I wasn't expecting the kids to come into the bar on Valentine's Day, although I'm not sure what else I expected them to be doing. Neither has a boyfriend (or a girlfriend, I suppose, although they certainly seem to talk about how their bodies react to boys a lot more than how they react to girls); we've all collectively decided that would be a bad idea which was only underlined when we booked our return trip to the Inn in June after making sure that the folks living our lives would be there during the two-week block before us, and they've co-ordinated with the folks living their lives, whose forms have been in limbo since September. It must be a nightmare to becomes yourself again if you get changed early in the summer!
I didn't quite know what to expect for business that night aside from that. As I said before, it's kind of guy-coded and not exactly a date location, and on top of that, that weekend was kind of a sports dead zone: Football over, baseball just starting spring training, the NHL and NBA both doing all-star breaks of sorts which didn't have much on tap for Friday night, and New York City generally has enough big-league action that the only people really watching college sports are alumni and those who also have a gambling app open on their phone. Still, it was a big going-out night, we had some live music, and folks were looking to fill seats. I'd expected to be waiting tables, but they've started to like me tending bar. I'm friendly enough that guys hang around but I'm not one to play favorites or get interested enough to ignore the other customers, and i still jump a little when someone slaps my ass on the floor.
I was kind of in the zone when Kutter and Rusty came in, found a couple empty seats, and ordered their first beers. I made a comment about "Galentine's Day" and they asked if I'd just made it up - I think a couple girls their apparent age might have got it but they were about ten when Parks and Recreation ended and never wound up binging it - and they said they were celebrating "Monica's new job".
I must have looked pretty surprised, because Rusty had just been laid off a couple days before. Her employers had said something about having to tighten their belts with the upcoming tariffs and congestion pricing, but Rusty said she hadn't been landing a lot of new accounts lately; they'd evidently found everywhere in the city that was interested in stocking Chinese energy drinks and expanding into Long Island or Connecticut had diminishing returns. She'd seen it coming but thought Razzy or Chandra would be let go, but apparently it was last in, first out.
I'd underestimated how good she was at that job, as it turns out; at some point in the last six months, she had knocked on the door of not just every bodega, but every small business that night have a refrigerator in their break room, including one of those language schools you see advertised on the subway. She mentioned that she was being laid off during her last call, and they said they had an opening for someone to work the phones and also handle bookings for corporate clien.ts. They already knew and liked her, and while they couldn't offer the commissions that the beverage company could, the base salary was about the same and she'd be eligible for free lessons. There is really only time for one session between then and the return to the Inn, she figured she should at least come out of this knowing the Korean alphabet and how to say hello, please, and thank you.
It was kind of interesting observing them on a night out mostly without me - they weren't dressed as sexy as New Year's Eve, but showing a bit more cleavage and leg than when it was all three of us, but they weren't really teasing. Their attention was mostly on each other, although they were polite when someone paid them a compliment or tried to but them a drink, saying they were just into hanging with their bestie tonight. A couple made comments about them being more than friends, and Rusty started to respond to the first with something along the lines of "you have no idea" before Kutter kicked her in the shins and said not to encourage anybody. Rusty got the message and said something along the lines of it being gross, and Kutter responded that it was obviously the case, but there was actually a phenomenon where siblings who had never met or who were separated long enough to not recognize each other were actually more attracted to each other than random people until they found out and society's incest taboos kicked in, and something like that could be at play with the three of us, although maybe in the opposite direction. Rusty rolled his eyes and asked why Kutter would even be reading anything about that, and she said it was to make sure nothing like that happened.
I'm taking it as a sign of maturity that Rusty did not immediately start acting like Kutter was her girlfriend afterward.
Striking maturity, really, because Rusty's sixteenth birthday was just a couple weeks later, and we celebrated with go-karting and video games at a huge warehouse of a building just outside of Brooklyn, and while I'd been bracing myself for the kids to want to go in rompers or something, it was loose t-shirts, slacks that didn't shrink-wrap themselves to our butts, sneakers, ponytails sticking out the back of baseball caps. There were bar areas, but we never went there all night. It wasn't even a bit my idea, either - I asked Rusty what she wanted to do for her birthday, and that's what she said. I didn't bring it up afterwards - I'll admit, I'm kind of worried that questioning it might make her think she should be even more all-in on being an adult woman until we go back, or being scared at just how well they can partition their lives - but it was really nice to feel like I was doing normal stuff with my teenage boys, even if the kart's seatbelt did find a way of digging into the valley between my breasts.
-Aidan/Emilia
No comments:
Post a Comment