe it was the wine room.

  “So 11 is mid-entrée, we’re running way behind for apps on 14 but drinks are down, I sold a Quintarelli, only the Valpolicella Classico, but not the worst sale, I know it’s Italy, but they insisted, maybe if you talk to Chef he can rush the food, I would go straight to 15, Heather was dropping the check for me.” I pulled her hand. She was breathing deeply. They were rough, lachrymal breaths that I knew all too well. “Hey. When are the asparagus coming?”

  Her eyes bounced to me.

  “With this weather?” she asked, consulting the ceiling. “Three weeks. Minimum.”

  “Oh yeah? You think it’s going to snow again?”

  I kept asking her questions she knew the answers to. Once she got on the floor she went straight to 15, smiled compulsorily, and snatched up the check.

  “We thought you went home,” Heather said. “In the future can I get some warning before you cleanse your spirit, darlin’? I’ll just plan on taking the whole dining room.” Simone didn’t acknowledge, apologize to, or thank her. I watched over Simone all night, but she was fine. Her tattoo faded from my mind as service beat on, relegated to the neglected file of weird, annoying shit about Jake and Simone. She got her normal tip average, an unfluctuating twenty-seven percent. The mechanics never failed.

  —

  “I THOUGHT YOU guys were such good friends,” Ariel said later that night. She was still halfheartedly punishing me for my absence from Park Bar. I told myself to be patient with her and Will, but I was willing to push it with her tonight.

  “Wasn’t Simone like the maid of honor?” Will asked. Vivian was pouring out tequila shots. “You wanna shot?”

  “Ugh,” I said. Jake was going to pick me up after he walked Simone home. I had no desire to get drunk, but it was the best shortcut to the reliable Park Bar intimacy. And, looking at them, I felt guilty. I was going to be a server. Howard had no idea how bad it was going to be for me. I couldn’t even imagine asking Ariel to get me something “on the fly” in that harried, bossy way the servers did. She was going to beat the shit out of me. “Maybe in a minute?”

  “All My Friends” came on, and Ariel made Terry turn it up. I thought she would grab me like she used to and pull me onto the floor to dance. It was our song when we were heading out into the night—the manic, dizzy piano introduction stretching us. The song was all promise—that this night would be different, or different enough.

  “You swallow you cunt,” said Sasha putting a shot in front of me.

  “But, hey guys, it’s our song,” I said. No one acknowledged me. Simone’s meltdown made me miss the simplicity of us getting fucked up together with no ulterior agenda. But I had an agenda now—a walk with Jake, a potential breakfast—things to stay sober for. I considered the shot. If I got too drunk I figured I could throw up before Jake got there. I took it and groaned.

  “It’s like Samantha represents the life she almost had with Mr. Bensen.”

  “Now what if he came in,” Will said, “what if he and his wife came in? That would make tonight look like a nonevent.”

  “Abandoning her section midrush—not exactly a nonevent.”

  “No, wait, guys,” I said. “Slow down.”

  “Oh, Bensen, the Silver Fox, I woulda done him, double shot.”

  “And it was like, out in the open, and Simone was putting in her notice without putting it in, like a six-month notice, but still.”

  “And what?”

  Will shrugged. “How does that phrase go? Married men always leave their wives?”

  “Oh,” I said. “That’s not how the phrase goes.”

  “Poof be gone,” Sasha said, and snapped his fingers. “You fuck the servant, you don’t take her to Connecticut, ’kay?”

  “I think Samantha lives in Connecticut.”

  “Bravo, doll,” Will said. “So a few years later, along comes Samantha—she and Simone fall hard for each other, like schoolgirl style.”

  “But Eugene and Samantha fall even harder. She wasn’t even here long enough to get a voucher. She and Simone had some bizarre falling-out after the wedding. It just broke Simone for a minute.”

  “Wait, Ari,” I said. “Simone doesn’t get broken. Especially by shit like that. She’s not like, looking to get married or get validated by a man. She’s in her own circle.”

  Ariel slammed her hand on the bar. “Are you fucking blind?”

  “Baby Monster, you need a bathroom break.”

  “It’s like you fucking own me,” I said to Sasha, standing up automatically and getting in line with him. I waved to Scott who sat in his corner.

  “Back at it?” he said. Mocking and cruel, as if he knew that I didn’t want to be here again, in a cycle of nothing nights.

  “Like riding a bike,” I said and turned to Sasha. “What about Jake?”

  “What about my Baby Jakey? He picking up all the Simone pieces like always.”

  “What about him and Samantha?”

  “Why you ask that?” He grabbed my chin and looked in my eyes.

  “She mentioned him,” I said. But that wasn’t it. It was that Simone was so upset by Samantha I felt like there had to be more to the story. A black aura of heartbreak shrouded Simone now. Her poems that no one read, her apartment that she could never leave, her expertise so niche it was skeletal. She hadn’t made a choice. Someone else had.

  We locked ourselves in the bathroom and he took out his bag. “Sugar Face, you better off just assuming that Jake fucked everyone. Where’s your key?”

  “Sasha, when are you going to be happy for me? Also I don’t have a key on me.”

  “Oh look who all grown up!” He pulled out his wine key and took a bump and handed it to me. “You know, you the worst kind, you want to marry the artist and live like squalor, but you wait, in five years you be like, Baby Jake why we eat ramen noodles every night? You a hustler, don’t blind me, I see.”

  The cocaine was an illumination, the bathroom florid, filtered. When I looked at our reflection in the mirror we looked like a photograph. I could see that we were just playing. The degree to which I took myself seriously was laughable. “God, Sasha, it’s so dark here. You guys are so fucking dark. Do you not see that?”

  “Oh, Baby Monster, please show me the light!”

  “I’m just saying it doesn’t have to be like this.” I checked his nose and teeth for him and lifted my head for him to do the same. He flicked something off my nose and I grabbed his face and kissed him on both cheeks. “This isn’t Mother Russia. It’s America. We believe in happy endings.”

  “Get me the phone, lemme me call my mama, Jesus fucking Christ, ’cause now I really fucking heard everything.”

  III

  THE HUNGRY GAP appeared, spreading like a rattled plane in front of us. We extended our use of the word local, bringing up soft-shell crab and asparagus from Virginia, blood oranges from Florida. The guests, the cooks, all of us anxious, still shell-shocked from winter and bucking against the restraints. It wasn’t spring fever, not yet. We didn’t fully have faith that it was coming but we had no choice but to move forward into the protracted promises.

  The sun came out for a moment. I stopped and stared at the ends of the branches, willing them to bud. I had just left the Guggenheim and clouds blindfolded the sun again as I walked toward the train. I felt like a stranger again, like I could disappear into any intractable diner or bodega or train station.

  I got out at Grand Central, hallowed ground of anonymity and flux, and followed signs for the Oyster Bar. It was a strange impulse—he had been saying that he was going to take me, it was one of his favorites. I don’t know whether it was a Kandinsky or a Klee that gave me a curious detachment from my life, but I decided not to wait for him. Simone assured me it was an old wives’ tale, but someone said that you were only supposed to eat oysters during months with an r in it. So maybe it was the impending warmth, the loss of the chilly r months, but I knew I should ta
ke myself to lunch.

  I got the last seat at the low counter, under a vaulted dome of tiles. I was prepared with my book but I stared at the ceiling instead, inhaled the velvet scent of shellfish and butter, watched the servers and busboys, then looked at the guests, slowly realizing that I was singular in the room. I had nothing in common with the suits and their lunch breaks and BlackBerrys. I belonged, but not because of my age or my clothes. I belonged because I spoke the restaurant language.

  “Excuse me,” said the man sitting next to me. He was midway through a bowl of clam chowder. He was broad shouldered and fine featured, and I did a double take because he had blue eyes. I raised my eyebrows at him.

  “I know you from somewhere.”

  “Oh yeah?” I put my eyes back on my menu.

  “Pardon me, I thought you were someone I know, a French friend.”

  “You have a friend who looks like me?”

  The waitress came up and stood in front of me silently, pen and notepad ready.

  “Can I get six Beausoleil, six Fanny Bay to start, and I’ll move on from there. Um”—I flipped the menu around, scanning, not wanting to waste her time—“you have a Chablis by the glass, yes? You can pick.”

  She nodded and walked away, and I fished into my purse for my book.

  “You’re an actress then. I know I’ve seen you somewhere.”

  “I’m a waitress. You’ve seen me everywhere.”

  “You’re going to eat all those oysters alone?” he asked, smiling.

  “And then some.” I sighed. It was a hazard of my job—or maybe it was my nature, maybe that’s what they’d hired me for—that I was too hospitable to strangers. On street corners, in bars, in line, I felt a duty to entertain, as if I were clocked in. I didn’t know how to be uninviting. I put my book up.

  “What are you reading?”

  “Okay.” I folded my hands. “I know it’s quiet at your job. You sit in silence at your computer and when you do talk nobody listens to you, so I understand the need to impose yourself on whatever docile-looking female you find yourself in front of, but let me tell you about my job. It’s loud. I lose my voice I talk so much. And people look at me, and they stop me, pretending they know me, they say, Let me guess, are you French, and I shake my head and smile and they say, Are you Swedish? And I shake my head and smile and so on. But this is my day off. I just want quiet. If you want someone to put up with you, may I suggest your waitress because that is li-ter-ally what you’re paying her to do right now.”