Chapter 1
ONE
There are some jobs so boring that those unlucky enough to work them spend each moment thinking longingly of the end of their day, when they can cast aside their email inboxes and sensible blazers and ride off into the sunset. Ben’s job is so boring it makes those jobs look like lion taming.
The idea of the job isn’t bad, which is to say that video editing itself isn’t bad.
Ben almost enjoys video editing. It’s not like it’s his passion or anything, but he studied it in school, and he knows he’s good at it.
It’s even satisfying sometimes, to cut things together in a way that watches smoothly, to make each piece of a narrative slide into the next one, seamless to the naked eye.
That’s not what Ben does for Formica, though.
For Formica, Ben edits technical and instructional videos, and edits more technical and instructional videos, and sits through long strategy meetings about the technical and instructional videos he’s going to be editing, in which no one ever says anything interesting or useful.
Occasionally, he gets pulled away from this thrilling nightmare to edit advertisements, which is an equally boring, but usually morally worse, nightmare.
His coworkers, many of whom have been present and unpleasant during some of Ben’s less poised moments, have the emotional depth of a puddle between them, and roughly the same intelligence; his bosses, to the extent he can call them that, offer no guidance or encouragement, just deadlines to meet.
Yet he puts up with it all, and in exchange enjoys the dubious pleasure of a permanent contractor role, a paycheck that would be higher if his role was not a contract position, benefits that cost him more than those of his less capable coworkers, and a small cube on the twenty-seventh floor where his spirit goes to die every morning.
So he spends most afternoons with a laptop set up in a variety of positions in one of the restaurants on the ground floor of the building.
Sometimes he’s perched on the edge of an armchair, absently running a hand through his dark hair; sometimes he’s resting his chin on his hand, comforted by the familiar, bristly texture of his carefully maintained, closely cropped beard; sometimes he’s hunched like a gargoyle over one of the mirror-finished, metallic tables, scowling balefully down at his own face, which would be pleasingly square if it weren’t for his sharply pointed chin.
However he’s positioned, though, he’s always doing the same thing: looking for interesting people to talk to while he works. It’s that or lose his mind.
“Hey, kid,” Rick says one such Thursday afternoon, as Ben walks through the door of Brew, the coffee shop on the west side of the building.
They’re in the last dregs of September, October only a day or two away and eager to bring its traditional weather, and it shows through the coffee shop’s large glass windows; something that looks to be a combination of rain and sleet is whipping into them.
Ben shudders very slightly, his mind skipping forward unpleasantly to his journey home tonight, and then wants to keep shuddering when Rick uses a foot to push a chair out from his table and says, “Pop a squat.”
Ben looks at him balefully, hiking his computer bag up a little higher on his shoulder.
Rick is… Rick. He’s a perfectly nice guy, Ben supposes, but that’s about all.
The whole point of lurking in these terrible corporate restaurants during the afternoon is to be free, in case an actually fascinating person comes down from one of the many publishing outlets Formica counts under its vast corporate umbrella.
They usually don’t, but now and then he has a conversation that makes working in this building worthwhile.
Rick, a thickly mustachioed, salt-and-pepper-haired white guy on the far side of middle age, once spent a whole conversation describing to Ben a fish he caught; he’d used the word “slippery” eighteen times.
Scintillating, he is not. But the conversational pickings are slim today, just Rick and weird sexist Kenny from the sports website on twenty-three, and Ben has vowed never to talk to him again.
Rick, at least, works for Gastronome—and while Ben wouldn’t necessarily call it the best cooking magazine on the market, it’s one of his personal favorites, and he’s been reading it since he was a child.
“Don’t call me ‘kid,’” Ben says, “and please never say ‘pop a squat’ ever again,” but he sits down in the offered chair anyway.
Rick laughs. Rick, Ben notes a little wearily, is often laughing at things Ben says that he doesn’t mean to be jokes. It’s part of what makes him such a frustrating conversationalist—Ben’s genuine attempts at humor fly right over his head, but Rick finds his actual personality hilarious.
“Look, kid,” Rick says, in flagrant violation of the request made only moments before, “I think I might have something for you.”
“Well, that’s ominous,” Ben says. “What kind of something? Animal, vegetable, or mineral?”
Again, Rick laughs. It really is very annoying. “A job, actually. Or—a project, I guess. You do video editing, right?”
“I… do,” Ben says, surprised and, weirdly, a little touched. He’s always assumed that his side of their conversations drifted out of Rick’s head like so much smoke the minute Ben walked away, but apparently, Rick’s been paying attention, at least occasionally. “Why?”
“Oh,” Rick says, and waves a hand. “Upstairs wants us to do more—what’d they say—‘accessible Gen Z content.’ Some nonsense about how the modern consumer doesn’t have the attention span to read a recipe or something.
It all sounds pretty stupid to me, but.” He shrugs, affecting a commiserating expression.
“You know how it is, when upstairs comes calling.”
The only person in Ben’s life who he even remotely thinks of as “upstairs” is Mrs. C, the octogenarian who lives in the apartment above his, and Ben doesn’t know how it is when she comes calling, because as far as he can tell she never steps past her front door.
He does, pretty regularly, bring her some dinner when he’s made too much for himself, but he doubts that’s what Rick’s talking about.
“Sure I do,” Ben says. It’s just easier. “What’d you have in mind?”
“Well,” Rick says, and grits his teeth. “I’ve got this guy, one of my test cooks.
He should’ve been perfect for it—real big personality, y’know?
Teaches people in the kitchen all the time.
Teaches classes, even! And one of the photographers who shoots for the magazine used to do video, so we figured, whatever, right?
We’d shoot Pete making some dish and throw it online. Should’ve been no problem.”
“But…?” Ben prompts, when Rick pauses to build the suspense. This, too, is a common feature of conversations with Rick, and one Ben finds particularly irksome.
“My guy’s a disaster,” Rick admits. “The minute the camera turned on, he totally lost it. Rambling, spilling things, burning stuff. It took him two and a half hours to demonstrate making the chicken and kale salad we put out in our last issue—”
“But that’s a twenty-minute recipe,” Ben says, aghast. “I made it myself last month! Even if you roast the chicken yourself instead of using a rotisserie—God, even if you go insane and decide to break down fresh artichokes—it shouldn’t take more than an hour and a half!”
Rick blinks a few times, then beams at him. “Wow, kid, I’m flattered. You never told me you were a reader.”
“Don’t let it go to your head,” Ben says, irritably. “And I told you, don’t call me ‘kid.’ I’m like ten thousand years old inside.”
“That’s what they all say, at your age.”
“Do they?” says Ben, who has yet to find another twenty-eight-year-old as ready as he is to be a crotchety old man. “Are you sure?”
“Eh,” Rick says, and shrugs. “I haven’t known what the kids are saying for years; I took a shot in the dark.
Look, my point is: Would you mind taking a look at the footage?
It’s beyond help from the likes of us, and maybe from anyone, but I figure it can’t hurt to bring in a professional.
” He lowers his voice, and, conspiratorially, adds, “You’d be doing me a big favor. I’d owe you one.”
Ben, who has freelanced for too long to do any editing work simply for being owed one, narrows his eyes. “Is this favor a paying gig?”
“Oh, sure, sure,” Rick says. He waves a hand, effectively (if probably unintentionally) establishing himself as someone with enough money to find discussing it at all a little gauche.
Ben grimaces internally but knows it’s the better part of politeness to keep the expression off his face.
“Our standard contractor fee. I’ll send over the paperwork with the footage.
The powers that be will probably find a way to roll it into your next paycheck. ”
Ben bristles a little at the words “contractor fee,” since the reminder that at Formica contractors are basically second-class citizens, less valued than their full-staff counterparts no matter what hours they keep, always rankles.
Still, he’s curious and bored enough that he agrees anyway, scrawls his email address down on a piece of paper Rick offers him and says he’ll turn it around as quick as he can.
After all, Ben does love food, and it’ll be something new to do.
Also, the eight-year-old version of him would have lost his mind at the opportunity to do anything at all for Gastronome.
For God’s sake, he’d dressed up as a chef for three Halloweens in a row, with the toque and the white coat and everything, always carrying a copy of the magazine under his arm.
A little part of Ben can’t help but want to honor that, for all adulthood has taught him that reality rarely plays out the way you dream it will.