The Night Shift, page 3
“Thank you,” Jean said, and an involuntary smile spilled across her face—not even the full force of her contrition could stop it.
“Oh, and I called your reference. Never got back to me—maybe she already packed her suitcases for Boca Raton.”
Jean squelched a wave of unease and smiled. “Yeah, probably.” Jean stayed quietly working until the morning coffee shift knocked on the gate.
Three
Jean’s job at the bakery was calming in the same way her job at the bar was energizing. While there, she couldn’t think about anything outside of work in any meaningful way, which, for Jean, was perfect. At Red and Gold and at the bakery, all she could think about were Red and Gold and the bakery. Jean was eternally present, with not a moment to spare to consider the past or the future. Even the exhaustion was fascinating. Jean loved learning something new that her body could do, identifying and surpassing the limits she had once believed were fixed.
On her first day off in over a week, Jean felt the opposite of relieved, relaxed, or restful. She made rent, and happily turned over her share to Molly and Christine. She even had enough left over to provide a small cash reserve in case she was late to the bakery again and got fired. She wished she was more certain that wouldn’t happen so she could just buy a new coat. For the last few back-to-back shifts, Jean had taken a taxi from Red and Gold to Lu’s, but she couldn’t keep doing that. It was already adding up uncomfortably quickly. Maybe she could find a bike somewhere, or borrow one.
Molly and Christine were in Long Island for the weekend, and instead of enjoying her empty apartment, Jean felt the urgent need to escape it. To be out. She hauled her filthy clothes to the Dream Clean and deposited her first check from the bakery at her bank’s branch in Union Square. She bought a pair of gloves at a pharmacy, lingering, inexplicably, in the dental hygiene aisle. All of those clinical minty greens and blues reminded her of hospital rooms and all of the other things she wanted to forget. Jean decided to get out of there and take a walk. She couldn’t shake the feeling of being idle and unsettled.
When her phone buzzed in her jacket pocket, she almost believed she had willed the distraction into existence.
“Hello?” she answered, her relief immediate as a patch of shade on a hot day.
“Jean? It’s Arpita.”
“Oh, Arpita—hi! How are things going up there?”
“Things are fine... I think.” Arpita paused, and Jean waited, not sure if she should interrupt. “It’s just that, Dr. Goldstein, you know, seems a little...”
“A little what?” Jean stopped and huddled against the side of a Blockbuster Video. A fluffy black-and-white dog paused to sniff her feet and then walked on.
“A little off? But it’s hard to tell if this is just how she is, or if something’s wrong with her, you know? I thought I would just check in with you to make sure everything sounds normal.”
“Okay.” Jean pressed a finger into her other ear to eliminate some of the noise from the street.
“Jean? Are you there?”
“Yeah, I’m here—can you hear me?” Jean wandered a few steps down the block.
“I can now, yes. I said, do you think something’s going on with her son? Like something, I don’t know, untoward?” An ambulance raced down the avenue and Jean waited to speak until it passed.
“Dr. Goldstein’s son? Jeffrey?” Jean was confused, unsure whether she had heard Arpita correctly.
“Yes, him. Jeffrey.”
“I mean, I don’t really know. I only met him a couple of times over the years.” Jean had spoken to Jeffrey on the phone more often than in person, and he’d always seemed like somebody’s regular, painfully square, middle-aged son.
“Only a couple of times? Really.” Arpita’s tone slanted toward suspicious.
“Why? What’s going on?”
“He just, well, he seems to be around a lot.”
“Is he visiting his mom?” Jean thought about the last time Jeffrey had been to New York. It was a long weekend, and he had taken Dr. Goldstein to the opera.
“I think so.”
“What’s wrong with that?”
“I don’t know how to put this delicately, but he seems kind of creepy to me.” Arpita lowered her voice.
“Creepy how? Did he say something to you?” Jeffrey had never seemed like an obvious racist, but 9/11 had revealed the worst in people. “Oh God, did he do something?” A bus rumbled by.
“No, no, no, not creepy with me. More like creepy with Dr. Goldstein.”
“What do you mean?”
Jean felt herself moving along the street in search of a quieter place, walking into a mostly vacant park.
“He just seems really pushy.”
“You mean like physically pushy? Like elder abuse?”
“No, more just emotionally aggressive.” Suddenly, Arpita sounded restrained, as though someone were in the room with her.
“Honestly, I don’t think there’s anything to be done about that. I mean, he’s her son, right? And he’ll go home eventually. Right?”
Arpita sighed. “Okay, I guess that’s true. Sorry to bother you—thanks for talking this out with me.”
“Sure, no problem—call me anytime. Take care.” Jean hung up feeling stranger than before. The wind picked up and she ducked into a Dunkin’ Donuts for shelter. She bought a coffee drink exploding with whipped topping and sipped from it as she walked. Jean tried to push back her restlessness. She imagined sealing it away into the sidewalk with every step. Her dissatisfaction didn’t vanish, no matter how hard she stamped. The coffee grew cold quickly, and she threw it in a nearby garbage can. She looked up and saw that her legs had transported her back to Red and Gold. Jean jammed her frozen hands into her pockets. The cartoon turkey taped to the door stared her straight in the eye—a dare. She walked in, for the first time, as a customer.
It was still early and the bar was mostly empty, apart from Mitch, Iggy, and a mismatched couple at a table in the back. Jean had noticed them before—the woman was tiny and sharp-eyed. She seemed sober no matter how much she was served, but her companion was epically sloppy. A faller-downer, Mitch called him.
“Hey! Jean Jeanie!” Mitch greeted her with a two-armed, exuberant air traffic controller’s wave. She ducked her head, a little shy to be on the other side of the bar, and sat down next to Iggy. “Can’t stay away either, huh?”
“Hey, man, I’m just picking up my tips!” Iggy toasted the air with a dented can of Tecate.
“Just stopping by.” Jean shifted a little, glad she hadn’t removed her jacket and scarf. She could feel her face reddening. She really should have thought this through a little more.
“You want a drink?” Mitch said, all gentle and perceptive.
“Yeah, sure whatever.”
The faller-downer shuffled to the jukebox in the corner and Mitch winced, setting a Tecate in front of her. Glenn Danzig screeched out of the speakers, and Mitch caught Jean’s eye as he shook his head. “My man is keeping his feet! It’s going to be a good night.” Jean smiled and shuddered from her first sip of the too-cold beer. She was still thawing from her walk down Second Avenue.
“You know, Faller Downer is a former nine-to-fiver, like you.”
“Oh yeah?” Jean loosened the scarf around her neck.
“He was a finance guy, if you can believe it,” Mitch continued, staring at the customer’s unsteady walk back to his companion. “Walked away from it all. Pulled the plug after 9/11. Were you in the city? For that?” Mitch turned to Jean.
She only nodded—Jean wished everyone would shut up about it. She had carefully packed away the horror from that day and couldn’t understand the people that kept unwrapping and comparing their own, similar horrors.
“What are you up to tonight?” Jean asked Iggy, talking too fast.
“I know the doorman at Transmission. You want to come? A lot of my friends will be there.” Iggy looked down at his drink while he spoke.
“What’s Transmission?” Jean asked, reaching for her beer.
“What? Jean Jeanie’s never been to Transmission? You’re kidding. It’s a party they have every week—you have such a bad haircut, I figured you were one of those Transmission kids. You know, it’s part of the whole look over there.”
“Ouch.” Jean put her hand to her hair, feeling around the shape of her shorn head. “I did this myself—do you know how hard it is to cut the back?”
“No offense!” Mitch said, holding his hands in the air. “It’s cool, really.”
“Sure it is.” Jean smiled, turning back toward Iggy. The half a beer on her empty stomach produced a welcome glow of confidence, and Jean beamed that effervescent feeling straight at Iggy. “Okay. Let’s go.”
Another beer and two slices of pizza later, Jean and Iggy strode back up Second Avenue against the gusting wind. “It’s the remnants of Nicole,” Iggy said.
“Who?”
“The tropical storm.”
“Oh, right.” Jean walked quickly, pushing forward through the gale. “Are you from somewhere with lots of hurricanes?”
“Not really. I just like weather.” They crossed the street, suddenly divided by a clot of tipsy college kids. As they neared Union Square, the streets grew denser and louder. People desperately wielded their umbrellas, and Jean edged closer to Iggy.
“Why do you like the weather?” Jean winced as a slap of rain smacked across her cheek.
Iggy cracked a smile. “It’s stupid, but I like that nobody really knows what’s going to happen. It’s always changing—kind of the only reliable adventure you can get as an adult. And we’re here, before I say any more embarrassing shit.” He stepped into a narrow doorway and ran up a flight of stairs, motioning for her to follow. Iggy paused on the landing where a line had gathered and looked Jean in the eye. “I’m really glad you came tonight.”
“Me too.” Jean could feel the music through her feet on the stairs and the hum of voices in the air. Iggy pushed a path to the entrance, and shook hands with the doorman, waving Jean through.
Iggy nodded at the bartender over the heads of the customers waiting to order. The bartender, a dead ringer for Jennifer Lopez, winked in friendly acknowledgment. “Babe,” he called out over the music. “This is my friend.” When he pointed at Jean, she felt a great jolt of surprise. “Take care of her.” The bartender barely glanced at her and vaguely nodded. Jean jammed herself into the free space, leaning against the bar.
“I’m going to see if my friends are here yet—get a drink and come meet us, okay?”
Jean nodded, grateful for the opportunity to collect herself and settle into the night. The bar was full, much fuller than Red and Gold even on her busiest shifts—the space was also much, much larger. In this bar, people came to dance.
Girls in cocktail dresses and boys in skinny ties flung themselves toward and away from each other. Kids in artfully cut up T-shirts strutted through the crowd, while the somber DJs looked on from a dim corner. The music was elastic and sunny—mostly British, all of it great for dancing. Jennifer Lopez set a shot in front of her with an efficiency that Jean coveted. Jean watched the room turn to liquid around her; people on the dance floor, people at the bar, people in line for the bathroom, people pressed up against each other and the wall—they all transformed into a soft whorl of energy.
When she looked at them like that, it was easy to dive in. Jean pushed away from her spot at the bar and dove. She had never been a dancer, but something about the night and the music, and her nocturnal new life, made it easy. She wasn’t self-conscious, thanks to all of the drinks; instead, she was filled with a ferocious delight. The arms of that galaxy of dancers opened up for her, and the way her body moved within that embrace surprised her. Jean had rarely felt so good. It made her a little sad to think about just how rarely. Maybe it was time to go home, she thought. But, within that small dip in her mood, someone grabbed hold of her shoulder.
“Hey, there you are!” Iggy hollered.
Jean responded with a relieved smile and a wave.
“Let’s get another drink,” he said, hooking his elbow into hers and pulling her out of the crowd. “Are you sure you haven’t been here before?”
“First time,” Jean said. She suddenly felt where the sweat had erupted over her body and fanned at her face.
“What do you want?”
“Whatever.”
Iggy called their order over an oblivious couple making out against the bar. “Here, come meet my friends.” He pressed a cold glass into her hand—a vodka soda.
“Funny,” she said.
Iggy led her through a narrow corridor and into a little side room that opened onto it. It was just big enough for a booth where Iggy’s friends were gathered. There couldn’t have been more than five or six, but Jean was overwhelmed by their volume.
“Guys, this is my friend Jean. She works with me at Red and Gold.”
A cavernous Ahh opened around her as the friends made sense of her among them, and, for the second time that night, Jean dove into the opening they made for her. Iggy scooted her into the booth, where she was crushed shoulder to shoulder with an Asian girl with bobbed dark hair. A white, freckly redhead with long blunt bangs regarded her from across the table, twisting the straw from her drink into a ragged, red plastic heart.
“It’s Jean, right?” the girl with the bob asked.
“Right.” She took a long sip of her watery vodka soda.
“Cool—very old-fashioned. Are you named after somebody?”
“Nope,” Jean lied. “What about you?”
“Claire.” The girl stuck her hand out in a comically abbreviated way, like a raptor, thanks to their close quarters. “Not named after anyone either. How long have you been in the city?”
“A few years,” Jean said, although she knew exactly how many: eight.
“Where from?”
“Pennsylvania. Nowhere interesting,” she added quickly. Jean was used to stringing up these deterrents in all of her first conversations with people.
“Not like Luke over there.” Claire smiled in the direction of a young man staring over at them from across the table. “He’s from the city, born and raised!”
“Wow,” Jean said, planting her gaze directly into her drink to avoid the carnivorous stare of born and raised in the city Luke. Jean steadied herself against the obvious currents of friendship at the table. She felt an unsettling lurch over being the odd one out—she didn’t often feel lonely, but something about the booth and the comfortable companionship with Iggy had changed her equilibrium.
“Jean,” Iggy shouted. “Will you please tell Claire she can’t audition for the Bad Girls Club?”
“What’s the Bad Girls Club?” Jean shifted to face Claire.
Claire rolled her eyes. “Jesus Christ, Iggy! It’s just a job.” She lowered her voice, dipping into confiding tones as she spoke to just Jean. “It’s a reality show—I’m an actress. It’s shitty, but this is the kind of work that’s out there. I just want to audition for a role that isn’t a geisha or a dry cleaner.”
“If you do it, you’ll always regret it, C.” Iggy banged his hand on the table like a gavel and Jean jolted in her seat.
“Don’t get me started on the stupid shit you’ve done, Iggy.” Claire threw a discarded lime wedge across the table in his direction.
“Listen, we’ve all done things we regret.” The redhead with the heavy bangs stared directly at Jean when she said it. Jean looked around the table, certain there was something she had missed.
“I need the bathroom. Sorry.” Claire winced sympathetically at her and pointed toward the corridor.
“I’ll go with you,” the girl with the bangs said. They jostled out of the booth and soon Jean was sandwiched between Luke and Iggy. Iggy’s attention was turned away, absorbed in conversation with an androgynous friend wearing heavy plastic-rimmed glasses.
“So, do you like working at Red and Gold?” Luke asked. He moved a little away from her on the bench instead of a little closer, which immediately made Jean like him better.
“So far, so good,” she said, offering a thin smile over the rim of her glass. “What about you? How do you know Iggy?”
“We’re in a band together.”
“Oh yeah? I didn’t know Iggy was in a band.”
“Yeah, Ig is great. He’s been playing the guitar since he could walk, practically.”
“What do you play in the band?”
“I’m the singer,” he said, like it was a joke. Jean felt an involuntary smile bloom across her face.
“I know, right? You want to go dance?” He nervously rearranged his faux hawk in the dull gleam of the framed Siouxsie and the Banshees poster hanging over them.
“Sure,” she said, with a shrug. She set her drained glass on the table and leapt over Iggy without asking him to get up, an acrobatic move that revealed her athletic past.
“Whoa, you’re really tall!” Luke said, once he’d extracted himself from the booth. Jean looked down at his voluminous, expensive haircut from a few inches. “Amazing,” he said, like a person eating a plum for the first time, half carnal, half sweet. Despite her better judgment, Jean liked the way he said it.
“Let’s go.” She led them back out to the dance floor.
* * *
Jean’s night grew blurrier and blurrier the more she danced. She forgot about her jacket, shoved into the booth with Iggy’s friends, all strangers to her. She forgot about her wallet and keys. Jennifer Lopez kept serving her shots. When last call murmured through the crowd like a game of telephone, she and Luke dodged the rush of dancers securing one more for the road and returned to find Iggy and most of his friends gone. Only the redhead and Claire remained, talking close and holding hands on the table.
“Hey, where’d everybody go?” Luke asked.
