Chapter 4 #4
Well. There’s one place he could put it, actually.
Oddly, horribly, it’s somehow one of the hottest things that’s ever happened to Ben, for reasons he can’t entirely explain even to himself.
Surely, some of it is just a function of the sheer, unbelievable hotness of Pete, which burns so intensely that Ben keeps finding himself having a hard time looking directly at him, as if those stupid cheekbones are the surface of the sun.
But for someone that hot to be paying so much attention to Ben as to notice a little thing like a trembling paper in his hand—for someone that hot to follow up on that observation by addressing and solving the source of the problem—it isn’t fair play, that’s all.
It suggests Pete as someone who might pay Ben the same curious, investigative attention in bed, take the time to think about what he’d like, what he’d find hot, what’d feel good.
This is not a quality Ben has found in previous men this attractive, who have mostly paid him absolutely no attention at all.
He’s not entirely mannerless, though, so instead of standing there openly staring at Pete like a fool, Ben thanks him, or tries to.
What actually comes out of his mouth is, “I mean—thank you, I guess. Assuming you don’t, like, cut your finger off in the process or anything.
I have an intense allergy, you understand.
To fingers. The hospital would need to be involved. ”
“Well, that does sound very serious, but I think we’re probably good,” Pete says, a chuckle running through his voice.
Then, his smile going smaller and a little sheepish, he knocks lightly against the wooden butcher block and adds, “But maybe don’t turn your phone camera on, yeah?
In case. Wouldn’t want you to go into anaphylactic shock or anything. ”
“Very considerate,” Ben says faintly, at a bit of a loss, and takes a sip of orange juice to buy himself a moment to think of something else to say.
Nothing comes, but it seems nothing needs to; even as Ben’s swallowing, Pete resumes humming.
The tune is vaguely familiar to Ben, but he can’t quite place it; it’s cheerful, though, and in spite of not being particularly loud, it has the odd effect of lulling Ben into an easy silence.
Somehow it suggests that there is no need to fill the space between them with words.
Instead, he watches with curiosity, and then surprise, and then steadily increasing astonishment, as Pete cooks.
Without a camera on him, Pete is not just a competent cook; Pete is maybe the most competent cook Ben has ever seen.
He grew up watching a long series of line cooks fall in, and often dramatically back out, of Trattoria Luciana over the years; some of his earliest memories are of standing at one of the prep stations, so young that his eyes barely crested the top of the cutting board, watching Luis or Samara or Wendy or Hiram or whoever was on the bottom of Daniel’s list that week, cutting huge piles of onions and peppers and tomatoes into a fine dice.
Pete is faster than Luis or Samara or Wendy or Hiram, faster even than Ben’s own mother, a terrifying woman who stubbornly wields a four-inch paring knife she’s sharpened down to nearly nothing as though it’s both a chef’s knife and an extension of her hand.
He slices a potato into neat, perfect chunks so quickly and so precisely that for a second Ben thinks that maybe he accidentally fell asleep, took one of those micro-naps Salvador Dalí was famous for, and missed part of the process.
But then he watches Pete do it again with six more potatoes, easy as anything, and dump them all into the stock pot he placed on the stove earlier.
He takes the pot to the sink, still whistling, and as he fills it, waves hello at someone who steps into the kitchen from the entrance on the other side of the room.
The mysterious visitor drops a pile of bags on one of the far stations, disappearing again after a returning wave.
When Pete returns to the counter and sets the pot to boil, Ben wants to ask him exactly how much he’s expected to eat here, but he’s distracted again watching Pete chop peppers and onions and mushrooms and pile them up on the cutting board, then slice some of the pastrami into paper-thin strips and set it aside, before he chunks up the rest so quickly Ben barely sees the knife move.
Pete’s starting the onions, mushrooms, and peppers in a huge, well-oiled cast-iron on a back burner—he’s seasoning them with salt and pepper—he’s cracking four eggs into a bowl and whisking them, and seasoning those, too—he’s turning the heat on under a stainless-steel skillet—he’s cutting off four slices of the loaf of bread, which smells like sourdough, and absently offering Ben the heel.
Ben takes it, and has a bite; it’s good, hearty, a whole grain of some sort clearly running through it.
The water hasn’t even come to a boil yet; Pete hasn’t stopped humming.
It’s this, more than anything, that ends up breaking Ben’s silence. “Is that… oh my God, man, is that ‘Mah Nà Mah Nà’? From the Muppets?”
Pete shrugs as he stirs the sizzling skillet, nodding at the potato water as though in approval when it starts to bubble and throwing in some salt with his non-stirring hand. “Hey, don’t knock the Muppets. Maybe the Swedish Chef is my personal hero. You don’t know.”
Ben snorts out half a laugh without entirely meaning to; he and Renata had grown up watching reruns of the original Muppet Show, and Fraggle Rock, and whatever else they could find, but it’s been a long time since Ben thought about it.
“My sincerest apologies to Jim Henson; I would never knock the Muppets.” Then he watches in growing hunger as, into the now-hot stainless-steel skillet, Pete lays down several of the thin slices of pastrami.
Ribboned with bright white fat, each slice immediately begins to sizzle and shrivel, and the smell they release makes Ben salivate in anticipation.
Luckily, it’s quick after that. The pastrami doesn’t take long at all to sear up into crisp little sheets of meat, and Pete piles them onto a small metal sheet tray and sets them aside.
Into the same pan, he introduces the slices of bread, letting them toast up in the rendered pastrami fat.
When they’re golden on the bottom with specks of black pastrami spice, Pete evacuates the slices from the skillet, tosses in a little pat of butter, dumps in the eggs he seasoned and whisked earlier, and cooks them up into a soft, fluffy scramble in a minute flat.
Finally, he spreads some sort of red paste from a jar—not a branded jar, clearly a homemade condiment of some kind—onto the top slices of bread, settles a handful of pre-washed arugula on the bottoms, and piles on pastrami and egg until he has two beautiful sandwiches.
He puts each one onto another tiny sheet tray and places one in front of Ben with a small, slightly nervous smile.
“The moment of truth,” Pete says, and his tone makes Ben a little unsure whether or not he’s joking. Which—well, surely that’s insane. After the skills Pete showed him, he couldn’t possibly care about Ben’s opinion of his work.
It is at this moment that Ben’s stomach releases a grumble so audible that Ben imagines Rick can hear it, back in his office. Pete’s smile spreads into something smugger. “Go on; eat it. The anticipation is killing me.”
“Are you planning to stare at me the whole time?” Ben demands, a little horrified.
Pete holds up his hands and looks politely away, and thank God; the minute his eyeline is elsewhere, Ben snatches up the sandwich and takes an enormous bite.
The groan that he releases is loud, involuntary, and incredibly embarrassing. Still: “Holy crap, are you kidding me?” Ben demands, staring at the sandwich. “Why is that so good? It’s just—eggs and pastrami and—what is this condiment?”
“Oh, it’s, uh, sauce,” Pete says, and shrugs. “Every week I throw some stuff together… into a sauce. Sometimes it’s an herb sauce; this week it’s roasted bell peppers and Calabrian chiles and some other stuff. Malt vinegar, maybe? Anyway, I thought it would go nice here.”
“It does,” Ben says, between mouthfuls. “God, sorry to like, inhale this—I was hungrier than I thought—”
“Nah, go ahead, eat,” Pete says. He sounds pleased.
In this, he’s the same as every chef Ben’s ever known, even his mother, even himself, to the extent that he is one: To the true cook, the cook who feels the call somewhere deep in their heart, there is no better feeling than seeing a satisfied eater at your table.
Ben does as he’s told, and, as he finishes the sandwich, watches with interest as Pete, while eating his own sandwich, tests the potatoes for doneness, drains them into a colander using only one hand, and then transfers them all into the skillet with the onions and peppers.
He seasons again, with a variety of spices as well as salt and pepper this time, and after a few minutes of sizzling, he throws the pastrami chunks in there, too.
“I hope that’s not for me,” Ben says, after he’s polished off about half of the sandwich. “Not that it doesn’t look good, but this is definitely a solid breakfast.”
“Nah,” Pete says again, easily. He’s relaxed now, in his element; it’s hard to reconcile with the Pete from the video, who stood in this very same space looking as out of his element as Ben might at, say, any professional sporting event.
“Mondays are usually a late day for the test cooks; some of them party pretty hard on Sunday nights. They’ll start rolling in soon, and it’ll be a better day for everyone if they all eat something. ”
“Oh,” Ben says, blinking. “That’s… nice of you.”