“Yes, she should,” I say primly, and serve the drinks. One for Redhead, the other for the normal-haired woman with the tortoiseshell glasses. I hover nearby as they sip.
The woman gags. Redhead only coughs.
“A little stiff?” I ask. “That’s how we like ’em, here at Shika.”
“This isn’t a Cosmopolitan,” the woman says.
“Not entirely,” Redhead agrees.
“Let me taste that.” Neil grabs Redhead’s drink and takes a slug. He shivers, a full-body expression of disgust. “That sure as shit is a Cosmo,” he says, suppressing a secondary tremor. “Never tasted better.”
“Have you ever had a Cosmopolitan?” the woman asks, and I’m just glad she’s looking at Neil, not me.
“So what if I haven’t?” he says. “That means I don’t know one when I taste it? Let’s say the first time you tasted a Cosmo, it was really a—I don’t know, let’s say it was a…”
“Manhattan,” Redhead deadpans, flashing me a glance.
“Yeah, a Manhattan,” Neil says. “So what you think is a Cosmo is really a Manhattan. That’s epistemology, baby! The limits of knowledge in—”
“That’s just crap,” one of the extra men says.
“It’s not just crap,” the other extra man says. “It’s utter crap.”
Which sets Neil bellowing again. “Utter crap? I’ll tell you what’s utter crap! The fact that George W was appointed president—”
Maya bounces over from the front door, and they all greet her with great relief. “I see Elle got you started,” she says. She smiles at them, and at me, and I feel I’ve been anointed. Then her gaze settles on my Cosmopolitans and her smile settles into a frown. “What are those?” she asks.
“Chicagos,” Redhead says.
“Well, I ordered a Cosmopolitan,” the woman says.
Maya looks at me.
“Cosmopolitans?” I say firmly.
“You don’t know how to make Cosmos, Elle.”
“They’re pink.”
“I’ll make fresh ones.” Maya takes the woman’s glass, and reaches for Redhead’s, but he stops her.
“I like it,” he says. “It’s unique.” He looks at me. “Sweet.”
“What are you talking about?” Neil the teddy bear says. “It’s awful. You can’t drink that. It’s not even a Cosmo.”
He’s shouted down by a volley of derisive hoots. Redhead sips triumphantly, and winces.
I scurry back to the bar as Maya fixes two Cosmopolitans. As she puts the bottles away, she pauses over the brandy I’ve pulled from the top shelf. “What’s this doing out?”
“Umm…”
“Tell me,” she says, fixing me with a horrified glare. “Tell me you didn’t use it in the Cosmopolitans.”
“Well…it’s not all I used.”
“Elle, this is de Fussigny—it’s a two-hundred-and-fifty-dollar bottle of cognac. It’s sitting on the top shelf so nobody opens it.” She doesn’t look mad so much as really disappointed.
“I’ll pay for it,” I say, wanting to shrink into nothing. “You know I have that monster stack of cash.”
“It doesn’t matter,” she says, though I know it does. “We might as well drink it now. You want a glass?” She pulls out some brandy snifters.
“I’ll have a glass,” Monty says.
“You have to pay for it,” I snap. “It’s expensive.”
“Elle,” Maya warns.
But Monty laughs. “How much?”
“Fifty bucks. It’s d’Fussy. Worth every penny.”
“Ellie,” Maya says.
“Hit me up,” Monty says, and lays a crisp hundred on the bar. “And one for the lady.” Meaning me. He’s now, officially, my idol.
“I’ll take a glass, too,” this lovely, deep voice says from three inches behind me, and Redhead is there for his Cosmos.
“Just one?” I say. “What about your friends?”
“Don’t push your luck,” he says, and takes the drinks back to his table.
Maya looks harried. “It’s not worth fifty dollars a glass. I can’t charge—”
“Oh, shush,” I say, and clink my glass with Monty’s. Maya snorts—trying not to laugh—and clinks her glass and we drink.
From the booth, Neil the teddy bear bellows something about us all living in a pentarchy while getting redder and redder in the face.
“What’s the deal with him?” I say. “Cute, but kind of argumentative.”
“That’s what they’re here for.” Maya sips her cognac. “Neil has a problem with rage. His wife said she’d leave him if he didn’t deal with it. He wasn’t beating her or anything, she was just sick of all the yelling. So he started this club. They come every Tuesday night and argue.”
“Does it work?” I ask. “Is he less rageful?”
“I don’t know,” Maya says. “I’m afraid to ask him.”
Maybe it’s the cognac, but we all laugh, and Maya tells me to watch the bar again for a sec, while she runs out back.
I panic. “No! Don’t leave me—I’m not ready!”
She ignores me, so I take my post and consider wiping the bar until it shines, but decide it isn’t worth the effort. Shika needs major renovation before cleaning will make it look any better. The booths are brown vinyl, the walls are painted dirty beige. The yellowing photographs of the Lower East Side of New York are fun, but better suited to a funky deli than a happening bar.
There are some good architectural details, though. The floor is hardwood, worn to a soft golden honey color. The ceilings are taller even than ZZ’s garage in Goleta, there are four skylights half-hidden by dingy fluorescent lighting fixtures and the bar itself is a great old art deco piece.
I happen to glance toward Redhead—only because I’m thinking we can paint the bathrooms a lovely deep red, and want to remember what shade of red I don’t like—and notice that he’s doing what I’m doing. Looking around the room, his eyebrows raising slightly at the good bits, and lowering at the ratty booths and walls. I wouldn’t mind renovating him. Shaving his head would be a first step, and—he catches me staring.
I’m not usually so weepy and pathetic. It’s the wedding, the engagement, Louis. Being left at the altar does things to your self-esteem. Plus, starting from scratch, back in the town where you went to high school—and realizing that you’ve accomplished nothing since then, except maybe what you thought was a nice, committed, six-year relationship, and even that fell apart, and there’s a man who catches you staring and he’s lovely except for being a ginger freak-head, and you don’t know what you want and barely know who you are, and what if he likes you and expects to see you naked, and dating is supposed to be this utter nightmare and you don’t know—
Long story short: I run away. I am a blur, fleeing out the front door.
I hear Maya’s voice say, “Elle?” but I don’t slow down. I am gone.
Wish I’d waited one more second, though. To see which direction his eyebrows went when he looked at me.