Between Me and You Page 5

  “Excuse me!” one of them shouts, then snaps again.

  “Don’t snap at me,” I say, my decibel level stronger than my will. “I’m not your goddamn dog.”

  “What?” she says, possibly because she can’t hear me over the stereo and the voices that are all raised to match the music, or possibly because she simply has never been spoken to in such a way.

  “Don’t. Snap.” I like the way that feels, this bravado.

  She recoils. “Oh my god, I just wanted a vodka tonic.”

  “I need ID.”

  I don’t technically need ID, since we pretty much serve anyone—bar policy—but I’m on a roll now, the distance widening between who I am outside of the bar and who I am behind it.

  Her head jerks back like I’ve slapped her, and her eyes skitter with fury. She leans over and whispers to her friend, then says: “The last lady served us no problem. Look.” She holds up an empty glass.

  “I’m not the last lady.” I shrug. I’m impressed with my swagger, feel very strongly that Professor Sherman would deem my performance “true to life.”

  “I left it in the booth, in my purse.”

  I start wiping down the bar again, as if I’m already bored with this. Easing my way toward phone number three.

  “Hey, Freckles!” she yells, referring, I imagine, to the band of freckles that run across my nose. “Don’t you want a fucking tip?”

  At this, the guy at the end of the bar looks up from staring at the foam in his surely warm beer and watches us.

  “I’d love a tip,” I say. “From someone who’s twenty-one.”

  “Here’s a tip,” she shouts, standing taller on the foot of the stool, which is teetering, imbalanced. “You’re working for me, back there, behind there. I am not working for you. Got that?”

  “Yeah.” I laugh, the blood rising to my cheeks again. I turn the other direction. “Got it loud and clear. But you’re still not getting served.”

  “Bitch!” she yells, just before the stool topples over and she disappears from my view and there’s a commotion on the floor as her friends huddle around her. My whole face is fire now, I can feel it, hot and shameful, but I squeeze my fingers together into tight fists and remind myself that tonight I’m not who these girls want me to be, I’m not who anyone thinks I am. I am the part I promised Daisy I would play. I curl my hands into balls so tight, my knuckles clench and my nails dig into my palms. Then I release them and let the blood flush back into the recesses of my body. He’s watching me—Phone Number Three—so I keep my eyes down, just scrubbing the spilled beer, wiping in concentric circles until I stop right in front of him. I check the clock above the exit. I have seven minutes to lock him in. Win the bet, ace Daisy’s assignment.

  “I hope you don’t take her personally,” he says, nudging his chin toward the hubbub by the fallen stool. “I went to high school with her older brother. I think being an asshole is genetic.”

  I laugh easily, like she hadn’t just set off a grenade inside of me, and reach for his glass.

  “Free refill for you.”

  “I don’t need one.” He waves his hand. “I’m on my way out.”

  “You turn into a pumpkin before midnight?”

  He smiles, and he’s cuter than I realized from afar. Straight nose, great teeth. Not that I’d taken him to be a troll, because trolls are off-limits per the rules of the game, but the shadows of the bar concealed his blue eyes, his defined chin, his strong shoulders.

  “Nah, just . . . I have an early shoot tomorrow, and the person I was meeting tonight never showed.”

  “A shoot? I’m intrigued.” I plop elbows onto the bar, then my chin into my palms.

  “Grad student,” he says.

  “Are you at Tisch? I’ve never seen you before; I’m there for theater.”

  “I’m there for writing, MFA,” he says. “You know, about to set the world on fire as the next big screenwriter.” He shrugs, looks away. “Or something like that. I don’t know, talk to my parents and they’ll tell you I gave up my very lucrative analyst position at Morgan Stanley for a graduate degree in film.”

  “Banking boys are so boring. No wonder you quit.” I grab the tap and refill his beer anyway, then slide it back to him. “Eh, tell your parents to screw themselves.”

  He honest-to-God snorts at this. “I’m still living with them, so that’s a little hard.”

  “Yikes,” I say.

  “Tell me about it.” He sighs.

  “Well, truthfully, I could probably never tell mine to screw themselves either,” I admit. “Sorry, bad advice. I’m trying something new tonight.” I shake my head, refocus. I can already hear Professor Sherman chiding me for slipping so gracelessly out of character.

  “I thought bartenders only gave amazing advice?”

  “Only in the movies.” I laugh. “You’re shit out of luck with me.”

  I wipe my hands on the towel, which is really more for show than hygiene, since it’s damp with old booze and pretzel crumbs. I extend my right hand.

  “Tatum Connelly.”

  “Ben Livingston.” He clasps my palm more firmly than I expect, and I wince. “Sorry,” he says. “Habit. Trained that way by my dad since I was six.”

  “Fun childhood.”

  “My dad’s only paying for grad school on the promise that I win an Oscar.”

  “So win an Oscar,” I say.

  “Uh . . . OK.” He grins. “Now you sound like him: ‘If you’re going to do something, Benjamin, you’d better at least be the best!’”

  “There are worse role models,” I say, because God knows, I know that there are.

  “I’m probably making it sound worse than it was.” He sips his beer. “You know, to make you feel sorry for me or something.”

  “Fun childhoods are overrated,” I say, because I would know. But because I already slipped once, and I’m not about to betray any part of who I really am again and instead will conceal myself completely in who I need to be for the night, I add: “But why would you want me to feel sorry for you?” I bite my lip, coy, flirtatious, exactly what would be demanded of this role in this moment.

  “Oh, I don’t know, so when you get my phone number, you might take pity on me and actually call,” he says.

  I chew on a swizzle stick to disguise my surprise at his forthrightness. “What makes you think I want your phone number? And even if I did want your phone number, why then wouldn’t I call? For your information, as a female bartender, I get numbers thrown at me all the time.”

  “Well, good, because I don’t hand out my number to strangers.”

  “I’m not a stranger,” I say. “I’m Tatum.” I wonder, briefly, if I should have made up a name, like Jocelyn or Tiffany or something else to go fully method in this conversation, but it’s too late. More proof, I remind myself, that I need to hone my technique, need to work on really living the part, not just trying it on. Sherman is always saying that: When you go, you have to go all in or else the audience will pick apart your inconsistencies like hawks on a dead deer. He literally said that. Verbatim.

  He laughs. “But you don’t want my number, Tatum, so we don’t have anything to worry about.”

  “Well, I don’t want your number, in fact.”

  “Perfect,” he says.

  “Great,” I reply. Then: “Well, what if I do want your number?”

  “I already told you: I don’t give my number out to strangers who scare me, knowing your name aside.”

  “Something else you learned in your childhood?”

  “They trained me well.” He raises his eyebrows, flirting.

  “What if I’m not a stranger?” I say. “What if I tell you something about my own less than fun childhood that assures that I’m just Tatum, your local friendly bartender!” I wiggle my fingers in my best jazz hands and push my face into a showbiz-style grin. I spy the clock. Less than a minute. Shit.

  “I’ll consider it,” he says.

  “I started working when I
was twelve, have had a job ever since,” I say. “So, no fun for me.”

  “Hmmm. Nope.”

  “Oh, come on,” I say. “Are you going to make me beg?”

  “Yes,” he says. “I am going to make you beg. Very much so. Come on, give me your best begging face.”

  I stick my lip out and furrow my brow, folding my hands in front of me as if in prayer. “Please? Pretty, pretty please?”

  I hear Daisy cackling before I see her; then she pops up on the stool next to him, shoulders shaking, tears in her eyes.

  “What?” I double-take. “Were you, like, crouching underneath the bar? Listening to this the whole time?”

  She nods, laughing too hard to speak.

  “What? Judging my technique?” I eye the clock—12:01. I lost the bet, which doesn’t mean much other than bragging rights, other than more proof that maybe Sherman is wrong about me, that I’m not the best one in the class.

  “Just ensuring that I won.” She hiccups. “Also, I wanted to witness Ben giving you shit because I knew it would be adorable. No, hilarious actually.”

  “Nice,” I say. “Supernice.” Then, to Ben: “I take it you know her?”

  “Ben wrote a short about dating I did a few months ago,” she says. “I told him about our little pickup contest, and he wrote it into the script.”

  “That Women Are from Mars short?”

  Ben nods.

  “That won an award last semester, didn’t it?”

  He shrugs. “I just wrote the script. She starred. And the dude who directed it, another guy I grew up with, actually got the award.”

  “All you fancy Manhattan kids,” I say. “The next Scorseses. But you, don’t do that.” I jab his shoulder.

  “Do what?”

  “Dismiss any notions of greatness, act like you’re not worthy of winning some award.” I point at Daisy. “She tells me that all the time. So now I’m telling you.”

  Even in the dim light, I can see his face redden. He’s not so different from me, outside of this bar. Uncertain, unsure.

  “I’m serious,” I say. “Like, if that had been my film, I’d be standing on top of this bar, screaming about it with a microphone.”

  He watches me, assessing, and for a moment I wonder if he’s going to dare me to do so, put my money where my mouth is, prove him wrong and jump on the counter and yell like a banshee—and I pray that he doesn’t, doesn’t call me on this ridiculous bluster, because I can take a part only so far before my self-awareness kicks in. But he checks his watch and glances toward the door, then fishes his wallet from his back pocket and flattens forty dollars on the wood paneling. “I should go; looks like I’m getting stood up.”

  “Well, that sucks.” I grab a glass from below the bar and pour myself a beer, ignoring two borderline-legal kids with backward baseball caps who are waving me down. “And you don’t owe me forty bucks.”

  “It’s midnight, and you lost the bet,” he says. “A big tip—an actual tip, not a smart-ass tip from that girl who went to my high school—is the least I could do.” He hesitates. “Anyway, I actually feel kind of bad about setting you up to lose. I really never do things like that.” He points at Daisy. “She begged me. So I apologize, and please, take the tip.”

  “I did,” Daisy says, nodding. “It was too perfect not to. But yes”—she holds up her right hand—“I can attest that Ben, whom I have known since childhood, is the rare breed of actually decent man who is not a total asshole.”

  “Nice,” he says.

  “She’s not from here,” Daisy interrupts. “She’s only very recently become acquainted with New York men.”

  “Ohio.” I shrug. “We only breed nice men in Ohio. Nice men who don’t trick us into losing.”

  “Thus, the forty dollars.” Ben inches the bills toward me.

  “Well, I don’t like losing.” I frown. “And I do like big tips.”

  “No one really likes losing,” he says. “And I think everyone likes good tips.”

  “Are you making fun of me?”

  “No.” He holds his hand over his heart. “I swear, I am not making fun of you. And I have Daisy to testify that I am indeed a non-asshole New York guy who wouldn’t do that sort of thing.”

  “We went to elementary together,” she says. “I’ve known him since forever.”

  “I suppose losing a bet and getting forty bucks is better than getting stood up, so my night is not quite as bad as yours,” I admit. “So, fine, I will see your forty bucks and raise you a tequila shot. On the house.” I reach behind me for the cheap tequila that the undergrads are more than happy to overindulge in. I never do shots on the job, but it feels exactly like what the persona would do, so shots it is.

  “I’m not sure if I’m quite being stood up . . . it’s complicated.” He sighs, and for a moment, it’s like I can see his whole childhood across his face: his aspirations, his disappointments, his hopes that he still pins himself to. “My girlfriend’s in her third year of med school. She’s just . . . busy . . . occupied—that’s the word she uses—she’s ‘occupied’ all the time. Saving lives and whatever, so . . . I mean, how can I argue with that?”

  “Sounds like you need a new girlfriend,” I say.

  “Probably, probably. But I’m one for loyalty. I don’t bail until the ship is sinking.” That look again: nothing but naked openness, like he is still eleven and hasn’t yet been jaded by the ways of the world.

  “Meaning you’re loyal, but she might not be?”

  He laughs. “What are you, like, my therapist too?”

  “So I couldn’t have gotten your number even if I hadn’t been set up by my so-called best friend?” I slam three shot glasses down and dump the tequila in each.

  He shrugs and smiles. “Hey, Daisy put me up to it.”

  “Well.” I toss the shot back too quickly, and it burns all the way down. “I guess you owe me one.” I smile at him now as Tatum, not Tatum the bartender, not Tatum the brave.

  He smiles back as Ben.

  “Well,” he says. “I guess I do.”

  3

  BEN

  JULY 2015

  “Constance is sick,” Tatum says. “Or else I’d have sent her to get him.” It was part of our separation agreement: that Constance, our nanny, would do most of the handoffs, though we’d gotten more casual about it in the four months since I moved out. Tatum shrugs and stares at my pathetic doormat, which is gray and muddy and in need of a wash. But how do I wash a doormat? I don’t even know. We both let our eyes linger on it for a beat too long.

  “I’m throwing that out,” I say, and point downward. “I’m getting a new one later today.” I don’t know why I care about impressing her; I’m angry with her; I am untangling myself from her. These are the words I use with Eric when he takes me out after work to nurse my wounds. He tells me to consider a real therapist, not my best friend from college who is now my producing partner and is not really good at advice for shit, especially since he is still single at forty-one and trolling Tinder.

  “OK,” Tatum replies. “Though you could just wash it.”

  This irritates me for no reason at all. Rather, it irritates me because of course she is right. I could simply wash it, which I’d just told myself five seconds earlier. But coming from her, it feels like proselytizing, not wise counsel, like she’s saying it just to be right. For fuck’s sake, why is Tatum always right? Of course I can wash the stupid doormat.

  “You don’t have to point out my shitty doormat,” I say. My eyes twitch when I realize that, in fact, I was the one who pointed out my shitty doormat in the first place. God, when am I going to stop being such an asshole just for the sake of it?

  “I wasn’t . . . I just . . .” She stops, shakes her head. “I don’t want to do this, Ben.” She checks the time on her phone. “Is he ready? I have a meeting in an hour.”

  Of course she has a meeting in an hour. Tatum’s time is no longer her own, hasn’t been for years now.

  “So let him
stay longer; I’ll watch him.”

  “It’s my day.”

  I soften. “But you have a meeting, and Constance is out sick. Come on, Tate. We’re having fun.”

  “Ben.” She uses that impatient voice that I sometimes heard her use on set (when I used to visit) when someone would have the misfortune of suggesting a creative tidbit that was totally beneath her. For the most part, Tatum was accommodating, as far as A-listers go. No temper tantrums, no outrageous diva demands. But it wasn’t as if she couldn’t skewer you with a raised eyebrow, couldn’t decimate your ego with one word. Ben.

  Also, it wasn’t as if she didn’t make plans without considering anyone else’s schedule, wasn’t as if she hadn’t grown used to everyone around her saying yes. Except for me. (But I now live in a two-bedroom apartment two miles away from the new house in Brentwood, so it’s not working out so well on my end either.)

  “Tate, come on.”

  “The therapist said that consistency was key,” she says. And it’s true, the therapist we found for Joey to help him through the divorce had said that constancy—a united front—from us was imperative. Joey had been moodier since we told him the news: explosive mood swings from a previously docile child, crying jags that felt unending, whereas he barely cried before, even back when he’d broken his arm. Consistency, Dr. Cohn kept reiterating.

  “OK,” I say as she waits expectantly for a fight.

  “OK.” She nods.

  I start to ask her who will be watching Joey—he’s only seven and can’t stay by himself—but I realize the answer will only spark another fight: Tatum’s father. To whom I have been unkind, shamefully unkind, until it grew too late. Until Tatum and I each held our own scorecards, and he was one of the chits she was able to hold against me. Rightfully so. I chew my lip. I could apologize now, I could say: God, I was such a stubborn dick for reasons that were all about me, but she has never apologized for her own sins, so I’m not about to fall on my sword. Besides, attorneys have been consulted, retainers have been paid. Apologies are too long in coming and won’t amount to much anyway.

  “Joe!” I call over my shoulder. “Hurry up, Mom’s here!”