Chapter 10 #4
Probably getting to be time to figure that out!
The part of Ben that points this out sounds both urgent and, if he’s honest, more than a little annoyed.
Because you’ve filmed the last video, and you don’t know what’s going to happen with your contract at all, and you don’t want to go back to spending all your time on twenty-seven, and pretty soon, it’s all going to come up!
Ben, very firmly, tells himself to let it go for now. After all, this is a party.
He turns, intent again on finding Pete, and pauses, breaking into a grin: Pete has found him first, is standing with his arm frozen in the air, like he was midway through reaching up to tap on Ben’s shoulder.
Ben is surprised to find himself feeling shy, suddenly.
It’s nonsensical; he’s known Pete for weeks now, and saw him yesterday, and only a few hours ago, they were exchanging ridiculous texts betting on what appetizers would be passed around tonight.
But still, Ben can’t help but scuff a shoe against the floor, grinning up at Pete like some soppy, lovestruck teenager, totally blanking on anything to say which is just embarrassing, isn’t it?
But there’s nothing for it. He would stop smiling if he could, but when he tries, he finds it entirely impossible.
As if having taken this thought as a challenge, an image of Chris floats across Ben’s mind, still perfectly chiseled and unfairly symmetrical in Ben’s imagining of him, which is just cruel.
His own mind can’t throw him this one bone?
Give the guy an unfortunately placed facial infection?
Poison ivy? Something? But no: He’s smooth and shiny even in Ben’s head, and looking down his nose at Ben in irritation and disgust. This does, Ben has to admit, dim the wattage of his smile somewhat, though he finds he still can’t crush it entirely.
At least, Ben thinks distantly, Pete is smiling back at him. That’s something. A pleasure to witness, if nothing else.
“Hi,” Pete says, eventually. His eyes flick down the length of Ben’s body, quick and barely noticeable; Ben notices anyway. “You look great.”
“I don’t,” Ben says, automatic. “I’m not a suit guy, but the invite said formal, and I didn’t have anything more formal than this so—uh. You look great, though. Like, actually great.”
Pete flushes slightly but rolls his eyes.
“Oh, thanks, but if that’s true, it’s only because I made one of my sisters dress me.
Or, at least, I asked for her help in choosing an outfit, which somehow ended up with both of us in a department store and her wielding my credit card like a sword, but.
” He shrugs, glancing down at his cream knit sweater, which he’s wearing under a camel-colored coat, and over a pair of woolen dress trousers in a complementary light brown.
“I have to give it to her, I do feel more professional in this than my canned beans T-shirt.” He winces, and adds, “Not that I’ve been at my most, um, professional, these last couple of shoots.
I hope the edit hasn’t been too brutal?”
Ben, who did in fact spend much of the night awake, and who did only get the last video sent off to Dave in S Ben’s cracked up laughing a dozen times over jokes about Miranda, or the sponsored products, or the abysmal quality of the scripted lines meant to sell those products.
But he doesn’t want to bring any of that up now, not when Pete’s clearly so happy to be on the other side, and the last thing that happened between them that wasn’t work-related was that cut-short evening after Late Night Live.
They have not talked about it at all since then, and the only evidence that it even happened is Pete’s beanie, which he’d left behind on the back of the sofa, and which Ben, to his great shame, has not been able to bring himself to return.
Thinking about that night once again brings up the mocking mental image of Chris; feeling a little like he’s generously salting an open wound, Ben forces himself to ask: “No Chris, huh? Where’s he tonight?”
Pete’s brow furrows briefly, as if in deep thought. “Hmm. Weehawken, probably? I’m not sure what he’s up to this weekend—why?”
Because a normal person would bring their boyfriend to an event like this, Ben does not say.
It is, if nothing else, a sentence that would disqualify him from being a judge of normalcy the moment he uttered it, and he does his best to avoid letting those escape.
Instead, in what he hopes is a tone of casual inquiry and not desperate interest, he says, “Oh, because, um… he came with you to that Halloween thing? So I thought—”
“Ah, yeah, no, different vibe,” Pete says, on a slight laugh.
“This isn’t his kind of party—it would need to be either three degrees fancier or four degrees less fancy to meet his very exacting standards for attendance.
” In slightly self-deprecating tones, like he thinks it’s an entertaining joke, he adds, “In a real sense, I am merely a vessel through which Chris attains access to parties. If he doesn’t want to go, what would be the point? ”
Chris sounds like a terrible boyfriend, and I’d like to throw him into the Hudson River.
Ben, again, keeps this to himself on the argument that saying it would be both mortifying and utterly incompatible with his general mission of projecting “It’s me, your colleague Ben, a regular guy who has never even thought about putting my tongue in your mouth.
” He thinks it quite hard, as instead he says, “Okay, talk to me about this fanciness points system. Is there actually a scale? Or does it run on vibes?”
The question has a very simple answer—it does, indeed, run on vibes—but somehow, the conversation that springs out of it covers them across the room, through both the drink line and the wait for their ordered beverages, and halfway through drinking said beverages.
By the time they’ve established that they are, honestly, pretty bad drinks for a food industry party, they’ve also come up with a comprehensive set of metrics and qualities on which to measure and rate the fanciness of events, complete with a little chart Pete draws on the back of a cocktail napkin.
Ben doesn’t know, suddenly, why he was worried about this. It’s easy, talking to Pete. It’s delightful. It always is.
It’s interrupted, of course, by a wide-eyed, round-faced man, who is wearing what appears to be his most formal sweater vest, hurrying over them. “Pete? Ben? Is that you?”
Ben stares at the man, confused, as under his breath, Pete mutters, “Do you know this guy?”
“No,” Ben hisses back out of the corner of his mouth. “Gathering you don’t, either?”
“Not a clue,” Pete whispers, and then the stranger is upon them, sticking out a hand for first Pete, and then Ben, to shake.
“Hi, hi, so good to meet you both in person, finally,” the man says, as he pumps each of their hands up and down exactly three times before releasing.
“Sorry to be rude—I know you, of course, from the videos, but you wouldn’t know me.
I’m Dave! From Standards and Practices! Ben, we’ve exchanged a lot of emails—”
“Ah,” Ben says, finding it’s suddenly a struggle to keep his voice neutral and friendly. “Dave. Yes. Good to—put a face to the name.”
“Likewise!” Dave grins at Ben, broad and guileless.
“Although I’ve seen you before, of course—you pop up in the show here and there—and you, naturally, I’ve seen a lot.
” Dave doesn’t notice Pete’s brief, hastily concealed grimace, but Ben does and wants to echo the expression himself.
“But it’s different in person, isn’t it? ”
“It sure is, Dave,” Ben says, to spare Pete from having to think of anything. Then, because he can’t quite help himself, he adds, “You know, speaking of being in person—I’ve got a question I’ve been wanting to ask you for weeks, Dave, and since we’re here—”
“Oh, shoot,” Dave says, patting his own stomach lightly twice, as if in invitation. In invitation for what, Ben is unsure and hopes not to find out, but it’s what the gesture communicates just the same. “I’m an open book.”
“Why,” Ben says, keeping his tone casual and trying to conceal the enormous irritation he’s felt about this since he first saw the schedule, “the varying deadlines, Dave? Some weeks S Ben is abruptly very aware of the rush of Pete’s breath, warm air tickling over the sensitive skin. “Just a heads-up: You’re saying Dave’s name a lot.”
Ben, not trusting himself to answer with any degree of composure at this moment, just nods, taking the note. But Dave doesn’t seem to notice. His brow is creased in what appears to be very deep thought.
“Let me give that one a little ponder,” he says.
He reaches up a hand and for a few moments just stands there, tapping his chin in contemplation.
Eventually, dropping his hand and shaking his head, he says, “I’m sorry, fellas—I can’t say I know what you’re talking about. There must’ve been some confusion.”
Even without knowing what the man is about to say, Ben feels his blood pressure ratcheting up. Immediately forgetting Pete’s note, and ignoring the soft snort of laughter from behind him as he says it, Ben snaps, “What sort of confusion, Dave?”
“Well,” Dave says, slow and thoughtful, “I’m not sure.
I can tell you I only need about an hour for most videos that come through; yours take me even less time.
They’re fun to watch, you know? So forty minutes or so usually does it!
” When Ben’s jaw drops open in a mixture of shock and fury, Dave grins at him and pats him on the shoulder.
“Aw, you’re nice, but it’s not that impressive; I could always go faster if it was crunch time.
Anyway, nice to meet you!” And he walks off, smiling sunnily, clearly one of those people for whom the toast always lands buttered side up.
Ben, who has never dropped a piece of toast without buttering the floor in the process, stares after him in wordless, boiling rage.
“Do you know,” he says eventually, “how many hours of sleep I have lost since I started this job? Because of Dave? Because of needing to send our videos? To Dave? Because it was so urgent that Dave get them exactly by the set deadlines, it said so in that email so many times, and he was—it—he—forty minutes, Pete! He only needs forty minutes!” In tones of genuine hysteria, he adds, “He could go faster! If it was crunch time!!!”
“I think,” Pete says, in grave and, very kindly, only slightly entertained tones, “you may have been Miranda’d here. Nobody likes it when Miranda is a verb—believe me, I know.”
“Why is she even doing this?” Ben complains, because it’s been bothering him. “It’s good for her if the show does well! Does she just hate me? Does my face inspire in her a fountain of rage? Will she not rest until she and Dave have driven me to the very brink of despair?”
For a second Pete’s face changes. It looks almost scared, or worried, or nervous, or something.
But then Pete laughs and takes him by the elbow, murmuring, “Ooookay, I think maybe we need to get you a drink better than the swill they’re serving down here.
You seem like maybe you’re about to snap and kill someone. ”
“No jury would convict!” Ben says wildly, even as he lets Pete steer him towards the doors out to the main lobby area. “Crime of passion!”
“I’m reasonably certain juries do convict for those, you know,” Pete says dryly. “Come on, come up to the offices with me? I can make us something worth drinking up there.”
A little part of Ben wants to stay and track Miranda down in the crowd, pick a fight just for something to do with all this annoyance, but Pete’s hand is warm at his elbow, and his suitcase is up in the offices anyway, and: “Oh, all right,” Ben says, and lets himself be led out of the party.