Every time he has this thought, it is, of course, followed by another thought, such as,Why on earth would you do that?OrDon’t you think that would be incredibly weird?OrWhat exactly are you planning to say to him, then? “Hello, person I hardly know and just eviscerated on video for the second time in as many weeks, I’m here to touch base on your emotional well-being!”No. Pete has been kind to Ben, and that’s because Ben is a weird little gremlin person and Pete is an incredibly attractive and competent man with, admittedly, a fairly significant camera-related flaw, but who, after all, does not have flaws? Ben himself has dozens and dozens of them, carefully cataloged in a little recipe box in his mind that he can flip through whenever he likes; it’s stopping that’s the problem. It wouldn’t be the same thing, for Ben to go hovering around in Pete’s workplace, as it was for Pete to swing by Ben’s desk—forone thing, Pete had been doing that mostly to size him up, which was only fair, in the circumstances.
And if on Tuesday night, getting ready to lock the video back at his own apartment, Ben lingers for a moment on the disquieting notion that he is awfully worried about what Pete thinks of him, it hardly matters. He drowns out the thought in the rush of satisfaction he gets from sending the file to Dave in S&P, and closes his laptop pleased with work well done.
It’s Thursday before Ben notices his mistake.
Wednesday is a nice day, a boring day, in which nothing much exciting happens at all; Thursday makes Ben long for Wednesday, and also, quite possibly, for death. His day is back-to-back meetings he has no business being in, and the technical video he finished a week ago for today’s deadline suddenly needs three additional minutes edited in, and Renata keeps texting him complaining about some fight she’s having with their father, which, as far as Ben can tell, started with a disagreement about the best type of lasagna and spiraled out from there.
So when the email comes through from Miranda a few minutes after five, he’s braced for the worst. This is, probably, what saves them in the end—Ben has found it often is—but it doesn’t ever make the experience of actuallyfindingthe worst any more enjoyable.
The email is Ben’s promised copy of his contract, paperwork, the slideshow she showed them, and best of all, the production schedule. Relieved to finally have that to study properly and add to his own universe of calendars, Ben opens it eagerly as he rides the subway home, waiting an age for it to load on the spotty signal. His eyes skim eagerly over the first week and—stop.
He stares at it. For a long, frozen moment, that’s all he does, the subway car alive and vibrant around him as Ben hovers,stilled, just outside of time in clear, world-sharpening horror. Then the train judders on its tracks and Ben seems to judder, too, his eyes skittering across the calendar before they land, again, on the offending tile.
Maybe he’s reading it wrong? He stares at it again, willing the words and dates to reconfigure themselves into a different order; they don’t. He closes his eyes, opens them—the same. This can’t be a stress dream, he remembers how he got here, heknowshe’s awake; God, God,God, could it possibly beright? Because if it’s right…if it’s right, then he and Pete owe S&Ptwovideos this week, not one. The Halloween one Ben already sent in was delivered on deadline, but they have another one slated to be sent off no later than—oh, God, even thinking it makes Ben feel a little sick—end of daytomorrow. He scrolls up to the body of the email, which he’d skimmed without really reading it because the first three paragraphs were a glaze of Miranda’s jargon-heavy corporate babble. But there is, at the end, a chilling postscript:And don’t forget, Ben: If you blow a deadline, you’re in breach of contract!
The train lurches to a stop in…well, some station, anyway. It’s not Ben’s station; he’s only been on the subway for a few minutes, and it’s eight or nine stops between work and his apartment, depending on which station he opts to start at and whether or not the line has gone express. It doesn’t matter—he has to get in touch with Pete. This whole thing is going to be over before it’s started, and Ben’s mother willneverlet him hear the end of it. He pulls out his phone and starts typing and then realizes speed is of the essence here, and messages are not going to be his fastest path. Shoving his phone into his pocket until he has the cell service to put a call through, he hurries towards the nearest exit and up onto the street.
He realizes unhappily, once he’s blinking in the thin, waning light of an early October evening, that he’s in Columbus Circle.His current mood is not comforted by the slick, shiny nature of this particular corner of the city, though there are days when it is. One of Ben’s favorite things about New York is that there is a little pocket of it for every mood, a place where you will fit seamlessly amongst the scenery no matter how buoyant or unhappy or anxious or fired up. But one of hisleastfavorite things is moments like this, where you turn up in precisely the wrong corner. Ben, right now, is in a St. Mark’s mood; he wants to sit without permission on someone’s front steps eating incredibly delicious dumplings that are still far too hot for human consumption, and then nurse his lightly burnt mouth while he considers an ill-advised tattoo. That is about the only thing he could think of that would make him feel less like a panicked animal right now.
But instead, he has a choice between the shiny, shopping-heavy district before him, or turning on his heel and storming into Central Park. He opts for the latter and, as the sound of the city begins to dampen ever so slightly against birdcall and chittering squirrels, he puts a call through to Pete, who answers on the second ring.
“Ben, hey!” Pete sounds cheerful; grimly, Ben thinks this conversation will probably take care of that. “To what do I owe the pleasure?”
“Didyouknow about the second video?” Ben demands, which is hardly any way to start a phone call.
He explains, as quickly as he can, when it becomes apparent that Pete has no idea what he’s talking about. When Ben has communicated the gist of the problem, Pete mutters, “Freaking Miranda—I can’ttellyou how sure I am she did this on purpose; this is just like her. But—Ben, I’m so sorry, but I don’t knowwhatwe’re going to do here. I could make it back to the offices tonight, not until seven thirty or eight, but I know for sureJaelyn’s not around—she left this morning for a wedding in Minnesota.”
Ben chews on his lip for a second, but: “I mean…I could shoot it, probably. It won’t be as professional as her work, not by a long shot, but maybe we can lean into that? A little more casual?GastronomeAfter Dark? It’ll still be better thannothing.”
Pete laughs, but not happily. “Do you think so? I’m not sure how much more casual I can get before it’s a medical condition. We might be enteringWeekend at Bernie’sterritory, which I think the health codes frown upon when it comes to cooking.”
Privately Ben thinks Pete’s issue is probably that he is the exactly the opposite of casual while the camera is rolling, but it doesn’t seem like the moment. “Well, yeah, actually? I think almost anything is better than me being in breach and you, I assume—well…you probably wouldn’t get fired or anything, right? But?—”
“Yeah, no, it wouldn’t be good,” Pete says, and swears. “I really did not want to have to do one of these again this week—do we have a concept, at least?”
“The guidelines say, ‘Something for fall,’” Ben says drily, and, as Pete groans, says, “Yeah, my thoughts exactly. Completely vague, no direction,anythingcould be for fall?—”
“Yeah, it’s always easier to come up with something with parameters,” Pete agrees. A pause, in which Ben almost thinks he can hear the distant sounds of the ocean. “Listen, I have an idea. Why don’t we meet at seven thirty—where do you live, exactly?”
“Uhh, Upper West Side,” Ben says, wincing slightly, and then hastily adds: “But it was one of those crazy situations, you know, I’m not like, secretly wealthy or anything. I went a little feral with the old real estate listings for a few months, and may or may not have snuck into a few invite-only open houses.”
“Oh, you’rewaycloser to the office than me, yeah, this is gonna work,” Pete says, seeming to blow right past Ben’s guilt by neighborhood association. “Listen—go to the grocery store and get ingredients, okay? Whatever says ‘fall’ to you, I guess. I’ll meet you at the office at seven thirty, and I’ll use them to make, uh…something. Dinner? Something.”
“Fine, fine,” Ben says, distracted by a small mob of pigeons that seem to be bobbing concerningly in his direction. “Seven thirty, ingredients, got it, bye,” and he hangs up, too frenzied to worry that he’s being rude. Then he spends several upsetting minutes trying to sidestep the pigeons, who are equally determined not to let him pass, before it occurs to him that he still needs to go back to his apartment. Slightly ashamed, Ben turns around and stalks back to the subway, and rides the several remaining stops to his usual station.
He blows through his apartment like a tornado, digging through old boxes looking for cameras and lenses he hasn’t used in years now. Roux comes over and yowls at him after a while, so Ben gives himself five minutes of operating at a reasonable, measured pace to scratch her behind the ears and feed her a can of wet food; then he’s running around again, looking for connecting cables and memory cards and all the other little things it would be a real pain to forget.
Twenty minutes after arriving, Ben’s got a camera bag as ready as he’s going to be able to get it. He says, “Wish me luck!” to Roux as he opens the door to leave, but she just stares at him, her wide green eyes unblinking, and delicately licks one cream-colored paw. This doesn’t seem like an entirely good omen, but to cover his bases, Ben says, “Thanks,” anyway, before hurrying down to his favorite grocery store.
As he’s walking across the threshold, it occurs to him that he didn’t ask Pete enough questions, but when he pulls his phone out to ask them, he sees he already has a message waiting:
PETE:
just remembered you’ve never cooked in the TK before. don’t worry about like, pantry staples—flour, sugar, pasta, spices, we’ve got all that. just like, whatever fresh stuff you want me to use
BEN:
Okay, great. also, I don’t know if you’re allergic to anything? Or on some kind of Whole Keto I Only Eat Carbs Under the Full Moon diet or whatever
