15 Glasses

Down by south pass, Matt-man looked cautiously over his shoulder, anticipating the impatience (and sharp reprimand) of a bartender. Relieved, he turned back with a mischievous grin, and began sliding wine glasses between the fingers of his left hand. They hung against each other, securely, though delicately. "On a good day I can carry fifteen stems," he boasted. "Cocktail glasses are easier, so I usually settle with twelve wine glasses."

Fifteen was a good number. On my best days, I'd try to match the number, until an uncertain rattle warned me otherwise. In that rattle was the memory of one hundred broken glasses, the shame of a shard in the ice well, the 120 pounds of ice shuttled frantically from the downstairs ice machine in four creaking buckets, two per hand, to return us to normal service. Our bar carried the restaurant and the spirits of the neighborhood, and when the bar went down everything else fell upon it.

We carried glasses, white-hot from the dishwasher, ice-cold from the chillers. It was constant rotation. I'd pass Tommy with my hands full, twelve dirty stems, and he'd alert me "North needs 'tinis!"

"Heard, south needs pints!" And that was our only conversation, the order of deficit and rotation, the constant engine of the bar back.

We carried bus tubs, three at a time (when the manager wasn't looking), or if we could clear them fast enough, we'd do them one at a time, darting around the furious shake of a tender. We carried full plates three at a time, empty plates fifteen at a time. Bottles, six in each hand, four under the arm. Cans, three in each hand, four under the arm. And every step we took was the launch of a desperate flight, almost always sure-footed, but sometimes stumbling into crash and catastrophe. We carried our fatigue on our sleeves, but never ever in our arms.

We carried the spirits of the kitchen. Iced-coffee with four shots of espresso for chef before service. Ginger ale with five dashes of ango ("whose hungover?" someone would ask). At the end of the shift, any draft beer in an iced glass for the bussers. We slept in sunlight, and carried the night until sunrise.

We carried dish racks from the washer to the drip-tray, and then to polish. We carried polishing rags, bar towels, sugar-stains, scummy bar aprons, sweat, tins, bar spoons, the stink of a broken beer bottle from the walk-in. Scars, still stinging when they touched citrus, bar-rot on our fingertips. Liquor cases, beer cases, tubs for infusions, 24 gallons at a time. Recycling bins to the dumpster, dumpster to the loading dock. And most fundamentally, we carried pride, almost to a vice, our heads held higher than our hearts, the mana by which we slung fatigue to the floor.