But when Pete turns to him, a pleading look in his eyes, and says, “Look, Ben, I’m sure you have plans already, right, and I’m sorry to even ask, but I’m freaked out about this, honestly. About how it’s going to go tonight. And with the videos, it’s always—you always make it—ugh.” He stops, makes a frustrated little noise, and then, sounding like it’s costing him to do it, says, “Would you, um… Is there any chance you might come with me? I’m supposed to be there at eight thirty tonight and I don’t evenknow what I’mwearingand the lady on the phone said I could bring a guest if I wanted and Iknowit’s last minute but?—”
“Sure,” Ben says, quiet and steady, mostly to stem the tide of increasingly anxious words flowing out of Pete’s mouth. “Sure, I can come. Where should I meet you? When?”
“Really?” Pete’s staring at him with round, shocked eyes, like Ben’s water in the middle of a desert, or an unexpected six-figure check. “But…you don’t have plans?”
Ben’s plans had in fact been to call in three orders of soup dumplings from Nom Wah, eat about half of them, and then fall asleep on the couch in front of whatever movie appealed to him most in the moment. Smiling winsomely, his hangover utterly forgotten, he says, “I think I can move some things around.”
By the time he’s standing on the corner of Sixth Avenue and West Fiftieth Street waiting to meet Pete that night, Ben is feeling less confident that he’s made the right choice. He’s beginning to think his original plan for tonight was really the way to go. It’s not that he minds being Pete’s moral support—it’s that 30 Rockefeller Plaza, where the show films, is only a few blocks away from the Formica Media building, so Ben had suggested they get dinner before they go. This was a mistake, since then he’d had to try very hard not to take it personally when Pete begged off, apologizing, saying something about having to head back to Jersey early, and that the turnaround was going to be tight to get to the studio.It’s not that Ben didn’t believe him when he said it—Pete had certainly seemed sincere enough, and he’s not the type to lie—but his belief has waned somewhat since then. In its place is the dark, snarling, persistent thought that Ben hadmade it weirdby suggesting dinner, and that when Pete does arrive, he’ll wish Ben had stayed at home.
The street corner is cold, and the building Ben is leaning against to stay out of the crush of people is cold, and the world itself is cold, the air biting and sharp. Perhaps that’s why Ben feels almost frozen, as though a thin sheet of ice has descended over him like a cloak, a transparent, frigid barrier between him and the rest of the city. Pete’s late, almost ten minutes past the time they were set to meet—maybe he already went in. Maybe he got here early in order to avoid Ben entirely, so that later he can send Ben a text that says,Hey, I know you were coming onto me earlier, but fyi I’ve got a boyfriend, and am way hotter than you, and think you’re gross, and have filed a sexual harassment claim, and also you’re fired.Maybe he and the other test cooks havealldecided theyhateBen, and never want toseehim again, and this isexactlywhy it’s easier not to put himself out there in thefirstplace, and?—
“Oh, thank God, I thought maybe you’d have left,” Pete gasps, all in one breath, bursting through the flow of people to collapse against the wall next to him. The icy sheet of despair around Ben shatters spectacularly, and he smiles as his world warms up. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, my sister promised me she’d be back at six and she didn’t show up until six fifteen and then theferrywas slow and I couldn’t get service?—”
“Pete, hey, take a breath,” Ben says; he looks down and realizes his hand is on Pete’s arm without having ever received clearance to land, but Pete doesn’t shake him off, so he decides, for now, to press on. “It’s fine. You’re still ten minutes early for your call time; I didn’t leave. It’s all okay.”
Pete stares at him for a second, and then nods, sucking in a huge breath. And then another. And then a third. After the fourth one, Ben says, “Pete? Are you…um…good?”
“I don’t want to do this, man,” Pete says, his voice low. “It’s going to be so bad, everyone’s going toseeit, it’s going to be that whole mess when I was a kid all over again?—”
“Hey,” Ben says, with a confidence he doesn’t feel, and squeezes Pete’s arm lightly. “It’s not going to be like that again. For one thing, it’s not the early 2000s anymore; when’s the last time you’ve seen someone rolling around in a pair of Heelies?” Pete laughs, so Ben, encouraged, continues. “Also, you’re an adult, and also, sorry, but: You’re a disaster on camera like multiple times per week anyway?”
“Thanks,” Pete says dryly, but he sounds grimly amused now, as opposed to panicked. “That means a lot, really.”
“Hey,” Ben says, letting go of Pete’s arm because hedefinitelyshould have already, “I’m not knocking you being a disaster on camera! As it turns out, that works for people. It’s practically a superpower, so there’s no point in worrying about it. This? One measly little five-minute segment on a show people regularly forget is even on? It’s all going to be fine, man, even if you screw something up. You’ll see—there’s only so off the rails this can go.”
Ben means this very sincerely. He’s also very sincerely wrong.
The first impression Ben has of Studio 8B, whereLate Night Live with Brian O’Malleyhas apparently been filming for the last fourteen years, is not dissimilar to stepping into some incredibly loud mass event, like a rock concert, or maybe gladiatorial combat. There are so manypeople, all of them running and shouting urgently to one another—someone is frantically doing makeup on an actor who appears to be asleep across a desk—there’s a large sign plastered up against one wall which reads:Late Night Live: If You Can Read This, Good Luck!
He glances over at Pete, and is unsurprised to find him looking terrified.
Ben doesn’t get a chance to say anything to him, though. Frankly, Ben doesn’t even get a chance to take in their surroundings, beyond observing that they seem to be in a long, wide hallway containing several chairless desks, off which there are a number of doors leading to God knows what. Regardless, they aren’t there long; they’re approached immediately by a harried-looking, dark-haired woman holding a pen and a clipboard, who snaps, “Pete Bailey? Jesus Christ, finally, it took you long enough! You were supposed to be here an hour ago.”
“I was?” Pete looks baffled. “Miranda told me?—”
“Who on earth is—actually, you know what, I don’t care and it doesn’t matter,” the woman says. “I’m Priyali; I’m the associate director. Is this what you’re wearing? Who are you?”
It takes Ben a second to realize she’s speaking to him; she’s still looking at Pete, seeming to be attempting to measure him with her eyes. Feeling enormously stupid about it, Ben says, “Oh, I’m, uh…Ben? Ben Blumenthal? I’m the video editor, um, on the?—”
“We didn’t ask for you, Ben Blumenthal,” Priyali says, glancing briefly at her clipboard, before sighing and shaking her head at Pete. “Well, it’s too late now, it’ll have to do. Why are you here?”
Again, it takes Ben a second to parse that he’s the one being spoken to. “Oh. I’m…” God. WhyisBen here? What could he possibly say?I’m the reason this all happened, so I am performing ritualistic penance by observing what dread horrors my hubris has wrought?Or, perhaps, would it be more accurate to offer,Since you ask, I am desperately in love with this man who I have trapped in his own personal version of hell; he asked me to be here, and I’d do basically anything he asked me to do, simply because I’d be so pleased to be the one he asked to do it!Maybe he should just go for broke and say,Sorry,lady, you’ll have to ask Pete, because if I were him, I think I’d be about the last person I’d ask to come with me for?—
“Moral support,” Pete says, bringing Ben’s entire train of thought to a grinding, shuddering halt. “Is why he’s here. Is that allowed? I’m not saying he has to come onstage with me or anything, just?—”
“Fine, whatever, I don’t care,” Priyali says, and points her pen at Ben. “Don’t burn the studio down or anything, got it? If you being here becomes a me problem, that’s going to become a you problem, are we clear?”
“Crystal,” Ben mutters, sinking into the heels of his shoes. “It’ll be like I’m not even here.”
Ben means this as a promise, not a prediction, but in the end itisa little bit like he isn’t even there. Pete is whisked into a room full of mirrors and makeup chairs and seen to briefly by a makeup artist who is not currently occupied with a passed-out actor in the hallway, while Ben stands awkwardly behind him. Then Pete is, after all, pushed into wardrobe, where he is made to exchange his button-down shirt and bomber jacket for a clinging black T-shirt, while Ben stands awkwardly behind him. Then Pete is dragged into a greenroom, where he is briefed extensively and pointedly by Priyali on what’s going to happen, while Ben stands awkwardly behind him.
They don’t get a chance to talk, or even exchange more than one or two speaking looks, before Priyali is saying, “Well, that’s it, you’re up, if you wanted more prep time, you should’ve beenontime, let’s go, up and at ’em,” and dragging Pete off towards the stage doors. Ben tries his level best to follow awkwardly behind, but Priyali shoos him off, telling him to go lurk on the side of the soundstage if he must, but to leave her alone. Pete casts a desperate look over her shoulder, but when Ben tries again to follow them, Priyali snaps, “One more step and I’m calling security, Blumenthal; I don’t have the timeortheenergy tonight.” Ben, at this point, has no choice but to hold up his hands, a gesture both of surrender to her and, rather more emphatically, apology to Pete.
They’re out of sight a moment after Ben stops walking, ducking through a door and vanishing to parts unknown, so Ben follows the signs in the large hallway for the soundstage.
The second he walks through the double doors into that enormous, open area, Ben realizes his mistake. Or, rather, Ben realizes his mistakes, plural; there are several. He’s been on soundstages before, hasn’t he? In college, on various trips and studio visits he got the chance to attend through his classes, and once or twice as an interested visitor in adulthood, justifying it as an education experience to pay for a guided studio tour. Plus, of course, there’s the fact that he’s made acareerin the video and film industry, and so has spent a fair amount of time thinking and talking about the mechanics of how any given show or movie is shot.
So it hadn’t occurred to him, the way itshouldhave occurred to him, the way it is occurring to himnow, that he should havepreparedPete. He should have warned Pete that shows like this are shot on a large, constructed soundstage with, and this is the important part, anywhere fromthree to five huge cameraspointed directly at it. This particular soundstage, Ben notes with a slightly hysterical alarm, has four huge cameras; great. Only three more than Pete already can’t bear to be in front of.
