Sweetbitter Read Online Free Page B

“no bugs. It’s full of love.”
    I took it, but that to me was more disturbing.
    —
    ON THE OTHER END of the linen spectrum came the bar mops. Every new trailer opened the session with, “Did someone explain bar mops?” And when I said yes they said, “Who? So-and-so always fucks it up. I have a secret stash.” I learned four different and elaborate systems for managing what were essentially rags they kept under lock and key.
    There were never enough. We could never attain healthy bar mop equilibrium. The kitchen always needed more, or the guy in the back never got set up before service, or the bartenders went on a cleaning spree. Invariably you forgot to save some for yourself. The victim of this bar mop negligence got to yell at you. When you asked a manager for more, they got to yell at you too, for burning through bar mops before service even started. If you begged—and everyone begged—the manager would unlock the cupboard and count out ten more. You told no one about the ten extra bar mops. You hid them, and then doled them out heroically during emergencies.
    —
    “THE KITCHEN IS a church,” Chef screamed at me when I asked my trailer a question. “No fucking talking.”
    Silence was observed in the kitchen. People entered on tiptoe. The only person allowed to directly address Chef during service was Howard—sometimes the other managers tried to do it and got their heads bitten off. The silence probably helped the cooks, but it made learning anything difficult to impossible.
    —
    IN BETWEEN shifts I went to the Starbucks that smelled like a toilet and drank one cup of coffee. On my evening off, I bought individual Coronas from the bodega and drank them on my mattress. I was so tired I couldn’t finish them. Half-empty bottles of warm beer lined my windowsills, looking like urine and filtering sunlight. I put slices of bread from the restaurant into my purse and made myself toast in the mornings. If I had a double I took naps in the park between the shifts. I slept hard, dreaming that I was sinking into the ground, and I felt safe. When I woke I slapped myself to get the grass marks off my cheeks.
    —
    NO NAMES. I didn’t know people. I grabbed whatever characteristics I could: crooked or fluorescent teeth, tattoos, accents, lipsticks, I even recognized some people by their gait. It’s not that my trailers were withholding information. I was just so stupid that I couldn’t learn table numbers and names at the same time.
    They explained to me that this restaurant was different—real paychecks first of all, and health benefits, sick days. Some nonsalaried servers even got hourly raises. People owned homes, had children, took vacations.
    Everyone had been there years. There were senior servers who would never leave. Debutante-Smile, Guy-with-Clark-Kent-Glasses, Guy-with-Long-Hair-and-Bun, Overweight-Gray-Hair-Guy. Even the backwaiters had been there at least three years. There was Mean-Girl, and Russian-Pouty-Lips, and my first trailer, whom I called Sergeant because of the way he ordered me around.
    Simone was Wine-Woman, and a senior server. She and Clark-Kent-Glasses had been there the longest. One of my trailers called her the tree of knowledge. Every preshift the maître d’ rearranged the seating chart because regulars demanded to sit in her section. The servers would line up to ask her questions, or they sent her to their VIP tables with a wine list. She never looked at me.
    And Sweaty-Boy, Jake? In those weeks of training I didn’t see him again. I thought maybe he didn’t work there, had just been filling in that day. But then I came in to pick up my first check on a Friday night and he was there. I put my head down when I saw him. He was a bartender.
    —
    “SO I HEARD you’re a barista,” drawled Guy-with-Long-Hair-and-Bun. “That makes my training day real easy.”
    It was like arriving to a coffee station on another planet. Everything silver, futuristic, elegant. More intelligent