“Got it,” I said, nodding. “No trolls.”
“And no drunks.” She held up a finger, then another. “So no trolls and no drunks. Because then it’s too easy. Because then you’d get, like, three numbers in three minutes.”
I laughed. “You’re overestimating my appeal.”
“Shut up,” she said, and wrapped her blond hair into a bun at the nape of her neck. “Don’t do that.”
“Do what?”
“That thing you do: act like you’re not worth it, act like you don’t deserve it.” She leaned over the bar and poured herself another shot. “Besides, this is supposed to be fun. This is supposed to be about making them believe you are whoever you want to be.”
“So it’s about the chase,” I said. “Well, and about the assignment.”
“Here’s to the chase,” she replied, and flipped her empty shot glass over against the wooden bar. “And maybe some sexy-ass men.”
“Here’s to that.” I laughed because why not.
So now it’s 11:47, and I have one more number to go when I see him at the end of the bar. Nursing a beer, which I hadn’t poured for him, which tells me that he ordered it before I came on my eleven p.m. shift. One beer over the course of an hour. A lightweight. A sipper. Probably a bit of a geek, not unlike me when I’m not donning whichever mask I’m assigned for the day or the evening. Nonthreatening. I like making these assumptions; it helps me compartmentalize who he is, who I might have to be in reaction to that. Like a casting call:We are seeking a nonthreatening kind of geek (who is also cute!) to play off the role of man-eater bartender (who is also pretty in a generic way).
I grab the dirty rag and wipe down the countertop, making my way toward the corner. Three undergrads, definitely not legal, push their way toward me and snap their fingers to get my attention. My cheeks blaze with something like lower-middle-class embarrassment, but it’s dark, and I’m notmeright now, so I flush that inbred shame away.These girls.They’re all the same: NYU rich kids who come to Dive Inn with their parents’ credit cards or their hundred-dollar bills and act like the world is imploding when they’re not immediately served their vodka twists. Outside of the bar, outside of this role that I slip into, these types of girls make me duck my head, dart around them on the street. They are better than me in ways that seem inexplicable, unattainable. But here, in this bar, on my turf, with my apron as a sort of shield, they are my adversary.
“Excuse me!” one of them shouts, then snaps again.
“Don’t snap at me,” I say, my decibel level stronger than my will. “I’m not your goddamn dog.”
“What?” she says, possibly because she can’t hear me over the stereo and the voices that are all raised to match the music, or possibly because she simply has never been spoken to in such a way.
“Don’t. Snap.” I like the way that feels, this bravado.
She recoils. “Oh my god, I just wanted a vodka tonic.”
“I need ID.”
I don’t technically need ID, since we pretty much serve anyone—bar policy—but I’m on a roll now, the distance widening between who I am outside of the bar and who I am behind it.
Her head jerks back like I’ve slapped her, and her eyes skitter with fury. She leans over and whispers to her friend, then says: “The last lady served us no problem. Look.” She holds up an empty glass.
“I’m not the last lady.” I shrug. I’m impressed with my swagger, feel very strongly that Professor Sherman would deem my performance “true to life.”
“I left it in the booth, in my purse.”
I start wiping down the bar again, as if I’m already bored with this. Easing my way toward phone number three.
“Hey, Freckles!” she yells, referring, I imagine, to the band of freckles that run across my nose. “Don’t you want a fucking tip?”
At this, the guy at the end of the bar looks up from staring at the foam in his surely warm beer and watches us.
“I’d love a tip,” I say. “From someone who’s twenty-one.”
“Here’s a tip,” she shouts, standing taller on the foot of the stool, which is teetering, imbalanced. “You’re working forme, back there, behind there. I am not working foryou. Got that?”
“Yeah.” I laugh, the blood rising to my cheeks again. I turn the other direction. “Got it loud and clear. But you’re still not getting served.”
“Bitch!” she yells, just before the stool topples over and she disappears from my view and there’s a commotion on the floor as her friends huddle around her. My whole face is fire now, I can feel it, hot and shameful, but I squeeze my fingers together into tight fists and remind myself that tonight I’m not who these girls want me to be, I’m not who anyone thinks I am. I am the part I promised Daisy I would play. I curl my hands into balls so tight, my knuckles clench and my nails dig into my palms. Then I release them and let the blood flush back into the recesses of my body. He’s watching me—Phone Number Three—so I keep my eyes down, just scrubbing the spilled beer, wiping in concentric circles until I stop right in front of him. I check the clock above the exit. I have seven minutes to lock him in. Win the bet, ace Daisy’s assignment.
“I hope you don’t take her personally,” he says, nudging his chin toward the hubbub by the fallen stool. “I went to high school with her older brother. I think being an asshole is genetic.”
I laugh easily, like she hadn’t just set off a grenade inside of me, and reach for his glass.
