Chapter 2 #3
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 eats any 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 at James Beard’s table, 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 buzz again.
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 then again, 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 who dumped 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:
BENJAMIN CHICKENFACE BLUMENTHAL I CANNOT!!!!! BELIEVE!!!!!!! YOU DIDN’T TELL ME YOU WERE WORKING FOR GASTRONOME I AM GOING TO KILL YOU
RENATA:
YOU’VE ONLY BEEN TALKING ABOUT IT SINCE THE DAY YOU WERE BORN
RENATA:
do mom and dad know????? god mom’s going to FLIP lolololol
RENATA:
ben?? you know this has gone SUPER viral right? like i just saw about six different people posting it on my feeds, it has like a couple million views i think
RENATA:
ben????????? are you dead???????
RENATA:
don’t make me call you for real
“Oh my God,” Ben says, staring down at his phone. His brain, short circuiting a little, naturally focuses on the important things first:
BEN:
My middle name is not “Chickenface.” That was the FIRST name of your childhood stuffed pig, which made us all worry that you couldn’t identify basic barnyard animals. Do NOT call me, it might make my phone explode
RENATA:
“chickenface” is a better middle name than “rochester”
BEN:
Be that as it may.
RENATA:
seriously: do mom and dad know??
BEN:
It’s not a thing, Ren. It was a one-off job. Leave it.
RENATA:
they’re GOING to find out u know
BEN:
I said leave it, okay?
RENATA:
ugh, you’re so annoying. congratulations u big stupid celebrity
RENATA:
haha celebrATy
RENATA:
because you’re a brat
BEN:
I’m not a celebrity. And if either of us is the brat here…
RENATA:
wow great insult bro
RENATA:
so witty and original
RENATA:
however will i recover
RENATA:
maybe go deal with your exploding phone or something
BEN:
Yeah, will do. Thanks for the heads-up.
RENATA:
lollllll for sure. good luck with internet fame haha
Ben ignores this last as not worthy of reply, and then immediately regrets it when he…
reads the rest of his messages. He’d assumed that Ren was exaggerating, since she tends to, but a number of other very online people in his life have reached out, too, expressing similar sentiments.
He opens the link to the video, sure it’s going to show him the same two thousand hits or so it did when he looked at it before lunch, and lets out a little shriek when the number is 2.
2 million. 2.2 million?! It’s only been up since this morning!
It must be—a glitch, or something. An error, that’s all. It couldn’t possibly be real.
But… but could a glitch have generated all these comments?
Ben scrolls through them, a little dizzily.
Some of them say things about the recipe, but those are in the significant minority.
Most of them are saying that Pete is hilarious, or that the video is hilarious, or that the editing is hilarious, or that he, Ben—the Voice-over Guy, as most of them are calling him—is hilarious.
And a glitch couldn’t generate this email in his inbox, either, Rick’s address, no subject, ten words: Did too good a job, kid. My office. Monday. Early.
Ben stares at it hard, and swallows.