Nights and Weekends
My roommates were expressing increased disapproval of Kirby’s after-hours tweets, diagnosing him as boundary-challenged.
“It’s only going to get worse,” Elizabeth insisted, as we three were waiting, dressed for work, briefcases by the door, for our commuter coffee to brew. “You have to nip it in the bud! Tell him you work Monday through Friday, nine to five, not twenty-four/seven. Do you have a contract?”
I didn’t. I pointed out that a trial period wasn’t the best time to debate fair labor practices. I didn’t admit that there was timing of another sort at play: as much as I shrank from his calling/texting/brainstorming after hours, I didn’t want to wait until Monday to hear about his drink with Veronica. “What if I ease into it?” I asked.
“Define!” said Elizabeth.
“Okay . . . He has a meeting tonight with someone who’s pivotal. I could tell him to report on just that when he gets home.”
“Still bad,” said Elizabeth. “That’s giving him a creepy green light to call you when he’s home alone—who knows, confiding in you from his bed or bathtub.”
“How’s this?” asked Yasemin. “Tell him you’ll make an exception to the rule about nights and weekends being sacred—”
“He’ll say, ‘What rule? We have a rule?’”
“He’s scattered enough that he’ll think somewhere along the line you codified that,” said Elizabeth.
“Tell him to email you about that big meeting, but not after five or six, or whenever, on Saturday”—and with a sly grin—“it being date night.”
“Forget ‘easing into it’,” said Elizabeth. “Tell him you have a private life, and it starts when you leave the office.”
Yasemin said, “Rachel’s not going to say that and you know it.”
“Ladies! I’m perfectly capable of texting back, ‘Can’t answer now. Turning phone off’.”
“Along with ‘please respect my embargo’,” Elizabeth amended.
From the other side of the kitchen, I mouthed to Yasemin, What embargo?
She said, “Lizzie and I expect bulletins from the jazz club—just a few words when Wine Boy goes to the loo.”
“Emojis will do,” said Elizabeth.
“We’re very invested in you two,” said Yasemin.
“How did I end up living in Yentaville?” I asked.
They’d approved my outfit—black pants, black boat-neck sweater, soft, part cashmere—after swapping my discreet gold hoops for louder, bigger, silver ones of Yasemin’s. As for what Alex was wearing and what he looked like, I was waiting to describe him only when I sensed there was more than platonic patronage of Varsity Wine & Spirits.
But he had come through. Thus: his hair was brown, his eyes light brown/maybe hazel. His black eyeglass frames I knew to be hip, having seen the latest in eyewear at a Royally Warranted optometrist’s showroom. He wasn’t a thin fellow; there was a bit of a belly that his apron hid, but hardly worth mentioning. He picked me up at my door like a suitor of old. If we’d been classmates at White Plains Senior High School, I may have overlooked him. Then, at our fifth or tenth reunion, as we’d talked about what we’d both been doing in the five or ten years since never knowing each other in school, I’d have thought how was I not friends with this boy who has grown up to be attractive in a non-flashy, five-foot-eightish way? How did I not invite him to the Sadie Hawkins dance junior year? He seems not only smart but, well, nice. And if I went back to our yearbook I’d probably find under his photo a line by Shakespeare or Fitzgerald that was compatible with my Judy Blume quote: “Our fingerprints don’t fade from the lives we touch.”
We drove to the jazz club, a fifteen or twenty-minute ride in a car that served as a conversation-starter because it was electric, my first such vehicular experience. I asked the whys and wherefores of charging, of charging stations, of charging time, of how far a charge took him—hoping to sound genuinely interested in his Bolt. Just like our two exchanges at the store, he’d answered in an amused, indulgent fashion.
I knew from my homework that the club was a jazz landmark—brick-walled indoors and out, and a framed 1933 front page announcing Dry Amendment is Dead, an homage to the club’s speakeasy past. Once we were seated, the topic turned quickly from prohibition to wine, not occupationally but because the menu listed only beer and cocktails.
When asked, the waitress said, “We have a red and a white.”
With a wry tilt of his head, he asked, “The red is . . . ?”
“Pinot Grigio.”
He smiled and said, “Maybe Pinot Noir?”
“Meant that,” she said. “Long day. Brunch this morning. Two seatings plus dinner, and the show.”
“I’ll have the red, too,” I said.
She pointed to the italics at the bottom of the menu. “The twenty-five dollar minimum can be for food or drink or any combination.”
“Maybe we’ll just start with the wine,” said Alex.
“Perfect,” I told the waitress, “but don’t go too far away.”
Alone again he asked, “And the new job? Still excited about it?”
I didn’t want to sound like a complainer, so I said only, “Not quite what I expected.”
“In a bad way?”
I lowered my voice. “My title is research assistant. I knew I’d be listening in on interviews and transcribing them, but I was shocked when he said I’d be turning those interviews into, essentially, a book. His next one.”
“Can that be bad—ghostwriter to a celebrity author?”
It felt great to speak bluntly about Kirby to someone who wasn’t going to urge me to file a grievance. I said, “It’s just about how we’re going to get there. He’s impulsive. He gets an idea in his head and runs out the door, dragging me along. Or he gets a big piece of news—”
“Such as . . . ?”
Once again, the question of what was confidential. I said, “He’s a muckraker and he’s not a fan of Donald Trump.”
“I think I just heard a non-answer answer.”
I said, “I’m not supposed to talk about stuff that’s going into the book.”
“Then I won’t press you. I’ll read the book when it comes out.”
“Working title: ‘The Blight’.”
Alex laughed. He asked if I’d read Kirby’s other books.
“I skimmed the most recent one on the train, heading for my interview. I’d only had one day’s notice between applying for the job and meeting him.”
“Obviously nailed that interview—that’s what the Prosecco was for, right?”
I said, “I’m impressed—remembering what a customer bought two weeks ago for, I think, $14.99.”
“Fifteen-ninety-nine,” he said. He took off his glasses, cleaned both lenses with his napkin, reinstated them, then said quite deliberately, “Not that I remember every customer’s purchase.”
“Probably just because I chatted you up.”
He smiled. “Are you fishing for a compliment?”
I said, yes, I was; no question.
“You told me you were celebrating a new job, who you’d be working for, that you had two roommates, lesbians, to be exact, while you yourself were straight.”
“Awkward. But helpful, no?”
“Very helpful.” He gestured: here we are, after all. On a date.
The waitress returned and asked if we’d decided.
“Anything not to be missed?” Alex asked.
“Crab cakes, made here. Shrimp and grits are popular. I don’t eat meat, but everyone says the burgers are awesome.”
After a fast speed-read of the burger lineup, I said I’d have the Ella Fitzgerald.
Alex said, “In that case, I’ll have the Herbie Hancock, medium, with the truffle fries.”
“Medium for me, too,” I said. “With the vegetable of the day instead of fries?”
“Because she’ll have five of yours,” the waitress said with a wink.
Waiting for our food, I launched into a history of the Klein family business: originally hardware, founded by my paternal great-grandfather on the Lower East Side of New York in 1925.
‘Still family-owned? Still in the same location?” Alex asked.
“Yes to family-owned. But Upper East Side now, on Lexington. And exclusively paint and wallpaper since my dad took it over.”
“And who takes over after your dad?”
“Not me. I have no aptitude for it. Or maybe no patience with the customers agonizing over four shades of the same color that look identical to me. When someone says ‘This red doesn’t have enough blue in it,’ I say, ‘You’d better talk to my mother.’”
Alex said, “No kidding. How about people who assume I’ve tasted every wine in the store?”
“Don’t you want to say ‘how the hell do I know? I’d have to be drinking twenty-four hours a day!’”
“Yup. But I say, ‘I haven’t tasted this exact cheap New Zealand Sauvignon Blanc, but I’m a big fan of the expensive Sancerre one section over.”
“No you don’t!”
“Not in so many words . . . just practice . . . doesn’t take a genius.”
“Okay to ask the same question you asked me: what happens when your dad retires?”
“I have two brothers, one older, one younger, both on different tracks.”
“That leaves you?”
“That leaves me.”
“Is that what you want?”
“On some days.”
Maybe he was being modest; maybe he didn’t want to sound overly enthusiastic about succession when I had spurned a parallel path. Was some positive reinforcement called for? I said, “From what I’ve seen, you enjoy the work. Didn’t I tell you how good you are at customer relations?”
“I believe the term was ‘good client facing,’ which I’ve gotten some mileage out of since I heard that. I found that . . . never mind. I shouldn’t say.”
“Stiffest compliment ever? Biz-speak?”
“No. Just the opposite. Sweet. I could tell you wanted to keep the conversation going, but didn’t want to come across as over-friendly, hence the jargon.”
I said, “I have to do better.”
The first song sounded like repetitive randomness in search of a melody, at least to me. Had my face given my jazz apathy away? I suspect I was guilty of that because Alex whispered, “If you don’t like it, we can slip away during their break.”
I said, “No. I’m enjoying this”—true, in the big picture. The Fitzgerald and the Hancock, as high as triple-decker sandwiches, arrived mid-set. Holding the burger in both hands, the first bite imminent, I whispered, “This isn’t going to be pretty.”
“I’ll be the judge of that,” he said.
After we’d eaten most of our burgers, after I’d asked him if he wanted to see a movie next weekend, the pianist announced, “Next up, a song by Jimmy McHugh and Dorothy Fields, debuted by singer Adelaide Hall in 1928. We have Artie Steinberg on tenor sax.”
The jazz-savvy all around us clapped and whistled. Was it possible that the trio was silently dedicating this to us? Of course not—with composer, lyricist, and chanteuse’s names at the ready. What a narcissistic, loopy thought. Surely ‘I Can’t Give You Anything But Love’ was their standard fare, and had nothing to do with blushing patrons holding hands under their two-top.