Antonio had known from the beginning that the night would turn out like this.
He was usually able to make an excuse when Rosenberg in accounting announced an after-hours get-together, but this time it was Joe's birthday, and you can't just refuse an invitation to the CEO's party - even if that party is being held at a seedy karaoke bar in midtown. Not that he hadn't tried: he and Lorenzo, the only other Italian in marketing, had made a pact to sabotage the outing as a last result, but Lorenzo had suddenly bailed when he found out that Stephanie from sales was coming. Of course. The two of them had spent the evening passing one of the microphones back and forth and blushing at each other, which would have been sweet if it had not been so thoroughly repugnant. Antonio had mercifully gotten the spot nearest the door and busied himself busing the drink orders from the bar until their party's time was up in the private karaoke room. While Rosenberg was laboriously calculating how much each person needed to contribute to pay the rental fee, Antonio had found a free table in the corner of the bar and dropped irritably into the chair. They would come get him when they knew how much cash they needed.
Antonio was fiddling with his phone, flipping through the pointless apps that would drain the rest of his battery if he indulged in them, wondering whether or not he should get another drink, when he heard the familiar crash of a server dropping a glass and the inevitable drunken applause that followed. He looked up to throw a dark glare at whoever had cheered the poor server's misfortune. Antonio, like everybody else who had once dreamed of being a musician, had had one failed stint waiting tables, and he remembered how embarrassing it was to be the person who had just broken a dish in front of everyone.
He saw the top of the unhappy server's head behind the bar: a messy knot of yellow hair bobbing up and down as she tried to collect the shards of broken glass. Still the customers crowded along the bar, calling new orders out to her as though their sobriety was the most pressing thing in the noisy room. Antonio grimaced. He had been getting drinks for the office party all night from that little bartender and she barely looked old enough to drink, much less handle a busy night like this on her own. Was she the only employee here?
He glanced over at his coworkers, who were still gathered around Rosenberg with intense looks of concentration on their faces. Stephanie from sales had even pulled up a calculator on her phone!
The door to the kitchen swung open. "Oh, Sophie! Careful, don't cut yourself! I'll grab the broom."
Another server had emerged from the kitchen - the first one's sister, by the look of it. Antonio looked around the little karaoke bar again with a renewed interest. Was it family-run?
The decorations hung haphazardly along the dark walls didn't seem to be able to commit to a theme: here was a rusty "Home Sweet Home" sign, on the back wall was a cheap print of the New York skyline, and, closer to his head, an autographed caricature of Hollywood's favorite new heartbreaker Aloysia. He rolled his eyes. Pop music wasn't usually his thing, but there was no way to escape knowing the entire refrain of "Syncopated Heart". After tonight, the annoyingly catchy song would also come with memories of that soppy look on Lorenzo's face while he and Stephanie from sales tried to harmonize on the chorus.
What had pop sensation Aloysia been doing at a run-down karaoke bar in midtown Manhattan?
"Tony! Have you put in your fourteen dollars yet?"
He groaned, flipping through what little cash he tended to carry in his wallet. So they had finally worked out how to split the tab, and had decided on the most annoying amount possible. Of course they had. Antonio gave up his table and went back to his colleagues, adding a ten and a five to the pile of cash in Rosenberg's hand.
"Fifteen from Tony, so he needs a one. Does anyone have change for a five?"
"Keep it," Antonio instructed. "Put it toward the tip."
"But we already calculated a twenty percent tip," objected Stephanie, pointing to the calculator on her phone.
Antonio just stared at her.
It was Lorenzo who stepped in, the traitor, muttering something about the service not being that great anyway and offering to walk Stephanie to the subway. As the rest of the party began to disband, a particularly-tipsy Joe being bodily supported by Rosenberg, Antonio decided he could do with another drink after all. At that point he would have done anything to avoid sharing a train home with Lorenzo and Stephanie. He slid into an open seat at the bar.
The younger sister who had broken the glass a few moments ago had been sent back to the kitchen (though it was frankly that time of night when no one was ordering food anymore) and the older one had taken her place, taking orders and flashing sweet smiles at the rowdy customers with a professionalism that Antonio kind of envied. He had worked in a cheap steakhouse when he was in school, but even dealing with old couples' soda refills had been too stressful for him. He had never cultivated the ability to bury his indignation and force a smile onto his face: the best he could do was the blank stare he had given Stephanie from sales half an hour ago. He shot a rueful glance at the framed caricature of Aloysia. Maybe if he had been born an extrovert there would be sleazy karaoke bars in Manhattan with his picture on the walls. Would his teenage self have been more appalled at a future where Antonio was a pop sensation in eyeliner and tight pants, or to see him working a nine-to-five marketing job at an advertising firm?
"You gonna order something, or just take up that seat all night?"
Between the intoxicated patrons and the relentless karaoke machine on the far wall, Antonio almost didn't realize that the bartender was speaking to him. It wasn't until she laughed that he noticed that she was staring at him.
"What?"
The bartender just grinned shook her head, mixing some godawful-looking cocktail for a woman who was making a valiant effort to perform a Divine Libertines song while the other patrons cheered. Antonio belatedly realized that the bartender had been trying to take his order, and squinted up at the drink menu on the back wall.
What on earth was a "Bend Over Shirley"?
His thoughts must have been written in his expression, for after a moment the bartender slid a wine menu under his hand with another of her bright smiles.
Antonio tugged at his tie, suddenly warm - and then he realized he was blushing. "Thank you," he muttered, though the bartender certainly didn't hear him over all the noise.
"Not much of a drinker, are you?" she teased. "Were you with that office party in the back room?"
"How can you tell?"
The bartender pointed to her own bare neck. "There's no dress code here, you know."
Self-conscious, Antonio loosened his tie even further.
"Syncopated Heart" started up on the karaoke machine for the third time that night; Antonio's groan was buried beneath the drunken cheers of the other patrons. The bartender caught his expression out of the corner of her eye and shot him her infectious smile. "You don't like Aloysia?" she asked.
Antonio shrugged, thinking of the autographed caricature on the wall. "I don't think I'm the right demographic."
The bartender laughed out loud at this, and Antonio felt the corners of his mouth twitch at the sound of it. He trained his attention back on the wine list with renewed determination.
To his surprise, the bartender placed a shot glass in front of him. "To help you get through the first refrain," she said, offering him a slice of lime on a plate.
Antonio stared at the drink she had left behind. Would it be more embarrassing to admit to the charming bartender that he'd never done a shot before, or to use his phone to look up why she had given him a piece of lime? He regretfully laid down the wine menu and ran a finger along the rim of the shot glass.
Though he had managed to develop a love of wine, Antonio was not the sort of person to loiter in bars in the evenings. When he wasn't at work, he tended to be at home in his crappy Jersey loft, his guitar on his lap and some awful reality show droning on the television to keep him company while he attempted to compose. Until Rosenberg was hired and started planning these ridiculous company outings, Antonio had never even been inside a bar. The only thing he hated more than a room full of strangers was a dark, noisy room full of strangers.
He was starting to wish he had left when everybody else had.
No one else in the bar had a shot of - which had she said it was? Tequila? - and a random slice of fruit in front of them. Desperation rising, he finally took out his phone and pulled up the browser, drumming his fingers nervously on the table while the search page loaded. It was times like these that Antonio cursed his straight-laced youth. Everyone handled foster care differently; for Antonio, he had enjoyed being the good boy that the adults trusted to finish all his homework and rat out the other kids for breaking the rules. While the other people his age were out learning what a slice of lime had to do with a shot of alcohol, Antonio had been home reading dusty old books.
The instructions on yahoo answers seemed ridiculous. Antonio read them twice, hoping that he didn't look as incredulous as he felt. He had to lick his hand? In public?
While the bartender wasn't looking, Antonio took a deep breath and swallowed the shot of tequila as though he was drinking medicine.
God, it was awful! It burned a path through his lungs like some unholy combination of acid and poison. Antonio bit off a chunk of the slice of lime, but it didn't help as much as the kids on Yahoo Answers seemed to think it would. To his chagrin, the bartender caught his eye before he had figured out how to work the sour expression off his face. She laughed. "Tequila isn't your drink, huh?"
Unsure how to answer, Antonio cleared his throat. "How much do I owe?"
"That was on the house," she said.
"No, surely I can offer-"
"On the house! We don't get that many Wall Street types in here."
"In that case, I'll have another drink." Antonio squinted up at the menu on the back wall, scanning the prices until he found one that seemed absurdly high. "French Connection, please."
He saw the bartender's brows lift, but she simply said, "Coming up!" and cleared away his lime rind and empty shot glass.
The second drink seemed even more toxic than the first, compounded by the fact that it came in a full-sized glass tumbler rather than a tiny shot. He nursed the drink for a while, concentrating on keeping the cringe off his face with each sip - and whenever a new song started up on the machine and the other patrons scrambled for a microphone. He felt the bartender's presence in the room like an anchor; it seemed like he had a fix on her no matter where she went or who she was talking to. She kept catching his eye and grinning, or, as the night wore on, winking. It was starting to get embarrassing.
By the time his glass was finally empty, he noticed he was gripping the edge of the bar to stay upright. It was much easier to slump against the wall at his side, watching the patrons who hadn't left yet sing through lowering lids.
"You finished with this?"
Antonio peered at the bartender through the murky room. She looked more like a golden haze than a person as she took the empty glass away.
The karaoke machine was just an incomprehensible roar at that point. Antonio mussed a hand through his hair and rubbed at his eyes. How much longer until he could go to bed?
Then he sat up so quickly he almost toppled off the barstool. He was still in midtown! He still needed to get all the way back to his loft in Jersey before he could sleep!
What time was it? Had he missed the last PATH train? Antonio fumbled with his phone, but every time he tried to enter the unlock code the stupid thing gave him an error message. After several tries, he finally flagged down the bartender and passed it to her, trying his best to explain his situation. She laughed and said something back, but her voice was like an indiscernible song. Antonio leaned forward, trying to make out the words she was saying, but the bar beneath his hands lurched and he almost lost his balance.
Everything was getting dimmer, drowned out by Antonio's thoughts. Or, not thoughts exactly: his feelings, his- the essence of his thoughts were like static, filling up his head. He was so angry at Lorenzo for ditching him, at Stephanie for catching Lorenzo's eye when she transitioned, at fucking Rosenberg in accounting for planning a party at a karaoke bar and forcing him to come along. He leaned his head against the wall, too sluggish to scowl anymore. Did he have enough cash for another drink? He tried to check, but he couldn't figure out how to get his hand into his pocket. Antonio sighed, flopping forward onto the bar and dropping his head into his arms.
As Antonio regained consciousness, he slowly became aware that he was lying on his back. His throat was dry and he felt like his skull was being squeezed. So he had managed to catch the last PATH train to Jersey after all!
Antonio started to sit up, but he heard a footstep and a whispering voice. A woman's voice. Antonio froze, even holding his breath, but he couldn't focus on the stranger's words. His throbbing pulse was too loud, and now he could feel the room tilting back and forth.
A second voice spoke, slightly louder than the first, but all he heard was the phrase "some drunk she brought home" before he lost consciousness again.