The space is a little bit like a museum—as the old woman’s home for the last twenty-five years, it’s packed full of little pieces of New Yorks gone by. Ben’s only lived in the city six years; it’s been enough time to absorb, if not fully understand, that the place he knows and loves will somehow be the same and utterly different six years from now. There’s a comfort in that, the relentless entropy of so many souls crammed into such a small space, but there’s comfort too in Mrs. C’s apartment, proof that what was still is, somewhere. Her walls are lined with oldposters, local art from the sixties and seventies, one illegally obtained street sign. On the shelves are beautifully maintained little collections of miscellany, things like sea glass and old subway tokens displayed next to tiny works of silver sculpture or obviously expensive jewelry intended to be admired.
That, of course, is the other thing about Mrs. C—though she’s never come out and said it, Ben knows she’s rich, and not low-key rich, either. Mrs. C is rich enough that she once gave Ben an envelope with a cool two grand in it as a holiday present. Mrs. C is rich enough that sheownsher apartment, which is…not small.
Ben asked her, once, why she picked this building. He didn’t say, “You could obviously afford somewhere bigger and nicer,” but he didn’t have to; she gave him a shrewd look, then shrugged.
“I had three husbands in my time, darling,” she said that night, over a meal Ben’s forgotten now. Something with mushrooms, maybe; it’s lost to the recollection of the ache in her voice. “The first was a cad; the second, a brute; the third was married to someone else when I met him, so I suppose he was a cheat. Regardless, he was my favorite. This was our place, before I stole him from her, and when death stole him from me, I came home to it. I don’t suppose I’ll ever find anywhere else.” She sighed, and dabbed at her eyes, and then, with false brightness, said, “Well! That’s enough of all that. Haven’t you brought any dessert for me, dear child?”
Ben took the hint, has been taking it ever since. Every time he visits, he wonders if the agoraphobia is a recent development, or if, as he suspects, she walked back in here the day the third husband died and simply never found anything worth stepping outside for again. He doesn’t mention it—she wouldn’t want him to—but it clings to him, the suspicion, a sharp-edged little burr of human tragedy.
“What sort of supper have you brought for me tonight?” she demands, wheeling on him in the living room. She’s pretty spry for a lady of her years, but Ben still holds his breath for a second as he watches her sit down in her favorite chair, dangerously low to the ground and—like all of her other furniture—chintz. “I do hope it’s not that terrible fish again.”
“I served you tilapia one time,” Ben says, feigning outrage. They’ve had this conversation so many times that he almost finds it comforting. “Most people like my tilapia.”
“I’m sure I don’t have to tell you that most people have terrible taste,” Mrs. C says primly. She sits, waiting, as Ben sets up a little folding tray table for her, then one for himself on the couch opposite. “That’s one of the reasons I like you, darling; you know what’s good when you see it. The fish, regrettably, is a blind spot.”
Ben laughs, shaking his head. “That’s a real backhanded compliment, but I’ll take it.”
“They’re my specialty, as you well know,” Mrs. C says.
Ben rolls his eyes, but not unhappily, and they eat in silence for a few minutes. They do, sometimes; they’re both fairly solitary people by nature, and he thinks that’s why silence tends to fall so easily between them. There’s also the fact that Ben didn’t grow up thinking of dinner as a time to sit and chat—the meal where that sort of thing occurred might have beencalled“family meal,” but it took place primarily between the restaurant staff, and it happened around 4 p.m., in the Trattoria Luciana kitchens, before dinner service started up. Ben mostly missed it on school nights, often walking in as things were drawing to a close. He typically ate his own dinner one of two places: either fighting with his sister for his share, generally in front of the television, in the upstairs apartment where they lived, or downstairs over the sink in the restaurant’s back of house,hunching and shoveling in a stolen manicotti or sausage as someone shouted, “Kid! Look alive! Behind!”
Regardless, Mrs. C doesn’t ever seem to mind keeping a companionable silence. It’s part of why Ben likes spending time with her. Around other people he does his best to listen more than he talks, but the nervous energy seems to bubble up out of his mouth if a moment of quiet stretches on for too long. But not here, in this little pocket of the past, with this strange, persnickety old woman. Mrs. C’s apartment is always emanating soft jazz music, muted but still audible, from some other room, and sometimes Ben comes up here just to sit, to be quiet with someone else. He thinks it’s a big part of why Mrs. C puts up with him, even though Ben’s heard her tell a number of their other neighbors to, to put it somewhat more mildly than she ever did, go take a hike. She doesn’t like most people, and some days Ben’s pretty certain she doesn’t like him very much, either, but she must be lonely. Ben’s considered suggesting that she hire someone off the internet to sit in her apartment and breathe all day, but he does think there’s a good chance she’d get murdered, so he’s never brought it up.
Also, horribly, Ben’s pretty sure he would miss her dreadfully if she threw him over for some Craigslist probable serial killer. This is what his life has come down to, and it’s very sad for him, but it’s true all the same.
“It’s a good chicken,” she admits, after a while. “Well seasoned. Not like that dreadful fish.This time, anyway.”
Ben smiles down at the floor. “Thanks, Mrs. C. It means a lot.”
She doesn’t eat all of it, but then, she never does—she’s frail, and old, and has a nurse come by several times a day to make sure she’s eaten enough, and help her with something she tells Ben to “never mind his young little head about” whenever he asks. He takes it as a compliment that she eatsany of what he brings over, honestly; she could afford to have something professional brought in, or eat one of the various, easily microwaved options stocked in the freezer, some of which were clearly prepared specially for her at various NYC landmark restaurants. In some ways, her continued acceptance of his extra dinner is the best endorsement for his cooking Ben’s ever received. He knows that over the years she dined at some of the most exclusive tables in the city and ate meals Ben would give up a kidney for a single bite of. She’d told him, once, that she’d eaten a few times atJames Beard’stable, which had put Ben into such a state that he had to go pace around the hallway like an overexcited Pomeranian for a few minutes to cool down.
He’s scraping her leftovers into Tupperware for her when he feels his phone buzz in his pocket. And then buzz again. And then buzzagain. Assuming perhaps it’s one of his more loquacious friends—a number of his old college pals have the tendency to pop up and send him multi-text screeds every now and again, especially if they’ve been drinking—Ben ignores it, and gathers up both plates to take back downstairs. As he wishes Mrs. C good night, he feels the phone buzz again, and thenagain, and then again and again and again and again, far too many times for it to be from one person. He hurries downstairs, not wanting to pull out his phone with plates in his hands and risk pitching to his death over the side of the emergency stairwell he always uses to get between his apartment and Mrs. C’s, finding it faster and less frightening than the building’s creaky old elevator.
He drops the plates hastily into the sink when he gets back into the apartment and pulls his phone, which has not stopped buzzing, from his pocket. It’s warm to the touch, and he takes a second to try to brace himself—maybe someone is dead; maybe a lot of people are dead; maybe it’s the end of the world; maybe aliens have made first contact; maybe that guy whodumped me in high school won the Nobel Peace Prize—before he lets himself look at the screen. He has seventeen missed calls, twenty-nine unread messages, and a number of notifications on his social media apps.
He clicks into the first message, which appears to be from his sister, Renata. It is, in fact, several messages in a row. Quite…quite a lot of messages. He scrolls up to the first one, where he’s surprised and slightly horrified to find a link to Pete’s cooking video, and his eyebrows climb nearly to his hairline as he reads her words below:
RENATA:
BEN OH MY GOD IS THIS YOU????? DOING THE VOICE-OVER???
RENATA:
oh my god you don’t even have to answer me i KNOW it’s you that’s YOUR voice
RENATA:
isn’t it? i’m going to feel stupid if you have a voice doppelganger i guess
RENATA:
or (please imagine i’m doing my aunt muriel impression rn) mAyBe i’Ve fOrGoTtEn yOuR vOiCe bEcAuSe YoU nEvEr CaLl mE, BeNjAmIn
RENATA:
oh my GOD wait it IS you, you’re in the CREDITS THAT’S YOUR NAME THIS IS SO FLIPPING COOL!!!!
RENATA:
