Chapter Twenty
The Toothpaste Factory
They ate together at the small table. It had only two chairs, the perfect size. “Do you like to read?” Trenton asked.
From his angle near the door, he could see the bookshelves in the living room. Two of them, each of a decent size.
Hilary followed his gaze. “I read, though I don’t always like it. Do you want to take a look?”
The man followed him out into the living room, carrying his bowl. It reminded Trenton of the restaurant. Hilary would often eat like that, in the doorway, talking to him and watching him work, usually complaining about the heat. It was why Trenton always kept the fan angled toward the doorway.
On the first shelf were a surprising number of children’s titles.
That was how he knew the man really did read.
Hilary wouldn’t have them if the books were there only for decoration or to make him seem like some kind of intellectual.
Trenton ran his fingers along the spines and recognized most of them.
The man had exceedingly good taste, though it soon became apparent that the overlap was more than coincidence.
Yes, many of the books he liked were classics, but to see not just some of his favorites, but all of them?
This was another thing Hilary had done with intention—and done for him.
He pulled Anne of Green Gables off the shelf. It was a strange choice for a man in his thirties to own, and he cherished so much that Hilary did. “I love this book.”
“Yes.”
Trenton knew that if he asked, Hilary might tell him how he’d known about the books, and just knowing that the answer existed somewhere was enough that he didn’t need to ask for it. Trenton turned to the second bookcase. “You must like poetry.”
Hilary crouched down before the many, seemingly endless volumes of verse. “I hate it, actually. It’s unbearable to read, but somehow I keep buying more volumes.” He tapped the Anne of Green Gables. “Will you read aloud?”
It was different from reading to himself.
Maybe it shouldn’t have been considered reading at all.
He was so aware of Hilary. Even more than he would have been with just outright staring at him.
When he came to the end of the third chapter, he looked up to gauge whether to continue and found himself saying, “I’m going to get a new job. ”
As before, Hilary showed no surprise, either at his speaking or with the subject. He was leaning against the couch cushions, curled up with his feet tucked to the side. “You want to?”
It came from a realization he’d had while cooking dinner.
Back at the restaurant, he thought he’d been cooking for many people, but really, he’d just been cooking for Hilary.
Even without the day’s incident, just having this now, having been in the house’s kitchen, there was no longer any point in returning to the restaurant. “I don’t want to go back there.”
Hilary brought his head up. “You misunderstand. What I meant was—do you enjoy working? Employment?”
Trenton was confused by the question. “Does anyone?”
“Some do.”
For some reason, the image that came to mind was of a man spooning ice cream out of buckets wearing a badge with Official Ice Cream Tester across it. “When I was a kid, I thought I’d get a job at the toothpaste factory.”
A bark of surprised laughter left Hilary. “Why toothpaste?”
It had been such a stupid thing to say, but there was no choice but to continue.
“Most jobs have you talking to people all day, but I was painfully shy as a kid, frightened of growing up. But then I saw this series called ‘How things are made’ and it was all these different factories putting things together. And in one of them there was this person in a gown and mask checking toothpaste caps all by herself, and I thought, ‘I could do that.’”
He was afraid to look at Hilary, sure the man’s estimation of him must be in the toilet, but Hilary was smiling, enchanted. “In that case, I’d work at a candy factory. Something like cotton candy or chocolate bars. I bet it would smell amazing.”
Yes, he bet it would. “You’d be hungry all day.”
“I’m hungry all day anyway. Look, jellybeans.” Hilary had his phone out, scrolling through videos already. “It’s a fucking rainbow in there. Fantastic.”
What was fantastic was the childlike look of wonder on the man’s face.
It felt impossible that just a few hours ago he’d had his hand around the neck of a customer, vomiting and crying like some demented criminal.
It should have made this place, the quiet loveliness of the house, and the sounds of a narrator explaining the outer shell of a jellybean, feel like an illusion.
But it was the life outside that felt like a dream, the nightmare he’d woken up from.
Here, now, with the grain of the wood beneath his feet, the brocade lining the edges of the couch pillows, and the warmth gently radiating from the body beside him, it all seemed real in a way he had no experience with.
“I’m changing my choice,” Hilary said, having switched to another video.
It was a tour of the Hostess factory, and they were watching mechanical arms fill cupcakes with cream.
“I think this one is open for public tours. Think we should go? Shit, it’s in Kansas.
Am I really at a point in my life where I’d get on a plane just to see some cupcakes? ”
This was the feeling, Trenton realized. The one that had made Anne Shirley wax poetic about Diana Barry’s hair, and why Gimli had risked his life to go with Legolas to the Undying Lands.
This feeling, the tightness of the forming bond, wasn’t a thing of fiction like all the best things in books were. It was real.
“No,” Trenton said, rudely interrupting Hilary’s definitive listing of all Hostess snack cakes, ranked best to worst. “I don’t like working.”
Hilary stopped in the middle of baby bundts (cute, but revoltingly soggy) and said, “Then don’t.”
“Don’t?”
Trenton thought being dismissed was his punishment for interrupting the conversation.
But it wasn’t dismissal at all. Hilary switched gears as easily as another person might have changed the TV channel.
“Don’t work,” he said. “I make enough for both of us, so there’s no point in going if you don’t enjoy it.
So long as neither of us takes up a penchant for luxury Italian sports cars, we should be fine. ”
Again, Hilary was saying life-changing things with deceptive casualness. As if it really could be as simple as that.
“That doesn’t seem fair,” he made himself say.
Hilary was back to lounging, his phone forgotten in his lap. “For you or for me?”
“For you. Having to work while I don’t.”
“It’s the opposite, actually. I’d rather have you here.
A place I know is safe. That way I don’t have to worry about what anyone might be doing to you while I’m gone.
What happened today at the restaurant—that’s going to fuck me up for a while.
A long while. I don’t think I can handle the thought of you in a new place, and I don’t want to.
I wish you’d stay here. I want to ask you to stay here. ”
And he could see that Hilary had been wanting to ask—no, that he had been asking it of him the whole while, every time he’d come to visit the restaurant secretly hoping to have him take off the apron and never look back.
Trenton found it was the easiest decision he’d ever make.
“I’ll quit now.” Had already mentally quit, in fact.
Where had he put his phone? He always knew where it was, but it wasn’t in his pocket.
He found it on the bookcase, and three minutes later he was back on the couch after his resignation call and feeling very different.
Bold. Assertive. Entirely foreign to himself.
“You need to say it when you need something,” he told his new jailer.
“I know I should be like you and understand without needing to hear things, but for now you need to advocate for yourself.”
Hilary gaped at him.
Trenton took the man’s hand. It seemed another push was needed.
“What else would help, do you think?” He asked.
“Should I follow you to work, or stay here at home where it’s safe?
We could download one of those GPS tracking apps for me.
They make those, I think. For parents to keep track of their children. ”
Hilary’s gaping was only growing worse, and Trenton wasn’t sure what he was doing wrong.
“Would a security camera be better? Or one of those baby monitors. Those have sound too, right? Do you want me to check in with you at certain times? We can set up—”
The hand clamped over his mouth had Trenton stopping mid-sentence.
Hilary was looking overwhelmed. “Why are you saying those things?”
Trenton waited for the hand to peel back before he spoke again. “I thought it might help to have the options. You’re anxious, right?”
“But it’s not normal. Wanting to spy on you. To have you constantly scrutinized.”
Trenton told himself not to laugh, knowing somehow that it would upset Hilary further. “But aren’t you a stalker?”
Hilary went white. Then pink. Then abruptly stood, going back to the kitchen.
Trenton followed and watched the man bang around, pouring himself a glass of milk.
Hilary got himself a straw and everything, pink with silver swirls going around.
When the man caught him looking, he snarled, “They’re leftovers from a party at work. ”
“I didn’t say anything.”
“You were thinking it.”
It was no good. Trenton knew he would laugh soon. He could feel the smile starting up already. “Are you upset with me?”
“You make me sound crazy.”
“I thought we both were.”
Hilary was banging around in the cabinets too. When he found a box of animal crackers, he took them down—preempting judgment with another glare.
“Do you like those?” Trenton found himself asking, unable to keep quiet.
“You’re not getting any.”