Language Arts

by Stephanie Kallos

  “Nah, thanks, I’m okay, really, but thanks. I’m kind of worn-out. I’m just gonna get some rest, take advantage of the weekend off.” He coughed hoarsely. “You should rest up too. You’ll need it.”

  Zach went on to remind Charles about the Stanford/Bettencourt wedding reception, a supersize fête scheduled the next day from four until midnight in the Broadmoor’s largest party room. It would be a huge amount of work, pouring and mixing drinks, supervising two rookie bartenders, and overseeing a cadre of over-hire waitstaff who’d be roaming the room serving pre-dinner hors d’oeuvres.

  “I can’t believe Meghan Stanford is getting married,” Zach said. “I was working poolside the summer she had her first swimming lesson; she must have been two, three. She was a funny little kid, comical, I mean, her daddy’s girl from the very beginning.” Zach adopted a mock grandfatherly tone, something he did whenever he started sounding like a senior citizen. “Of course, my son, that was way before your time.”

  “Right,” Charles said, trying to laugh, sinking back down on the sofa without taking off his coat. Suddenly, he felt exhausted. “Hey, are you sure this whole hospital story isn’t an April Fools’ joke?”

  Zach emitted a single, hollow sound, more cough than chuckle. “Ah, bro. I wish. Good luck tomorrow. Let me know how it goes.”

  That was how, on the chilly first weekend of April 1988, Charles ended up managing the no-host bar for the Stanford/Bettencourt wedding reception. Among the three hundred and fifty guests was a twenty-five-year-old law student named Alison Forché.

  •♦•

  Around seven thirty, there was enough of a lull that Charles felt comfortable entrusting the bar to his less experienced colleagues, a pair of overcaffeinated, undernourished graduate students with the hollow-eyed seriousness Charles associated with overachievers (pity the poor kids): Pre-Law Patrick and Biochemistry Kate.

  He left a message at the hospital for Zach letting him know that everything was going well (a nurse informed him with obvious irritation that the patient was already asleep), and then—because he considered it important to enforce a strict boundary between his dual identities (Charles the Pothead and Charles the Barkeep)—he removed his monogrammed, country-club-issue jacket and took a brisk walk to the sixteenth green to smoke a joint.

  By seven forty-five—as the toasts were wrapping up and the cake-cutting was about to begin—Charles had taken a piss, freshened his breath with mouthwash, renewed the whites of his eyes with Visine, and resumed his place behind the bar before any of the guests noticed he’d been gone. At least, that’s what he thought.

  After announcing his return to his battle-weary subordinates—neither of them had worked an event of this size before, and both of them looked exhausted—Charles added, “Why don’t you take a break for half an hour, get some dinner. I can handle things.”

  “Are you sure?” Patrick asked.

  “Tell you what,” Charles went on. “Take forty-five minutes. Just come back when you hear the band start up, okay?”

  Kate began gathering up her things with such rapidity and desperation that Charles wondered if she intended to bolt. “Sure,” she blurted. “You bet. Thanks. Bye.”

  Reaching for his jacket, Charles noticed what looked like a small handkerchief tucked into the chest pocket. “What’s this?”

  “One of the waiters left it.” Patrick raised an arm and pointed. “That one. A guest asked him to deliver it to you. See you later.”

  It was a gold-lettered cocktail napkin—the first of its kind Charles had seen that day. Supple and soft, feeling more like cloth than paper, it was the same warm persimmon color as the bridesmaids’ gowns and had probably cost almost as much:

  On the non-lettered side, in black ink, someone had written:

  BARTENDING EXAM

  1. Name the ingredients in a Moscow mule.

  Charles was no graphologist, but given a reasonable-size writing sample, he did have the ability to make assumptions about a person’s penmanship background and training. And in the same way that an elocution teacher can detect the slightest trace of a regional accent in even the most neutrally executed speech, Charles could locate vestigial influences in the script of anyone who had come into contact (however briefly) with the penmanship techniques of Austin Norman Palmer.

  The woman who wrote this message—and Charles knew it was a woman, not because of the handwriting but because of the perfume—used a combination of print and cursive, a sure sign that she was younger than Charles, schooled at a time when learning cursive was no longer a priority. And yet somewhere along the way she’d been exposed to the Palmer Method; the words bartending and Moscow made use of Mr. Palmer’s distinct, special variants for the letters g and w located in a terminal position.

  Charles perched on a stool behind the bar, assumed the position, and began to write.

  2 oz. vodka

  It had been years since he’d written with a consciousness of technique—

  juice of ½ lime

  1 split ginger beer or ale

  —and being so out of practice, he was nervous—

  Combine and serve in beer mug with two cubes of ice.

  —but at least he didn’t have to improvise the content of his reply.

  Drop in lime shell.

  Charles examined his penmanship as if judging a blind submission to the national Palmer system handwriting competition. Muscle memory had served him well; it was an acceptable effort, so he flagged down the waiter Patrick had pointed out and asked him to deliver the napkin to its original sender. Charles tried to follow his figure through the crowd, but there were too many people and the postdinner drink orders were starting to come.

  A few minutes later, another napkin arrived:

  Correct.

  2. What is the proper glass in which to serve a Bacardi buck?

  Charles wrote his next response on a Broadmoor letterhead note card, tucked it into an envelope addressed “To Examiner,” and posted it with the waiter/mail carrier.

  Another question: How do you make a blood ’n’ sand cocktail?

  Then others: How do you make an absinthe frappe? A Bobby Burns cocktail? A horse’s neck? A maiden’s prayer? A merry widow? A point of no return?

  Charles penned and posted his replies as quickly as he could.

  The questions kept coming (none fired his anticipation more than How do you make a between the sheets?). And then—as the clock inched toward midnight and the band began its last set—the final question arrived:

  How do you make sense of the fact that you’re working as a bartender?

  •♦•

  Once the room started to clear, Charles scanned the remaining crowd and guessed that the person most likely to be his mysterious correspondent was the one sitting alone at a table on the far end of the reception hall.

  Wearing horn-rimmed glasses and one of those simple, A-line dresses that look best on lean, long-boned women, she was watching the band and sipping on what looked like the remnants of a hot buttered rum. Mahogany-colored hair shorn into a boyishly messy ruffle; no makeup. She’d kicked off her shoes and stretched out her legs, using a small shipping box as an ottoman.

  Great gams, Charles thought as he made his way across the room; Big feet, as he got closer.

  “Designated driver?”

  Startled, she looked up, quickly shifting her body as if she’d been caught in some trifling infraction, and then she readjusted her eyeglasses, leaving another set of smudges on their already murky surface. “No, actually,” she said, “designated Sherpa.”

  She thrust out her hand; they shook like businessmen at a Rotary Club lunch.

  “Alison Forché. Nice to meet you …”—she squinted at his chest—“Charles.”

  “With whom are you on expedition?”

  She looked startled and (for some reason) amused. Twitching her head toward the reception-hall stage, she said, “My brother Aidan is the drummer—please, have a seat—and we made a deal: I promised to he
lp him haul his gear around this weekend and he promised to help me haul my books across Manhattan next month.”

  “What happens next month?” Charles asked as he sat.

  “I’m moving. And graduating.”

  “Ah,” Charles said, immediately starting to strategize a polite exit. Too young.

  “From Columbia Law School,” she added, not with hauteur but with a wry emphasis that made it clear she’d read his subtext. “I’ll be clerking with a firm that’s paying enough so that I can finally have my own apartment.”

  So she wasn’t twenty-two; she was still much younger than Charles. He’d concluded that this person couldn’t possibly be the authoress of the cocktail-napkin epistles; she was too straightforward and deadpan, too earnest. She didn’t exude even a trace of flirtatious intent.

  “Are you a friend of the bride or the groom?” Charles asked.

  “Groom.”

  Charles checked to make sure no one needed him at the bar (he’d dismissed the rookies at eleven o’clock) and then let his gaze wander.

  The reception was in its death throes, the guests gathering their things, leaving the tables, and somberly drifting away in twos and threes. Occasionally there was a truncated blurt of laughter, but it sounded canned, like the soundtrack of an embarrassingly unfunny sitcom with irredeemably lousy ratings. At the coat check, people looked as if they were swimming in gloves, hats, jackets, and overcoats that, inexplicably, were now two sizes too large; they examined their claim tickets with disbelieving expressions: Is this really mine? Why does it feel so big?

  It was always like this after a newly married couple departed the postwedding festivities: a steady leak of high spirits, a mysterious physical shriveling. Charles suddenly pictured the big inflatables at the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade, all those ten-story Snoopys and Bullwinkles and Hortons and Spider-Men. They had to surrender their buoyant contours sometime, somewhere, and as he watched the last deflated guests depart the Stanford/Bettencourt wedding reception, he felt as if he were witnessing the end of the line, looking on as Whoever’s-Sorry-Job-It-Was pulled the plug, setting off that long tragic exhale of stale helium.

  Jesus, what was wrong with him?

  Charles concluded that his cocktail-napkin correspondent had to be long gone, having chosen to remain anonymous. He checked his watch. Twelve fifteen. Time to clean up and head home.

  He turned to bid a polite farewell to the odd Mademoiselle Forché and found her staring at him. She looked different somehow.

  “You didn’t hear me, did you?” she said.

  “Sorry?” She’d removed her eyeglasses; that was what had changed.

  “I said, I didn’t think you were going to find me.”

  “Find you?” The floor in their corner of the room began to upend like a huge curling linoleum tile; Charles could feel a dull, potent headache gathering force between his brows. Stupid, he thought, remembering that he hadn’t eaten all day and wishing that he’d forgone his habitual end-of-shift Irish coffee. “I’m sorry, I’m not following.”

  Leaning forward slightly and looking into Charles’s eyes with purposeful intensity, she said: “Have you thought about my question?”

  “What?”

  The muscles around her mouth quavered into a tilted, suppressed grin. She took a sip of her drink and re-angled her body to reveal a small spiral-bound book: Charles’s dog-eared copy of the 1952 edition of A Guide to Pink Elephants: 200 Most Requested Mixed Drinks on Alcohol Resistant Cards; it usually lived in plain sight on a shelf behind the bar. She picked it up and handed it to him.

  “Sorry about filching this and inundating you with those napkins,” she continued, filling the conversational void while Charles grappled with vocal paralysis, a side effect of being gobsmacked. “The groom’s mother put me in charge of getting rid of them, but they’re so lovely, I couldn’t bear to toss them.”

  “Hey!” a voice called from the stage. The musicians had started breaking down their equipment. “Alison! Need you!”

  “Be right there!” She stared at Charles for another moment, then reached down and hoisted the box of napkins into her lap. “I should go,” she said.

  “Why were you supposed to get rid of them?” Charles asked. “The napkins.”

  “Because of the typo.”

  “The what?”

  “Hey! Roadie!” A tall fellow—presumably Alison’s brother, since he was thwacking a pair of drumsticks together—stepped to the front of the stage and bellowed, “Sis, time to schlep!”

  “Be right there!” she hollered again. She reached into the box, plucked up one of the napkins by its corner, and smoothed it out: a miniature picnic blanket unfurled on the field of her upturned palm. “See?” she said, holding it toward Charles and pointing with her other hand: “‘Love Life Us Up Where We Belong.’ It’s a mistake.”

  “Ah. Is that a quote from something?”

  “Not a big fan of popular music, are you?”

  “No, not really.”

  “Well.” She replaced the napkin and hugged the box. “I should go help my brother. A promise is a promise.”

  Charles stood. She stood. He’d guessed that she was tall, but he hadn’t expected them to be eye to eye. They looked at each other from either side of the boxed-up inventory Alison clasped to her chest: hundreds of costly, exquisitely soft, obsolete, and typographically flawed rejects, neatly packaged and facing an uncertain future.

  “I’d like to see you again,” Charles said.

  “I’ll say goodbye before I leave.”

  “No, I meant—”

  “I know what you meant,” she said. “I’m thinking about it.”

  As Charles finished washing glasses and wiping down the counters, she made several trips in and out of the reception hall, toting band equipment with impressive fortitude.

  When fifteen minutes went by and she hadn’t returned—by which point Charles was the only person left in the reception hall—he figured that was the end of it, but after he hung up his bartending jacket and started heading to the kitchen to clock out, he heard the sound of hurrying footsteps.

  “It’s a lot of work, being a roadie.” Her voice was a little breathless.

  Reaching into her coat pocket and withdrawing a small rectangle of paper, she walked toward the bar, parked herself with her back to him, and, bending close to the counter, began writing something. “I’m flying back to New York tomorrow,” she announced. “I prefer written correspondence to telephone conversations.”

  When she finished, she turned around, stood up straight, and held up her pen at the precise midline of her face, so that it aligned perfectly with her nose. “You are under no legal obligation to return this,” she said. “However, you should know that it’s my favorite. So, please, either use it or regift it, but don’t throw it away.”

  She handed over the pen and the piece of paper: lightweight card stock. It was her claim check. When she didn’t immediately depart, Charles kissed her.

  He could have stood there kissing her forever, but when their breathing started to deepen and synchronize, she pulled away.

  “Goodbye, Charles,” she said. Then she turned on her sensible heels and walked away.

  The pen she’d handed him was no ordinary Bic Roller Ball (So Smooth It Almost Writes by Itself) or even a Sheaffer Slim Targa (Revolutionary Inlaid Nib) but the brand used by Ernest Hemingway and John Dos Passos during their World War I ambulance–driving days: a Montegrappa Italia.

  On the claim check, she’d written two addresses and a brief note:

  The first address is good through the end of May. After June 1st my law books and I will be living on West 10th. It was a pleasure meeting you, Charles. You’re an excellent bartender; nevertheless—and no matter how things turn out—I do hope you’ll give some thought to that question.

  Best wishes, Alison

  P.S. I’ll want to have children right away.

  •♦•

  “Crazy, isn’t it?” Charles t
ook a long hit and leaned back into the reassuringly firm resistance of Zach’s Italian leather sectional. They were sitting in the living room/kitchen of Zach’s condo; with its ascetic design and expansive views of Elliott Bay, it looked like it had just been featured in an Esquire photo shoot. In contrast to Charles’s cramped and squalid U District studio, Zach’s place was clearly the abode of a grownup.

  “And just think,” Charles concluded, offering Zach the joint, which he declined, “it could have been you on the receiving end of that girl’s weirdness.”

  It was Monday night. To celebrate Zach’s release from the hospital, Charles had invited himself over, toting a bag of takeout from El Puerco Lloron, a couple of videos, and a six-pack of Corona. Charles had just finished a rambling monologue in which he recounted the story of the Stanford/Bettencourt reception and how he’d narrowly escaped falling into the clutches of a humorless nutcase.

  “Of course, if you’d been the one working the gig,” he went on, “she probably would have missed her flight. Hell, she’d probably be in this room right now.”

  Zach smiled. “I’m not so sure about that.”

  He started gathering dirty plates and glasses, clearing the mess of bags, napkins, beer cans, and tinfoil scattered on the coffee table. “Stay put,” he said when Charles had trouble getting up. “I got this.” Zach crossed to the kitchen and began washing dishes.

  Charles breathed in another long, sustained hit of weed and worldview. Lucky guy, he thought. So fucking lucky.

  What Zach had was what Charles aspired to: personal freedom, elegant surroundings, the tidy, dignified sphere of a man unfettered by connections to anything but his own desires, untouched by the emotional and environmental chaos that’s an inevitable result of letting other people into one’s life.