“Don’t pass that along to the Owner.” He wasn’t insulted. He was interested. “You and Simone…don’t tell me this is a story about a boy.”
“It’s not. It is, but it’s not. It’s about me. Come on, Howard,” I said, leaning back, trying it out. “I know you don’t like Jake or he doesn’t like you or whatever. And I know you and Simone are whatever, friends. But I should be a server here. I know plenty of people doing things that they could be fired for immediately. It’s not even the drinking and the drugs and the theft. It says in the handbook that if you’re more than fifteen minutes late three times then you are to be fired. No one would blame you. Certain people who have been showing up thirty minutes late for years…”
“Tess!” He laughed. “You’re out for blood.”
“I’m not. I know you won’t do it. Firing him would be firing two people. But let me tell you, Howard, from the inside, that stagnant water stinks. It’s just a fact. And this restaurant isn’t getting any younger. We have real problems, the walls are crumbling, the food is stale, and yes, people still come, but because of nostalgia. They aren’t excited to eat here. Now some fresh blood—some unjaded servers who actually fucking care—wouldn’t hurt the atmosphere, the reputation, or the bottom line.” I finished my drink again. “But you know all this.”
“I like to hear you say it.” He refilled me.
“You might be the only restaurant manager who has leather-bound Freud in his office.”
“I consider it an instruction manual.”
We were silent while I scanned his books.
“You wanted to be something else? An analyst? Anthropologist? Architect?”
“Why do you ask?”
“The same reason everyone asks. You couldn’t possibly choose this job, you must have fallen into it accidentally.”
“And yet here you are.”
“Here we are.”
We fell into silence again and I felt like I was running out of time. All my wants crowded forward. I wanted an ally. I wanted my job. I wanted to hurt them. Someone knocked—Misha poked her head in.
“I’m leaving,” she said awkwardly, looking at me.
“Okay,” I said.
“Excuse me one moment, Tess,” Howard said, straightening his tie.
When he left I stood up over his desk, scanning the papers for any edges of her script. It was just a few days ago that I’d found the vacation request. What if I hadn’t found it? No fight with Jake, no night of self-abuse, no fever, no truth. I would be downstairs right now revisiting the Pouilly Fumé. When were they going to tell me?
I heard the door handle and I took my seat again.
“Are you going to place Misha?” It was a card I was unsure about playing, but I couldn’t take it back.
“Misha?” he asked without concern. “As far as I know, she’s content where she is.”
“Oh, I just thought I read in the handbook about like, sexual congress between management and staff not being allowed, blah blah. I don’t know.”
“I believe that is how the rule goes.” He glanced at a clock on his desk. “Do you mind if we pause this meeting? I still have a few hours of work, but I’d like to come to a satisfactory conclusion about your prospects, maybe even a plan for the upcoming months.”
“Um, okay.” I felt like a failure. “I’m the three p.m. tomorrow.”
“You can meet me back here at one.”
“One a.m.?” I exhaled. “Okay.” My mind spiraled. “I mean they might still be closing—”
“You can ring at the back door and we can meet in the other office. No need to disturb the nightly staff party.” He put the cork in the bottle of whiskey. “I’ll bring ice.”
“All right.”
“All right,” he said. He smiled and tapped the computer mouse, dismissing me. The screen saver dissolved. It was just business after all.
—
EVEN AT THE TIME I understood that Park Bar was unremarkable unless you worked in those five square blocks. One of those bars that survives because of its location. Nobody ever went out of their way to go there. It was somewhere you ended up, an oasis for the stranded.
But it was a rarity in the city—not quite a dive, and not quite a nice place. Decent wines by the glass. They were smart painting everything black—you could never tell how dirty it was. The bathrooms let you know that people behaved badly, but when you walked by the open windows and saw people sipping unpretentiously in the twilight, you envied them.
It was nearly empty when I got there, at first I couldn’t make out anyone I knew. I had a vision that they’d all stopped going there, that they had a new place and hadn’t told me about it. Then my eyes adjusted. Sasha was blinking brilliantly at me. I sat down next to him. Terry gestured toward the bottles.
“I don’t know,” I said to him. “I’m so tired of drinking. Just pick for me.”
Sasha pulled something out of his pocket and slid it over to me. I thought it was going to be a bag of coke, but it was a small jewelry box.
“What you think?”
I opened it to find a pair of earrings, opals set in gold.
“I send them out tomorrow. A surprise for my mama. She’s gonna flip the moon when she sees them.”
I closed the box. “You miss her?”
“Yeah. She an old cunt, more fucked up than even me, but I love her.”
I started crying. Sasha was skeptical.
“You got your health, Baby Monster.”
“Do I?”
“Let me tell you about self-respect, okay? When you do the things, you fucking do them, and when the consequences come you take them up the ass too, ’kay?”
“Trust me, I am.”
“Now, in the beginning, I think, this girl, not so smart, we throw in the garbage in two weeks, but all right, you a Baby Monster, you a little cunt, you gonna make it, and I say, I’m gonna talk straight to her ’cause everyone else trying to stick the dick in her pants or make her over like little dolls, but okay, I tell her straight. And what you do?”
“I didn’t listen.” I wiped under my eyes. “You know they’re going away for a month? To France?”
Sasha pursed his lips at me. “This my shock face.”
“It’s fucked up.”
“Yeah, they fucked up. You know Simone start fucking and sucking him when Jakey was a Jakey Baby, not like the elevator going up from there.”
“Wait, like literally or metaphorically?”
“Whatever the fuck that mean? Oh please, you know all that. I don’t kiss and tell. Jakey had looser lips when we used to snort it all and scrape up the table for seconds, you know how I’m saying? Who keeping track of this shit?”
“When Jake was a baby?”
“Whatsoever, who is knowing anything? He was too young when they start fucking each other all up, and Simone not such a sweet-as-pie face like you. But why you liking the past so much, Pop Tart? That shit goes dark then it nobody business, and none matters the least bit.”
“None matters the least bit,” I repeated.
It was bright in Park Bar. Terry should have dimmed the lights. It was all too exposed, including my beleaguered insights, which began with old-fashioned nausea. Then a suspicion that Sasha was lying. I could never tell with him and cruelty wasn’t out of his purview. Then a confirmation I had never known how to articulate: Simone had broken something in Jake—there was anger buried under his attachment. My compassion for that golden-eyed bartender was total in that moment. I thought, If only I had known…Then I laughed out loud. I don’t know that it would have mattered, even if it was true. None matters the least bit. Sasha kept right on talking.