Chapter 5 #4
Ben looks up from his phone, startled. He’s been wandering around in a bit of a daze for the last few minutes, grabbing things and dropping them in his basket almost at random between messages; he should take stock, probably, since time is relatively short.
Instead, he takes a breath, trying to work out why he feels abruptly but profoundly off-kilter.
He doesn’t even know why he mentioned the acid thing—it’s not like Ben’s stomach’s tendency to turn his constant churn of stress into a series of inconvenient ulcers is relevant to Pete in any way—or why it should make him feel so odd, now, for Pete to respond like this.
Ben’s own parents can’t seem to keep track of it, constantly plopping down plate after plate of things drizzled in thick balsamic or drenched in a tomato sauce so well-reduced that, digestion-wise, it might as well be lemon juice.
In the end, he leaves the texts unanswered, mostly because when he half glances over his basket, he realizes there is an eggplant inside of it.
An eggplant, of course, is a wonderful choice for dinner tonight, in the first full week of October, when the very last in-season specimens are still waiting to be taken home.
Still, something about it itches at the back of Ben’s brain, sets off the shrill, insistent warning alarm he associates with a mistake in progress.
The production calendar seems to swim before his eyes, superseding the lemons and limes he’s standing in front of for a moment.
It’s not a good idea to shop for what’s in season tonight, because the video goes to S it sounds like a genuine question. “Deciding not to think about something?”
“Me? Oh, no,” Ben says, waving a hand with a little laugh. “I’m still thinking about things I should have forgotten twenty years ago, myself. But, you know. Maybe you’re normal.”
“A bold assessment from someone who has watched all my footage,” Pete says solemnly. Then he sighs. “Well, listen, before we turn the camera on and ruin the evening for everyone—what did you get?”
“Seriously that is so defeatist, it’s like you want it to be a disaster,” Ben complains, but they’ve reached the kitchen, so he unpacks his grocery bag onto Pete’s counter in answer to Pete’s actual question.
“The wrapped package is scallops—they’re what looked best in the case—and you can feel free to skip using whatever.
I sometimes do this thing with pomegranate and brussels—”
“Oh, and the pancetta, yeah, I can see that,” Pete says, tilting his head.
“You would need a little balsamic for that, though—I have this fig one, that would be nice—and then the scallops would be a quick sear, and it all plates up on… Hmm. Does it want to be one dish or two, do you think? I could stack it all up on like, a polenta or something, but it seems like it might be a little busy.”
Ben stares for a second; is Pete asking for his opinion?
On the food? When he’s a professional? Sure, okay, a professional with some significant problems, but still.
Even when Ben had made sous at Fleur de Sel, the French restaurant where he worked in college, his role had been to execute the chef’s vision, not opine on it.
And in his parents’ kitchen, he’ll always be an overly eager, somewhat obnoxious little child, whose opinions on the dishes won’t matter until he’s old enough to count, to them, as an adult.
Based on progress, Ben expects that day to come sometime in his own late eighties, when his parents themselves have been dead several decades, and even then, he expects their ghosts to be a little grudging about it.
But Pete stares back at him with wide, clear eyes, nothing in the expression but interest and curiosity. It’s weirdly intoxicating.
“Uh. Let me consider for a second, yeah?” Ben swallows, and forces himself to start setting up camera equipment so he’ll have something to do with his hands.
Unfortunately, this means that within seconds he finds himself needing to mic Pete up, which, okay, maybe was a bit of a mistake.
Standing close enough to Pete to clip the mic to his shirt, smoothing the wire down before passing him the battery pack to slide into his pocket; it does something to Ben, for some reason.
Maybe it’s the smell of whatever cologne Pete is wearing, or the scent of the shampoo he uses or something—clean and crisp and vaguely sandalwoody, Ben thinks, though he’s not normally one to think much about sandalwood at all.
It’s a good smell, whatever it is. Distractingly good.
All in all, Ben’s proud that his voice comes out normal and even as he steps back and says, “Okay. Yeah, honestly, I don’t know that brussels want pancetta and balsamic and scallops and polenta.
The fig vinegar sounds good, though; it’s only a little acid and I always do vinegar, too—so maybe it’s two dishes?
Do you have a scallop in your repertoire somewhere? ”
“Sure, until you hit record,” Pete says ruefully. “I can think of a dozen things to do with them. Ceviche—although, I guess, acid—”
“I mean, you don’t have to worry about that,” Ben mutters, feeling himself start to flush slightly and willing the blood back down away from his neck. He stares hard at the camera equipment he’s popping and slotting into place as he says, “It’s for the video really, it doesn’t matter if—”
“Come on, I’m not going to make something you can’t eat,” Pete says, rolling his eyes.
“If I have to endure the nightmare of filming, someone had better enjoy it. And, anyway, scallops are easy, I could do a beer batter and fry them off, or a quick seafood stew, normally. But the minute the camera starts rolling—”
“I know, I know, shut up and stop thinking about it,” Ben says, flapping a hand at him in a way that he’ll recognize, some hours from now, as upsettingly reminiscent of his mother.
“Look, which one’s the most hard coded? Like, if you were on a desert island, totally wasted, and had to cook one scallop dish to survive—”