“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 from 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.”