Chapter 13 #2
But to Ben, and to anyone who has spent time working in restaurants, a high-rancidity night is obvious from the moment you step through the door.
The causes are infinitely varied—interpersonal drama, financial drama, staffing issues, management issues, all of the above—but the results are always the same.
Left to fester, low rancidity can become high rancidity with disquieting speed in the back of house, one person’s bad mood dispersing like noxious gas to infect everyone else.
Having grown up in a restaurant and thus been the Patient Zero responsible for more than a few high-rancidity nights there, Ben’s senses for these things are finely tuned.
Even Renata, hopeless though she is with a knife or a pan, can tell a good vibe from a bad one; more than once she and Ben have met somewhere for dinner, walked inside, looked at each other, and walked right back out, not needing to exchange a word.
It wasn’t worth it—high-rancidity nights, in addition to being unpleasant, were the nights with the highest chances of cut corners and mistakes.
If you had, as Ben did, the ability to sense when it was happening, you were always better off just coming back another time.
The vibes in Castillo’s this morning are so rancid that Ben almost does turn on his heel and walk out, on sheer instinct alone.
There are so many signs it’s hard to count them all—the diners look gray-faced and uncomfortable, first of all, many of them staring down at their plates in awkward silence.
The waitstaff, also, look unhappy, though there’s an air of desperation to them that the diners don’t possess, which Ben knows implicitly is because the diners can go home without risking their jobs.
The hostess, white-knuckling a lovely, art deco-style stand which Ben would admire if circumstances were different, gives Ben a wide-eyed look, one which clearly reads, “Your brunching spirit will die a slow death here today; run! Flee! Save yourself!”
All of this pales in comparison to the screaming coming from the kitchen. Ben thinks, honestly, that it probably would have tipped anyone off as to how things are going at Castillo’s today, whether they had Ben’s food service background or not.
“When I want your damn help, I’ll ask for it!” This voice is deep and unfamiliar, lightly accented, and, above all else, furious. “I’m not a child, and this is my place. If I say I can do it—”
“But you can’t do it!” This voice Ben knows; it’s Pete’s, and it’s very upset. Ben winces. “This keeps happening over and over again! What was it last week—oh, the pot of stuffing for the chile rellenos—”
“I wouldn’t’ve dropped it if one of you hadn’t spilled oil on the—”
“Dad, c’mon.” Pete sounds pained, now, though still perfectly audible out here in the dining room.
“There wasn’t any oil. It was the same thing as this, the same thing it always is: You say you can do it, and I say, ‘Are you sure? I’d be happy to help you,’ and you tell me to shove it and stop talking down to you.
So I back off, and then you can’t do it, because it’s too heavy, and then it’s a big mess that sets back the whole—”
“Too heavy? Too heavy? Ridiculous! I’m strong as an ox, you know that. It was the damn slippery handles. Look, stop being such a worrier and get out of the—”
“Aw, Jesus, Dad, don’t—”
There is a loud, resounding crash, which is followed by a long beat of dead silence.
When Pete’s voice sounds from the back again, it’s much quieter, but still perfectly audible, since absolutely nobody else in the building is currently making so much as a peep. “Well. Okay. There it is. So much for the atol de elote! But for the record, this is exactly what I said would happen.”
There’s a sound from the kitchen like someone scoffing, but it’s Pete’s voice that carries on, dropping into a despondent register Ben recognizes from filming.
“Hell. Somebody needs to clean this up, and we’ll have to eighty-six it off a bunch of tickets; there isn’t time to make a fresh batch before those tables are turned.
But I’m sorry, I… I need to take a fifteen. I’ll come back after and deal with—”
Pete’s father’s voice is a roar now; Ben’s whole body tenses up on Pete’s behalf even as he wonders if it’s embarrassment driving the older man’s rage. “I didn’t say you could take a—”
“You’re not paying me,” Pete snarls, as he pushes the double doors to the front of the house open. “I’m here to help you, as I keep trying to do, so I can do whatever I want…”
He trails off, his mouth parting slightly in surprise, as he spots Ben waiting next to the hostess stand.
Ben realizes, in a hideous moment of perfect clarity, that he has absolutely no idea what to do.
Not one. His mind is a vast and yawing abyss, into which any request for something to say falls like a stone, bouncing back to Ben with an echo that sounds a lot like, “Gooood luuuuuck wiiiiith thaaaaaat, brooooo.”
With no other options before him, Ben finds himself raising one hand in the air and pasting on a queasy smile as Pete visibly shakes himself, then hurries forward. He wishes, very much, that he’d listened to his cat and stayed at home.
“Christ, it’s Sunday, isn’t it,” Pete says when he reaches Ben, instead of “Hello.” His voice is the opposite of the agonized bellow of moments ago; now it’s quiet, hushed, like he doesn’t want to be overheard.
Ben doubts that’ll be much of a problem—now that the dramatics seem to be over, the diners have cautiously returned to their conversations and meals.
“I’m sorry, I’m not—I woke up this morning thinking it was still Saturday, and it’s been one of those days where—”
Another huge crash sounds from the back, followed by a female voice crying, “God damn it, Adrián, do you not want there to be anything left for us to serve this morning?”
“How dare you,” booms Pete’s father—whose name Ben can only presume is Adrián—even louder than before. “To speak to me that way in my own restaurant—”
“God, okay, I need to get out of here,” Pete mutters. “Just… just come on.”
Ben follows him, mute and panicking, out of the restaurant, around the nearest corner into an alley, and then into a small alcove out of the wind.
There is, in this alcove, a single metal folding chair, and in spite of the circumstances, Ben relaxes a little to see it, and to see Pete sink down onto it.
Clearly, this is the Castillo’s unofficial smoke break spot, and somehow, for Ben, that makes this all feel ever so slightly less…
personal. Obviously, this is Pete, for whom he has some devastatingly intense feelings, and to whom he is so attracted that half of his thoughts feel as though they might burn through his brain and body to drop to the floor, like a hot coal in a vat of butter.
And, of course, Pete’s personal, emotional, and family life are heavily tied up in what Ben just witnessed, and that means the stakes here are high.
But out here, right now, Pete’s also just a guy in kitchen blacks, sitting on a crappy metal folding chair with his head in his hands, having had his ass handed to him quite unreasonably by management. That, at least, is familiar to Ben, even if the specifics here very decidedly are not.
“So that seems like it sucked,” Ben offers. “For, well… everyone, maybe? But for sure it seemed like it sucked for you. Are you good?”
“God,” Pete says, on a little laugh. It’s not a happy one. “Am I good. Am I good? I’m sorry, but I’m not sure I know the answer to that right now.”
After a beat, Ben says, “Fair enough,” although, in his heart of hearts, he feels it’s not.
In his heart of hearts, what he’d like to say is, “For the love of God, man, you’re obviously not good, it was a rhetorical question!
Why are you being so weird with me all of a sudden?
Did something happen with Rick? Did I do something wrong?
Is it that this stuff with your dad is so messed up right now that you’ve shut everything else off?
Because I’d get that, okay, I’d be so understanding, if you’d just tell me! ”
But Ben doesn’t want to seem desperate, or clingy, or pathetic. So instead he says, “Do you, like, want to talk about it?”
Pete looks up at this question and meets Ben’s eyes with an expression that genuinely startles him.
For a second, there’s such raw, naked openness there, such obvious gratitude for being asked, that Ben’s muscles are tensing to move towards him before Pete’s face changes, abruptly, to an anguished one.
Then it goes carefully blank, all traces of either emotion wiped away before Ben can so much as lean forward.
“There’s not much to talk about,” Pete says on a sigh. “And I’m sure you gathered a lot of it from the dining room, unless—you wouldn’t happen to have come in only seconds before I walked out of the kitchen, would you?”
“I could say I did?” Ben offers, wincing slightly. “If it would make you feel any better.”
“Ah,” Pete says, in a tone flatter and grimmer than Ben’s ever heard him use. “So you heard all of it, then.”
Silence falls between them for a beat or two, Ben not sure what to do.
Surely, he didn’t hear all of it—enough to get the gist, of course, but it was obviously in progress when he arrived.
But he can’t imagine Pete wants to hear, “Actually, I turned up just in time for ‘When I want your damn help, I’ll ask for it,’ and then lingered like a fool instead of leaving, if that gives you an accurate timestamp in your mental file scrub!
” He’s equally certain he wouldn’t be convincing if he tried to lie, since Ben’s never been that good a liar.
It doesn’t end up mattering, anyway; it’s Pete who breaks the silence: “He has multiple sclerosis. My dad, I mean. Diagnosed about ten years ago. For a while it was the kind that comes and goes, and that was—it’s not like it was a blast or anything, but it was okay.
Manageable. But last year something changed, and now it’s the kind that just…
comes.” He drops his gaze, looking down at his hands as he says, quietly, “That wasn’t him, not really.
I don’t want you to think—he’s not like that, not when he’s himself.
He’s fun, usually. Still loud, to be honest, big personality, but chill, more or less.
But now he gets confused, and combative, and that thing where he’s so stubborn is him, which is hard to work around.
And I shouldn’t talk to him like that, I know it’s the damn disease, but it’s so frustrating.
I’ve put so much time and work into helping him, and I’m so tired all the time, and I’ve tried so hard to keep it separate, you know?
To not let it eat into my life, or turn me into a different person, or become all I think or talk about, or make me think of him differently. But he just—”
Pete stops talking abruptly, the words cutting off as though they’ve dried up in his throat, which is when Ben realizes he’s stepped forward and put a hand on Pete’s shoulder.
“God, sorry,” they say together, Ben jumping backward even as Pete springs up and out of the chair. Ben’s confused—he’s not sure why Pete’s apologizing, or jumping away, or even why he, Ben, is doing those things, beyond that the way Pete is acting makes him feel as though he should be doing them.
But Pete looks like he knows why he’s doing what he’s doing.
He’s looking at Ben with an expression of total panic with which Ben is intimately familiar, having seen it in person and on film enough times now to commit it to memory.
To be the person who put it there is… non-optimal, Ben decides, as if from very far away.
To not know how or why, though, is a particularly corrosive brand of torture, pouring acid on the already flimsy lock holding back Ben’s self-doubt.
“Sorry,” Pete says again, too quickly, walking backwards down the alley away from Ben now.
“Sorry, I didn’t mean to dump all that on you, or to forget about our plans, or for you to see—it doesn’t matter, okay?
Just, I’m sorry, it’s only that it’s such a bad day, and it’s going to take ages to clean up that damn elote, and we’ll reschedule, and I’ll see you—”
And here Pete’s face goes utterly stricken, the expression genuinely making Ben think for a second that they’re about to be mugged, before he smooths it away and finishes, “Uh. Soon.”
“Okay…?” Ben says, when Pete stops at a door in the alley a few feet away, puts one hand on the knob.
Stepping closer, he realizes it must be the back entrance to Castillo’s; their logo is painted on the surface, faded and peeling away.
Aware that he has maybe seconds left before Pete vanishes down a path upon which Ben has neither the permission nor the non-slip shoes to follow, he says, “Pete, listen, I’m really sorry if I did something to—”
“God,” Pete says, sounding so upset all of a sudden that Ben’s mouth snaps shut in shock. “Please don’t apologize to me. Please. It isn’t you, just… I can’t talk right now, okay? I have to go.”
And before Ben can reply, Pete’s disappearing back into his father’s restaurant, the door slamming shut behind him.