“There’s a cute new bartender at Therapy.” Gabe leans closer to the mirror and examines his chin, tapping beneath it as if to check for signs of sagging. “Amazing ass. Never wears a bra.” He pauses. “Glasses.”
Ari tries to muster some enthusiasm. She pictures leading a braless, near-sighted bartender into the alley behind the bar. Feeling a new pair of hands in her hair. The damp brick wall against her back. Dragging her mouth across a shoulder, a collarbone, a nipple covered by the thin fabric of a stretchy tank top. Clouds of breath in the cold two a.m. air. Being pushed to her knees. Quiet little whimpering noises barely audible above the muffled, thumping bass from inside. Just picturing that kind of encounter would normally send flickers of live-wire energy through her body.
But the swooping sensation in the pit of her stomach won’t materialize.
“I can’t tonight.” After what is sure to be a few mind-numbing hours of pouring cheap merlot at an opening at the Whitney, she has huge plans to go home and try not to look at her soon-to-be-ex-wife’s Instagram. It features pictures of Cass and Katya cuddling on a hammock in the Catskills, captioned “New beginnings,” followed by some quote from Brené Brown.
“You’re isolating yourself.” Gabe turns to face her. “You should get over her by getting under a bartender. Or two. At the same time.”
“I’m not getting under anyone.” She gives the mirror one last swipe with the rag, catching her disaffected facial expression in the reflection. “Plus, you know I like to be on top.”
Thurs, Oct 13, 6:26 p.m.
Abby: Financial advisor will be at the restaurant in 7 mins.
It’s on 55th.
I have a booth in the back.
Bring your laptop.
7:10 p.m.
Are you coming?
7:28 p.m.
We ordered you the salmon.
You like ponzu, right?
8:00 p.m.
You need to be part of this decision, Joshua.
We have to present a united front.
Emailing you a recap of the offers.
If we move forward, I’m inclined to wait until after the Historical Society event.
Optics.
Josh braces himself against the chilly October wind whipping down Great Jones Street. He’s started adding evening runs to his gym schedule. Spending a full quarter of his waking hours at the Crunch on Bowery is a perfectly acceptable way to pass the time. Better than meetings with the humorless bald man fielding offers for Brodsky’s—property developers who want to turn the space into “athleisure concept labs” or “bitcoin bodegas.”
Inside his building, the old elevator shudders to a halt, opening directly into his fifth-floor apartment.
The fluorescent lights take a full two seconds to buzz to life, revealing the chaos, courtesy of his mother. In what’s supposed to be his living room, there’s half of a booth that his dad never got around to reupholstering, an industrial mixer, assorted hotel pans and racks, his dad’s old records and paperbacks, and questionably functional home gym equipment. A physical testament to Danny Kestenberg’s stubborn refusal to let go of things. His home now functions as a twelve-hundred-square-foot junk drawer.
At some point, Josh will pry the hideous avocado tile off the bathroom floor, rip out the chipped kitchen cabinets, and finish demolishing every non-load-bearing wall. But he’s not going to bother with the renovations he and Sophie had planned. Someone else can come in with their Miele appliances and Herman Miller chairs and create the most generic version of a Manhattan “dream home,” complete with a wife and a French bulldog.
He’s been telling himself that for the last six months. The only progress he’s made is a smattering of half-hearted sledgehammer holes, created after an especially brutal bout of self-loathing. Instead of dropping an anchor, he’d swung it through drywall.
He does some light social media stalking: monitoring restaurant openings and closings on Eater, sifting through the social accounts of every chef he ever worked with. All the James Beard winners, the Top Chef contestants. This form of masochism is supposed to propel him into action, but it only brings the bitter feelings back up to the surface.
Peeling off his shirt, he walks back to the bathroom to start the multistep process of running the hot water in the ancient claw-foot tub. Everything in this apartment is half-broken. Josh misses the walk-in steam shower from his previous apartment. He misses Sophie in his walk-in steam shower. Or maybe he misses the idea of Sophie in his walk-in steam shower because they’d only had sex in there once. （She’d said it was awkward and possibly dangerous.）