Huffing in annoyance at himself, Ben returns eggplant and corn as well as a bag of what had to have been the last good plums of the year. Those he is particularly regretful to leave behind, but there’s nothing for it—no one outside of California will be able to find good plums by the middle of the month, and there’s no point setting the audience up for failure.
He selects brussels sprouts and several pomegranates instead, and then swings back to the meat and fish counters. The meat counter is mobbed with after-work traffic, but the fish line is lighter, so Ben does what he’d usually do and gets what looks best in the case, which is sea scallops. At Pete’s advice he skips any staples, but he does, on the theory that he’s already picked up brussels sprouts and pomegranate, grab a small package of chopped pancetta on his way to wait in the interminablecheckout line, too. It’s not that he doesn’t trust that Pete can cook—Benknowsthat Pete can cook. But he also knows that in front of the camera, all bets are off, so it’s better if Ben stacks the odds with an option for somethingheknows how to cook, too. That way, if Pete burns the scallops, or forgets the entire English language, Ben can…well, he can dosomething, anyway. Hopefully by the time he has to cross that bridge, he’ll have figured out what.
After a seemingly endless wait, during which Ben still cannot muster a normal human reply to Pete’s texts, he gets through the line and heads back downtown, crowded like a sardine into the standing-room-only subway crowd he’d been thrilled to miss when he’d cut out of work hours early. Resigned to his inevitable fate, Ben dissociates with the smooth practice of all seasoned New Yorkers, forgetting the weight of the groceries in his hand and the straps of his camera bag digging into his neck. He rocks to and fro with the turns of the train, his shoulder occasionally brushing against someone else’s, too tightly packed against his fellow travelers to be in danger of falling down.
In spite of his haste, between the waits and the train rides and the frankly upsetting amount of time Ben spent standing around in various corners of Zabar’s, typing furiously on his phone, Ben dashes into theGastronomeoffices at 7:32 p.m., kicking himself for being late. But he finds Pete taking off his coat in the lobby, having clearly only just arrived himself.
“Hi. What’s the hurry?” Pete says, cracking a grin. “We’re basically going to my funeral, you know—I don’t think we need to rush it.”
“Oh my God, we’re not going to yourfuneral,” Ben snaps, too on edge from the impending deadline and two hours of running around to temper himself. “Are you always this dramatic about it? Do you walk into every one of these shoots thinking to yourself, ‘Pete, you’re going to die today?’ Because honestly, thatwouldbasically explain why you’re always acting like you’re in a hostage situation and trying to communicate it to the audience.”
Pete blinks, clearly surprised, and then laughs. “I don’t know. I guess I kind ofdo, now that you say that.”
“Well,” Ben says, shouldering past him and walking back towards the kitchen, “maybe that’s the problem, right? What if you tried…notthinking that?” A little voice in the back of Ben’s mind sends him a brief memo, letting him know that later he’ll look back on this moment and be embarrassed for taking charge like this. He ignores it.
“Does that usually work for you?” Pete says, falling easily into step with Ben; it sounds like a genuine question. “Deciding not to think about something?”
“Me? Oh, no,” Ben says, waving a hand with a little laugh. “I’m still thinking about things I should have forgotten twenty years ago, myself. But, you know. Maybe you’re normal.”
“A bold assessment from someone who has watched all my footage,” Pete says solemnly. Then he sighs. “Well, listen, before we turn the camera on and ruin the evening for everyone—what did you get?”
“Seriouslythat is so defeatist, it’s like you want it to be a disaster,” Ben complains, but they’ve reached the kitchen, so he unpacks his grocery bag onto Pete’s counter in answer to Pete’s actual question. “The wrapped package is scallops—they’re what looked best in the case—and you can feel free to skip using whatever. I sometimes do this thing with pomegranate and brussels?—”
“Oh, and the pancetta, yeah, I can see that,” Pete says, tilting his head. “Youwouldneed a little balsamic for that, though—I have this fig one, that would be nice—and then the scallops would be a quick sear, and it all plates up on… Hmm. Does it want to be one dish or two, do you think? I could stack it all upon like, a polenta or something, but it seems like it might be a little busy.”
Ben stares for a second; is Pete asking for hisopinion? On thefood? When he’s aprofessional? Sure, okay, a professional with some significant problems, but still. Even when Ben had made sous at Fleur de Sel, the French restaurant where he worked in college, his role had been toexecutethe chef’s vision, not opine on it. And in his parents’ kitchen, he’ll always be an overly eager, somewhat obnoxious little child, whose opinions on the dishes won’t matter until he’s old enough to count, to them, as an adult. Based on progress, Ben expects that day to come sometime in his own late eighties, when his parents themselves have been dead several decades, and even then, he expects their ghosts to be a little grudging about it.
But Pete stares back at him with wide, clear eyes, nothing in the expression but interest and curiosity. It’s weirdly intoxicating.
“Uh. Let me consider for a second, yeah?” Ben swallows, and forces himself to start setting up camera equipment so he’ll have something to do with his hands. Unfortunately, this means that within seconds he finds himself needing to mic Pete up, which, okay, maybe was a bit of a mistake. Standing close enough to Pete to clip the mic to his shirt, smoothing the wire down before passing him the battery pack to slide into his pocket; it does something to Ben, for some reason. Maybe it’s the smell of whatever cologne Pete is wearing, or the scent of the shampoo he uses or something—clean and crisp and vaguely sandalwoody, Ben thinks, though he’s not normally one to think much about sandalwood at all. It’s a good smell, whatever it is. Distractingly good.
All in all, Ben’s proud that his voice comes out normal and even as he steps back and says, “Okay. Yeah, honestly, I don’t know that brussels want pancetta and balsamicandscallopsandpolenta. The fig vinegar sounds good, though; it’s only a little acid and I always do vinegar, too—so maybe it’s two dishes? Do you have a scallop in your repertoire somewhere?”
“Sure, until you hit record,” Pete says ruefully. “I can think of a dozen things to do with them. Ceviche—although, I guess, acid?—”
“I mean, you don’t have to worry about that,” Ben mutters, feeling himself start to flush slightly and willing the blood back down away from his neck. He stares hard at the camera equipment he’s popping and slotting into place as he says, “It’s for the video really, it doesn’t matter if?—”
“Come on, I’m not going to make something you can’t eat,” Pete says, rolling his eyes. “If I have to endure the nightmare of filming,someonehad better enjoy it. And, anyway, scallops are easy, I could do a beer batter and fry them off, or a quick seafood stew, normally. But the minute the camera starts rolling?—”
“I know, I know, shut up and stop thinking about it,” Ben says, flapping a hand at him in a way that he’ll recognize, some hours from now, as upsettingly reminiscent of his mother. “Look, which one’s the most hard coded? Like, if you were on a desert island, totally wasted, and had to cook one scallop dish to survive?—”
“What desert island is this?” Pete asks, cocking his head. He sounds amused. “Sounds like somebody needs to get a UN representative out there to check things out, stat.”
“Oh myGod, would you just answer the question?” Ben snaps, finally turning away from the tripod and camera and laptop and hard drives and connecting cables to glare at him.
Pete just offers him a slow, lazy grin, seeming to relax slightly as he leans back against his counter. “What? Am I annoying you?”
“You’re avoiding the topic is what you’re doing,” Ben grumbles, trying to ignore the mysterious spike of pleasure hefeels every time he takes a swipe at Pete and, in spite of his generally excellent aim and a long track record of unfortunate success, seems to miss. “You think that you’re going to draw me into some involved conversation about sending the United Nations to Scallop or Die Island, and whether or not their authority extends to fictional islands, and what the conditions are for scallop-based survival?—”
“It already seems like a lot more fun to?—”
“And Irefuse,” Ben cuts him off sharply, “to be part of it. You and I have to make this video tonight one way or another, and I, for one, don’t want to be here at three in the morning watching you struggling to remember how to use aknife, okay, I have an appointment with my pillow! I cannot be late! And you could do this with youreyesclosed, it’s so clearly a mental block—for the love of God, what is your easiest scallop dish!”
“Seared on a pesto pasta,” Pete says, blinking at him in what appears to be surprise. “Done it a thousand times.”
“Fantastic,” Ben says, shaking his head. “Do we have all the ingredients for that? I donotwant to go back to the grocery store.”
“Oh. Yes,” Pete says, still blinking. He opens his mouth, as if to say something else, and then, after a moment of standing there like a fish who has had the misfortune of encountering Rick, closes it again.
