Will was an excellent food runner, with his Yes-Chef-No-Chef military mentality, his eyes-to-ground focus. So while he was a backwaiter, he also had some loyalties in the kitchen, which he exhibited in several annoying ways, such as partaking in kitchen beer, and complaining about “FOH” as if he weren’t one of the front of house.
Ariel loved the freedom of being dining room backwaiter. She waltzed around, picking up a few plates, topping off a few waters, polishing a few knives and nudging them into place on the newly set table with first a look of pinched frustration, and then placidity when it came together. And while this wasn’t true of all backwaiters, Ariel was generally trusted to talk to the guests. If the rest of us so much as said “Hello” to a table, a scolding was sure to follow.
Sasha was too good at his job to stay still. He got bored easily. If you put him in the kitchen, he could run your plates, drop off ice at the bar, and bus two tables on his way back in—all in the same amount of time it took me to find position 3 at table 31. It worked against him—I saw Ariel, Will, even the servers slack when they were on with him.
Which left me. For several reasons I gravitated toward the bar. First, because I noticed that there was a spot open to be the beverage runner. Second, because I had an aptitude for beverage running, cultivated over many years making hearts in mediocre lattes. The third reason was that it was a chance to get away from Chef in the kitchen. The fourth, or first, or only reason was that Jake was a bartender.
I assisted the servers in delivering their drinks to tables. I assisted the bartenders in keeping their bar stocked. I brought up crates of wine and beer, buckets of ice, ran the glass racks, the bar bus tubs, polished the glasses. If you were slow, the drinks were slow, and if the drinks were slow, the turn times lagged and we made less money. And then, about an hour and a half into each turn, the first espresso ticket would print. And then I was under it for the next thirty minutes.
At the end of the night the bartender made a stocking list and I put the whole thing back together again. Some people dreaded beverage running because it was a pure shit show for most of the night—you got hit with the drinks on the initial rush and the coffee on the tail end. Yes, my neck, my hands, my legs hurt. I loved it.
There was only one problem with my new position. The manual labor, the coffee—fine, that was the forty-nine percent of it. The fifty-one percent of beverage running was wine knowledge.
—
“APPETITE IS NOT a symptom,” Simone said when I complained of being hungry. “It cannot be cured. It’s a state of being, and like most, has its attendant moral consequences.”
—
THE FIRST OYSTER WAS a cold lozenge to push past, to push down, to take behind the taste buds in the back hollow of the throat. Nobody had to tell me this—I was the oyster virgin, my fear told me what to do when the small wet stone came into my mouth.
“Wellfleet,” someone said.
“No, too small.”
“PEI.”
“Yeah, some cream.”
“But so briny.”
Briny. PEI. A code. I took a second oyster in my hand, inspected it. The shell was sharp, sculptural, a container naturally molded to its contents, like skin. The oyster flinched.
I suspended it on my tongue this time. Briny means salty. It means made by the ocean, it means breathing seawater. Metallic, musky, kelp. My mouth like a fishing wharf. Jake was on his third, flipping the shells over onto the ice. Swallow, now.
“I’m going West Coast, it’s too creamy,” someone said.
“But clean.”
“Kumamotos. Washington, right?” he said.
“He’s right,” said Zoe, smiling like a fool for him.
I wrote it down. I heard him say, “Do you like them?”
I was sure he was talking to me but I pretended to be confused. Me? Do I like them? I had no idea. I took gulps of water. The taste stayed. In the locker room I brushed my teeth twice, stuck my tongue out to the mirror, wondering when the residue would go away.
—
THAT SUNDAY AFTERNOON I was positive Mrs. Neely was dead, that she had died at table 13. I stayed away but kept her in my vision until another server went and revived her. She asked for more sherry for her soup. A shot glass for her soup, a glassful for herself.
She was nearing ninety, born and still living in Harlem. She took the bus down to Union Square every Sunday in stockings, high heels, and a hat. She had a burgundy pillbox with silk flowers, and a cornflower-blue fascinator edged in lace. She had been a Rockette at Radio City Music Hall.
“That’s why I still have these legs,” she said, pulling her skirt up to her thighs.
“I dined at Le Pavillon. Henri Soulé, that bastard, he ran the door like a dictator. But I went, everyone went. Even the Kennedys went. Child, you don’t remember. But I remember. They really cooked your food back then. Where’s the cream, I say. The butter, the green beans, honey, you didn’t even need to chew.”
“I wish I could have been there,” I said.
“The haute cuisine, it’s done, it’s dead. Al dente. That’s what they do now.” She paused and looked around the table. “Did my soup come?”
“Um. Yes.” I had cleared it myself ten minutes ago.
“Now, I haven’t had my soup yet. I need my soup.”
“Mrs. Neely,” I whispered stupidly, “you already had the soup.”
Suddenly Simone was beside me, sweeping away my inefficiencies, making me irrelevant. I drew back as Mrs. Neely narrowed in on Simone.
“Tell the chef I’d like my soup now.”
“Absolutely, Mrs. Neely. May I bring you anything else?”
“Oh you look tired. I think you would do to drink a little old wine. Some good old wine, like some sherry.”
Simone laughed, her cheeks colored. “I think that’s exactly what I need.”
—
PARTLY IN THE HANDBOOK, but mostly just understood: You could sleep with anyone, except those above you. You couldn’t sleep with anyone on salary. Anyone that could hire or fire you. You could sleep with anyone on your level. All the hourlies.
Anything slightly more romantic than sex had to be disclosed to Howard, but the sex passed freely below the surface.
I asked Heather about her and Parker. She wore a small vintage engagement ring—his grandmother’s—but they hadn’t set a date yet.
“Parker? Oh, I remember my first trail, seeing him from down the bar, and I said, Oh lord, look at Trouble. We were both betrothed to other people. He was engaged to—I’m not kidding—a Debbie Sugarbaker from Jackson, Mississippi, a lawyer-something, plain as white bread. Don’t you ever tell him I told you. Once we started talking, I thought, Here we go. My real life is coming for me, gunning at me like a train.”
“Wow,” I said. My life, my train.
“This place is a love shack, darlin’. Try to keep your panties on.”
—
THE INTERIOR OF Park Bar was dark and the decorations minimal. But watching over us, high up near the ceiling, was a huge reproduction of a painting that felt familiar. I told them I’d seen it before but that might have been a lie. Two boxers in a ring, midconflict, midinjury. Action everywhere, blows landing, receding. Except the faces. The two boxers’ faces were blurred together, one solid mass.
Will had finally asked me to join them for a post-shift-drink drink, or Shift Drink Part Two. I hung close to him while Nicky locked up the restaurant. People said their good-byes, discussed which trains were running, flagged down cabs. I remembered Ariel’s voice daring me—“It isn’t two yet”—and I checked my phone: 2:15 a.m. They headed into the parking garage across the street from us. Oh do you have a car? I asked. Will said, No, we’re going to Park Bar. Ariel hummed into the echo. We walked farther underground. Rubber soles on cement, oil stains, gasoline fumes. The guard waved to Will. We ascended and we were on Fifteenth Street under a huge lit-up sign that said PARK. And there was, indeed, a bar.