Chapter 7 #2
He turns his computer towards Pete, who bends in to look at it, leaning against the counter.
He’s abruptly so close that Ben could tip forward the barest inch and snatch off Pete’s beanie with his teeth; he wouldn’t, of course, because who would, but the proximity is upsettingly intoxicating.
Hoping it doesn’t show in his voice, Ben scrolls through the agenda as he says, “So the first thing here is the vegetarian/vegan-friendly options one—we talked about that last week, so I pulled the casserole you suggested and that stuffed pepper—and then there’s two more we hadn’t roughed out yet.
One video of standard sides, and then one for entrees, which I think they probably mean for us to do a turkey for?
But Miranda didn’t specify, and turkey sucks, so I vote chicken.
Game hens, maybe? But we can do ham if you want.
” Realizing, for what must be the millionth time in a long, embarrassing life, that perhaps he has become carried away, Ben finishes, awkwardly: “Anyway, I… I have some thoughts on all of it, obviously, and that’s what I pulled together here, but you can switch out whatever you want.
I pretty much used your recipes anyway, since I figured you’re probably already familiar.
” Pete’s recipes have also, especially for the last few months, tended to be the most highly trafficked on the site, according to Ben’s new buddy in data analytics, Findley, who he met while drinking an entirely unnecessary afternoon coffee at Brew a few weeks ago.
Ben is not interested in approaching anything related to fame or audience right now so he doesn’t mention it.
Pete is silent for a moment, scrolling through the document.
Ben considers several options, including letting out a long, uncontrolled yodel of anxiety, or jumping out of his own skin in anticipation, but none quite seem to suit the moment.
When, eventually, Pete speaks, his tone is hard to parse, distant and faintly disbelieving, like someone trying to remember a dream: “When… when did you do all this?”
“Oh, yesterday,” Ben says, shrugging. “You know how sometimes you just get an idea and run with it?”
“I mean,” Pete says, shaking his head and laughing slightly, “no, dude. Not really. You know, sometimes I get an idea like, ‘What about baklava but with the syrup from torrejas instead,’ but that’s, you know, a pretty straightforward next step.
This is like homework—it would have taken me a week and it wouldn’t have been half as detailed.
There’s an ingredient list for each shoot and for the whole day…
Oh my God, wait. This link—is this an actual list of the ingredients we have in stock? In the test kitchen? Right now?”
“Oh,” Ben says, and blushes slightly. This is the sort of thing he struggles to do for himself but learned young to do for others, because it was the only way to keep the restaurant running smoothly.
He prefers to do tasks like this unnoticed, the way it was when he was a kid; being spotted at it always makes him feel unaccountably embarrassed.
“Yeah, I put it together a couple of weeks ago? It was just easier, you know, to keep track of everything, and I used to do inventory for my folks at the restaurant and I couldn’t find yours—”
“We don’t have one,” says Pete, in reverent tones, as he scrolls.
“No one’s been able to keep up with it since Miranda fired Josie, and that was years ago.
We don’t even do normal ordering anymore, we just run on ‘who kills it, fills it’ and have everyone expense it—oh my God, you have brand names in here! Listen, can I print this out?”
“Oh,” Ben says, blinking. “Sure, if you want to, but it’s updating in the document, so it won’t be accurate for—”
But the printer is already whirring, and Pete bounds off towards it before Ben can finish his thought.
It’s at the other end of the test kitchen, near the far door, and Ben watches in bemusement and, if he’s honest, a little fondness as Pete bounces on the balls of his feet, waiting for the last sheet to spit out.
When it does, he clutches the little sheaf of papers in his hands, raises it over his head, and lets out a long, reverent note, an “aaaaaah” sound that carries on long enough that Ben walks over to investigate.
Before he can say anything, like, “What are you doing?” or “Have I, in attempting to balance out some of the damage I have caused here, driven you past your breaking point?” or “You know that’s just paper, right?” the far door opens, and Adina walks in.
“What are you doing?” Adina says, and then, “You know that’s just paper, right?” which is, at least, handy.
“It’s not just paper,” Pete says, wild-eyed, without dropping his arms. “Ben made an inventory. An up-to-date, accurate inventory. Of everything in the test kitchen. Everything, Adina. The brands of the salts are in here, okay, it’s better than Josie’s was, and this is just a printout! It’s a document! An editable document!”
“You’re joking,” Adina says, with overly brash confidence that indicates a sliver of doubt.
Pete shakes his head, grinning at her. “I’m really not.”
Adina stares at Pete for a second, then whips her head around to stare at Ben, then turns back to Pete. Then, to Ben’s astonishment and slight horror, she too raises both hands in the air, as if in worship of the paper, and joins Pete in another long, reverent “aaaaaaaaah.”
“Good Lord,” Ben says, trying not to laugh. “If I’d realized an inventory was going to be such a hit, I would have sent it over to you weeks ago. Here, if you come over, I can show you my basic system and share it out.”
Adina is so eager for access to the file that she refuses to take off her coat or put down her bag, which is half her size and looks like it weighs about seven thousand pounds, until she’s watched Ben send her the link.
Then, as the other test cooks start trickling in, she oohs and aahs over Ben’s level of detail and organization, the way he’s set it up to track intervals of time between refills, and any changes to those intervals.
This tips off the rest of the staff to the fact that the inventory exists, and suddenly Ben is being showered with promises to be taken out for a drink, or a few drinks, or to be given Brogan’s firstborn as a tribute, although that one is quite clearly a joke.
Ben is also being inundated with compliments, which is somehow both incredibly nice and deeply embarrassing.
He keeps trying to explain to them that it’s nothing, that it’s just a slightly updated version of the system he created for the restaurant when he was thirteen, but this makes Pete stare at him with glassy astonishment and say, “You could do this when you were thirteen?” which doesn’t help things at all.
“I just wanted my parents to stop accidentally double-ordering the imported tomatoes my mom insists on,” Ben says, shrugging.
He keeps to himself the reason he’d wanted that: to avoid the doubled bill arriving, and the subsequent screaming fight his parents would have in the walk-in, which had never in Ben’s lifetime been as soundproof as Daniel and Lucia imagined it.
Sometimes he and Renata could hear them at it even from upstairs, going back and forth about whose fault it was and then, eventually, about who was at fault for everything else either of them felt was wrong in their lives.
“So it wasn’t like a great act of organizational altruism or whatever. ”
“Still,” Pete says, shaking his head in what appears, to Ben’s amazement and confusion, to be admiration. “Still.”
And then Ben doesn’t have time to talk about it anymore; too much is happening.
Jaelyn is arriving—Ben, not actually wanting to take his life into his hands, had emailed her about this plan yesterday, and had her enthusiastic sign-off in the event Pete agreed.
She’s a contractor, too, with a variable schedule; Pete has to be here all day regardless, but he wasn’t about to spring this concept on her with no notice.
He gives her a thumbs-up when she steps into the kitchen with her camera bag, and Jaelyn grins and groans in relief, says, “Thank God! Ripping the Band-Aid off, I love it, I’m going to get such a nice check for Black Friday.
My wife and I have been eying this couch for like six months, and I know it’s going to go on sale—”
“Ooh,” an arriving Ezra says, as he takes off his coat.
“Color, size, shape, tell me everything,” and they, along with an enthusiastic Adina, descend into a furniture conversation while Ben helps Pete gather the ingredients for the first video.
He does it almost automatically, following Pete first to the potato and onion bins, then into the walk-in, selecting their produce on muscle memory while Pete scoops up dairy and eggs.
And it’s there, in the chilly depths of the walk-in fridge, when Ben’s arms are full of ingredients and he has nowhere to run, that Pete turns to him and says, “That run of show—look, Ben, can I ask you something?”
What a horrible question—he could ask anything—what if he asks if Ben has—no, no, it’s better not to speculate. Carefully, Ben says, “Sure! Why not.”
“You asked Jaelyn to stop calling ‘cut,’ didn’t you,” Pete says quietly. It’s not really a question. “Way back at the beginning. You didn’t say anything about it, or ask me if you should, you just did it. Because you could tell… Because you could tell. Right?”
Oh, God, couldn’t you have asked any—almost any—other question?
Ben does not say this through an amount of effort that frankly staggers him; instead, shrugging somewhat miserably, he says, “I mean, I couldn’t tell—what you told me the other night, or anything.
But I… did, yeah. I thought the cuts maybe were… not helping.”