Pete turns to look at him, his expression abruptly wide-eyed, his mouth parting slightly in surprise. He reaches up a hand to run through his hair, pushing the top half of the hot dog suit off of his head as he does, so it sits behind his neck like a hood. Pete’s hair is wild and mussed from its time in this costume, and for a second Ben can feel his whole body thrum with the urge to reach out and work it back into place, rake his fingers throughthe curls until they’re tamed into something approaching an order. He wants to do it so badly hisfingertipsitch, and he rubs then slightly frenetically against the rough edge of the brick, trying to override the sensation.
Luckily, Pete doesn’t seem to notice this. He’s still looking at Ben like Ben himself is a peyote-short-rib-induced hallucination, a ghostly apparition, or some other impossible phantasm. Ben… can’t totally work out why. It was a simple enough question, wasn’t it? Maybe he has something on his face, or in his teeth; he hopes not. But surely, if that was the case, Pete would have noticed before now?
Ben has no choice but to sweat it out, so he waits for what feels like an eternity even though it can’t be more than a few seconds.
Finally, Pete says, “I don’t know, actually. What helps. I’ll…think about it.”
“You do that.” Ben offers him a small, hesitant smile. Then, thinking longingly of his peacoat, he adds, “For now, though, did you want to like—stay up here? I can leave you alone, obviously. Or I could go get Chris?—”
“No,” Pete says, and shudders. Then, more quietly, he adds, “Sorry, that’s not—Chris is great, this just isn’t really, uh…his area.” Ben decides, with the help of another sip of his drink, that he hates Chris. Pete does not seem to notice this as he continues, “If you don’t mind. I don’t want to stay up here all night or anything, but would you just hang out with me for a few more minutes?”
“Oh,” Ben says, warmed through suddenly, forgetting about his jacket. “I mean—yeah, sure. If you want.”
Pete nods, and Ben settles back against the wall. Within a minute, the conversation has turned to the food downstairs; within five, they’re laughing about some nonsense joke Ben doubts he’d even be able to explain to anyone else. By the timethey return to the party fifteen minutes later, Pete’s smile is bright and his eyes are clear, and he breaks off to check in with Chris in a great mood, his earlier despair forgotten for now.
Ben sighs, watching Pete smile at something Chris whispers in his ear, swallows down the last sip of his drink, and walks away. Through the party; through the empty halls; through the coat check, where he is reunited at last with the glorious warmth of his peacoat.
Abruptly too drunk for logic or good decisions, Ben makes his unsteady way to the nearest subway station essentially on autopilot, and rides the twenty-five minutes home in the slightly swaying fashion of the properly sauced. He doesn’t talk to anyone, but he watches as he rides, taking in the uniformed woman struggling to keep her eyes open, the old man reading a Tolstoy novel, the scowling teenager glaring into space. He’s struck, suddenly, with the knowledge of how separate they all are, even packed tight into the same densely layered city, the same unlikely tin car bulleting under the ground: together, undeniably—but, equally undeniably, alone.
As Ben walks the few blocks from his usual station back to his apartment, under the sort of soft, forgiving street lamplight he’s grown fond of lately, he thinks again of Pete. His easy laughter; his complicated competence; the way he always seems to get Ben’s jokes, no matter how stupid or off-kilter or strange. New York never sleeps, so the streets are still pockmarked with anonymous people, striding and shuffling about their singular business; surrounded by the safety of just being another soul amongst the rabble, Ben’s drunken, treacherous heart twists in his chest, and opens the door beyond which he keeps things he doesn’t want to know.
Ben takes a long, sobering look at the looming truth behind that door, its inarguable shape and unmissable features, the way it seems, already, to be threatening to break containment.
Then he takes a firm grip on the door’s metaphorical knob, and slams it shut.
SEVEN
The first week of November dawns cold and bracing, matching Ben’s mood. After spending the bulk of Sunday both hungover and viciously down on himself, he battles his way grimly to the office on Monday morning, regretting, as always, the fact that New York’s eye-catching skyscrapers have the unfortunate side effect of creating, in certain weather, a series of interconnected wind tunnels. He’s buffeted along Forty-Second Street, and then blown sideways onto Sixth Avenue, before managing, barely, to make his way into his own office building.
Another sign of the state he’s worked himself into: He doesn’t even make a cursory stop by twenty-seven on his way to theGastronomeoffices. Instead, he guilelessly and with malice aforethought hits thirty-four when he gets in the elevator, and makes sure to stand in the back, so if the doors do open on his more usual floor, none of his coworkers can catch a glimpse of him.
He’s the first in, when he gets to the test kitchen; this doesn’t surprise him, as the chefs here, like chefs in general, are typically a later crowd. Really, Ben should continue through the test kitchen to the editing bay, where someone else will inevitably already be working, and where he truly belongs. ButPete is supposed to film today, the first of three Thanksgiving videos they’re set to turn in this week, and Ben doesn’t see the point getting ready anywhere but here. He’ll just end up drifting in while Pete films, using a variety of excuses to explain his presence, before eventually sticking around, trying to make it seem organic and natural and like that was his plan all along.
Ben’s had enough of being organic and natural. He’s had enough of silly little plans built around a silly little idea of some silly little life Ben’s not even sure that he wants, and that isn’t possible or remotely in the cards for him in any case. Pete’s not suited to this job; Pete’s got a boyfriend; Pete’s having a panic attack after every shoot, at minimum. Ben’s vague, gauzy plan, the one he had not allowed himself to so much as think about but had been drifting loosely towards even so, is not going to work. And, anyway, while all this has been going on Ben’s been doing what, exactly? Ripping Pete to shreds for the entertainment of the masses, that’s what, while Pete lived his long, unrelenting nightmare, more or less as a direct result of Ben’s tendency towards evisceration. There’s nothing he can do about it now—for better or worse, that’s the job, and it would damage both of their careers if he abruptly changed the whole tone of the show.
But the other thing Ben’s been doing—the dancing around what he’d normally say, what he’d like to do, here in theGastronomeoffices, because he wants to…to…impressPete, or whatever? Give a convincing impression of being someone cooler and more cavalier than he is? That’s going to have to stop, and it’s going to have to stop right now.Someoneis going to have to get bossy, and insistent, and demanding. Someone is going to have to make this easier for Pete, since it’s clear he can’t make it easy for himself.
So Ben sets up at the station next to Pete’s that he knows is always empty, hooking up his laptop to his external hard driveand prepping programs he won’t need for hours yet. Then he sits and waits to execute his plan.
Pete comes in first—also not a surprise. He’s almost always the first cook in, which Ben knows is because he has a complicated daily system timed out with the ferry ride from Jersey City; if he’s ever more than five minutes late, it’s always because he’s missed his boat, and will be delayed at least half an hour. He smiles when he sees Ben; Ben tries to smile back.
“Ben, hey! I’m glad you’re here—I was hoping I’d catch a moment alone with you.” Pete lowers his voice in spite of the aforementioned solitude. “I just… I wanted to thank you for the other night, for being so chill, and everything. I tried to find you again at the party, but I couldn’t, so, just. Thanks. I appreciate it.”
“Oh,” Ben says, blinking. He’s spent the past thirty-six hours steeping in a simmering tea of self-loathing, born partially of hangover and partially of realizing the sheer depth of the trouble he, specifically, has brought upon this specific man; he wasn’t exactly expecting thanks. “That’s—don’t be stupid, it was nothing. You don’t have to—just—forget it.”
“Oh, you’re one ofthosepeople,” Pete says musingly, as if to himself.
Bristling in spite of his better instincts, and biting even though it’s obvious bait, Ben snaps, “I’m sorry, one ofwhichpeople, exactly?”
“You know,” Pete says, taking off his jacket and folding it precariously over a stool, “people who can’t take gratitude, or a compliment, or whatever. Look, I’ll prove it: Your editing is really good.”
“God,” Ben groans, running a hand over his face, “don’tdo this to me right now. I haven’t even had good coffee yet; I had to throw out my bodega cup halfway through this morning,something wentwrongwhen they were making it, it was like drinking a cup of straight hair dye?—”
“And yet you still drank half of it,” Pete comments lightly, shaking his head, but he lets the compliment thing go. Ben doesn’t think he could take continued praise of his work from Pete right now—in his current mental circumstances, it might actually kill him.
Instead of this, he offers, “Hey, I’d drink hair dye too if it had caffeine in it.”
“I think we can do a little better than that,” Pete says, rolling his eyes. “And if we can’t, we have no business calling ourselves ‘America’s cooking standby,’ or whatever it is?—”
