They sit in silence for a moment, sipping their hot chocolates. Then Ben says, “Did you want to tell me the story, or…?”
Pete grimaces briefly, then shakes his head, then sighs, then nods. “Okay. Yeah. God. So—do you remember, back in like the eighties and nineties, a show calledAmerica’s Best Home Videos?”
“Oh, sure,” Ben says, his brow furrowing as he tries both to bring up the show and imagine why on earth it would be relevant. “The host was—that guy from that show, right?”
Pete gives him a sideways little smile, and says, “Okay, well, technically, that could be anyone, but I’ll grant you that I know who you mean, so. Yeah, that was him.” He sighs and takes another sip of his hot chocolate with the same energy that someone might sip at a stiff whiskey for strength. “Anyway, my parents recorded this, well…home video, right? Of me. And I was maybe seven or eight, and learning to skateboard, and so I was kicking around in front of the restaurant, and I hit a rock.” He shrugs, his mouth twisting. “Sometimes that’s all it takes,you know? You hit a rock and then, ten years later—hell, sorry, I’m getting ahead of myself.”
“It’s really fine,” Ben says, a little at sea but hoping to be encouraging. “I’m not, like, grading you here. There will be no scorecards at the end of this process.”
Pete nods, and takes a breath, and says, “Well, I hit the stupid rock, right, and I went flying through the air, and I happened to be holding a water bottle, which I squeezed in surprise, and so I also managed to squirt myself in the face. But I landed on the grass, which was lucky, and didn’t get hurt, and when my dad watched the footage back later, he realized he’d inadvertently zoomed in while it was all happening, and that the video was pretty entertaining. He and my mother showed it to a few people who all found it really funny, and then one of them—they’restillarguing about which one, even ten years after splitting up—decided to send it into the show, which aired it.”
Ben grimaces. He knows how bad it was to be humiliated as a kid in front of his own school; on a national television show sounds horrifying. “Dude, I’msorry. That must have been hard.”
Pete laughs, though not as though he finds it funny; it’s a bleak laugh, a sad one. “Honestly, it wasn’t; I wish it had just been that. I didn’t even see it air, and the kids I was at school with mostly didn’t watch it, either—it was on pretty late. If the parents and teachers knew, they kept it to themselves. But.” And here Pete’s shoulders square, and his jaw works, and his voice is tight when he finally says, “Someone videotaped it, back then. When it aired. Someone videotaped it, and they liked that particular clip so much that a few years later, they uploaded it to one of the very first streaming video sites, where it was one of the very first videos to ever go viral. And then someone else—no way to know who—butsomeoneelse enjoyed that viral video so much that they made it into a meme. You might remember it; imagine this face I’m making, except on like a seven-year-oldversion of me, and over the wordsWomp Womp.” Pete contorts his face into a pantomime of shocked distress before, wincing, he adds, “Ringing any bells?”
As he stares at Pete, Ben feels the blood drain from his face, because—yeah.Yes. Ben has never been particularly online; Renata had been the one, of the two of them, willing to fight to the death for use of the desktop computer the whole family had shared when Ben was growing up, and it had set the tone for the rest of his adult life. He has social media, an online presence, but he doesn’t use it very much, and he’s certainly not up on whatever memes are circulating at any given moment.
But…the early 2000s Womp Womp Water Bottle Kid meme? Of course Ben had seen that;everyonehad seen that. It was like that stupid interrogative owl, or the cats and their insatiable desire for cheezburger, or that one movie still full of information vis-à-vis whether or not one can simply walk into Mordor: a foundational piece of the early internet, something built into the weird, unconstrained bones. It would have been seen and saved and shared by people all over the world, been written into the code of websites as a gag, and then on sheer longevity become part of internet history, to be preservedforever. It’s probably, Ben realizes with a wash of horror, intextbooks.
“Oh myGod,” Ben says, putting his hot chocolate down a little too abruptly. Still full, it splashes a little out of the top of the lid, sliding down the side of the cup; Ben doesn’t care. He feels, honestly, a little nauseous. “Dude, that’s—that’shorrible, Pete. It must have been—” Ben blinks, trying to cast the net of his own creative empathy as far as it will go, and pulls in nothing but air. “I can’t even imagine how it must have been. I’m so sorry.”
Pete stares at him for a second, his head cocked to the side, and then huffs out a soft laugh. “Oh, thanks. I wouldn’t say it was a great experience, no.” He grimaces, and then waves a hand, like he’s trying to wipe some of the grime of the memoryaway. “But, you know. It all happened out in front of my father’s restaurant, so. Castillo’s ended up getting famous off it, which I guess is kind of nice.”
When Ben’s face creases in puzzlement, Pete explains: His father’s restaurant, Castillo’s, sits under a big eighties neon sign bearing its name near the Newark waterfront. The logo on Pete’s shirt that day had been a printed version of the sign. When he went onAmerica’s Best Home Movies, traffic from locals saw a little bump, but when the meme went viral a few years later, the restaurant took off with it. Apparently, there are all kinds of people on the internet who enjoy doing things like taking photos in front of the sign, or recreating the meme themselves, to the best of their ability. “It is,” Pete admits, when he shares this part, “pretty funny to look out the window and see people squirting water in their own faces, but I wouldn’t call it worth it.”
“Honestly, I’d think it was worse,” Ben says, as lightly as he can. “Not the water part—that does sound funny—but, like, it making the restaurant famous or whatever. That just sounds…complicated.” Ben winces, and adds, “Then again, the whole thing sounds complicated, and like a total nightmare, so what do I know?”
“No,” Pete says, and sighs. “You’re right. It is complicated. It’s hard, and weird, and I don’t know how to talk about it, even now. When I was a teenager, it wassoawful—I still hadn’t grown into my face, so I looked a lot like I did as a kid, so people recognized me all the time.And, because my name was Pete Castillo back then, even if they didn’t know it was me atfirst, the second I introduced myself, I’d see it wash over them.” He shakes his head, an unusual sour note entering his tone. “I didn’t want it to follow me all my life, so I changed my name, and now I’m a Bailey, like my mom’s family. Even though it was my dad’s family who raised me, and all my sisters kept Castillo even after they got married, and made sure their kids were Castillos, and Ihaven’t even seen my mom in years—but what does that matter, really? Oh, and she remarried, and she tookhisname even though she never took my father’s, because of course, right? So now there are a bunch of new little baby Castillos running around, which is great, and she’s Laurie Cholmondeley, which is great, and I’m the last Bailey standing. Which is great.”
It does not sound like Pete thinks this is great. It sounds like Pete thinks this is so far from great that he’d like to scream for one thousand years, or take a baseball bat to a series of china shops, or drive an ATV through a garden party about it. Ben does not, however, think it would be helpful to point this out.
Unfortunately, before he has time to process what he’s just learned, let alone consider whatwouldbe helpful, Ben’s stupid, reckless mouth decides to soldier on ahead. “I have to say, I have some questions about your mother’s logic, in terms of last name decisions. Keeping Bailey—fine, respectable. My own mother told my father that if he insisted she change her name to Blumenthal, he’d live to regret it, and I think my sister, Renata, intends to tell whoever she eventually deigns to marry the same thing, so I get that. But…Cholmondeley? She wouldn’t take Castillo, but she’ll take Cholmondeley? No offense to anyone named Cholmondeley, of course, but she’s going to spendsomuch time telling people how tospellit?—”
It’s a silly line of conversation, an asinine one. But Pete is laughing anyway, his slightly shaking shoulders seeming to dislodge the dark blanket of despair that’s been draped over them since they left the bar. “You know, I never even thought about that? But you’re right, I bet it’s a nightmare.”
He seems relieved to find them swimming in lighter conversational waters, so Ben lets them paddle in the shallow end for a few minutes. The conversation drifts, from name spellings to whether or not either of them had any childhood nicknames to a riotously funny story about Pete and two ofhis three sisters attempting to sneak out in the middle of the night, in hopes of conning their way into an R-rated movie at the cinema down the street. They had all been under the age of twelve, and also the man working the cinema counter that day had happened to be their uncle, from whom they had heard about the movie in question in the first place. He had ended up chasing them all the way back home, yelling at them about how much trouble he’d be in with their father, which had woken their father, who had, indeed, been annoyed.
It’s a nice story, one that feeds, though does not satiate, Ben’s vast appetite for details about Pete’s early life. But mostly, he’s grateful for the way it makes Pete sit easier, sound easier, than he did when they arrived. It’s getting harder and harder, as the weeks pass, for Ben to bear the anguish of Pete’s unhappiness, to hold himself together while Pete’s obviously struggling. He cares too much, he thinks, shifting uncomfortably to realize it. No one had ever warned him it would be such a liability.
He’s still curious, though, feels in some ways like he hasmorequestions than he did before Pete told him this story. He’s opening his mouth to ask his most pressing one—that is, why onearthPete is stilldoing the show, if this hideous story is, very understandably, the source of his hatred of cameras—when the tree branch next to them, which has been slowly gathering snow, reaches a breaking point. It snaps, dropping snow across the table, and all over Ben and Pete; they both jump up, shocked first and then laughing, and brush themselves off.
And from there, as Ben finds it often goes with Pete, things just…happen. They’re falling into step in mutual, tacit agreement that it’s time to go; they’re walking to the closest subway stop, even though Pete doesn’t need to go to the subway, and surely, Ben realizes as they reach the entrance, needed to turn off the other way a block or two back. When he says as much, Pete shrugs easily and says, “I wanted to walkyou. Thanks for listening. Have a good night, okay?” Then he’s walking off, black bomber jacket disappearing into the haze of the snow.
Who walks you to the subway, Pete?Ben thinks at his retreating back. It’s pointless, nonsensical; surely, the answer is Chris, if nothing else. But knowing that it doesn’t matter, doesn’t stop the rest of it from lining up inside his mind:Who makes sure you get home all right? Who checks in to make sure you’re not doing too much? If you’re the last Bailey standing, and you’re always looking after everyone, then who’s looking after you?
Pete’s back, barely visible now, doesn’t reply. Ben sighs, and shakes his head, and descends into the station, certain the thought will dog his heels all the way home.
NINE
The next morning dawns painfully—some might even sayagonizingly—bright. At least, Ben thinks so, although it might be his hangover talking. He pours himself out of bed like so much blackstrap molasses, feeling equally bitter and ill-suited to most basic cooking tasks, and elects not to bother making himself breakfast. He stops at the nearest bodega, waits in an interminably long line, and orders a bacon, egg, and cheese instead, grimly housing it on the sidewalk directly outside. He barely tastes it, but dutifully chews and swallows anyway, willing the grease to revive him.
It doesn’t really, and so Ben makes his way through his Friday morning meeting block on twenty-seven with bad grace, snappish and jumpy and sharper than he usually allows himself to be at the office. People notice; Jessica, standing ten feet away and holding a can of disinfectant spray in front of her as though it’s some kind of weapon, asks if he’s feeling all right. He is not feeling all right—he is feeling as though someone has taken a jackhammer to the back of his head, and also as though he’d like to be roundly sick into whatever trash can’s nearest. When she eagerly shoos him out before the next conference call can start, he happily goes.
He stops up at theGastronomeoffices intending just to say hello—his edits on the Thanksgiving videos are all done and submitted to S&P, and he’s already thrown together a run of show for each Christmas video, and he does like the thought of being a lot less conscious for a good long while. But he wants to make sure that Pete’s…well, that Pete’s not laid up with a worse hangover than Ben’s, or wigging out too much about being only hours away from tonight’s dreadedLate Night Liveappearance. That Pete’sokay. That’s not such a horrible thing for Ben to want, is it? Friends want their friends to be okay, after all, don’t they? Ben could mean it in an entirely platonic way, this concern he feels for Pete. Hedoesn’t, of course, but the fact that he could seems important.
But Pete isn’t okay, as it turns out. He isn’t okay at all.
Ben can tell, from the minute he walks in, that Pete’s starting to really panic, but he’s not sure the rest of the kitchen can. They seem to dismiss Pete’s pacing and muttering to himself, the way his hair is all but standing on end from the times he’s run his fingers through it, as “Pete being Pete,” and nothing worth worrying about. Ben, however, is worrying about it, both the rest of the staff’s comfort with it—how often has he beenlikethis?—and how this sort of energy is going to play onLate Night Live with Brian O’Malley. Ben thinks the answer to that second question is probably “very badly,” but he can’t think of a tactful way to point this out.
