Hex - Rebecca Dinerstein Knight Page 0,23

so far back, and her shoulders so proud and wide, she looked like a high school football player in his graduation photo. I looked like her water boy. Sunny himself passed away about a year ago and they’ve been rotating new bartenders—I don’t know any of their names. They don’t know mine. Everybody knows Mishti’s. She’s been there once.

“Tequila, Mishti?” someone said. She confirmed and he poured it for her free of charge. I asked for a whiskey soda and he charged me $7.50. Mishti sat on a high stool laughing at me, her shawl pouring from her shoulders to the floor like whitewater. I was wearing a hat inside and I couldn’t say why.

Mishti took her shot, wiped her mouth, and said, “Barry’s the devil.” We hadn’t been talking about Barry, I hadn’t put her up to it, she was simply and unilaterally offering me this kindness.

“Please sir may I have some more!”

“He just waits around outside after class and jumps on whoever comes out first. And I always come out first because Joan’s laser-gunning me with her fucking eyebrows by the end of class and I have to basically seek shelter. And then Barry goes, Something something nucleus! and I have to laugh and then he’s so happy I’m laughing.”

“You don’t have to laugh.”

“But he’s like . . . really pleasant. He just wiggles, pleasantly, at me. It’s hard to meet that with unpleasantness because he’s having such a nice time.”

She stared into her empty shot glass and remembered about the devil.

“It’s gross,” she said, “because then he does it all over again to anyone else.”

“You want his wiggles for your own.”

She did and she was embarrassed so she said, “No, I want him to stop wiggling.”

“Amen.”

“And he does it with this look in his eyes like he’s just waiting for one crumb, waiting for me to drop one crumb so he can just eat it, really eat it up, like a maniac.”

“And you’ve never dropped one?”

“I have total control,” Mishti said, “and he will never touch me.” She looked into the dead center of my eyeballs and said, “He’s disgusting.”

She wanted to leave it there so we did. The bartender refilled her shot. I didn’t order another drink because I didn’t need one and I couldn’t pay for it.

“When does the school end your stipend,” I asked, “never?”

“I don’t know, I just try to stay enrolled.”

“I need a stipend.”

“Bartend.”

The palm tree lit up above my head.

“Tony,” I said. Nobody answered. “Pete.” “Asher.” “Nathaniel.”

If you can believe it, the bartender’s name was Nathaniel.

“Yeah?” he looked at me. In his glance I understood that he wanted me to stop talking and his name was probably George.

I moved my head so it was closer to his head, punched both my elbows down onto the bar hitting both funny bones, and with little shocked tears in my eyes asked, “Hire me?” Most of my body was over the bar now, I was lying on it, on my stomach. “I’ve just spent my last fifteen dollars on seven candles and a whiskey and I’d like to restock my stocks. I live around the corner. I can work weird hours.”

“Ask Johansen,” he said, unblinking.

I pictured becoming the newest anonymous employee, I would no longer need to know my own name, I would even be willing to give Mishti her drinks for free, as she’d come to expect, and to charge myself.

George shouted, “Hey Johansen.” A blond woman stood. I peeled my torso off the bar and hurried to pick the peanut shells out of my sweater. Mishti took her second shot and slammed the glass down, taking credit.

FEVERFEW

I don’t know what happened after that night, there was something I’d liked the taste of, I failed three martini tests but I passed the fourth and started working, I used my tip money on seed packets. I went a little nuts. I bought enough planters to fill my empty apartment. I bought enough dirt to bury myself. I’ve been so focused on poisonous plants, it proved extremely therapeutic to plant safe, moral flowers. I planted cowslip and bupleurum and mizuna and yellow rattle. Everlasting sweet pea and Harlequin sweet pea. Stereo broad beans and sweet cicely. Mishti came over to study for your midterm while I planted garlic and set it out beside the nightshade on the fire escape. I bought single-tier LED grow lights that aren’t lab grade but make do. I know most of the flowers will fail. Some of them will love