“Are you serious? It’s a gorgeous restaurant. Who wouldn’t like it?”
“Me, that’s who. I go to these types of places because it makes you happy, or at least I think it does. But it makes me uncomfortable.” I take a step into the dangerous waters of candor. “The servers are always fussing over us and the price for a can of Coke is more than what the entire bill should be.”
“So what? For Us will cover our expenses. It’s not our fault the plane was rerouted.” He looks at me with genuine confusion in his eyes.
“You think since I’m not paying it doesn’t make a difference to me, but it does. I don’t care who’s paying – the hotel people or you or me. It’s the fact that so much money is being spent. It’s hard for me to do that and not feel guilty. Do you know how many shifts my dad would have to work to pay for a meal like this?” My voice is calm. I’m not angry. I’m trying to help him understand more about who I am. Maybe we need to go beyond where we got in college.
“I’m sorry.” Brady looks down and rubs his forehead. “I guess I never thought of it that way. I assumed since someone else is paying that it wouldn’t matter.” He slinks away from the restaurant like it’s the scene of accident, which is not what I wanted.
“It does matter,” I say, my words as soft and kind as I can make them. “Doesn’t it bother you?”
“Total honesty? No judgments?” He stops and turns toward me.
“Total honesty. No judgments,” I echo. “I promise.”
“I have no idea what it even feels like to pay my own way, or how much things cost. I have a credit card, I have a bank account with money in it, but I don’t ever think about it.” Brady puts his hands in his pockets and we walk down the street without a specific direction in mind. “Once when I was in boarding school, I bought this high-end computer. I tricked it out with extra memory, everything I could think of. I thought this would surely make someone in my dad’s office alert him to how much I was spending. It cost a fortune. You know what happened?”
“I can’t even imagine.” The entire scenario is beyond me.
“Nothing. Absolutely nothing. So, the next week. I placed the same exact order. The highest end computer I could think of. The only difference was I ordered three of them. Three.” He holds up his fingers. “I thought surely someone would say I was spending too much or at least ask why I needed so many computers. But that never happened. For like a second I thought, ‘Wow. This is so cool. I can buy whatever I want.’ But I already knew I could do that. What I really felt was that no one was paying attention to what I was doing as long as I was following the path they set. And that felt really shitty, so I decided not to think about it. I just treated me and my friends to whatever because that actually felt good. When you haven’t earned the money in any way, sometimes the more you are worth means the more worthless you feel.”
“I’m sorry,” I say, and turn to him. “Brady, you are not worthless.”
“Thank you,” he says, and continues walking. Sometimes I think Brady had an easy childhood because he was always accepted for being gay and never had to worry about paying for things, but I know that’s only on the surface.
After a few more blocks, we approach another restaurant. This one is entirely different: mismatched chairs out front around tables with chipped linoleum and plates that haven’t been cleared.
“Why about this place?” I ask.
“Looks great,” Brady says.
“Is that honesty or politeness?”
“Honesty,” he says.
We walk past construction workers on their lunch break. I see their plates overflowing with some kind of dumplings and lots of potatoes. We slide into a booth with ripped vinyl seats and Brady discreetly takes out a wipe from his cross-body bag and removes some crumbs from the table and then covers his hands in anti-bacterial gel. “Honesty is one thing. A stomach bug is another.”
“Because you are being so honest I will spare you my lecture about how anti-bacterial products are making it harder to fight…” I begin.
“Thank you,” he says, smiling and stopping me from going further.
“Do you want me to just order what looks good?” I ask, knowing he will let me know truthfully if he does not.
“Sure,” he says, and I walk up to counter and point to items. Almost everything is covered in a light brown gravy with green flecks of dill so it’s hard to distinguish between dishes. But a few minutes later we are sitting in front of a table covered with plates of pierogis, some kind of breaded meat cutlets, noodles and potato after potato after potato. All of it smothered in creamy gravy.
Brady takes a bite and his eyes shut right away. I watch his mouth chew and his lips glide around his teeth. “Oh my God.”
“Good?” I ask.
“So good,” he says, opening his eyes. “It’s not much to look at, but if I am being honest…”
“And you are, because,” I point around vaguely, “you know, Poland.” I nod and then his head bounces in agreement with mine as he chews.
“It’s fucking incredible,” he says after he swallows.
We stop talking and focus on the food, realizing that we haven’t really had a full meal all day. We share everything and when I taste something I love I tell him to try it and he does the same with me. I look up and notice he has gravy on his chin and he didn’t immediately reach for his napkin. He must be enjoying it. He uses his fork to grab the last bit of potato instead of leaving it politely. Finally, we pause the eating frenzy and each down a glass of water from a plastic pitcher before settling down in the booth to digest in quiet gratitude.
Walking out of the restaurant, I notice Brady’s shirt has a grease stain on it from the breaded cutlet he devoured and there are crumbs of breading still on his cheek. I take out the compact camera from the media kit that I put in my pocket before we left and without warning I snap a picture of him.
