With no other options before him, Ben finds himself raising one hand in the air and pasting on a queasy smile as Pete visibly shakes himself, then hurries forward. He wishes, very much, that he’d listened to his cat and stayed at home.
“Christ, it’s Sunday, isn’t it,” Pete says when he reaches Ben, instead of “Hello.” His voice is the opposite of the agonized bellow of moments ago; now it’s quiet, hushed, like he doesn’t want to be overheard. Ben doubts that’ll be much of a problem—now that the dramatics seem to be over, the diners have cautiously returned to their conversations and meals. “I’m sorry, I’m not—I woke up this morning thinking it was stillSaturday, and it’s been one of those days where?—”
Another huge crash sounds from the back, followed by a female voice crying, “Goddamnit, Adrián, do you not want there to be anythingleftfor us to serve this morning?”
“Howdareyou,” booms Pete’s father—whose name Ben can only presume is Adrián—even louder than before. “To speak to me that way in my own restaurant?—”
“God, okay, I need to getoutof here,” Pete mutters. “Just…just come on.”
Ben follows him, mute and panicking, out of the restaurant, around the nearest corner into an alley, and then into a small alcove out of the wind. There is, in this alcove, a single metal folding chair, and in spite of the circumstances, Ben relaxes a little to see it, and to see Pete sink down onto it. Clearly, this is the Castillo’s unofficial smoke break spot, and somehow, for Ben, that makes this all feel ever so slightly less…personal. Obviously, this is Pete, for whom he has some devastatingly intense feelings, and to whom he is so attracted that half of his thoughts feel as though they might burn through his brain and body to drop to the floor, like a hot coal in a vat of butter. And, of course, Pete’s personal, emotional, and family life are heavily tied up in what Ben just witnessed, and that means the stakes here are high.
But out here, right now, Pete’s also just a guy in kitchen blacks, sitting on a crappy metal folding chair with his head in his hands, having had his ass handed to him quite unreasonablyby management. That, at least, is familiar to Ben, even if the specifics here very decidedly are not.
“So that seems like it sucked,” Ben offers. “For, well…everyone, maybe? But for sure it seemed like it sucked for you. Are you good?”
“God,” Pete says, on a little laugh. It’s not a happy one. “Am I good.AmI good? I’m sorry, but I’m not sure I know the answer to that right now.”
After a beat, Ben says, “Fair enough,” although, in his heart of hearts, he feels it’s not. In his heart of hearts, what he’dliketo say is, “For the love ofGod, man, you’re obviouslynotgood, it was arhetorical question!Why are you being soweirdwith me all of a sudden? Did something happen with Rick? Did I do somethingwrong? Is it that this stuff with your dad is so messed up right now that you’ve shut everything else off? Because I’d get that, okay, I’d be so understanding, if you’d justtellme!”
But Ben doesn’t want to seem desperate, or clingy, or pathetic. So instead he says, “Do you, like, want to talk about it?”
Pete looks up at this question and meets Ben’s eyes with an expression that genuinely startles him. For a second, there’s such raw, naked openness there, such obvious gratitude for being asked, that Ben’s muscles are tensing to move towards him before Pete’s face changes, abruptly, to an anguished one. Then it goes carefully blank, all traces of either emotion wiped away before Ben can so much as lean forward.
“There’s not much to talk about,” Pete says on a sigh. “And I’m sure you gathered a lot of it from the dining room, unless—you wouldn’t happen to have come in only seconds before I walked out of the kitchen, would you?”
“I could say I did?” Ben offers, wincing slightly. “If it would make you feel any better.”
“Ah,” Pete says, in a tone flatter and grimmer than Ben’s ever heard him use. “So you heard all of it, then.”
Silence falls between them for a beat or two, Ben not sure what to do. Surely, hedidn’thear all of it—enough to get the gist, of course, but it was obviously in progress when he arrived. But he can’t imagine Pete wants to hear, “Actually, I turned up just in time for ‘When I want your damn help, I’ll ask for it,’ and then lingered like a fool instead of leaving, if that gives you an accurate timestamp in your mental file scrub!” He’s equally certain he wouldn’t be convincing if he tried to lie, since Ben’s never been that good a liar.
It doesn’t end up mattering, anyway; it’s Pete who breaks the silence: “He has multiple sclerosis. My dad, I mean. Diagnosed about ten years ago. For a while it was the kind that comes and goes, and that was—it’s not like it was a blast or anything, but it was okay. Manageable. But last year something changed, and now it’s the kind that just…comes.” He drops his gaze, looking down at his hands as he says, quietly, “That wasn’t him, not really. I don’t want you to think—he’s not like that, not when he’s himself. He’s fun, usually. Still loud, to be honest, big personality, but chill, more or less. But now he gets confused, and combative, and that thing where he’s so stubbornishim, which is hard to work around. And I shouldn’ttalkto him like that, Iknowit’s the damn disease, but it’s sofrustrating. I’ve put so much time and work into helping him, and I’m sotiredall the time, and I’ve tried so hard to keep it separate, you know? To not let it eat into my life, or turn me into a different person, or become all I think or talk about, or make me think ofhimdifferently. But he just?—”
Pete stops talking abruptly, the words cutting off as though they’ve dried up in his throat, which is when Ben realizes he’s stepped forward and put a hand on Pete’s shoulder.
“God, sorry,” they say together, Ben jumping backward even as Pete springs up and out of the chair. Ben’s confused—he’s not sure why Pete’s apologizing, or jumping away, or even why he,Ben, is doing those things, beyond that the way Pete is acting makes him feel as though heshouldbe doing them.
But Pete looks like he knows why he’s doing what he’s doing. He’s looking at Ben with an expression of total panic with which Ben is intimately familiar, having seen it in person and on film enough times now to commit it to memory. To be the person who put it there is…non-optimal, Ben decides, as if from very far away. To not know how or why, though, is a particularly corrosive brand of torture, pouring acid on the already flimsy lock holding back Ben’s self-doubt.
“Sorry,” Pete says again, too quickly, walking backwards down the alley away from Ben now. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to dump all that on you, or to forget about our plans, or for you to see—it doesn’t matter, okay? Just, I’m sorry, it’s only that it’s such a bad day, and it’s going to take ages to clean up that damn elote, and we’ll reschedule, and I’ll see you?—”
And here Pete’s face goes utterly stricken, the expression genuinely making Ben think for a second that they’re about to be mugged, before he smooths it away and finishes, “Uh. Soon.”
“Okay…?” Ben says, when Pete stops at a door in the alley a few feet away, puts one hand on the knob. Stepping closer, he realizes it must be the back entrance to Castillo’s; their logo is painted on the surface, faded and peeling away. Aware that he has maybe seconds left before Pete vanishes down a path upon which Ben has neither the permission nor the non-slip shoes to follow, he says, “Pete, listen, I’mreallysorry if I did something to?—”
“God,” Pete says, sounding so upset all of a sudden that Ben’s mouth snaps shut in shock. “Please don’t apologize to me.Please. It isn’t you, just… I can’t talk right now, okay? I have to go.”
And before Ben can reply, Pete’s disappearing back into his father’s restaurant, the door slamming shut behind him.
FOURTEEN
Ben doesn’t bother attempting to sleep that night; he knows better. He’s simply not built for this, to bounce from feeling so good to feeling so bad in such a short amount of time. Ben, in general, doesn’t bounce. If people who can roll with the punches are made of rubber, then Ben is terracotta: Drop him from a height and get the dubious thrill of watching him shatter.
So Ben can’t get into bed, because if he gets into bed, he thinks there’s a real chance he won’t get out again. He stays awake at his desk instead, poking at old projects and updating his reel, too miserable to notice whether or not he’s tired. Around 5:30 a.m., on a whim, he gets dressed, buys a coffee and a bagel with lox and cream cheese from his favorite spot, goes down to the subway, and rides it all the way across the island to the Financial District. Then he walks the few minutes from the station to Battery Park, to eat breakfast while he watches the sun rise over the water.
It’s a cold day to be doing this; Ben doesn’t care. He used to do it when he first moved to New York, when he felt alone and stupid and certain that whatever happened, no matter how unhappy he was, he couldnotcrawl back to Michigan and prove his parents right about his inability to hack it in the big city. He’dbeen adrift within the seas of himself at that point, the only soul sailing upon a strange and lonely ocean, and so the temperature hadn’t mattered to him then, either. It had just mattered tobe there, watching the sun peek up from over the horizon line and illuminate the Statue of Liberty from behind, and feel like he was part of this complicated, storied city. Like he was reallyexperiencingliving here, even if he was doing it somewhat pathetically, and utterly by himself.
Today he’s not looking at the Statue of Liberty. He’s staring in shivering, wistful silence across the river at New Jersey, which looks to be just waking up.
