15
My tender cheek and lack of sleep make me feel like I’m hungover. It probably looked that way, too, when I woke up in a pool of lukewarm water on my carpet. For a second I thought I passed out and pissed myself, but realized I just fell asleep holding a Ziploc bag full of ice cubes, which melted and leaked onto the floor. At least that’ll evaporate in a few hours. Unlike the black eye that’s just getting started on my face.
This. This is not a good look for me.
Standing in front of the mirror, I turn my cheek from left to right thinking that maybe if the light hits it just right, the area around my eye won’t look like the mess it is. Did he really hit me this hard? It’s like that zit you popped a little too much, turning what could have been gone in forty-eight hours into a bruised, purple mess that’s not going anywhere without a scab first. Couple that with the yelling that went on and I’m convinced that if my neighbors see me this morning, they’ll label me the trailer trash of the tenth floor.
I flip the light off in the bathroom and sit myself down on the couch. I look around my quiet, sun-filled apartment and take in the calm after the storm.
I don’t know exactly why, but I proceed to check Locator. The thing I’ve played keep-away with for months is now my compulsion. Benji’s phone no longer shows up at all, which means either the battery has died, or everything on it has been erased by the hoodlum who accepted the device as payment for an eight ball because Benji had already spent the cash from the pop-ups. It feels disgusting to realize the latter option is the more probable of the two.
It’s crazy because I protect my belongings like they’re sacred. My laptop? I worked hard for that. My iPod? The gateway to my soul. My cell phone? My link to everything that is holy—my family, my friends, my Facebook feed.
But these things to Benji are nothing—or rather, they become nothing. They are fleeting pieces of hard goods that at any given moment can and will be used against his sobriety. I wonder if he regrets at all deciding in a flash that his iPhone, the thing he uses to tweet his face off, was disposable. Especially since it probably made calling an Uber—or calling anyone, actually—a little difficult at 4:00 a.m.
Speaking of a little difficult, there’s someone I need to talk to. ASAP.
Starbucks on Fullerton. 10:30, I text Angela.
Ten seconds later, she replies: U know it’s already 11, right?
Fuck, I’m dragging major ass today.
Just be there in 20, K?
Sure thing, sunshine.
I use a whole bottle of liquid foundation in an attempt to even out my face. The cakiness will probably make me break out, but what else is there to cover up the red, blue and purple mark below my eye? And then there’s the swelling, which no amount of Maybelline can contour away. For that, I’ll turn to big sunglasses.
I poke my head out of my apartment like I’m checking for traffic, then slither a few doors down to exit through the stairwell. That’s right, I’m choosing to crawl down ten flights of stairs so that I can avoid my neighbors and bypass the front desk completely. I can’t take a chance that Quincy is working a double. No one can see me like this. Not even Angela. The last thing I need is someone calling social services and having them show up outside my door pressuring me to file a report about a situation I still can’t comprehend really happened.
Out on the street, the sun feels like a spotlight beaming just on me. I can see the Starbucks and it’s just half a block away. Half a block—that’s, like, what, a hundred steps? You can do this, I tell myself. Just keep your head down.
As I tilt my head to the ground, the thoughts come rushing forward, too.
This was an accident, wasn’t it? Oh god, if it’s not...does this mean I’m a victim of domestic abuse?
And where the hell did he go? I hope he didn’t OD.
Wait, did he even do the pop-ups, then? I remember the delivery driver who said he went Wednesday, but what if that guy delivers drugs in addition to Thai food and he’s in on this somehow?
“Hey! Watch where you’re going, would you?” says a male voice, his tattooed arm knocking into me. I gasp as I look up.
It’s not him. It’s not him.
My mind is playing tricks on me, which I suppose is the result of three hours of restless sleep and possibly a head injury from the moderate blow I took to the moneymaker. I need to pull myself together, especially since I see Angela already waiting for me just steps ahead on the patio of Starbucks. She’s sitting in the sun, so no need to remove my shades. Thank god, because these knock-off Ray-Bans are the only thing keeping my secret, and as long as the heavy gray clouds in the distance stay glued to the horizon, I think I can get away with looking normal. I just hope I can act normal.
“Allie-cakes!” she chirps. “What can I get you to drink, baby doll? A little latte to get the blood flowing?”
It surprises me how chummy we are—or rather, she is with me. I’m not sure when we became sorority sisters, but I guess I don’t mind the fact she’s skipped out on hazing me.
“Nothing, I don’t drink coffee,” I say matter-of-factly.
“You did say Starbucks, right?”
“Yes.”
“Well, okay then.” I can tell Angela is being facetious, but I don’t have the energy to rise to semantics. “So to what do I owe the caffeine-free privilege?”
“I just, I guess, I...” I guess I haven’t really thought about this. I haven’t come here to tell her what happened back at the ranch, that’s for sure. But I do need some sort of a sign from her that all hope isn’t lost. That from her vantage point, everything is still going strong.
“Spit it out, Al. I’ve got a budget meeting with Craig to get to after this.”
“Well, I wrote the check Monday, almost a week ago. And I know we open in like, what, forty-five days?”
“It’s forty now.”
I swallow hard against the sandpaper in my throat. “Shit. Okay. So how has it been going? Like, with planning for Here. I’m just kind of...”
“Freaking out a little bit?”
“Yeah. Something like that. I want to make sure you’re on track.”
“I’m sorry, was closing a deal on a restaurant on Randolph Street in forty-eight hours not fast enough for you?”
She can’t see through my sunnies, but I’m rolling my eyes. Sometimes her sarcasm is like a tollgate that just won’t let me through.
“Angela, come on.”
“Alright, tough crowd. First of all, calm down. What did I tell you? I got this. We got this. You have a dream team.”
There it is again, that cute little rhyme. I let out a breath and wonder, is it still a dream if one of the players punched me in the face? It might be too late to make a trade at this point, but how much do I reveal about Benji’s performance at home when I still don’t know how his relapse will affect him on the field? I don’t have time to figure it out before Angela plows ahead.
“Allie, it sounds to me like you’re dancing around asking me whether or not Benji’s reached out to me to get things going on his end. So allow me: the answer is no, I haven’t heard from him. Didn’t you say he was doing one last round of pop-ups or something? I’ve been too busy to keep up with social media this week.”
“Yeah, they just ended last night.”
“Well, then, there you go. Now just because he’s been busy doing his own thing, that doesn’t mean I haven’t been moving forward with everything at Here. We’ve got three shifts of workers over there to open on time. There’s already new flooring, paint, molding, you wouldn’t even recognize the place. Signage was ordered yesterday—it’s all custom, so it’s going to take a few weeks—same with monogrammed cocktail napkins and the fancy cloth paper towels for the bathrooms. The electrician is coming tomorrow to install lighting throughout and we’ve got chairs, tables and glassware on hold for us at the warehouse.”
“Wow, so it’s like a real restaurant.”
“As real as it gets. And you saw all that press come through last night, right? PR firms are eating this shit up. I’ve actually never seen anything like it. Normally, it’s kosher to announce something like this during the week—I think Tuesdays at 10:00 a.m. are the sweet spot. But I figured with Benji’s pop-ups ending last night, we’d hit people with the ‘what’s next’ right away. And it worked! It totally defied everything I thought I knew about the media. But then again, I’ve never opened a restaurant on Randolph Street with a reformed addict driving the boat. I really think Benji is our lucky charm here, I must say.”
I can’t handle another suggestion that Benji Zane shits roses, so I throw a flag. “Well, that all sounds fine and great, Angela,” I say, sharpening my whisper. “Really nice job with the press release. But what about Benji? Shouldn’t you and he be, like, menu planning? Or talking about seating? I don’t know, chef-y stuff?”
“Chef-y stuff? Goddamn, I wish I had a latte right about now,” she says to no one in particular. “You’re right. It’s a little odd that he hasn’t been breathing down my neck asking me to help source squirrel meat for opening night, but the kid chose to do a string of pop-ups while we’ve been clearing the path on some of the nitty-gritty stuff. He’s just been busy. Right?”
Busy doing something.
I shrug. I’m not going to offer up any details on what happened last night. Whatever it was, was a temporary setback. It has to be for the sake of the bigger issue at hand: getting Here up and running on time. I’m not sure in what order these things need to happen, I just know that I only have forty days to get him to apologize for last night, admit the truth about whatever happened, and somehow still cheer him on until the doors of Here open to the public and a photo of us holding hands and bowing for a clamoring audience shows up for the second time this year on the front page of FoodFeed. Difficult? Yes. Impossible? No.
“Look, in my heart of hearts, I think he’s just really nervous, okay? This is the biggest deal of his life, Allie. His reputation is quite literally on the line. If he fucks this up, he’s out. He’s a goner. There’s not one single restaurant in this city that would hire him, not even McDonald’s. And at his level of notoriety, hell, I doubt he could get a job in any major food city. Forget New York. Forget Miami. Possibly LA, because California is the land of fruits and nuts, but honestly, this is it for him. He has to succeed with Here.”
I don’t respond because the only words I can gather in my brain articulate a question about how someone can have the proverbial world in his hands, and risk throwing it all away to get high off some dirty cocaine from the Ukrainian Village.
“And then, Allie, let’s not forget you. He’s deathly afraid of letting you down. I mean, you’re really the only one who has ever given him a chance. Sure, yeah, Craig and I did, too, but that’s only because we saw you do it first. We thought, ‘Hey, if that shit-together Allie chick is with him, there’s got to be something good there.’”
I give her a cockeyed look. “Really?”
“I swear to god, that’s how we saw it! And I’m pretty sure that’s how this entire city sees it. They trust you. They like you. And so they’re willing to give Benji a second chance. Which is exactly why we are already one hundred percent booked with reservations on our opening night.”
“Wait. Are you kidding me?”
“It’s a perfect sell,” she says.
“Perfect sell?”
“Yes. We’re fully committed.”
“Fully committed?”
“Oh my god, Allie, you’re killing me. Let me put it this way: every seat will have an ass in it ALL NIGHT LONG with no room for walk-ins. Been that way since five minutes after the first press release hit Twitter.”
“Oh my god, yay!” I give Angela a high five. Is that what you do in this situation? I have no idea, but what I do know is I just showed my age. I also know that fancy restaurant lingo aside, a packed restaurant is a good thing for my investment.
Angela pulls out a travel size of Purell and rubs it on her hands post high five. This bitch, I swear.
“Look, as much as I’d like to stay and chat, I need to go meet Craig. After budgets, it’s back to the restaurant, where I’ll be supervising the ladies’ room build-out. If the mirrors aren’t floor-to-ceiling like I ordered, I’m going to flip my shit. The boxes were delivered yesterday. They look a little on the short side. So, are we done here?”
I’m breathing easier, so that must mean yes.
She scoots out her chair, getting ready to dismiss herself from the patio.
“Here’s a piece of advice, Allie. Take it or leave it. Talk to Benji. Tell him how much you love him, support him, and how confident you are that he’s going to absolutely knock it out of the park come opening night.”
“I have been doing that,” I say, not trying to sound defensive.
“I’m sure you have. But people like him need more reassurance than people like you. He’s got to always feel like you know he can do it. And then he can do it. And will do it.”
I let out an audible sigh.
“Hey, it’s okay. I know what happened here.” Angela says softly, putting a tender hand on my shoulder and looking me square in the eye.
Oh god. Is Angela who he called when I kicked him out?
“I know you’re freaking out because you feel like him rising or falling is on your plate. But such is life for the person who’s his rock. I’m lucky, he’s lucky and the whole city of Chicago is lucky that person is you and that you can handle it. You love him, right?”
The tweet that made me his. The tattoo that’s on his wrist. His tender gnocchi and his surprisingly soft heart. Despite the turmoil of the past twenty-four hours, my favorite things about him scroll like pages in a flip-book and the answer to Angela’s question is an absolute yes. I do love him.
“Then go home and tell him so. Then fuck his brains out because you won’t be seeing much of him after we start planning this beast of a menu tomorrow.”
“Got it.”
Her thoughtful suggestion, mortifyingly heard by everyone al fresco, seems so distant. Being intimate with the man who is responsible for the throbbing pain billowing beneath my gas-station Wayfarers is the last item on my agenda. I need time to think about what happened and come to grips with the fact that we’ve got no choice but to work this out. Quickly, quietly and together.
She walks off, adding one more marching order: “Oh, and tell his ass to call me. I’m serious. Ciao, ciao for now.”
Her request is simple enough but the problem is, I don’t know where to find him and I’m not ready to go back to the scene of the crime and start making calls just yet. If the melted ice hasn’t dried from my carpet, then the wound is too fresh.
I check my phone on the off chance he’s reached out sometime during my chat with Angela. Nothing but a text from Maya.
Getting a pedi at noon if U wanna come?
Yes. Yes, Maya, I desperately want to have someone scrub the dry skin off my feet while I pretend to be normal for an hour. But what’s going on on my face isn’t normal and she’s definitely a person I can’t tell the truth to right now. I think quickly and fire back a reply that gets me the best of both worlds.
Sure. FYI burned my cheek w/ curling iron. Don’t ask.
LOL u would, she sends back.
* * *
Part of me feels incredibly irresponsible. My dog is lost and I’m sitting in a massage chair as a nice Korean woman paints my toes an ironic shade called “Orange You Lucky.” The other part of me is dying to tell Maya everything, but instead I divert the attention to someone else.
“Why didn’t Jazzy come?” I ask.
“Tinder.”
“Oh god, not again. What about you? What’s going on in the dating department?”
“Nothing. But I did sleep with an Irishman last night,” Maya says proudly.
“Considering this is the first I’ve heard of him, something tells me you didn’t get to three dates first.”
“His visa expired today. I had to make an exception.”
I plaster a smile on my face. Maya and Jazzy are the definition of twentysomething, big-city living. One of them is out on a date simply because she made a swiping motion with her finger on her smudgy phone screen. The other may or may not have slept with Conor McGregor’s cousin. But who cares? Life’s good when none of these people smack you in the eye the morning after.
In a time when I should be clinging on to my friendships the most, I’m thinking a little distance might make me feel better. Or at least, stop me from comparing my complicated life to their carefree ones.
Though my phone is on silent, I see the screen light up from my bag and peek into it. My doorman’s called me twice, which tells me that a keyless, phoneless Benji must be back. I’ve got to get going.
On my fifteen-minute brisk walk back home, I recite out loud, “I forgive you. I love you. I believe in you,” over and over. By the time the polish on my toes dries, it better sound like I mean it.
The other thing I do on my walk back is imagine where he’s been this whole time. I deduce probably on a bench by the lake, waiting for what seemed like an appropriate amount of time to pass in order to come back and try to make peace with me. I’m not over it, that’s for sure. But I’m in it. In the thick of it. And right now, it’s best that we move this apology along for the sake of the restaurant and my woefully sparse bank account. I hope there’s at least a bouquet of roses waiting for me as I escort him back upstairs. Thinking about it, I’m actually somewhat excited to experience his remorse. The makeup sex, whenever we get to it, will be undoubtedly out of this world. As will be the meal he cooks me tonight to show how much he cares.
Upon entering the lobby, I look left and I look right. He’s not there. The weekend doorman, some rent-a-cop type guy who looks to be about eighty-five years old, is reading a James Patterson book behind the desk and doesn’t even look up to acknowledge me.
“Excuse me,” I interrupt. “Did you call me?”
“Who are you?” asks the doorman.
“Allie Simon. 1004.”
He leans over to check the call log. “Oh, yes. I did. You haven’t confirmed a time for your annual furnace check yet. Are you available Tuesday around 10:00 a.m.?”
“My apartment has a furnace? Listen, did anyone come here looking for me? Asking for me? A tattooed guy with a man-bun by chance?”
“With a what?”
“A man-bun.” I make a swirly motion on the top of my head. “Ugh, never mind.”
Dejected, I make my way up to my apartment trying to wrap my brain around what I’m supposed to do now.
As I step off the elevator, I can see that the door to my apartment is cracked slightly open, so the light from my windows floods into the dark hallway like a laser beam. That’s when it hits me: I never locked the door when I snuck out to shimmy down the stairs earlier.
Oh my god. He’s inside.
For some reason, reuniting with Benji after our blowout felt much more exciting when I knew it was going to start in a public place with an audience, the lobby of our building. Now I’m proceeding with extreme caution, gripping my cell phone in my hand just in case a loose cannon goes off. Just in case he’s thought about it and he’s not actually sorry. Just in case he’s thought about it and he’s pissed. Just in case...he hits me again.
Have I mentioned how far away we are from those first moments with him that seemed so nonchalant? So serendipitous and special? I can’t believe I’m now afraid of the man I’ve had tabs on for the last three and a half months.
“Benji?” I say, pushing the door open. I repeat to the silence, “Benji?”
It’s a small studio apartment; there are only so many places he could be. No one in the kitchen. No one in the closet. No one in the living room/bedroom. I circle my way around to the bathroom. The vent fan is on.
At the bottom of the bathtub are about four of the little plastic button bags, all of them empty. There’s a makeshift pipe made of tin foil and a lighter near the drain. It smells like burnt hair or something. Something I’m not sure I should be inhaling too deeply.
The coast is clear. No Benji. Just a sure sign he had been watching and waiting for me to leave. Park bench all night? Ha. Try just down hallway. Clearly, the moment he saw me depart down the stairs, he snuck back in and had one last hurrah at the expense of my recently refinished bathtub. I checked his hoodie for paraphernalia while he was “showering” last night and found nothing, which tells me he was really in the bathroom to hide his stash under the toilet tank before showering the detritus off with my bottle of Pantene. When I kicked him out without a chance to sneakily pack it back up, well, he had to come back for it. Not for me. Just for the score.
My thoughts are eerily calm as I piece together how the crime was committed. First he did this, then he did that, and so on, and so forth—trying to make some sense out of this very confusing situation. Before I came upstairs I was thinking about makeup sex, but now it’s obvious he’s on a bender somewhere off in the distance.
“Rita called it,” I say out loud. “Rita fucking called it.”
I’m a big believer in trusting my gut, but my gut never felt this coming. The one thing I rely on to make good decisions and keep myself safe and sane has failed me. I have no idea if my intuition is broken or if it’s just been outsmarted. Outsmarted by a man who thought it was a good idea to abandon his dream job just days after it had been fully funded by his dream girl.
None of this makes sense and neither does what I see as I look up at the mirror near the tub. There’s a note from Benji written in green marker. Scribbled frantically, it says: I AM SORRY
The message is hardly cryptic. The handwriting gets progressively more illegible as it trails off to the lower right corner. My instinct is to smudge it off with my fingers but when I try, it turns out it’s written in permanent marker. I’m not sure this kind of thing is covered by my security deposit. I’m already not looking forward to the sorry-I-have-a-psychotic-boyfriend conversation with my landlord.
I don’t even know where to begin with cleaning up the bathroom, which is only a bloodstain away from being a murder scene in my mind. My confusion has catapulted into anger and I don’t think channeling it through scrubbing the mirror is a good idea right now unless I want to wind up with glass on the floor and seven years of bad luck. So I continue on through the apartment in pursuit of any other thoughtful clues Benji may have left behind to help me figure out just how far off the deep end he’s launched or where he may have gone.
On my way out of the bathroom, I see that his shelf in my closet is cleared off and the duffel bag he originally moved in with is gone. All that’s left is a toothbrush and his knife set.
Leaving his knife set behind might speak even louder than the mess in my bathtub. He would never leave Dodge without the one thing that makes him who he is. Or who everyone thinks he is: a master chef; a genius with a blade. Yes, the events that have transpired are complete insanity, but I find some solace in knowing he’s not gone for good; he can’t be. He’ll come back for these knives when the high wears off, the withdrawals subside and he realizes just how shitty it was to risk throwing it all away in the eleventh hour because things got a little stressful. At the sight of the knives, I think: we still have time to figure this out. And we will.
How he’s gone from “man on a mission” to total monster in just five days is...well, it’s not exactly a mystery, because it’s everything Rita warned me about. I want to call her, tell her she’s won the grand prize. Guessing he was about to relapse is kind of like winning a baby pool or something, right? Or maybe not. No matter how you look at it, there can’t be satisfaction in knowing you were right in a situation like this. There’s only embarrassment in knowing that you were—that I was, completely and utterly—wrong, and I’d rather feel my shame in private.
I take the elevator up to the penthouse storage unit, being triple sure to lock the door behind me. It’s the only place I can go right now to feel safe.
I let myself collapse to the ground like I’ve done so many times before. My phone rings from the cement floor next to me. I look at the caller ID—it’s my mom. I send her straight to voice mail.
I resent Benji now more than ever for the simple fact I could not pick this call up. Yes, I’m hurt. I’m scared. And I need my mom. But I can’t do this right now. I can’t have a casual conversation about her neighbor’s dog or her hairdresser when all that’s on my mind is the travesty that’s just gone on in my apartment. But what’s on my mind and what’s going to come out of my mouth are two different things. Because no one can hear the truth about the last twelve hours. No one.
That’s when my mom’s mantra trickles into my mind. “I won’t be mad, as long as you tell me the truth.”
It’s the thing she’s drilled into me since I was a kid, but this feels like the one exception. This isn’t the kind of truth you tell your mom. This isn’t your run-of-the-mill breakup story.
Is that what this is, a breakup story? Or is it just a new level of theatrics for Benji? Which one am I wishing for?
She leaves a voice mail. I check the transcript. “Hi, honey. Nordstrom Rack is having a grand opening sale. Need anything? Call me back. ’Bye, sweetie.”
I throw my phone across the floor. How dare Benji get between my mom and me to the point I can’t even take a call about a damn Nordstrom Rack without risking unraveling, and thus, jeopardizing my relationship with my mother?
That’s when the sobs come in waves; I am drowning yet again. I drop my bruised head into my hands and give myself a pass to just lose it for thirteen minutes...the amount of time left on the fluorescent light timer.
When the lights go dark, that’s my cue to leave.
Okay, Allie. That’s enough.
I pick myself up, dry my eyes and fetch my phone, which now has a crack through the screen.
It’s time to go back inside and clean up what I know for sure is one of many messes Benji has left behind.