Home / Featured, Fiction / The Notebook by Victoria Tishman

The Notebook by Victoria Tishman

Before his name showed up in the tabloids, I knew Jeremy Fry. None of the other waiters noticed him. They cared more about the celebrity bodyguards who came to Club Dredd to unwind and the occasional female porn star. Those clients didn’t interest me, but there was something about Jeremy that did. The thing about working in the service industry for so long is that you develop a sense about people. From the way he’d dressed I knew he had money yet didn’t necessarily flaunt it. He sat alone with his back to the crowd and never spoke to anyone. His routine was two vodka tonics with one glass of water; after ordering the second drink he’d use the bathroom. The thing I couldn’t figure out was why he’d do this every month when he appeared to be having such a shitty time.

The only other person who noticed him was Tabitha. We’d begun collecting theories about various customers. When I’d go to pick up a drink from the bar she’d whisper the beginning of one into my ear: guy at table four is here with someone else’s wife and the husband’s sitting down at table five. (That one actually turned out to be true.) We’d compare observations on our breaks, but after a while it became contested which one of us came up with more accurate guesses, so that’s how the notebook began. It was small enough that I could keep it in my back pocket so our theories could be modified at any possible time.

Tabitha started bartending eight months before the arrival of Jeremy Fry. Entering her second year at Florida State College, she needed more money for tuition so she’d enrolled in a part-time bartending course. Most of the employees at Club Dredd didn’t look like her. I like to compare our staff to a bad tan; a while ago each one was probably decent, but after too much exposure they’ve ended up flaky and hot-skinned. I immediately liked Tabitha because she didn’t have anything to prove. Female servers often choose to work at Club Dredd after failed acting or modeling careers; this is the closest they’ll get to the lowest echelon of celebrity. I’m not sure why our manager even hired Tabitha except that she can pour exceptionally well.

After four months we started dating. Our evening strolls soon became littered with conspiratorial theories, which were often disproved as quickly as they were hatched. The only one neither of us could understand were the forces behind a guy showing up at a dive bar wearing a $10,000 watch with tattered jeans.

Her theories were more pragmatic than mine. She thought that he was a recovering alcoholic and that this was the only bar in the world that didn’t care. Club Dredd’s owners had personally fueled many addictions, but I didn’t buy her theory, being that Jeremy’s drinking was strikingly methodical. He couldn’t be using the club to have an affair because we’d never seen the same woman or man come near him. I was the one who guessed he was the victim of a blackmail scheme; Tabitha thought this was ridiculous. If he was being blackmailed then where was the person doing it? In the bathroom, I insisted. The amount of time he spent in the bathroom was limited but never varied. He probably left a roll of bills tapped underneath the sink and if his blackmailer only went in and out of the bathroom he or she could easily avoid being seen by Tabitha and me. Of course, this lead to countless decisions over what anyone would be blackmailing him over. Half of our notebook would become devoted to these ideas.

Our first break came on a Sunday morning. She and I were lying in bed, her white Persian cat, Duffy, on my lap. I’d brought croissants and orange juice back from the store and we were devouring them, drinking and eating almost simultaneously, when his face appeared on the television. There’d been a fire at an upscale chain of restaurants and the owner, Jeremy Fry, was standing above the rubble alongside his wife, who was carefully dotting a handkerchief to her eyes publicly lamenting the loss.

“Who carries a handkerchief around?” Tabitha had wondered. Surely, not a brassy woman in her mid-thirties. Blackmail. It had to be true, and now we knew his family business was somehow involved in the scheme.

For our next date, two days later, we had dinner at one of the local restaurants Jeremy owned. This was incredibly exciting, perhaps our cultural equivalent of scoring last-minutes tickets to the Super Bowl, and because of all the excitement surrounding the event we’d both called in sick earlier that day. The restaurant was located in a more gentrified part of Jacksonville than the working-class neighborhood where we both lived. The restaurant was housed in an old brick building. Wooden beams, or vigas, ran across the ceiling probably in an attempt to make the space feel traditional yet current. The furniture was hard brown leather with a Southwestern twinge. There were candles everywhere and all the staff wore red and black tuxedos. No one in the restaurant appeared over forty. The customers looked like artists with money: women with blown-out hair and large pieces of jewelry. Men in cashmere sweaters wore Italian loafers with jeans. Tabitha and I adequately fit in, being under thirty, dressed in black, and somewhat groomed. At each table were complimentary postcards listing the nine other tapas lounges the Frys owned throughout Florida. Tabitha put one in her bag for future insertion into the notebook.

“Do you think he use surveillance cameras in the restaurant?” Tabitha asked while her gaze lingered about the ceiling. I shook my head. The notion seemed to go against the atmosphere of casual luxury that was being so carefully sculpted.

“If there’d be any, I’d think they’d be outside,” I said.

“More discreet,” Tabitha suggested. She swirled a hefty glass of Pinot Noir under her nose. “I bet he has this place insured for a ton of cash. Cameras would be a liability if he’s been planning on insurance fraud. Maybe someone at Club Dredd’s blackmailing him, like, they’re in on his scheme.”

This was followed by a long silence as we looked for a face we might have previously seen, but everyone appeared too fresh-faced and healthy. They’d end up waiting tables at Club Dredd after succumbing to an addiction or being kicked out of their parents’ house too young, like me.

“I wonder if Jeremy used to work at Club Dredd or someplace like it,” Tabitha suggested. “Maybe he started on the low road, made a bunch of cash and someone from his former life’s tracking him.”

This made sense to me because he clearly wouldn’t have met a Club Dredd type in a place like this. We ordered an assortment of patatas brava, champiñones al ajillo and imported cheeses, along with two glasses of house wine and the bill reached ninety dollars. Before we left Tabitha need to use the restroom. By this time the restaurant was nearly closed, and as I sipped a glass of water, Jeremy Fry arrived. I thought it would be inappropriate for me to telephone Tabitha while she was in the ladies room, but considered it nonetheless.

Jeremy was dressed in a silver button-down shirt with scruffy jeans, looking a little better than we’d seen him at our corner of the world. He shook hands with a man wearing poker cufflinks, perhaps the manager, and they spoke near the low-lit bar. When Tabitha came back they were still there. She wanted to approach him but I strongly felt this would be crossing a line. The thing about keeping a notebook was that it wasn’t supposed to collide with the outside world. More than once I’d secretly fantasized about our future notebooks, and maybe even using one to cleverly propose to Tabitha when the time felt right. Talking to Jeremy would potentially compromise the meaning of our game, so I faked a migraine and asked her to drive us home. She didn’t suspect that I was lying. When we got back to her apartment she tucked me in her bed and slept on the couch in the living room. Twice during the night I could hear her breathe above my forehead, briefly and covertly checking on me.

* * *

What the Sunday morning news had failed to disclose was that Jeremy Fry had been famous before. Around 1993, he was a champion golfer. His name was known throughout the country. By age twenty-three, he’d won several prestigious titles but shortly after this, in 1998, he vanished from the golf world. Of course, there were rumors about a breakdown, but in 2001 he opened his first tapas bar, and was soon making a name for himself in an entirely new way. I found several blogs insinuating that about the time he first started patronizing Club Dredd, he was in the works of creating his own brand, a series of ready-made toppings that would debut at grocery stores nation-wide.

What seemed unclear to me was whose money was fueling the Frys’ ventures. Tabitha and I couldn’t find any mention of partners in the restaurant. It was like Jeremy Fry had disappeared only to re-enter Florida society with bags and bags of money. For a while he even stepped away from Club Dredd, but one week before Christmas on a Wednesday night he returned. While I was jotting down two bikers’ drinks I glimpsed Tabitha shaking his hand.

“Fuck!” I dropped my pad on a customer’s foot, and then had to ask again for their order.

“Come over here, sweetheart, meet Jeremy.” Tabitha placed her arm on my shoulder and somehow it felt like less of a betrayal. I don’t know how to say it, but up close Jeremy looked much cleaner. He could probably be a men’s model with such pores. He took a card out of his pocket and placed it into my hand.

“Just tell them I sent you and the hostess will get you 10% off your next meal. Friends’ special. It’s funny, you know—most clients don’t work at places like this. Why don’t you both apply for a job at one of my restaurants? The tips have real meat.”

Tabitha and I grinned and shook our heads. I didn’t know what else to do. He was warmer than I’d expected, but it was a busy night and I didn’t have much time to linger. I did notice he ordered a second drink before disappearing, as usual. There were two bachelor parties so I had trouble watching out for him. Strangely enough, his arrival was disappointing. I’d begun to enjoy all the theories Tabitha and I could concoct with so little evidence; I worried there’d be danger of that ending. After the first bachelor party left I noticed Jeremy’s routine had changed. This time he was staying for a third and fourth drink. When my shift got over, for Tabitha’s sake, I joined him.

“You a long time bachelor?” Jeremy asked me.

“No,” I shook my head. “I’m with Tabitha.”

“Naw,” Jeremy flicked his drink. “Girlfriends don’t count. You ever been married? Divorced?”

I shook my head.

“Well,” he continued, “Tonight’s your lucky night because I’m gonna tell it to you like it is, Bruno. You go through life with all these fuckin’ people, they’re all over and you’re packed together like sardines. The problem is, everyone else is too self-centered to share shit. What I mean is that the love of one person is worth everything. If I told a little story would you mind?”

Again, I shook my head.

“There’s this young hot shot—arrogant, but also talented. Gets up every morning so used to everyone else saying he’s the greatest that the idiot actually believes it and starts acting like the world’s his to give.

“Understand? Any schmuck can be king of the castle in his head. Remember that, Bruno, because once you forget, it’s over. So this fella, hypothetically, starts running up a long list of tabs because he thinks he’s better than paying for his own bills, and in the middle of all this mess he meets a girl—actually several—but this one is particularly special. When he cleans up she won’t let him leave her. She says he’s forgotten his roots. Bullshit. All she’s after is this,” Jeremy rubs his fingers together indicating money.

By this time his fifth drink got swallowed and I noticed his damp brow, but then Jeremy leaned in, rather erratically, and asked me what I’d do.

“I guess if she was really bothering me I’d change my number and if that didn’t work, I dunno, get a restraining order.”

“Seriously, what’d you do?”

“That.”

“All right, wise guy,” Jeremy said, as my stomach started to turn, “What if she had something on you? What if your girlfriend would leave you? I’ll tell you what you’d do…” He lifted up his empty glass. “Kill her.”

I waited for him to start laughing. His gaze focused on where the drink had been and the whole thing felt overly serious.

After all these weeks of coming to the bar I don’t know what made him lose control that night. I guess he was waiting for someone to take an interest in him and I was just a decent listener.

Before leaving, Jeremy emphasized that our conversation was strictly hypothetical. He made a point to say goodbye to my girlfriend using her name.

By the end of that winter, Tabitha and I were engaged. She’d moved her stuff into my place and going through her boxes I came across the notebook. One day while she was napping I took it down to the dumpster and buried it beneath a pile of smelly fruit. A few years later, after we’d moved to Tampa and had a child, she thought it’d be fun to jot down our theories again. When she asked me where I’d put it I looked at her quizzically so Tabitha drove to the store and bought a similar pad. Now we use it on family outings; fiction’s been banned. When I see Jeremy’s name in the paper, about the drug money allegedly laundered through his restaurant business, I try not to think about that woman. I haven’t seen him since, but one time around New Years’ Tabitha received an anonymous postcard congratulating us on the birth of our first son.

–

Victoria Tishman lives in Northern California with her inamorato. Her work has appeared in Short, Fast, and Deadly; ZYZZYVA and other fine places. Visit her at victoriatishman.com.

Comments

Trackbacks

• Tweets that mention The Notebook :: Black Heart Magazine | reading writing rebellion -- Topsy.com