“Oh, no, let’s be clear,” Pete says, holding up a hand to shut Ben up. “I loved it. You’re hilarious, man—and you saved my bacon on that video. I know it must have been straight-up garbage before you cut it up like that.”
“I—what?” Ben stares at Pete, wondering if maybe he’s having a stress-induced hallucination. “You—what?”
“I’m not very good on camera,” Pete says, in the tones of an admission. He ducks his head and rubs the back of his neck, obviously uncomfortable. “When Rick told me I was going to have to do this, I seriously thought about quitting my job, which, believe me, would be a nightmare. But I watched the video last night, and honestly? It’s pretty funny. And I know that was you, so I thought I’d come down here to…I mean, okay, to rib you a little, for making me look like such a jerk, but really to thank you. For fixing it, or whatever. Making it look like it could have been on purpose.”
Oh my God, Ben thinks,it wasn’t on purpose?
“Wait,” Ben says, before he can stop himself, “you’re justlikethis?”
Pete smiles, but it’s very nearly a smirk. It takes Ben a second, and then he realizes he’s more or less parroted back at Pete the exact question Pete asked him not five minutes ago. He scowls, and Pete’s smile widens into a lazy, self-satisfied grin.
“Like what?” Pete says, all innocence.
“Possessed of the intelligence of your average housefly,” Ben snaps, before he can temper his tongue. “A fool with a cast-iron pan! God, I thought maybe you were faking it or whatever oncamera, trying to get out of it, but clearly, you couldn’t fake your way out of a paper bag!”
This doesn’t have the intended effect. Usually, when Ben snaps at someone, shows them the jagged edges of his personality, they make an annoyed face and immediately get away from him, which is the desired outcome. Ben’s long since known that most people don’t like him, therealhim, with his complicated angles and his sharp tongue, and it hurts less to figure that out up front. It backfires on him occasionally, sure; sometimes they burst into tears, which is the living worst and always makes Ben feel like a terrible person, and sometimes they snap back, which inevitably ends badly for everyone. Every now and again someone laughs awkwardly and rolls their eyes, but that’s about the best it ever gets.
Pete…Pete laughs again, a real laugh, his shoulders shaking. It’s not like when Rick laughs at Ben’s personality, either; there’s always an edge of condescension to that, as though Ben is a particularly entertaining dog, which, admittedly, has made a little more sense since discovering he’sRichard Raleigh. Pete’s laughter is—more genuine. Kinder. It seems designed by nature to invite others to laugh along.
It’s just a laugh, Benjamin!Ben thinks, semi-hysterical.You’re losing it! His hotness has hypnotized you! You can’t snap at him until he goes away; he clearly enjoys it! Run for the hills!
“I’ve known a lot of brilliant houseflies,” Pete says, grin still wide. “They’re basically geniuses, at least when it comes to avoiding me murdering them, so I think that’s an unfair comparison. But I’m making ‘A fool with a cast-iron pan’ my new bio, like, everywhere.”
Ben stares at him, trying to think of something to say that won’t a) make him, Ben, look like a fool himself or b) make Pete do anything else inexplicable and unprecedented, to whichBen will have to respond. Eventually, because he’s been sitting silently blinking for too long, he says, “Uh. Okay?”
Pete claps a hand on Ben’s shoulder; Ben doesn’t flinch, but only just. It’s been a while since he’s been touched by…well, by anyone, save the occasional app-sourced hookup, and the apps are enough of a nightmare to keep Ben from bothering most of the time. Pete’s hand is warm through the thin cotton of Ben’s T-shirt and Ben tries his best not to think about it, wills his face not to turn the color of a ripe tomato.
“It was nice to meet you, Ben,” Pete says, and flashes that grin again, all easy amusement. “I gotta get back to work now, but seriously, thanks again. The video’s going up tomorrow, and I don’t feel like running away to the woods, where I’d probably die, so. I appreciate it.”
“I’m not sure I feel good about that,” Ben admits, a little faintly. “I think it might be better for cooking—and humanity—if you went ahead and pulled a Henry David Thoreau.” Feeling like a bit of a schmuck, he adds, “Assuming you’d, like, survive it, I suppose. I’m not wishing you death here.”
“Very generous,” Pete says, still smiling, shaking his head. He sounds…weirdly happy about it when, waving and turning to go, he adds, “I’m sure I’ll see you around.”
Ben doesn’t watch him walk away. He doesn’t. Hedoesn’t.
That’s Friday.
The video goes up Saturday; Rick sends him a link. Ben watches it again, feels vaguely proud of his work, and forwards it to a few friends. It’s notCitizen Kaneor anything, but it’s amazingly decent given what Ben started with. He takes a moment to admire his own name in the credits, and maybe one more to marvel at Pete’s utter buffoonery, then closes the window, closes his computer, and stops thinking about it. It’sover and done with; no point dwelling on it, or on its star, or on that star’s visit to Ben’s cubicle.
He spends a quiet day bouncing around the city, grateful that the unholy union of rain and sleet has decided to take its talents to some other metropolitan area. Still, it’s chilly out for all it’s bright, motivating Ben to dig out his favorite scarf—thick and dark blue and knitted by his sister, though Ben has never told her how often he wears it—and loop it under his canvas jacket as he runs out the door. As always, he regrets it bitterly within three minutes of every subway ride he takes, and then is incredibly grateful for it within five minutes of being back aboveground; this, more than anything else, is what marks for Ben the beginning of the end of the year. Sure, itstartswith going back and forth about whether he should have bothered with a scarf, but somehow, before he knows it, Ben will find himself surrounded by twinkling fairy lights and snow-covered bus benches and a really unnerving number of drunk guys in Santa costumes.
Trying to put this out of his mind—the holiday season, for Ben, has never been a particularly happy one, and he’d just as soon live in denial about the approach of another bone-chilling New York City winter—he occupies himself running errands for a while before swinging down to Union Square for the farmers market, peeking eagerly into the various booths and stalls. He’s able to get a ham and cheese croissant for lunch, and eats it as he selects some gorgeous eggplants, a few bunches of scallions so bright and green that they could have been plucked from the earth that morning, and a variety of root vegetables, jams, and pastries. He stops at his favorite butcher for a chicken and then rides the subway home laden down with bags, wishing as he does whenever this happens that he was smart enough to buy one of those personal pushcarts, even though he knows, to his bones, that he never will.
Roux is full of furious energy when Ben arrives back at his apartment, and he spends half an hour or so being batted at and gently scratched for her entertainment. Then he roasts the chicken and eggplant, chars the scallions whole, and cuts them up. It’s the work of a few minutes to use them to make a ginger-scallion slaw, and he slices the chicken, arranges it with the eggplant on two plates, heaps the slaw over it all, and takes both dishes up to the eleventh floor.
Mrs. C’s apartment door is always decorated for the season; she takes pride in it, insists that it brings the building together. Ben’s not sure anything could bring the collection of New Yorkers under this roof together, far removed as they are from the forced friendliness he grew up with in the Midwest, but it’s nice that she cares about things like that. She’s not totally wrong in any case—she and Ben only met because when he moved into this apartment six years ago, it was June, and she had a gigantic rainbow flag tacked to the door. He’d been locked out of his apartment during his first week, and walked around the building looking for kindly souls who might give him the super’s number. He knocked; she answered. They’ve been friends ever since.
There are things Ben doesn’t share with his parents when they call. The fact that his closest friend in New York—really, his only friend in New York—is a sassy housebound octogenarian who would probably starve without him is close to the top of this list. He has a rotating cast of made-up people, largely based on characters from television shows he knows they’ll never see, that he talks about instead, because it’s easier. Lord forbid he tell them he’s lonely and leave them to set him up on some kind offriend datewith someone who knows someone who met one of their friends a few summers ago in Hilton Head. The last time he’d let tried that, he’d ended up spending two hours at a bar in Midtown with a woman who explained to him, in great detailand with several enthusiastic, room-stopping demonstrations, her passionate love for ventriloquism. Never again.
Today, Mrs. C’s door has a banner hanging across it that says,Welcome, Autumn!It looks like she ordered it, and probably the little dancing leaves and mushrooms tacked up beneath it, from a store for kindergarten teachers. Ben shakes his head, grinning. Her doors always entertain him; they’re so bright and cheerful, at odds with her actual personality, and it tickles him that she insists on them anyway, even though she seems to loathe most of their shared neighbors.
He knocks; she answers. This is how the vast majority of Ben’s evenings go.
“Benjamin,darling,” she trills, beaming at him. Everything Mrs. C does is reminiscent of a Broadway actress aged out of the stage, and her greetings are no exception. “I see you’ve brought two plates up tonight—does that mean I am to be graced with your presence for the entirety of a meal?”
“Hi, Mrs. C,” Ben says, and leans forward for the requisite air kiss on both cheeks. “Yeah, I thought I’d join you for dinner, if that’s okay?”
“I would be onlytoodelighted! Do come in.” She sweeps away from the door, throwing the mink stole she wears anytime it’s less than eighty degrees out over her shoulder, and Ben steps into the apartment.
