Klein
I keepa paperback book tucked under the bar. Not because I have time to read during my shift (that never happens), but I like to have it when I grab a five-minute break in the back of the restaurant. Usually I’m shoveling bites of whatever food the chef has placed on the metal break table while I read a few pages.
There’s been no opportunity for a break yet tonight. Obstinate Daughter is slammed. Every seat at the horseshoe-shaped bar is taken, with even more people crowding around the backless teak stools. Every table in the dining room is booked throughout the evening. The DJ, here on weekend nights, sets up his station in a corner of the bar. He doesn’t play pulsing club music, but more of a low-key background sound to match the hip, upscale vibe.
I’m on my first hour of nonstop drink making, and between the bodies jammed around the bar and the number of drink orders spitting out from the machine, it won’t be slowing anytime soon. When I was sixteenand working my first job as a host in a little Mediterranean place, I found the bartenders aloof and cool. Then I became one and realized they were aloof because they had to save their socializing for all the patrons at the bar.
“Excuse me,” someone screeches, a female, probably Lexi.
Five-foot-one Lexi emerges from a group of tall men standing near the bar, all holding icy beers. She wears a murderous glare as she barrels toward the drink pick-up station.
I close the lid on the cooler holding bottles of beer. “You look ready to commit heinous acts.”
“Ugh,” she groans, throwing down her drink tray on the rubber mat. “Why must they stand there?”
I line up all the glasses I’ll need to make Lexi’s long ass drink order. Grabbing a shaker and loading it with ice, I set about making lychee martinis for the thirty-seventh time tonight.
“If you haven’t noticed,” I glance up at Lexi briefly before continuing my work. “There’s nowhere else to stand. I don’t think I’ve ever seen it so busy.”
The live DJ starts his music at that exact moment, taking the scene and ratcheting it up to nuclear. “It’s that bachelorette party,” Lexi yells.
I shake the steel mixer, give it a good thwack on the edge of the bar to loosen the top, and pour the mixture into the waiting chilled martini glasses.
Lexi leans over the drink station so I can hear her while simultaneously threading her long midnight black hair into a ponytail. “The bride is a piece of work. Shewon’t shut up about the groom. Anybody who talks that much about their fiancé doesn’t mean a damn word of it.”
I nod and say nothing. I know better than to speak against Lexi. She divorced her philandering husband six months ago, and vociferously informs people he’d screw a cardboard box if it had a nice rack. That’s verbatim.
Lexi loads up her drink tray with my freshly made martinis. “They’re drinking like fish. At this rate, they’re going to float out of here.”
“Make sure you don’t over-serve them,” I caution, and for my care I am repaid with Lexi’s middle finger made longer by her lime green fake nail.
My feelings are far from hurt. Coming from Lexi, the middle finger is a sign of love.
I palm my chest and pretend to gaze at the heavens. The moment is over and I grab Raul, my barback, and ask him to aid Lexi in her treacherous sojourn across the bar to where the drunken women await.
More tickets spill out from the printer. I’m reaching for the new orders when I catch sight of Lexi’s finished ticket on the counter and realize she’s missing a mixed drink. Lexi will undoubtedly give me grief for making her walk back through the crowd to deliver the missing drink. In the name of protecting myself from her verbal assault, I whip up a quick vodka with soda and round the bar.
I stand at precisely six feet tall, and unlike Lexi, my wide shoulders make it easy to navigate the sea of bodies. In no time I’ve made it through the bar patrons and into the only slightly more tame restaurant area.
The bachelorette party is easy to spot for many reasons, not the least of which is the woman at the centerof the table wearing a hot pink cowboy hat that readsBride. Shockingly, there isn’t anything that resembles a dick anywhere in sight. At this point, I’ve seen it all. Obstinate Daughter is usually the first stop of the night for bachelorette parties. Carb-loading to start the festivities, I guess.
I get Lexi’s attention by lifting the missing drink in the air. She hurries around the table and takes it from me, whispering, “Thank you, but now you need to get out of here. One of the bridesmaids said she’s DTF, and her standards are low.” Lexi delivers a small shove to go along with her warning. “You’d be right up her alley.”
“I don’t know what that stands for.” I’m aware Lexi issued a jab, even if I don’t know what DTF means. Current pop culture, and its common vernacular, is something I stay away from. Give me books, my laptop, my family, and my weekly soccer scrimmage. In none of what I listed is the acronym DTF.
Lexi makes a little ferocious sound that’s not at all scary. “It meansdown to fuckyou bookworm, and the longer you stay here, the more likely she’s going to harpoon you.”
So we’re continuing with the under-the-sea metaphor? I like it. “Well?—”
Lexi shoves me again, harder this time, and for her diminutive stature she has some power.
My weight shifts, and I spin with the intention of returning to the bar. But then I see...her.
Paisley Royce.
A woman who has haunted me for years. A dream, but in the flesh. A story I relive too often. Beautiful Paisley,with her unique blue-green eyes and her rosebud mouth.
Once upon a time, she and I shared a very messy, very drunken make-out session our freshman year of college. It was a terrible kiss, the kind you look back on and outwardly cringe. I grope-smashed her breast, our teeth clacked, and who knows what else happened. She was a friend of a friend, and I wound up at her off-campus apartment, a little high and a lot overwhelmed by how pretty she was. She smelled like orange blossoms, an all-time favorite scent of mine thanks to the three orange trees still growing in my mom’s backyard.
