No one asked me if I did coke. Ariel asked me if I wanted a treat and I said sure. I had done it seemed to be the same as I do it. I caught the subtext that everyone did a little bit of coke and nobody had a problem. If I had any inclination to think about it the noise in Park Bar ran right over it. It was crowded and Will and Ariel knew everyone.
Scott and the cooks held up a table in the corner. I recognized some of the prep guys. We moved toward the table and I set my purse by them just like Ariel. I saw people that had been cut earlier, people who worked the a.m. Ariel pointed to different tables and said, “Blue Water, Gotham, Gramercy, some retards from Babbo, and so on.” I nodded.
Will held on to my elbow as we made our way to the bar, where Sasha sat next to a Dominican man with huge diamond stud earrings.
“Oh look who finally graced us from her present!” Sasha said, and shocked me by kissing me on both cheeks. The other man introduced himself as “Carlos-at-your-service.” He was a busboy at Blue Water Grill and he sold drugs to every server within a ten-block radius.
The line for the bathroom ran in humid pairs, some ear-piercingly loud, some whispering as they waited. It wound around the room. After two sips of my beer, Ariel took my hand and we joined the line. When our turn came, we shut a flimsy door, hooked it, and locked the handle. She dipped a key into a small plastic bag and handed it to me. Someone banged on the door.
“Wait your fucking turn motherfucker!” she screamed. She dug the key around and took a bump herself.
“What do you think of Vivian?”
“The one Scott was talking about?”
“Don’t listen to him. He’s lying, they’re all fucking homophobes.”
“She’s pretty,” I said. “She has great tits? I don’t know. I don’t feel anything. Can I have some more?” Ariel handed me the bag and I pyramided up the powder. “Are you gay gay or just half gay?”
“Jesus, you’re something. Where do you come from? Okay, stick this in your mouth.”
She stuck the key in my mouth like a pacifier. It tasted like battery acid and salt.
“You good babe? How do I look? Torrid? Like a natural disaster?” She ruffled her hair up like she’d been in an electrical storm. I nodded. She kissed me on the forehead, and where she kissed tightened, first in my skin, then in my skull, then in my brain. A saccharine, sentimental drip ran down my throat, and I was blinded by how stupid I had been not to see that everything was absolutely, one hundred percent going to be okay.
The boxers panted furiously above my head, I could hear them: let me go, let me go. They put on Abbey Road and I wanted to tell everyone at the bar about how for my sixth birthday I knew I wouldn’t have a party because my father didn’t believe in birthdays but I stole two pastel Hallmark invitations from the grocery store by slipping them into the back of my jeans and I used all my colored pencils to decorate them and addressed one to John Lennon and one to my mother, asking them to please come to my house for tea on my birthday, and the night before my birthday I put them in the empty planter next to the front door and I went inside and I prayed on my knees next to my bed and I begged God to come and deliver the invitations to John Lennon and my mother, I promised him I would never cry again, I would always finish my dinner, and I wouldn’t even ask for another birthday for the rest of my life, and I went to bed holding an unendurable, trembling joy in my arms, thanking God for his hard work tracking the two of them down, thanking him for knowing how badly I needed them, and when I woke in the morning and the cards were in the planter, wet and mushy, I threw them away and I didn’t cry in front of my father, but later in school I started crying at my desk and couldn’t stop and they sent me to the nurse and I told her I knew that God didn’t exist and they called my father to come pick me up, and I heard the nurse arguing with him and then she said to him, exasperated, “Do you know that today is her birthday?”
Instead I said, my voice coming out of me with brusque clarity: “On certain days, I forget why I came here.” They nodded empathetically. “Do I need to justify myself all the time? Justify myself for being alive and wanting more?”
They introduced me to Terry, who bartered free drinks for free bumps. He was pushing forty, his hair balding from the top down so it was still long on the bottom, and he tucked it obsessively behind his ears. He raged like a bull in a pen back there, flirting, singing, snapping at the bar back. When I was introduced he pointed to his cheek so I kissed him and he gave me a beer.
He said, “On this day in 1864, General Grant surveyed General Lee’s army and knew he was sending his men to their deaths. He told his soldiers, There will be no surrender, gentlemen. And we think we have it rough.”
I thought, Is that even true? But instead I said, “At least they had something to fight for.”
He shrugged. “I may have made some bad life choices. Who can tell?”
A dagger of morning prowled outside the open windows. The air revived itself, my bones braced like something new was coming. We reentered the line for the bathroom, passing the bag between our back pockets, our hands lingering longer, a feeling of clouds, ominous, pads of melancholy on our fingertips, impending headaches….Mundane, yes, but thrilling to me, all of it.
—
“ALL RIGHT. What is Sancerre?” Simone’s brown eyes, serpentine.
“Sauvignon Blanc,” I answered, my hands crossed in front of me on the table.
“What is Sancerre?”
“Sancerre…” I shut my eyes.
“Look at France,” she whispered. “Wine starts with the map.”
“It’s an appellation in the Loire Valley. They are famous for Sauvignon Blanc.”
“More. Put the pieces together. What is it?”
“It’s misunderstood.”
“Why?”
“Because people think Sauvignon Blanc is fruity.”
“It is not fruity?”
“No, it is. It’s fruity, right? But it’s also not? And people think you can grow it anywhere, but you can’t. Popularity is a mixed blessing?”
“Continue.”
“The Loire is at the top. It’s colder.” She nodded and I continued. “And Sauvignon Blanc likes that it’s cold.”
“Colder climates mean a longer growing season. When the grape takes a longer time to ripen.”
“It is more delicate. And has more minerality. It’s like Sancerre is the grape’s true home?”
I waited for affirmation or correction. I did not know half of what I’d said. I think she pitied me, but I received a grim smile and, finally, a half glass of Sancerre.
—
AFTER SERVICE the dishwashers rolled up the sticky bar mats and the smell of rot rose from the blackened grout in the tiles. The kitchen was a hollow amphitheater of stainless steel, still, but holding the aftereffects of the fires and banging and shouting.
The kitchen boys were scrubbing every surface, rubbing out the night. Two servers sat on the lowboy, eating pickled red onions from a metal tin. Leftover ice cream sat on the bread station, turning to soup.
“Hey, new girl, I’m in here.”
Me? Jake was in the doorway of a walk-in. He had a cup full of lemon wedges in his hand. His apron was streaked with wine, his shirtsleeves were rolled high and I could see his veins.
“Are you allowed to be in there?” What I meant is, Do you ever think about me the way I think about you?
“Did you like them? The oysters?”
When he said the word oysters, their flavor flamed on my tongue, as if it had been lying dormant.
“Yes. I think I do.”
“Come in here.” His tattoos showed themselves as he pressed the door open wider. I passed under his arm, looking back to make sure Simone wasn’t watching. I had never been in any space alone with him.
“Are we going to get locked in?” What I meant is, I’m scared.
Inside there were two open beers, the Schneider Weisse Aventinus, a bottle I’d pulled for the bar but never tasted. The beers were propped against a cardboard box labeled Greens but filled with littleneck clams. We were in the seafood closet. Crimson tuna fillets, marbled salmon sides, snowy cod. The air nipped at my skin, smelling like the barest trace of the sea.