Sweetbitter

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Book: Read Sweetbitter for Free Online
Authors: Stephanie Danler
fabric.
    “It’s compulsive but we actually find the painful repetition pleasurable.” He took another sip.
    “It doesn’t sound pleasurable.”
    “It’s how we self-soothe. How we maintain the illusion that we are in control of our lives. For example, you repeat ‘Pick up’ in hopes that the outcome each time will be different. And you are repeatedly embarrassed, are you not?” He waited for me to respond but I wouldn’t meet his eyes. “You are hoping to master the experience. The pain is what we know. It’s our barometer of reality. We never trust pleasure.”
    Every time Howard looked at me I felt bare. A coffee ticket printed up and I used it as an excuse to turn around.
    “Are you dreaming about work often?” he asked. It felt like he spoke it into my neck.
    “No.” I slammed a portafilter to empty it and I could feel him walk away.
    But I was. The dreams were tidal, consumptive, chaotic. Service played over in my head, but no one had faces. And I heard voices, layered on top of one another, a cacophony. Phrases would rise then evanesce: Behind You, Pick Up, To Your Right, To Your Left, Picking Up, Candles, Can You, Now, Toothpicks, Pick Up, Bar Mops, Now, Excuse Me, Picking Up.
    In my dreams these words were a code. I was blind and the directives were all I had to pick my way through the blackness. The syllables quaked and separated. I woke up talking: I couldn’t remember what I had been saying, only that I was driven to keep saying it.
    —
    TERROIR. I looked it up in
The World Atlas of Wine
in the manager’s office. The definition was people talking around it without identifying it. It seemed a bit far-fetched. That food had character, composed of the soil, the climate, the time of year. That you could taste that character. But still. An idea mystical enough to be highly seductive.
    —
    IGNORE HIM. That’s what I did. When Jake came into family meal late and took his seat next to Simone, when he pulled up on his bike outside the front window, when he called harshly out for bar mops, I looked away.
    But I started to hear things, all of it unverifiable and improbable. Jake was a musician, a poet, a carpenter. He had lived in Berlin, he had lived in Silver Lake, he had lived in Chinatown. He was halfway through a PhD on Kierkegaard. They called his apartment “the opium den.” He was bisexual, he slept with everyone, he slept with no one. He was an ex–heroin addict, he was sober, he was always a little drunk.
    He and Simone were not a couple though their magnetic, unconscious way of tracking each other seemed to indicate otherwise. I knew they were very old friends, and that she had gotten him the job. Some nights a cherubic strawberry blonde that Sasha called Nessa-Baby came and sat in front of Jake at the bar as service was winding down.
    He knew part of his job was to be looked at. He was a quiet bartender. There was a submissiveness to his beauty that was nearly feminine, a stillness that made one want to paint him. When he worked the bar he submitted. Women and men of all ages left business cards and phone numbers with their tips. Guests gave him gifts for no reason—that kind of beauty.
    If he rolled up his shirtsleeves, you could see the edges of tattoos that spoke to another private body he kept. It was the sight of his arm resting on the beer tap that changed me. The beer was acting up. The kegs were probably too new, not cold enough. Just foam, no beer. Jake let the foam pour while he talked to a guest. The drain was full of foam, it ran over to his feet, a spreading white pool. His sleeve was rolled up, the tendons of his forearm tensed from shaking cocktails. I remembered that static shock when I touched him. I felt the shock in my mouth. His inappropriate forearm and the foam cascading, his manner too casual, too condescending.
    “That’s a lot of beer to waste,” I said. My voice surprised me, ringing out over my vow of silence.
    He looked at me. Perhaps it was raining that

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