I’M LOOKING ATa glob of spinach attached to the fork I’m trying to polish and contemplating how much we have in common. Both stuck in a commercial kitchen at three in the morning, grey beneath the harsh fluorescent lighting, prune-like from the dishwater, not even chewed up before being spat out…
It’s either the delirium of a twelve-hour shift or a lucid cheese-dream from all the brie I scoffed while clearing the charcuterie. There’s no other reason to be waxing philosophical about a piece of spinach, except that it’s the most interesting thing I can think of. I’ll be here at least another half hour—end of shift is tantalisingly close, but it only exists over this mountain of cutlery—and I’m on autopilot, arms detached from brain. Grab cutlery from the dishwasher; dunk into a scalding tub of vinegary water; rub each piece with a tea towel to a gleaming shine; dump into a cracked plastic tub lined witha stained napkin. Repeat. The pile refuses to shrink, right up until the moment it vanishes entirely.
The spinach and I both had a role at this party. The spinach and I have taken very different journeys to get here, but we’ve been brought together in this kitchen, having served our respective purposes. And now we’re both stuck in a bucket of vinegar water at the end of the party. The spinach has moxie, though. I admire its perseverance, surviving the dishwasher and the cutlery tub and making it to the polishing bucket.
I used to find it soothing, a calming way to end a night. I’d volunteer eagerly to head to the kitchen, smugly abandoning the lugging of tables and chairs out of the room. That novelty has well and truly worn off. I yawn; it really is time to go home. I dry off my pruny hands on my Big W work pants and wonder if they’ll last another shift. Yeah, I really only spilled water on myself tonight, no visible marks, they’ll be fine. Now I check off a list in my mind. Dump out the used water (farewell, little leaf), pack up the cutlery, place the used cloths in the laundry bags lined by the door for pick-up.
I return to the kitchen to find everything else exactly as I left it, with Reg and Nicole hunched over one of their phones, laughing behind their hands. I was distantly aware that they had been chatting while we all polished the cutlery but honestly, I tend to tune them out. After all, I have deep thinking to do.
‘What are you watching?’ I don’t particularly care, but I want to passive-aggressively move them on so we can all finish up and go home.
‘Nothing!’ Nicole says. But a quickie denial just makes thedenier more guilty-looking and people like me more curious. Reg is silent, which is so antithetical to his usual state that I want to check if he is still breathing. I walk over and stick my head over his shoulder.
Bee’s Insta stories. She has posted so many that the lines across the top of the screen are just tiny little dots, and I’m familiar with most of them given that I am normally the videographer. I always find the best light, apparently. My phone is dutifully stashed in my locker, but I know that when I check it I’ll find a dozen tipsy texts, voice notes and videos that didn’t make the cut.
Bee’s wearing that perfect day-to-night dress she found online that she was wearing earlier, here at work. Being an event coordinator has its perks. I think this as I look down at the black polyester pants that cut me in half mid-belly and the sensible shoes (in-built arch support!) which befit a lowly food-and-bev attendant (a fancy term to make ‘waitress’ sound more sophisticated and less gendered). In the video the tight ribbed knit hugs her body and flares out slightly at the hips, fluttering around her calves as she dances, stumbling slightly on her boot heels.
I’m not quite sure what’s so funny about it. Fuzzy drunk stories are a dime a dozen. I look at Nicole, who taps furiously on the screen to take the stories back to the beginning.
So far, nothing groundbreaking. A sunset and a tag at the new rooftop bar I saw online last week that we have been talking about going to. A clinking glasses boomerang ‘with the gals’ from the gym (cult) Bee attends. I only know these women by their handles: @daisyfields__, @elemenop,@getfitwithstacey and other cutesy puns. An artful flat lay of the share plates they had ordered. A perfectly posed candid laughter shot. Things get a little blurrier, a little shakier, a little louder. Then there is Bee with a man, posing like she doesn’t realise it’s a video. And fuck if he doesn’t look like a young Enrique Iglesias. Then they are dancing, the movement of his hips inviting me to draw conclusions about his skills in other areas. Good on you, Bee. And then they are pashing—which doesn’t look as sexy as one would assume—and then he is gone. And she is singing along to a girly pop song. At this point, all I’m wondering is why the hell Bee has posted any of this online for other people to see. Then again, she doesn’t have me in charge of her phone tonight. And I really don’t get why Nicole and Reg are so tickled.
Until I do. I really do. And I begin to grieve for the few hours of sleep I had hoped to get.
In the very last story, Enrique is tucked up against a wall in the back of the frame messily sticking his tongue down someone else’s throat while Bee dances in the middle, blissfully unaware and blissfully slopping her martini all over the place. That was roughly an hour ago.
I look up at Reg and Nicole’s expectant faces. Whether they are expecting a laugh or a scolding I don’t know, so I just shrug and step back.
‘Did you want to stay for a drink, Gertie?’ Reg asks cautiously, like you’d approach an escaped guinea pig. ‘There’s heaps of good scotch left from the whisky bar.’
Nicole nods eagerly. ‘Yeah, I think one of them was a two-hundred-dollar bottle! What a waste that they only dranktwo-thirds of it.’ Weirder to have such expensive scotch at a teenager’s birthday party, but really, how else are the parents meant to get through the surprise exclusive performance from some singing competition’s three-seasons-ago-winner?
‘Eh, more for us!’
They always ask. I never say yes. When they first asked I thought they were just being polite and didn’t really want me to say yes, so I said no. But they keep asking and now I’m not sure. Maybe they need a designated driver? As I do every time, I consider, for a brief moment, accepting their invitation. But there really is no point in delaying the inevitable.
Bee’s and my two-bedroom art deco apartment is on a busy road in Albert Park, and driving home at four in the morning is the only time I don’t get stuck behind a bloody tram. It only came with one parking space, so I park around the corner and wander up a poorly lit street to get to our building. I climb the external stairs heavily, weighed down by the exhaustion of what has passed and what is to come.
Kicking off my shoes, I head for the kitchen and boil the kettle for tea. Then I grab the potato gems I tucked away in the freezer last week. Processed food is a banned substance in the house until the very moment it is needed—and that moment is now. I throw the gems in the air fryer, make the tea and walk towards Bee’s bedroom, turning off all the lights along the way.
Bee’s bedroom has two states: before and after a night out. Before—immaculate earth-toned bed linen, way too many pillows, more lamps than necessary and mandalas on thewall left over from her eat, pray, appropriate-other-cultures era. After—all of that is still there except it’s under the entire contents of Bee’s wardrobe. Bee is currently sprawled on top of the clothes pile, face down, shoes on.
‘What happened?’ Bee lifts her head slightly before slumping it back down. I place her tea on the bedside table. Mascara tracks tattoo her cheeks, and her tight slicked bun has sagged, leaving the product-heavy top bending at odd angles.
‘He’s going back home to Colombia!’ she cries into the pillow. And possibly a sequinned crop top.
‘Oh no, Bee.’ I pause. ‘And…sorry…what was his name?’
‘Carlos!’ Like I’m supposed to know.
‘From…’
‘Colombia!Oh…the gym.’
Oh shit, I’m supposed to be de-escalating. Where are the gems?
I nod slowly and use my calm voice. ‘Of course. Carlos from the gym.’ Then I wait. Have I heard about Carlos from the gym? It’s possible that Bee told me before eleven a.m., which really isn’t the best time to tell me anything if you expect me to remember it. I’ve been trying to work on that. Bee says that highly successful people are early risers. She slowly flips herself over and sits up against the headboard, reaching for the tea cooling on the bedside table.
‘He has been flirting with me tragically forweeks, remember?’Nope.I nod. ‘We met in the most adorable way…’ Her eyes glaze over. ‘I left my bench for a moment to get a new set of dumbbells and when I came back he was doing chest presses on it. It had to be deliberate—my drink bottle was stillbeside the bench, clearly marking it as taken. Obviously he just wanted to meet me.’
