“No, that’s not what I’m saying. I’m sorry if I did anything.”
“Sorry you did what? Which part?” Will thought we were flirting. I didn’t know when exactly my guard had lowered with him, it had been high since his confession in the Park Bar bathroom, but it had been whittled away by time, cocaine, and beer. And work had been lusterless since they left.
“I don’t even know, Will. I don’t remember a thing.”
“Ah,” he said. He stood up. “Chef threw them out.”
“What?”
“Yesterday. Every year whatever is left out over the holiday gets thrown out. There’s a note on the bulletin board. Check the trash cans in the alley. Maybe the garbage hasn’t been picked up yet.”
I stared at him as he left. “Sorry,” he said, “you should have told the maid.”
And there they were. Three bags into my search, with curdled milk and clotted food and disintegrating paper towels.
—
THE FLOOR DRAIN under the sink was the fountainhead. Decomposing fruit, crusts of bread, wine dregs, and general backwash congealed to an opaque gray slime. It seemed ridiculous that we didn’t know about it sooner, as water barely passed through it. This slime, this primordial sludge, was the home base for all sorts of insects that weren’t allowed in the restaurant. Namely the fruit flies.
They weren’t so menacing in and of themselves. But they had a disturbing blind tenacity when they landed. They moved away in thick clusters when you swatted them and then settled again in the exact same spot. I had nightmares about them landing in my hair, covering my face.
I told Zoe the first time. She nodded and nothing happened. Then it was my turn again for the drain side work and I marched up to the office where she was picking at a filet mignon of tuna.
“Zoe, I can’t clean that drain.”
“What drain?” she asked.
“The drain. The one I told you about, the disgusting one where the fruit flies live.”
“You never told me that.”
“Yes I did, it was like weeks ago.”
“No one said anything to me.” She stood up, annoyed, and straightened her blazer. “We can’t solve problems if we don’t work together. I need you to perform your side work, and inform management if you’re not able to.”
Never once had I thought of her as a real authority figure. She was Howard and Simone’s puppet, the poor desk slave who made sure the drop was correct and had to arrange the server schedule every week. Which meant everyone hated her.
“I’m very sorry, but I did inform management. You can’t pay me enough to touch that.” I laid the yellow gloves down. “You should see for yourself.”
Maybe it was because Simone was gone, or maybe I was worn a little thin. I thought for a second she would write me up. But she shrugged her shoulders and shook them, like she was warming her body up. She picked up the yellow gloves.
“The bar sink?”
When we got downstairs Nicky was rinsing down and wiping out the speed rack, one of the last steps of closing. He saw Zoe’s gloves and said, “I wouldn’t disturb them. Can this wait five minutes?”
“No, I’ve been informed of a serious situation.”
“Yeah, like a month ago, Zoe—”
“Enough.” She put a hand up. She went behind the bar and grabbed a flashlight and a fork. I don’t know what the fork was for—protection? She sank down and two seconds later, she screamed, covering her face. They soared up in a cloud and I sprinted back into the kitchen.
—
SOME NIGHTS if Terry was feeling particularly loose, he let Ariel put on her music while we cut lines on the bar and helped him put up the stools.
“Did I tell you the one about polar bears?” he asked. I finished my line and passed him my cut-up pen.
“Yes, the canned peas.”
“Shit, you need to get a new bar.”
“You need to get new jokes, old man.”
He passed it to Sasha. Ariel stood looking out the windows, her body tense. Vivian was supposed to meet us two hours ago. I wiped my nose. Every muscle in my body clenched then released and my legs gave out. I sank, and then sat on the floor.
“Whoa,” I said. “It’s strong.”
“Who gonna take care of Baby Monster tonight? Not me, I have a date in twenty minutes.”
“You have a date at four a.m.?” Terry asked.
“I say to him four fifteen,” Sasha said, checking the clock. “You think too early-ish?”
“Terry, can we get one more?” Ariel asked. Her eyeliner made black notches in her face.
“Ari, come on, I’m all cleaned up.”
“I’ll make it, I’ll clean it, come on, Skip here is tripping her face off, we all need to wind down.”
Terry looked toward the street and he and Ariel exchanged a loaded glance.
“I’m not tripping my face off. I’m cool,” I said from the floor. My palms were sweating and it was delicious, running them on the cold, gritty tile.
“Negronis!” Ariel demanded, pushing behind the bar.
“Wait, you guys, wait, show me!” I bolted up. I pulled down a stool, and it felt so light.
“The lesson is thirds,” she said as she poured Campari into a jigger. She locked her eyes on me and said in a low voice, “And of course, it is a lesson of life as well.”
They started laughing.
“Stop guys, don’t make fun of her. Thirds is an important lesson! Like a cappuccino,” I said. “I mean, ideally, the perfect cappuccino, it’s one-third espresso, one-third milk, one-third foam, but I mean, ideally, you want the foam and the milk to be perfectly integrated, um, aerated actually—”
“There she is,” said Will. He pulled down a stool and sat next to me and I hugged him, generously, an overflow of the love I had burrowed within me and needed the drugs to interpret.
“Now she got diarrhea in her mouth,” Sasha said.
“No, wait, guys, it’s a lesson—”
“The lesson of thirds,” said Terry. “I ever tell you guys about the two German girls I took home? It wasn’t as fun as you would think. Even before the gonorrhea.”
“One time I took too much Special K and ended up with two fat, ugly motherfuckers, not a good time,” Sasha said and pointed at me. “Don’t touch that shit.”
“Threes, threes, the three amigos,” I said. “No, sorry, the five amigos.”
“Jesus, Skip, will you shut up and make a pretty little line.” Ariel scrolled through her iPod. “Then we’re done.”
“Are you high?” I asked Ariel. I turned to Will and Sasha. “Wait, are you high? Is anyone high?” I made the line the way she taught me, about the length of a cigarette, evenly distributed with sharp, tapered ends. “I’m high.”
Ariel passed me a Negroni and it tasted like cough syrup. “Medicine. Hey guys, I think I hate my job.” They laughed. “No I’m serious, isn’t it kinda depressing and dirty in there lately?”
“What you think, everyone look, Alice just wake up and oh fuck, no wonderland.”
“Maybe you should hit the pause button every now and then,” Will said, and I turned away from him.
“I’m putting on your favorite song, Skip.”
Ariel was aggressive about music. She had made me a few CD mixes, the depths of my ignorance presented in sixteen tracks. It never ended well. For her, the enjoyment of music was contingent on its obscurity. Once people knew about it, she discarded it, moved on. And yet she was always trying to educate me. Every time I told her I liked a song she had shown me, she put on a disappointed smirk and said, “You would.” Which I thought had been the point.
“You don’t know my favorite song,” I said. When I caught her eyes they were like rain-washed windows I couldn’t see inside. Worry fluttered through me and I took another drink.
“No LCD,” Terry said, hitting his hand on the bar for emphasis.
“I will shoot myself, Ari,” said Will.
“Fuck you, fuck your mothers, if you talk shit on James Murphy I will fucking kill you.”
The song came on. “Heartbeats.” I clapped my hands.
“Oh, I do like this song!”