Читать книгу Shadows Still Remain - Peter Jonge De - Страница 8

Freemans, styled like a ramshackle hunting lodge, is packed to the fake rafters, but Pena’s friends have staked out prime real estate at the corner of the bar. Like Pena, Uma Chestnut, Mehta Singh and Erin Case are NYU undergrads. Standing side by side, they are so photogenic and multihued, that if you cropped out the three-thousand-dollar designer bags and serious jewelry, they could be showcasing their racial diversity for a college catalog. In a sense they are.

Pena’s arrival sets off a high-pitched eruption of girly glee. When it subsides, Chestnut, who believes with some justification that she reigns over everything below Fourteenth Street, sets off a second by announcing “Cocktails!” Singh, who is taller, curvier and darker than Pena and possesses an equally electric smile, asks for a Sidecar, and the porcelain-skinned Case, whose pink cable-knit sweater is somewhat misleading, a Beefeater Martini—dirty. “Dirty indeed,” says Chestnut, whisking an intentionally greasy bang off her forehead. “And how about you, Francesca?”

“A Malibu and Seven,” says Pena. “You can take the girl out of the barrio, but you can’t take the barrio out of the girl.”

“Why would anyone want to,” says Singh.

The girls present their fake IDs, and Chestnut places the orders, including her own signature Lower Manhattan. When all the cocktails have been mixed, signed for and delivered, Case carefully raises her tiny infinity pool of gin and vermouth. “To Thanksgiving,” she says. “Everyone’s favorite excuse for a five-day bender.”

“And to all your relatives who got seasick on the Mayflower,” adds Pena. This sets off enough laughter that cocktails have to be steadied before they can be sipped again.

Time flies. Particularly when you’re young and beautiful and getting wasted. For four hours, the four pals don’t stop cracking each other up, and while occasionally a brave boy dares to breach the perimeter, they mostly flirt with each other. And although Chestnut’s father just had a retrospective at MOMA and Singh’s is the largest commercial landlord in New Delhi and Case was raised like a hothouse flower in eighteen rooms on Park Avenue, it’s Pena, the scholarship girl from western Massachusetts, who is the undisputed star of the group. It is her approval and messy snorts of laughter the others vie for.

Chestnut, Singh and Case have elaborate Thanksgiving dinners to wake up for the next morning. By 2:30 a.m., they’re inclined to call it a night. But not the long-distance runner Pena, who by way of explanation nods discreetly toward an older guy at the end of the bar.

“Tell me you’re joking,” says Singh. “He looks like rough trade.”

“Doesn’t he, though?”

“You’re coming with us if we have to drag you out,” says Case.

But Pena crosses her arms and shakes her head like a stubborn toddler, and after a final flurry of hugs and kisses, Chestnut, Singh, and Case have no choice but to abandon her. As soon as they’re out the door, Pena’s posture stiffens. In the tiny bathroom near the kitchen, she splashes her face with cold water, and when she returns to the bar, so-called rough trade has strategically relocated to the neighboring stool.

“I’ve been watching you all night,” he says. “Am I finally going to get a chance to talk to you?”

“Not tonight.”

“Any reason?” asks the deflated suitor. But he does it so softly and with such diminished confidence that Pena, who had already turned to the bartender and ordered a Jack and Coke, pretends not to hear him as she takes the drink to a small table in the far corner. As the last customers trickle out, she sits with her back to the bar and nurses her drink for almost an hour. Finally, as a busboy gathers bottles and glasses from the empty tables, she pushes out of her seat and navigates the short alley to Rivington and the half block east to Chrystie.

At 3:30 a.m at the end of 2005, the corner of Rivington and Chrystie was still among the darkest and least trafficked on the Lower East Side. At 3:30 Thanksgiving morning, it might as well be the dark side of the moon. Pena knows there’s no point even trying to hail a cab until she walks the two long freezing blocks to Houston. After three queasy steps, she realizes she is about to pay the price for mixing all those ridiculous cocktails, and crouches between two parked cars.

“You OK?” asks a voice behind her.

“Get the fuck out of here,” she snarls, and retches some more.