October. You are twenty-three. Your second night back from Lviv, and Carmen put you on the schedule the morning after you landed.
The shift starts at five. You are at the apron-hook by four-fifty. Carmen is at the bar polishing glasses with a towel that has been the same towel for as long as you have worked here. She does not ask how Lviv was. She nods at the apron. You put it on. The bow goes the way your hands have been making the bow for three years.
The early-evening regulars start coming in at five-twenty. Russell with the dog whose name you do not know. The two architects from the building on Cornelia. A man with a guitar case. Carmen pours their first drinks before they sit. You take orders. Your mouth does the work. Soup of the night is white-bean and kale. The fish is striped bass. The words come out in the order they always come out and the customers nod and you write nothing down.
The bar-radio is doing its weekday-evening cycle. Some Brazilian thing first, then a Bill Evans solo Carmen will leave on for the rest of the night. Bill Evans is what she puts on at the hour of dinner-service. You bring the bread. You fold the napkin under the bread the way Carmen showed you the first month. Russell tells you about his sister. You listen.
Joe comes in at six-twelve.
He sits at the end of the bar. The same stool. He has the book — different from before; he reads faster than you have ever seen anyone read — and he asks for water and the soup. Carmen pours the water. You bring the soup.
Your hand is steady. The bowl goes down on the napkin without sound.
I did not know. I know now. The body that was-not-knowing for three years and is now knowing-for-three-weeks does not announce itself to your face. The face is the face that takes Joe's order on a Wednesday in October the way it has taken his order on every Wednesday since he started coming here.
Thanks, Vera.
You're welcome.
That is what your mouth says. The mouth has been saying it. The body — you notice this only afterward, much later, walking home — has held its breath for the half-second between Thanks and Vera. That half-second is the body knowing a thing the face is not allowed to know.
He reads. He eats. He pays. He leaves at seven-forty. He does not look back at the kitchen on his way out. Joe never looks back at the kitchen on his way out.
You drop a glass once at the bar-pickup-end at eight-fifteen and Carmen says you're fine without looking up from her register tape, and you sweep, and you keep going.
At eleven the kitchen closes. You wipe down. You do the floor-stack of the chairs. Carmen pours you a small pour of something at the end of the bar. You drink it standing.
She says the restaurant was quiet for a Wednesday. You say yes.
She says Russell's dog is old and you saw it walk differently. The vet told Russell it was the joints, not the heart, and Russell was relieved. You did not know. You say you're glad.
She says her knee is the same as always and the stretches are the same. A physical therapist on Varick named something Carmen says once and you do not catch and she does not repeat. You do not need the name.
She pours her own at the end of the night — a small one, same size as yours — and she drinks it sitting on the stool at the end of the bar, which is the stool she sits on exactly once a night, at exactly this moment, in exactly this amount of light. Her ankles cross under the stool. Her forearms are on the bar.
You been reading? she says.
On the plane back.
Good?
Yes.
What.
You tell her the title. She writes it on the order-pad at her elbow with the pen she has used all year. The order-pad has three pages left before she will need a new one.
Lebanese on Atlantic? she says.
Not yet.
Went Sunday with Mina. The bread is the bread. Everything else is also.
You say you'll go.
Go, she says. Let me know what you think.
You say you will.
She finishes her pour. She sets the glass on the bar. She does not wash it. She'll wash it before she leaves.
She does not ask about Lviv.
You do not say.
She says, Same hours next week?
You say, Yes.
She nods.
You go.
You walk east on Bleecker toward Sixth and your apartment is where it has been and your body — which has held the half-second since six-twelve — releases its breath as you cross Sixth and the breath comes out as nothing visible. The night is not yet cold enough to show it.