The sun set. It was the point of day when everything was at its most senseless and hopeless, when everyone else finished work while he sat, waiting for V. She hadn’t even come home last night. She often worked late but she’d always warned him before.
He moved in a month ago and left his ex seven months before that. V believed in him in ways his ex never had. Over the summer, they visited each other for a few weekends, weekends spent in bed exchanging the stories that they believed defined them, grateful for someone who got it. A process they’d done before with others but felt somehow that this time was different. In LA he struggled for a life he didn’t even want, while believing he’d be happier in New York. She said he could live with her until he found a job and a place. She said just using the space was doing her a favor, that just having him there made it less awful to come home. He worried it was out of pity.
She worked for a huge law firm and the guilt manifested in a variety of ways. V said the work was wrong, that it existed solely to preserve inequality. She offset it by spending her weekends and evenings basking in the work of her latest infatuation — welcome, necessary reminders of the world beyond financial consolidation. She worshiped Foucault, DFW, and Lynch — completely indifferent to genres. Ideas were the surest route to her seduction.
They met because she followed him on Twitter — he didn’t know how she found his account, he only had seventy followers. She praised him beyond what his posts could justify and asked for his number.
Alcohol was her other method of handling the guilt. She drank hardest on Fridays and Saturdays. She sent drunk texts that were a melange of insider trading tips (which he had no money or desire to act on), photos of her in fine lingerie, and abrupt emotional confessions.
Maybe a big case was keeping her. Maybe she was just running late. He turned on the TV, eager for distraction and left it on a documentary about a serial-killer, the kind of thing V would enjoy if she got back in time.
She paid for everything despite her loans. She had to help people while she could, she said, as if she was helping a group and not just the boy she’d taken in. In case she’d get home soon, he forced himself to make dinner. Despite the apartment’s obvious expense — marble bathroom, steel appliance filled kitchen, floor-to-ceiling plate-glass windows, the space grew transient and cold in the evening, as welcoming as an airport after the final departure. Through the wall of windows he watched the water darken until it no longer reflected the sky and the lights in Jersey glowed like beacons.
On nights when he expected she’d be late, he made simple meals that would be just as good reheated, something unlikely to induce any guilt. Tonight he made spicy rigatoni, a recipe he’d made at least twenty times before, but only a few times for her. He dumped out most of the pasta water before saving a fraction of what he usually used for sauce. The whole time he watched his phone, hoping for some notification, some proof of her continued existence and interest. Some sign he was still welcome.
He ate alone and drank wine he could probably never afford. The narrator said the killer had begun to choose increasingly risky targets. Once you adjusted to the subject matter, the narrator’s delivery became soothing. He lay down and drifted off between the killer’s fifth and sixth victims.
In the morning V still wasn’t back. No messages or missed calls. He’d texted her three times yesterday but sent another message anyway.
Are you okay? The message went through blue, so her phone was on and had service, though he’d seen messages send this way and turn green minutes later. He cleaned the kitchen while telling himself it was just another late night due to a sudden deadline or case she’d mentioned earlier that he’d forgotten.
He made a pact not to worry until that night. There was nothing alarming about a lawyer working absurd hours. Maybe her phone was just dead or lost. A small boat sailed past the Statue of Liberty. He didn’t know what kind of boat it was, but when he watched them he imagined a future where he knew them all . Most of the life she afforded him felt nearly-identical to before but the view was different — it gave him a sense of possibility that his old life never had.
When V caught him staring this way, she’d laugh and say something about how much she’d save if she could just give up the view. Sometimes, late at night, they would stand in front of the windows and marvel over the city. He’d hold her and she’d lean into him, wobbly with what he hoped was comfort and not simply exhaustion and alcohol. The ships glided over the water, reminiscent of dinner service at the fine restaurants where V brought him when she felt especially indulgent, microcosms of perfect execution.
One night, he tried to take her from behind but she just kept cackling, saying doggy-style. He tried not to get annoyed. She rolled over and caressed his cheek. “You’d find out anyways when you visited, better to tell you now. You’ve got the same name as my family’s black lab.” Remembering how often V hinted or actually said he belonged in her life only made it worse. What if she was gone?
He spent the morning as he usually did now, applying to jobs he was at best half-qualified for, while envisioning extreme variations of imminent success or failure. Just a month ago, he’d have vomited at the prospect of being some asshole’s executive assistant for their cashmere line for babies. Now he just strained to estimate the weekly pay of a salary like that, while estimating what kind of bullshit would surpass the patience that pay like that.
This excess of time time naturally led to anxiety over V, especially after her absence. Maybe nothing was wrong. He’d been searching for work since he arrived in New York and for a week and a half before that. Wading through job listings’ absurd requirements, entry level positions that required four years experience, sometimes fluency in multiple languages. Usually they required New York experience only, as if the city was so different from the world outside that no experience from without could apply within.
Some of the struggle was his fault. Getting an art-history degree led him to museums and works he’d otherwise have never seen. Beyond that, it provided him with the right words to describe and savor the same details he’d enjoyed long before declaring the major. Sometimes V begged him to list art terms. He’d exaggerate and elongate their pronunciations until she cackled beside him. Impasto, chiaroscuro, intaglio. That education and its incantations led only to a life of envy — a life spent wishing he came from a family with money, one where he could at least afford to intern for a few years and earn nothing for another decade or so after that, or for just enough money to afford nice enough clothing to blend in, or if not that, to feel certain of his words around people with money, so he wouldn’t have to ruminate over whether it was correct to say I’m well when someone asked how he was doing or if it was fine to say I’m good. So he didn’t walk away from those exchanges replaying every word, dissecting them for some betrayal of his origin, as if that was what any of these people spent time thinking about.
Sometimes he mixed up his cover letters or sent them half-rewritten, inadvertently emphasizing his love of both fashion and dog-handling, or concluding a cover letter by praising the company he’d applied to immediately before it. This wouldn’t happen so often if he didn’t need to apply to hundreds of jobs to receive just a handful of rejections. The galleries and museums didn’t even reply.
If he somehow wound up in a first grade classroom explaining what he wanted to be when he grew up, he’d say anything — whatever they’d let him be, and he’d say it with such desperation that the children around him would break down in tears.
But then, he received a reply from an application he sent out weeks ago. He stopped himself from opening it, in order to prolong the moment when it was possible the reply was from one of his most desired positions and would change his life. He paused too because it felt wrong to feel a speck of joy while V was missing.
He’d have liked to only open the email once he knew V was safe, but that was the exact sort of promise he’d break almost immediately, ruminating over whether to open it until he exhausted himself and did what he’d wanted the whole time but under the pall of guilt. At best he could wait a couple hours.
It was ten. He shaved and dressed the way V instructed him to for the firm’s events. Standing in front of the mirror in a suit, he looked almost capable of facing the day. He brought his folder of resumes to provide the illusion of purpose. Maybe he could con his way into the firm and see if she was stuck there. Maybe her phone was dead and there was no time to deal with something so small in the midst of this huge, ongoing case. Millions or billions of dollars at stake. Whatever it was, maybe he could help. Maybe he could bring her a change of clothes, or commiserate, or make sure they had whatever she might want when she got home.
The sun cut between skyscrapers. He’d slept poorly but the crisp air snapped him awake. He walked along Stone Street’s cobblestones, peering in the restaurants on the ground floor. Some of these buildings were as old as the founding fathers and Goya’s Black period. He didn’t know what he’d do once he reached the firm but he had to do something. Still no new messages. He looked up V’s office number and rehearsed delivering it to the guards. If he was polished and certain enough they might let him in. If he got everything right, this would end.
Like the street, the firm and a few others, had existed for hundreds of years. That scale should have dwarfed his concerns but it only made him more aware that he’d have to fight to get what he wanted.
There weren’t many people out, at least not along the water but it was better outside. These streets, despite being the backdrop to his time with V, didn’t force his thoughts back to her the way her apartment did. He was grateful to be almost alone, for the space to think. Brooklyn sat serene and still across the water. Transit boats darted toward it, bobbing along the tops of waves. He couldn’t blame V if she was sick of him. He was sick of himself — why should she feel any differently? Maybe it had nothing to do with him. There were other things in her life.
The firm held five floors in a waterfront skyscraper owned by one of the banks. A metallic sculpture of what looked like melting letters sat in the fountain, the kind of banal corporate art that made the world feel just slightly more pointless and empty. Usually a steady stream of people whisked through security, before waiting at the elevator banks but it was too late for that. Whoever belonged there started work hours ago. He shielded himself with the folder of resumes and strode as confidently into the lobby as he could. The security guard stared emotionlessly, the sort of watchful expression he wished he could volley back, but couldn’t precisely because of how badly he wanted to.
“I need to deliver these documents to Mr. C on the ninth floor.” C was a partner at the firm, a name he hoped would inspire obedience.
“Are you a registered visitor?”
“They’ll admit me, if you call. Just call — ” he fumbled for his phone but rushed into announcing the number, as if the guards would even need a phone number for any of the floors of a building they’d worked in for years.
“Probably a junior there or something.” He said as casually as he could.
The guard frowned before snapping back to neutral. A real courier wouldn’t be nervous or eager, they’d simply be working — probably impatient or bored. The guard looked past him. “What were you delivering again?”
When V got nervous she would claim she lived in the shadow of the twin towers, that every moment they hung over her. Physically, it was true of the freedom tower. At a certain time of day its shadow must have crossed her building, but she meant it metaphorically. According to her, if she were just a few years older she could have died there, would have died there. One of the firms she interviewed with had an office there. Occasionally, on the subway she’d nudge him and signal toward someone with her eyes, usually just drunks or people muttering to themselves. She admitted it was insane but she couldn’t stop. When she took the train home to Long Island to visit her family she’d text him nervously, joking about their last goodbye. She’d only moved to New York to join the firm that past summer. She didn’t even know anyone who died in the towers.
He made himself speak slowly and forced firmness into his words “I am delivering certified documents to either Mr C, or in the event he is detained, V.”
“They can come down and meet you or acknowledge you as their guest. If, or when, they do, I’ll happily escort you up.” The man’s mouth smiled.
“You think a partner is just going to come down here?”
The other guard drifted over. He must have detected his rising frustration.
“If it’s important enough, sure.”
“Just call that number. You’ll see.”
The first guard dialed while the other watched. As he waited for someone to answer it seemed increasingly certain it would be V. That the spiral would end. Someone answered. The guard asked him who he was.
“A courier from United,” he said, immediately regretting that he hadn’t googled an actual courier company before. It was suddenly obvious how stupid it had been to wear a suit.
The guard repeated his words over the phone.
“They aren’t expecting you. I can bring the documents up if you’d like.”
He opened the folder and scratched out a note to V. “Please only give that to her.”
“Sure, need a signature on anything?”
He shrugged. “Thanks.”
“You want to wait?” The guard’s tone softened.
He nodded and stood. The other guard gestured for him to move away from the desk. The guard with the folder got into an elevator. When the doors closed he found himself hoping V would be back, or that she’d come down when she saw the folder. It was normal working hours so there was no reason to expect her not to be there. Maybe she wasn’t allowed to leave her desk. As he waited he felt hopeful, almost proud he came down to put an end to this worrying, but then the guard was back with the folder still in his hands.
“Sorry bud, she wasn’t at her desk. This seemed important so here you go.” The guard smiled weakly.
It was brighter outside but colder — he lingered, annoyed for having come. He didn’t know what to do until he spotted Sam leaving the building, lighting a cigarette. He’d already come down so he might as well ask. Sam was one of the three summer associates who joined the firm with V. The others all possessed the same unnerving ease, a level of comfort with the world’s inequities that was most easily attributed to oblivious self-satisfaction, but V and Sam worked together. He’d know if she was in.
He forced a smile and approached, initially with his arms extended in mock-surprise or in preparation for some, awkward, ill-advised hug, but Sam didn’t notice him so he dropped his arms and said “Hey, Sam,” twice before Sam turned.
“Oh, hey — what are you doing down here?” Sam poorly concealed his struggle to remember him. At parties Sam was warm and welcoming but maybe he was just that kind of drunk.
It was miserable to ask but he forced himself to. “Is V up there?”
Sam exhaled and stared back. “Answering that would violate her privacy and my agreement with the firm.”
“Oh, you signed that special, V-specific NDA? I didn’t know anyone else had to.” He laughed. Sam didn’t. False relief receded, exposing now-familiar panic. Of course Sam would behave this way. The person he’d bonded with wasn’t working Sam, it was Sam after four or five scotches Sam. “I forgot my phone. We were supposed to meet for lunch. Help me out. I don’t want her to think I’m standing her up,” he allowed real desperation to seep into the words.
Sam studied him, seemingly hungry for even a semblance of desperation.
“So if you see her, not that you will, will you tell her I’m down here?”
“Sure. It’s always so good to see you.” Sam smiled and threw his cigarette into an elevated bed of bushes. “I don’t blame you for coming down, V’s great.” Sam’s eye-contact lingered. He struggled to push away images of her looking up at Sam the way she looked at him. Unemployment vs. a position at a top five firm. His hands felt cold and his legs began to tremble.
“Great, I really appreciate it,” he said as if Sam had even pretended to help.
He sat on a bench in front of the building. There was no reason to think sitting and staring at her building would reveal if she was there, or draw her out if she was, but he continued anyways, at first so it would look like the story about lunch was true and then out of inertia. At this point he didn’t care how it looked. V claimed she hated guys like Sam, said there was nothing more repulsive than the idea of another man glomming onto her, sick and blind with self-satisfaction.
The temperature dipped and his jacket felt as thin as gauze. He stopped every few minutes to check his phone. The dread was worry crossed with abandonment.
He typed out a message to V. “If you don’t want me there when you get home tonight just tell me,” his finger hovered over send, but he deleted the message.
He decided to walk along the water despite already feeling cold. He passed the Staten Island ferry, uncertain whether it was better to hope she’d dismissed him or that something else had gone wrong — as if his thoughts could shape reality. Barkers shouted too rapidly about trips to the Statue of Liberty, packages that seemed to include tours of the Empire State Building and Rockefeller Center. He’d been too embarrassed to ask V but once he had a job he’d go. The Empire State Building was from a time when details mattered, when buildings were built with a sense of beauty and permanence. When the city aspired to something beyond wealth.
On rare days when he managed to exhaust the job listings he celebrated by riding the ferry. It was free and the beers were cheap enough to afford when the future seemed especially, or even somewhat, promising. He’d sit and drink and study stranger’s expressions while they watched the horizon, actual proof of the world’s continued capacity to deliver joy.
A screen above the merry go round in the park projected bright colors flowing through an amorphous, white landscape, like something from Tokyo or Paris. Although he’d only been to Paris for four days with a student loan and still dreamed of someday going to Tokyo. Brown-skinned, older women watched white children ride in joyless circles. Throughout their rides, their expressions didn’t change. Bored caretakers and bored children, tied together mostly by obligation. Not a single bounce or turn delivered delight or shock. They didn’t seem to savor it, but he’d do almost anything to feel that kind of boredom. The edge of the park angled toward the Statue of Liberty, which was somehow always smaller and more beautiful than expected. There were still no messages from V.
The wind there was merciless. His fingers and toes went numb and his cheeks burned. He walked back toward V’s — the promise of leftovers and tea kept him moving, along with the half-considered possibility she was already there. The kind of embarrassing desire he hoped to deny by regarding it obliquely. Maybe she’d come home while he was out looking for her.
At the apartment he tried to remember if her shirt had always been hanging over the back of her desk chair like that, but she wasn’t in the bed or the bathroom or anywhere else.
He should have called the police that morning. They’d watched enough episodes of Unsolved Mysteries together for him to know he’d be their top suspect if anything had actually happened. Thinking like that made him feel guilty.
No new emails. No missed calls or texts. He spent the afternoon watching his phone and whatever came on TV in a state of dull half-vigilance, like how the doorman on the night shift looked when he came back without V. If V wasn’t home tonight he’d have to report her missing. He troubled over their last uneventful night together, trying to differentiate it from all the others, to pull out some hint of betrayal or dissatisfaction or hidden danger. If he reported her missing it felt like it would fix her fate. If he could just wait maybe he could prevent whatever had happened from veering too far into the dark territory she always found so fascinating.
At six, seven, and now eight she still wasn’t home. He opened his email. The reply from before was for an open call tomorrow at a restaurant in Meatpacking. When he googled it the website had an ugly, loud design, with a garish, red and black font, but the menu was expensive enough that he might be able to afford to stay in New York even if V was gone. On the resume he’d submitted he claimed he’d worked in restaurants for years. The only restaurant he’d worked in was a pizzeria in college. The whole process would probably go nowhere.
Maybe it was better this way, maybe if he was unlucky in this he would be lucky with V or she’d be lucky in his place. Maybe luck was finite and by failing to get the job, he would shift the odds in favor of V’s safety. He replied and said he could come tomorrow. By then V would be back, giddily teasing him for how easily he’d warped this blip into a catastrophe.
He’d sleep on the couch so he’d wake up if V came home. The door always slammed shut so firmly. The lights in the other buildings began to go out as he researched the unfamiliar terms and ingredients on the menu. He struggled to memorize the few wine descriptions he found online, but it was a relief to be occupied by something other than V.
The streets were empty — which was common in the evenings. Aside from V, almost no one lived down here, it was where people worked and occasionally ate lunch, unless they were tourists visiting the bull or riding a boat to the Statue of Liberty. On weekends you could walk for blocks without seeing anyone. It was as peaceful as the end of the world.
Whatever show was on ended and the TV went black. V wouldn’t get home tonight. He recycled the same reassurances, their effect predictably diminished. If she didn’t come back tonight she’d be there in the morning — back for a fresh set of clothes. Or she’d text. He opened the dresser. Her underwear and bras filled the top drawer, neatly nested into each other. Confirming her clothes were still there felt sad and perverse, not that he could truly account for them all.
Now that it was just him, staying in V’s felt different, more like trespassing. He poured Scotch into a mug and dropped an ice cube in. The sound made his spine tingle. If she’d just left him here he might as well enjoy what she’d left him with. The Scotch was V’s, like everything else. He studied the label, pushing himself toward an interest in such things if it could lead to something better than this.
He coaxed himself asleep by promising himself V would be back in the morning or that he actually didn’t need her at all. It was always easier to fall asleep on the couch and tonight was no different.
Groggily, he woke up to a cartoon commercial. It was still dark. The cartoon was black and white and feigned old-timeyness. A jar of RnC peanut butter sat on a table in the foreground. A gaunt boy in a loin cloth approached and strained to open it. Perched on it, the boy wrenched his body, beads of sweat shot off his face, veins bulged. Still, he couldn’t open it. So he tried to smash it against the counter but the counter either became, or had always been, rubber. Every surface in the kitchen was rubber. He threw the jar against the walls and it ricocheted until eventually landing somewhere, tottering — still despicably intact no matter how hard he threw it. He collapsed on the ground, thinner than before, every rib now visible. A light bulb appeared above his head and he started smashing the jar against his shin. A bruise spread across his leg. The jar shattered and he cut himself as the camera pulled out. A tendril of blood crawled along the groove between the tiles. The camera zoomed into the broken, clearly long-empty jar of peanut butter. The message, “Worth any sacrifice — RnC Butter Company,” flashed on screen.
The brand was unfamiliar. Maybe it was regional or new. The ad was unpleasant but at least stood out. At this point the days ran so cleanly into one another, at least before V disappeared, that even something as minor as a new peanut-butter ad seemed noteworthy. It was the kind of anecdote he’d previously squirreled away to tell V when she got back, little ways to keep himself from becoming dull.
The message lingered so long that he worried the TV was broken. He faced the back of the couch and covered his head with a pillow. Whatever was on the TV changed and the light in the room shifted from blue to pink. When he was a boy his mom wouldn’t let him sleep with the TV on. She said sleep was a vulnerable time, that ads could penetrate more deeply into your unconscious while you slept. He didn’t believe it, it was how he slept best.
The next morning V was still gone. An email from the restaurant thanked him and said they’d see him at 3. He’d waited too long. He should’ve reported her missing days ago, but he forced himself to the precinct on Wall Street. The process was almost identical to a trip to the DMV. During the report the officer raised an eyebrow when he realized V was the only one who worked. As he was leaving the man said, “Don’t worry. We’ll find your missing lotto ticket,” and winked.
He didn’t wear a suit for the interview, just the blue and red paisley shirt V bought him for this sort of occasion, if you excluded the missing persons report or the fact that it was the kind of job he’d be embarrassed to tell her about. V was more polite than the others at restaurants, but there was nothing humble in how she acted. Too comfortable with someone at her disposal, as if it were the proper order of things.
As he exited the subway and found himself where he’d intended to go he felt satisfied and confident. Past the expensive store fronts, the day-drunk women tottering in heels along cobblestones, the homeless man screaming about people keeping children in cages, he found the building. It was massive. The hotel looked more like a spaceship than a building, staring over the Westside Highway. It housed four different restaurants on the ground floor. He stupidly hadn’t asked which one he was interviewing for. He could ask the front desk but the elegance of the place and its guests was alienating. He’d rather wait. He was seventeen minutes early anyways, too early to wait inside without giving off desperation and not early enough to actually sit anywhere and do anything. He circled the block twice.
The doorman led him to what he thought was the right restaurant and delivered him to the host. She was short like V and gave him a clipboard. Like the hotel, she looked wealthy. Beyond that she was either unremarkable, or he was too amped up to properly notice.
“Please fill this out.” In two minutes he’d be late. He rushed through the application, trying to conceal his annoyance at having sent a resume and still having to fill this out.
She led him through a series of doors while he tried to remember the path in case he had to find his way back alone. She opened another door and gestured inside. He wondered if she liked telling people where to go. Twenty or so people, close to his age, sat around oversized picnic tables in a room too cold for anyone else but not cold enough for them to complain about. A couple scanned the room, estimating the competition. Most just stared at the table or the walls. Black and white photos attempted to create the illusion of a past. The entire building was a year old.
An overly tall man interviewed them in groups of five. They called him in with the second group. The tall man would ask a question and call on someone at random. If they answered incorrectly they had to leave. For four rounds, they didn’t call on him. By then it was just him and a blonde man with a prematurely receding hairline.
“I haven’t asked you anything yet. Describe suckling pig.”
“It’s a baby pig known for its sweetness and tenderness.” He berated himself for the repetition.
“What’s port?”
“A Spanish dessert wine.” It wasn’t from Spain but it was too late to correct himself so he just waited, certain he’d be dismissed.
“Great. Welcome to the team,” the man said joylessly. Maybe Spanish was close enough. Maybe the man didn’t know. Maybe he didn’t care. Calculations of his future pay eclipsed any lingering concerns over the interview. The host led him out and said they’d email the training schedule.
He returned to V’s and tried to tell if she’d been there. He toasted the skyline with a half-full mug of Scotch. It wasn’t the job he wanted but it was a job and with it he wouldn’t starve or have to leave.
After his first day of training he checked Twitter. V was still posting. Just inscrutable rants about interest rates. Nothing about the boy she’d left in her apartment for the past five days, no hints of guilt or clues of her whereabouts. A mixture of sickness and relief hit when he unfollowed her and blocked her a half hour later.
With his remaining savings he put down a deposit on a windowless room in Brooklyn that he found on Craigslist. That night he took his bag and left. He wanted to out-vanish V, to disappear so thoroughly that she would wonder whether he’d noticed her absence at all. Maybe she’d think he beat her to it, but once he was in Red Hook, lying on the Ikea bed that the room came with, he was too angry to let it go.
He texted: I left. Enjoy your home.
She didn’t reply. He typed out all kinds of messages, feel-bad nonsense like how what they’d had must have been nothing, lies about how he never saw it going anywhere anyway. Most of the time he deleted them or left them unsent. V didn’t reply.
The restaurant’s red leather banquets, aspiring models and actresses, bottles of wine that cost hundreds or thousands, all seemed perfect, but all he did was fuck up. Ordered things like vodka mojitos and rum martinis, or liquors that had been 86’ed for weeks. He lied about the bartenders making drinks wrong and apologized profusely for his mistakes, or the ones he blamed others for. He learned enough from the beautiful, infinitely forgiving women he worked beside to stay afloat. Most of the men ignored him. The staff was a mix of seasoned servers and other incompetents like him. Each week a few got fired. Each week he continued to scrape by. Whenever he approached a table of women V’s age he worried V would look up from behind one of the menus and curdle it all. She appeared in his nightmares, laughing in his face or ignoring him completely when she inevitably came in. Dreams where he forgot every order, where his tables all moved outside, where the floor-plan changed mid shift, where the chef screamed at him for so long that his entire face was covered in spit.
The money was less than expected. His initial shifts were awful and because he was new, he only received a half share of tips. Eventually he managed to keep his section together, and then to notice the space beyond it. Soon he ran drinks for other servers, then was able to take on an extra table or handle VIPs when they were mistakenly seated in his section. Later he graduated to a small section of the main dining room. None of it was how he’d envisioned. The tips were pooled so he didn’t earn more despite breaking a thousand in tips some nights, but there was joy when his fingers danced across the screen and completed orders swiftly and accurately, or when he made a rich, difficult table laugh after a quip of his, or when that heiress requested him as her server. The guests drank heavily and lived lives people envied and for an evening he facilitated it.
He ate the same food as them, hunched over a plate with twenty other servers, struggling to assemble one perfect bite — focused on remembering the dish in order to describe it accurately-to stave off pre-shift humiliation. He drank the same wine from water glasses hidden in the hutches or from the bottle when the managers were downstairs and it was late enough to eliminate the possibility of a sudden rush or any significant interest in his sobriety.
The thin margin for error and drinking made it easier to forget V. It made no sense to think of her anyways. They’d only seen each other for a few months. He’d only lived with her for one. That was almost three months ago.
While he was setting up a side-station in the garden he spotted her on the sidewalk beside an ordinary looking man. The space between them wasn’t so small or so large as to reveal anything about their relationship. Part of him wanted to curse her out or fill a glass with red wine and throw it at her, but he buried his face in the hutch and prayed they would keep walking while he stared at a ketchup bottle with ketchup caked to the lip and tried to ignore the smell.
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