“Gotta jump, kid,” Rick says cheerfully, which almost certainly meansyes. “Good luck, but not too much, ya know?” He hangs up.
“Sometimes I reallyhatepeople,” Ben says to Roux, who he has spotted underneath the couch. “What do you think about that, huh? Do you hate people?” She cocks her head inquisitively, meows as if in agreement, and then reaches up a paw to scratch a new mark into the already much-maligned couch fabric, which seems about right.
Ben decides it’s the better part of valor to step away from all this for a moment. He leaves Roux to her cavalier destruction of his property and walks, slightly unsteadily, the few blocks to the nearest specialty grocer. The weather continues, but as he is now somewhat drunk, he doesn’t care as much that he’s being simultaneously frozen and drowned. And, anyway, he’d walk through almost any weather to get where he’s going.
It’s not that Ben moved to the Upper West Side for the food. He moved here because he lucked into an apartment he could afford six years ago, and finding that apartment was such an ordeal that he’s planning on staying in it until he dies…But he has to admit, the food is nice. Every few blocks there’s another grocery store, each one stocked with a hundred products none of the others have, and scattered between them are delis and bakeries, little hole-in-the-wall restaurants, and bodegas somehow selling the freshest-tasting melons Ben’s ever had in his life.
It’s a cook’s paradise, and Ben is, first and foremost, a cook, however long it’s been since he wore the title professionally. He grew up in his parents’ restaurant—bussing tables by ten, working the counter at twelve, waiting by thirteen, line cook from his sixteenth birthday—and he made it to sous chef at Fleur de Sel, the French joint he worked at in college to make ends meet. He may have abandoned it all for a career that seemed, at the time, like it would bring him fewer barely covered medical bills, unnecessary injuries, and hours spent feeling like he’d been hit by a series of trains, but he’ll always be that kid on some level, begging his mother to let him put his latest fixation on the menu.
Food, now as then, brings Ben peace, and he wanders through the grocery store at a pace much slower than everyone else, taking his time, breathing it all in. He’s learned, over the years, how to do this without inconveniencing the rushedNew Yorkers around him. Ben dances lightly around the other shoppers, spins away from an oncoming cart, catches a falling avocado in midair when another customer knocks it down. The employees greet him by name, and he greets them by theirs, pleased to be a regular, to be known. Out in the world Ben may be small and strange, never quite fitting in anywhere, but here amongst the chocolate babkas and smoked salmons, he belongs.
He has a basket half-filled with the ingredients to make sausage and mushroom risotto—sometimes, when he’s feeling particularly stressed, he finds it restful to take his aggression out via twenty to forty minutes of stirring—when it occurs to him that maybe he should make the chicken and kale salad from the video. He did it without issue last month, after all, and maybe having it fresh in his mind will help him figure out how onearthhe’s going to make Pete’s attempt watchable.
Balancing his basket on his hip, he fishes his phone out of his pocket and pulls up the recipe on theGastronomewebsite. He doesn’t even get a chance to scroll through it, though, before he notices the byline.
“Hewrotethe stupid recipe?!” Ben yells this, a little, at his phone screen. It’s a credit to his fellow shoppers that not one of them so much as turns around; Ben would still be a little embarrassed, but honestly, he’s occupied. Petewroteit? Pete wrote therecipe? Pete got a job in theGastronometest kitchen, and was hand-picked to create video content for them, and wrote the stupidrecipe—for a salad that, horribly, was delicious when Ben made it, the flavors of all the components exquisitely balanced—and he couldn’t justphone it in, or something, in front of the camera?What?It was bad enough when Ben thought it was some randomly selected dish, but Pete must have made it dozens of times while he was developing it. He must be able to make it with hiseyesclosed!
Already hating himself for it, Ben clicks on Pete’s byline. Sure enough, it pulls up dozens of recipes, some of which are personal favorites of Ben’s. One of them is the very risotto he was planning to make tonight, and he lets out a soft shriek on realizing it, nearly dropping his basket; then, hastily, he puts all the ingredients back and gets a few potato knishes and a pint of pasta salad to go.
Forget risotto. Forget cooking anything, at least for tonight. Ben knows what must have happened here now; Ben understands. The Formica execs want Pete to do this, and Pete doesn’t want to do it, and Rick, Pete’s boss, doesn’t want him to do it, either. They must have—Pete must havetanked it on purpose, maybe at Rick’s instruction or maybe because it was the only thing he could think of to do, and now they’ve got Ben looking at it as…plausible deniability or something. Not quite a patsy; a patsy might be more dignified. No, Ben’s astooge, only here to help sell their little con.
Ben goes home. He cracks his knuckles, eats a knish directly out of the foil envelope it came in, and gets right into editing the stupid video, the aggression that he intended to take out on the risotto going into the work. After a bit of effort, he’s able to hack together a version that vaguely resembles a normal man making a normal salad in a normal amount of time, so long as you don’t turn the audio on. With sound, of course, it’s still the cooking show equivalent of a train accident, but Ben’s got a plan for that little problem.
It’s kind of a mean plan, if he’s honest, but. Well. Pete decided to play the fool, didn’t he?Ben’s got no choice but to work with what he’s got.
He pauses the video on the opening shot, Pete’s mouth split in a wide grin. Ben was annoyed at being tricked a few hours ago, but he doesn’t care about that anymore. Now he’s angry,furious, at this stupid handsome face to whom everything mustcome so easily. At this stranger who has things Ben’s dreamed of since he was a child, things Ben willneverhave, and who doesn’t seem to care at all. At this man who’s got it so good that he can afford to throw away something like this, an opportunity like this, because he doesn’tfeellike taking it, and because his life will sail on just the same either way. If nothing else, he’s too breathtakingly attractive for it not to.
Ben stays up until nearly five in the morning, cutting things together, recording voice-over, adding captions and graphics, using Photoshop to scrawlWHY???over several particularly grim moments. Then he sends it to Rick, along with the signed paperwork, before he can change his mind.
TWO
For the next week, Ben’s life proceeds as usual.
He gets up as usual, rides the train as usual, sits at work in nightmarish boredom as usual. His cat scratches him four times, as usual, and he forgives her four times, as usual; he tells himself, each day, that his life isn’t empty, as usual. He makes chicken cacciatore and shrimp scampi and five-bean chili, distracting himself from his problems by cooking through them and then taking the leftovers upstairs to Mrs. C, as usual. It’s the same as it ever was.
Except that the following Friday, he’s sitting in his cubicle in his typical position—chin tilted down, shoulders up around his neck in a protective curl, one headphone in—when someone says, “Yo.”
Ben wishes he didn’t recognize the voice instantly, but spending almost ten hours editing footage of someone will do that to you. He’s still hoping he’s wrong, or having an aneurism or something, as he turns his chair…But, no. Of course, there he is, in all his hideous glory.
Pete looks bigger in person. Or, that’s not quite right—in fact, Petelooksmore capable of beating Ben to a pulpin person, his broad shoulders and well-muscled arms a lot morethreatening up close. A little frantically, Ben curses himself for not thinking this through; it’s all well and good to verbally eviscerate someone on video, but it’s probably a better idea to do it to a person who isn’t actively working in the same building as you are.
Also—not that it even bears thinking about—Pete is hotter in person. A lot hotter. His arms are crossed over his chest and he’s scowling, but that doesn’t do anything to minimize the sharp cut of his cheekbones, his full lips, his tousled hair. The footage didn’t do him justice. If he wasn’t wearing the sameAsk Me About Canned Beansshirt, Ben might be too overcome with the combination of his own panic and Pete’s frankly devastatingly good looks to do anything but sit here, staring, mute and horrified.
As it is, he finds himself opening his mouth and, almost against his will, saying, “For heaven’s sake, is that the only shirt youown?”
Pete stares at him for a moment, and then bursts out laughing. Ben, despite an admitted surge of relief that this dude isn’t here to try and throw down, raises his eyebrows and silently wills his rude, nosy coworkers to ignore the hysterical beefcake at his cubicle. He doubts they will, but a guy’s gotta hope.
“Oh my God,” Pete gasps, when he gets his laughter under control. “I had this whole plan, you know—I was gonna play like I wasmadabout it—but you’re justlikethis, aren’t you?”
“Like what?” Ben asks, not sure he wants to know.
“Oh, you know,” Pete says, waving an expansive hand. His grin goes all the way to his eyes, crinkling them up at the corners, and Ben tries frantically to remember that he’s angry at this guy, however attractive he might be. “Mean.”
“Mean?” Ben repeats, suddenly finding it less difficult to hold onto his annoyance. “I’m notmean, I’m?—”
“Exacting?” Pete suggests, eyes dancing. “Particular? Mean people usually have another word for it.”
“Look,” Ben says, nettled, “I’m sorry if I upset you or whatever, but that doesn’t mean you get to come down to my office and?—”
