Chapter 14
FOURTEEN
Ben doesn’t bother attempting to sleep that night; he knows better.
He’s simply not built for this, to bounce from feeling so good to feeling so bad in such a short amount of time.
Ben, in general, doesn’t bounce. If people who can roll with the punches are made of rubber, then Ben is terracotta: Drop him from a height and get the dubious thrill of watching him shatter.
It’s a cold day to be doing this; Ben doesn’t care.
He used to do it when he first moved to New York, when he felt alone and stupid and certain that whatever happened, no matter how unhappy he was, he could not crawl back to Michigan and prove his parents right about his inability to hack it in the big city.
He’d been adrift within the seas of himself at that point, the only soul sailing upon a strange and lonely ocean, and so the temperature hadn’t mattered to him then, either.
It had just mattered to be there, watching the sun peek up from over the horizon line and illuminate the Statue of Liberty from behind, and feel like he was part of this complicated, storied city.
Like he was really experiencing living here, even if he was doing it somewhat pathetically, and utterly by himself.
Today he’s not looking at the Statue of Liberty. He’s staring in shivering, wistful silence across the river at New Jersey, which looks to be just waking up.
It’s not that he knows what’s going to happen; Ben doesn’t know anything, not anything at all.
Two days ago, he thought he knew some stuff, but he was—kidding himself, probably, about all of that.
If this weekend was anything to go by, he couldn’t possibly have had any of it right.
He spent a good chunk of the previous day trying to work it all out, solve for what could have happened to make things take such a dramatic wrong turn, but around two in the morning, he realized it was pointless and gave it up.
Ben knows nothing, and the uncertainty is dreadful, but the most dreadful part about it is in fact the single thread of information running through it, the one thing about which he is, right now, absolutely sure.
Ben might not know what’s going to happen, but he knows it’s going to be something bad.
He can feel that inevitability tingling and buzzing within him the way he used to be able to predict what kind of night the restaurant would have, the very edge of the catastrophe curve starting to give way under his feet.
It’s so unfair it makes his chest hurt, his teeth—Ben got, what, a week?
Of something good? A single week of feeling like he might have a shot at a real relationship, of caring about someone who cared about him in return, and now it’s all going to go wrong?
Nearly a decade of being alone and he gets a week? What kind of a deal is that?
There isn’t anything to be done about it, though, so Ben watches night become day, trying to think about nothing at all.
When the sun is up, he throws away his trash, gets back on the subway, and lurks in a coffee shop a few blocks away from Formica headquarters until just before nine.
He people-watches to avoid looking at his phone, which he knows is not going to show any new texts from Pete, as none have come in since yesterday, not even after Ben reached out to say he hoped everything was all right.
As he sits hunched in the table closest to the coffee shop’s large picture window, he tries not to scowl to see the whole block shift into Christmas mode before his very eyes: people changing out their window displays, wrapping street poles with garlands and twinkly lights.
He, himself, has never felt less festive in his life.
It’s in this Scrooge-like spirit that Ben makes his way into Formica headquarters, having moved past anxiety and into a state of mind he would characterize more as a desire to be put out of his misery.
He keeps his head down as he walks through the building doors, fishing his contractor ID badge out of his bag as he has every weekday morning for years now.
Wearily, as he reaches the small bay of electronic security gates that grants access to the employee-only elevator bank, Ben waves the badge over the reader without bothering to slow his pace and—
“Ow!” Ben snaps, surprised, as he walks directly into the plastic security divider. It should have moved—it always moves—and he waves his ID over the reader again, puzzled. The divider stays stubbornly closed.
Taking a step back so he can fully take in the gate before him, Ben narrows his eyes. Then, with an air of a man reaching into a tiger enclosure, he waves his ID badge over the reader for the third time.
In this attempt, which also does not work, Ben can see the light below the reader flash a judgmental, punishing red.
Terror begins to churn in his gut, freezing anything it touches as though he’s swallowed liquid nitrogen.
Face flushing, he realizes a few of the other employees milling around are looking at him now, watching as though they’re trying to work out what’s happening, and whether or not he’s going to make a scene.
Hastily, Ben retreats a few steps, out of the flow of traffic to the elevators. Leaning against the nearest wall, he pulls out his phone with shaking fingers and checks his email.
And there it is, right at the topic of his inbox, sent only a few minutes ago: Just what he was afraid he was going to see, and hoping so much that he wouldn’t.
To: Benjamin Blumenthal
From: Erik Aaronson
CC: Miranda Culter
Subject: Termination
Dear Ben,
We regret to inform you that your contract position with Formica Media has been terminated effective immediately.
As you know, all of our contract workers are hired at will, and subject to termination due to fluctuations in budget, work availability, project planning, etcetera.
Though we cannot discuss specifics, your services will no longer be required.
Thank you for your time here at Formica. Wishing you all the best.
Regards,
Erik Aaronson
Associate Co-Director of Human Resources
Formica Media
For the space of Ben’s next few breaths, time slows down.
He drags his eyes up from his phone screen as if pulling them away from the abyss, an agonizing, grueling effort, to look at the people milling around him.
They, too, seem to Ben to be frozen in place, caught in the amber his memory is pouring frantically onto this moment, determined to capture every punishing angle whether Ben likes it or not.
He knows none of them—there are too many people working here to know everyone—Ben has never liked working here, at least up until the last few months.
But somehow this collection of people hurrying in for their Monday morning meetings, this hideous fluorescent lighting, this overdone eyesore of a first floor that Ben has prowled a thousand times looking for someone to talk to, have all become part of the fabric of Ben’s reality.
He has constructed his life around being here, telling himself it was just for now and it didn’t matter to him anyway, that he was fine with the inherently tenuous nature of contract work, that it was only a paycheck.
That it wasn’t like it was important, in the long term, what happened, so long as he could cover his rent one way or another.
That he wasn’t going to become one of those people who let some crappy, exploitative job define him.
Ben realizes, too late, that he was wrong, but it’s not as though it will change anything. After all, he’s just a guy who doesn’t work here anymore.
The sound of his own breath is what, eventually, pulls him back into the flow of time; it’s ragged, as though he ran here from the subway instead of walking with the slow, steady pace of a man to the gallows.
He tries, desperately, to gather himself.
Hadn’t he known, after all, that something bad was going to happen?
Okay, granted, this exact scenario had not played out in even his most anxiety-riddled imaginings, but maybe there’s an upside.
Maybe Ben’s sense of impending doom was strictly professional.
Maybe it wasn’t because he’s blown his shot with—
Pete.
Ben’s gaze, which had been pinging around like a trapped animal’s, fixes on the other man, who has clearly just arrived. He looks cold, red-cheeked and shaking snow from his hair, but he freezes when he sees Ben, his expression changing in an instant.
It is not, Ben notes with some trepidation, an expression that suggests Pete is pleased to see him.
It’s more an expression you’d see on someone who has opened their refrigerator, expecting perhaps to be mildly disappointed by its contents, and found, to their surprise, a very angry raccoon who wasn’t in there before.
Still, the part of him that is fizzing and hissing with shock can’t help but take a few steps towards the lifeline of a familiar face, however uncertain he currently is of that face’s entire deal.
And Pete, as though being reeled in by one of Rick’s long lines, is walking towards him, too, stopping when they’re only a few steps apart.
“Ben, what are you—” Pete starts to say, in the same moment Ben, unable to contain it, snaps, “I just got fired.”
“You—what, just now?” Pete stares at him with wide eyes.
“At eight fifty-nine!” Ben says a little wildly, shoving his phone at Pete. “That’s the timestamp on this email! Where they fire me! Not just from Gastronome, by the way, but from Formica at large—”
“What the hell,” Pete mutters, staring down at the phone. “Rick told me—I mean, Christ, he said it was a rumor! Just whispers! I thought we had time, that I’d be able to figure out how to—”
“Sorry,” Ben says, a ringing starting up somewhere in the back of his mind. “Rick told you—what?”