“All beliefs are a choice,” he said. He rolled his bike and I walked next to it.
“That’s really deep, Jake.” I loaded it up with sarcasm, but what I thought was, You’re romantic.
Raindrops perched on his eyebrows, on the lenses of his glasses, on his ears. I was suddenly very sober and scared.
“Are we going to Park Bar?”
“Is that the only bar you’ve been to?”
“Um, no.” Yes, more or less.
“I’m taking you to dinner.”
He’s taking me to dinner. I watched my feet until my laughter made it impossible, and I covered my mouth.
“I am,” he said, “why are you laughing?”
“You’re taking me to dinner?”
“Are you a fucking parrot? Stop repeating everything I say.” But he couldn’t finish it. He laughed.
“Jake, I would looooove to go to dinner with you.” Heads down, frizzy rain, rocking with laughter. It wasn’t funny but it took some time to stop appearing that way. When it ended we looked away from each other and I stared into ground-floor apartments. I bumped into the bike.
I wondered if we were going to the restaurant. All the servers got vouchers, monthly allowances that you could spend or accrue. I would get one too after I’d been there six months. It was such an incongruity to see your coworkers sit at the bar. They treated themselves like royalty with their fake money, ordering everything on the menu, rubbing elbows with the regulars, sharing their bottles of Burgundy. It scared me to think about—watching from the other side. Watching the bar tickets drag, knowing that Chef was screaming at someone about my entrée, watching Howard, or god forbid Simone, going over my order with the server, while I was drinking or talking with my mouth full.
But what if Jake opened the door for me? What if the hostess’s eyes flashed when she saw him, and then settled on me? Her disappointment would be so satisfying. I would let Jake order. I watched the oyster plate drop down in front of us, Nicky bringing out two Negronis. Then that anchovy-and-escarole salad everyone talked about, Chef would probably send out the foie gras torchon with candied kumquats, Simone would want us to drink Sauternes with that, she always dropped off half glasses to her soigné tables. Every time I rose from my seat a backwaiter would come and refold and fan my napkin, and Jake would look marvelously unkempt without his stripes, like a wealthy degenerate and I would be— “I have a thing about shitty diners,” he said. He stopped in front of the plate-glass windows and gaudy lights of a diner somewhere on Sixth Avenue. He pulled open a door and said, “I love them.”
A half-moon, radiating yellow, revolved above us, but the sign had so much sparkling plumage I couldn’t read the name of the place. There were a few others inside, a nondescript trench coat at the bar, an older couple in a booth. Jake took me to the counter, to the corner, and jumped on the stool while I tried to flatten my hair. He pulled off his soaked green army jacket and his shirtsleeves were short enough that I could see tattoos. There was the key on the inside of his biceps, which I saw now was heavily scarred, the bottom of a buffalo that I assumed covered his shoulder. The tail fins of what I assumed was a mermaid descending down the back of his right biceps.
“That one doesn’t look like the others,” I said, pointing to the key.
“Yeah, it fell out partially.” He pulled down his shirtsleeve.
“The key to your heart?” I asked playfully, stupidly.
“Sure, princess,” he said. He scanned the menu and I shut up.
To our right sat a couple not much older than me. She had long, ironed platinum hair, with sooty roots. She wore a fake flower crown. The guy was so hairy I couldn’t make out his face. Bearded, long hair sticking out from under a woolen cap, wearing red-and-black flannel. They looked familiar to me, probably from my neighborhood.
“I think they were at the show,” I said.
Jake looked visibly pained. “They are everywhere.”
“Says the guy with American Spirit cigarettes and the bike.”
A terse smile. “Did someone learn what a hipster is? Very good, new girl.”
What I knew was that they lived in Williamsburg and the label was pejorative. And I knew that I would never be one. Even in my leather jacket, I couldn’t blend in. I cared too much about the wrong things. The waitress behind the counter threw two giant menus at us and walked away.
“No specials?”
Jake studied the menu. When she came back he ordered us both black coffees and Coors Lights.
“Steak and eggs,” he said. He waited for me. I hadn’t even looked.
“What’s good?” I asked her.
“Nothing,” she said and smiled. She was firmly into her fifties, pillowy, and had drawn Egyptian cat eyes with black eyeliner through her wrinkles.
“A turkey club, I guess,” I said. “Is that a good choice?”
She took our menus. Jake didn’t look at me, like he thought he’d made a mistake. I told myself to just be normal, casual, two friends at a diner, totally cool.
“She was enthusiastic. How was home?” I asked, not meeting his eyes.
“Home?”
“For Thanksgiving?”
“Fucking brutal per usual. There’s a reason there’s so many suicides out there during the winter.”
“But you got to see your family?”
“I don’t have any family. I go to Simone’s.”
I had a dozen questions to ask: What does that mean? What happened to your family? What is Simone’s family? Why didn’t you stay here? I finally said, “I don’t have any family either.”
“Should I believe that? A little Jane Eyre alone in the world?”
“I thought you didn’t flirt with girls who read.”
He coughed and said, “I’m not.”
A month ago I had seen Jake eat a steak topped with foie gras. The cooks made fun of him behind his back because he was thin, and made him disgustingly decadent food as a dare. He ate nonstop while he worked, but I held a certain regard for his palate because of Simone. Then I watched him wolf down a cindery steak and eggs at midnight and I realized he was a brute who was always hungry. He was the master of indifference and she was the master of attention.
“So,” I said, grinding the cardboard sandwich down into the plate. “When did you move here?”
“Seven, eight years ago? I don’t know, I can’t remember.”
“And you’ve been at the restaurant the whole time?”
“About five years too long.”
“You don’t like it.”
“These places have a shelf life.”
“But no one leaves.”
He shook his head rather sadly. “No one leaves.”
He pushed my coffee toward me and I sipped—weak, watery.
“Cinnamon—am I right, Nancy?” he said to the waitress. She ignored him. “They put cinnamon in the blend.”
“I don’t think her name is Nancy.” I pushed the coffee away.
“A snob already? That was quick.”
“No.”
I picked the white bread out of the sandwich, dipped it in the mayonnaise, and crumbled up bacon with my fingers. Inedible, but I probably couldn’t have touched it anyway. So many times I imagined this, and now that I was living it, I couldn’t fit myself into the scene. I glanced at Flower-Crown and Lumberjack as they got ready to leave. I tried to see us through her eyes. I tried to see us as a couple that always ate at these stools, us inside an Edward Hopper painting.
“So,” I said. His eyes were on his rapidly disappearing food. “What neighborhood do you live in? Do you like it?”
“Are you interviewing me?”
“Um, I wasn’t trying—”
“No, it’s fine, I get it. Just let me put on my suit if you want to play.” He tucked his hair behind his ears and cleared his throat. “The time in my life that best exemplifies my totalitarian—I mean, hospitalitarian—attitude was when I carried drunk old Neely—”
“Okay, I get it. You don’t want to tell me where you live.” He went back to his food. “You carried Mrs. Neely?”
“Many a time, many a time. She’s as light as a feather.” He cleaned his plate completely, pushed it away. He burped and turned to me. Finally. “Chinatown.”
“That’s cool. I hear it’s really cool down there.”
“Cool?”