I kick and flail and flounder my way into less insistent waters.
“Hurry up!” I urge as I march the dolly through the room. “I think I see a tile thief outside.”
We load the boxes up together and take turns wheeling them over to a corner of what was once the front of house. Each one feels like it contains two—possibly three—baby elephants inside, and we end up ditching our jackets to huff and puff our way through the task. By the time we’re finished, we’re both red-faced and mopping sweat off our foreheads.
“These better be some fucking nice tiles,” I grumble as I lower myself to sit down on one of the boxes.
“I should hope so.” Julien leans against the wall opposite me and lifts his foot up to rub it.
“You did hurt yourself, didn’t you?” I ask.
He waves me off.
“I’ll survive.Merci.” His expression goes suddenly serious as he places his foot back down. “Really, Monroe.Merci mille fois. You didn’t have to stay this whole time. It was extremely kind of you.”
I pat the box beneath me, feeling the warmth rise in my cheeks and blaming it on the exertion. “I think we can agree that Ididhave to stay. You think you could have done all this yourself?”
“Not at all. I should hire you to help with the renovations. We’d be done well before June with you around.”
“June?”
The shock and panic in my voice slips out before I have a chance to disguise it.
“It’s ambitious, I know,” he adds, mistaking my alarm for disbelief, “but I want to start hiring in June and be open by the end of the summer. Of course, we’d have to change plans if I buy the place next door. I’m not sure what to do. I’ve had to wait so long to start this project that putting it on hold for any longer just feels...exaspérant, but it could be so much better with a bigger space.”
Hisproject—like investing hundreds of thousands into a new business venture is ahobby.There’s something inescapably entitled about him. It’s not even arrogance; it’s the obliviousness of being born into invulnerable wealth, of viewing money as a constant instead of something subject to the dangers of flux and flow.
Every day I’ve spent as a manager has been marked by the shadow of that danger. It’s one thing to be an employee, to know that no matter how well the business is doing, you still get paid. Sure, you might lose some hours and your tips might suck, but at the end of the day, your pay is your pay.
There’s no minimum wage for how much a bar makes. When yourunthe business, there’s no guarantee you walk out with anything at the end of the night. Sure, I’m entitled to my salary, but the reason I put in so many hours for free is that I’m constantly running numbers that tell me if Idon’tdo the overtime, I’m not going to have a job at all. When you take on the duties of a manager, you’re signing on for a permanent devotion to the ‘greater good.’ It’s no longer about watching the clock waiting for your shift to be up; it’s about obsessively watching the net profits rise and fall and doing everything you can to keep them out of the red.
Julien talks like the red doesn’t even exist.
“This wall,” he says, knocking on the plaster beside him, “is my dilemma.”
We’re silent enough now that I notice the thumping of the music in Taverne Toulouse for the first time. If I strain my ears enough, I can hear people laughing. I can imagine Dylan singing rap songs to himself in the kitchen. I can see DeeDee dancing around behind the bar in her crop top, pouring shots and giving her famous order for anyone leaving to do ‘one for the road.’ I can picture Zach staring at her like she’s the sun.
And here on the other side, I’ve just spent a half hour piling up boxes with a man who has a dangerous ability to make me forget about all of them.
That wall is my dilemma too.
Suddenly everything shifts back into perspective. He’s a threat again, something I have to outsmart and overcome. So many people are depending on me doing just that. I tell myself to pretend he’s a drunk at the bar and I’m convincing him to go for a glass of water instead of another whiskey.
“Can you even change your plans this late in the process?” I ask. “You’re already getting tiles delivered. Things seem pretty...final.”
“They are.” He sighs and reaches up to scratch the back of his neck. “It would be one hell of a headache to change everything now.”
Sweet Jesus, let him put his arm down. I can’t think with his shirt riding up like that.
A thought seems to strike him, and he laughs to himself. “I feel like you’re my bartender right now.”
I glance around us. “This is hardly a bar.”
“Then let’s go to one.”
“Huh?”
He pushes off the wall. “Let me buy you a drink. I owe you at least one for all your help tonight.”
