The Bar
CHAPTER TWELVE from CAUGHT UP Truth and Metaphor | An Imaginary Tale
The Bar
12
With her savings, Petra rented a single-room efficiency in town. It wasn’t much, and she had to unplug the refrigerator at night so she could sleep, but it was all hers. She landed a server job at a brand-new restaurant run by a family of Brooklyn-based Italians who, having planted their feet on the small town scene, launched a big-city con that would set the surrounding area and its unsuspecting inhabitants on fire.
She worked hard, made friends and, in less than a month, moved into a comfy room in a big house full of young people, also in their late twenties. The house, owned by the parents of another server, was situated well beyond walking distance of the restaurant. Out of sheer necessity, she purchased an old junker painted in multiple shades of blue with rust accents.
Life progressed along normal lines. She allowed herself an end-of-shift drink, smoked a little weed here and there, and worked tons of hours. Patrick, the chef, a surly character with a quick wit and sharp edges, was her favorite co-worker. His demeanor had everything to do with being a dry drunk most of the year. It was his custom to jump off the wagon on Memorial Day and drink his fill until Labor Day.
The restaurant was great fun, but uncomfortable when the owners came around. Beneath the food, drink and merriment was an accumulating sense of dread.
“Hey Chef, I need a shrimp scampi for the old man.”
“If he fucking sends it back again, I’ll piss in it.”
The Italians were strict overlords with high expectations of their employees. They were classic New York gangsters. The old man, the head of the family, liked to hang out at the bar well past dinner service. As the waiters passed each other, their trays overflowing with silver and restocking materials, they hissed under their breath.
“Isn’t he done yet? What the fuck? Surely, he’s had enough.”
There he sat, oblivious, interfering with their time, closing time, when the restaurant belonged to the staff, that special time when the private party began. Several times a week, he passed out on the bar top. On those nights, they closed it all down, turned off the lights and left the old man in his drunken slumber.
Second on her list of favorite co-workers was the front of the house manager, Carlo. He was a Brooklyn born sommelier who had accompanied the Italians at the request of Enzo and Matteo, the old man’s sons. Like some sort of mad consigliere, he managed the inventory, the clients, and Patrick, their Michelin star chef. Petra appreciated him for many reasons. He had a big city gangster vibe, a brilliant mind and an unabashed authenticity. Unapologetically, even in rural Vermont, he maneuvered through space and time with exaggerated feminine mannerisms.
“You know what I like about you, Petra? You can smell a rat.”
“I don’t know what you and Chef did to get pulled into this, but I’m here for the duration. Honestly, I’ve got nowhere else to go.”
“It’ll be fine. These are simple people. By the time they figure it out, it’ll be too late.”
The Family, as they came to be known, moved into town, purchased an enormous tract of land and posed as a development company. The restaurant was a cover designed to legitimize their wheeling and dealing. Nothing more than a shell game. A place to pamper their marks; to bewitch them with top-shelf liquor and entice their senses with Nouvelle Italian cuisine from a renowned chef, all the while stroking their egos with first-class service. A clever distraction that allowed them to sell the unsuspecting marks fallacious tracts of land and nonexistent luxury homes. Sets of blueprints, fixtures in a variety of metals and finishes, and samples of high-end cabinet and countertop materials lined side tables.
The gangsters were the talk of the town. Everyone wanted in. Status became associated with the size, type and location of the buyer’s new home. Everyone was looking forward to the property value of their current, and often generationally owned, homes skyrocketing with the influx of rich New Yorkers following the prophetic developers.
It took months, well into late spring, for the townsfolk to notice that something was wrong. No one seemed to build anything. Sales meetings at the restaurant ceased and the horse-trading sons had all but disappeared. Only the old man slithered in, under cover of darkness, for one more drunk. And then, on the night of the day the land went into foreclosure, he vanished, leaving behind a ghostly imprint on his bar stool.
Petra, promoted to bartender a few weeks before Memorial Day, the day everyone knew Chef was going off the wagon, had his back.
“Hey Chef, Here you go. Two fingers Old Forester 86 Proof Bourbon, neat.”
“What do you want for dinner?
“Squid Ink Pasta with Calamari, please.”
“I’ll bring it to the bar. Have another one of these ready.”
“Yes, Chef!”
By that evening, it became obvious to the rest of the staff that they had, unwittingly, been complicit in the pilfering of an entire town. The following Friday, their paychecks bounced. Something had to happen. New jobs in a fleeced town would be impossible to find.
“I want to see you and Chef after close.”
Petra, wiping down the bar, handed another bourbon to Chef, who had parked his ass, on purpose, in the old man’s seat.
"What is Carlo doing down there?” said Petra.
“I imagine he’s constructing a plan for the great escape.”
“Mixing a wizard’s financial cocktail?”
She thought about her father hunkered down over his mathematical formulas. She prayed, yes, prayed, a new pastime filtered down from the ethers, that Carlo had a viable way out of this mess. He danced his way up the basement steps, threw the door open, and sauntered up to the bar.
“I know exactly what to do. I’ve made contingencies and we are in excellent shape.”
“Do tell,” said Chef.
First, we close down lunch service. The three of us will need to work seven days a week and I can’t have us bogged down.”
“I’m fine with that as long as Brunch is 86d too. I fucking hate cooking motherfucking eggs and waffles for a bunch of churchgoing assholes!”
“Yeah, they don’t drink and they don’t tip for shit,” said Petra
“No brunch. I’ve been ordering extra liquor for months and I’m happy to report that we have enough booze to last us through Labor Day. Chef, I need you to streamline the menu and eliminate as many expensive ingredients as possible. Think about shifting your focus to bar food.”
“Heard.”
“Petra, no more credit cards. Cash only. We’re going to pay everyone out of the till.”
“How’s that going to work?”
“We’ll meet nightly after close. I’ll give you guys your daily cut and I’ll divvy up the rest. I’ll pay the staff, in cash, at the start of shift for the previous night’s work.”
“The servers will love that,” said Petra
“Damn, right! Get the word out. The party is on! No more Frank Sinatra. I want a club vibe in here. No offense, Chef, but, for now, it’s all about serving alcohol. That’s where the money is. This town is hurting and we’re going to help them forget their troubles.”
Petra felt an eerie sensation run up her spine. It was vaguely familiar.
The investors, addicted to the restaurant and the illusory sense of status that came with it, continued to pour in night after night. Business boomed. All the chaos surrounding the swindlers centered amidst its tables and along its bar.
“Have you seen them?”
“What are we going to do?”
“Should we hire a lawyer?”
The town had no recourse. They had been bamboozled by master scam artists. Disheartened people, kicking themselves for their gullibility, unable to tear themselves away from the crime scene, drank their sorrows away. Everyone became self-soothing drunkards chained to dead dreams, replaying their mistakes over and over; the restaurant and its bar, an oversized coffin.
Petra’s side scam centered on giving away free drinks for tips. She had no idea what Carlo was up to down in the cellar at all hours. He possessed the only key. Every night, he brought one of the many bottles of expensive wine or champagne, those brands reserved for the wealthiest suckers, to their end of shift accounting sessions. Imbibing a bottle or two became a nightly ritual.
Driving home drunk, her hand covering one eye, trying to focus her double, intoxicated vision became another unholy ceremony. A perfect storm that flipped her alcoholism gene to “on” and mutated her disease from drug addict to raging alcoholic.
By Labor Day, the bar had morphed into a new circle of hell, one that Dante had not foreseen. Standing behind it, sipping dirty gin martinis, she had a front-row seat to an array of human degradation.
“I need to get the hell out of dodge!”
As luck would have it, a young server, celebrating his nineteenth birthday, took her aside.
“Hey, these two brothers I know have a condo on Maui for the next three months. They invited me and said I can bring someone. Do you want to come with me?”
“Who’s condo?”
“It belongs to their uncle. Look—we can’t stay here, can we?”
“What I meant to say was, yes, I’d love to go to Hawaii with you.”
Within a week, she was on a plane headed to paradise with a single suitcase and, sadly, a mere $900 in cash tips.
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A harrowing tale, shot through with unlikely humor and fantastical creatures.
This autofiction (autobiography and fiction) novel revolves around a lifetime spent underwater struggling to find the surface. The narrative follows the journey of an unlikely heroine from the bondage of childhood trauma to self-awareness and freedom.
It is a roller coaster ride from the depths of hell to triumphant success that finishes with a big Hollywood ending.