6
I like going to work for two main reasons. First, it’s a place I can go to escape my strange home life. The near-constant sound of a blender, prep bowls always piled high in the sink and the occasional sous chef asleep on the floor is enough to drive anyone crazy. Here in my River North office, I can table what’s going on in my world and tune in for eight hours to what other people, sometimes worlds away, are going through. Granted, these online conversations are almost always about cotton swabs, but I still find ways to engage with hordes of people who seem really nice, really normal. Sometimes I wonder...do any of them have a Benji?
I’m good at what I do, too. So that helps. Our boss, Connor, doesn’t spend a ton of time with our social media department—he’s got bigger, more corporate fish to fry. But he checks in with us formally every six months to see how we’re feeling about things and where we want to go with our jobs. He and I last met together five months ago, when I hinted at creating a new role for myself: Creative Director. Essentially, I’d step back and oversee Stacey and Dionte, our graphic designer and copywriter, respectively, then lead a team of monitors who would divvy up responding to all the social streams. Though I’ve been a little distracted with my home life, I plan to pick up the conversation with him during our next one-on-one review, and remind him he’d been tentatively on board.
The other main reason I like coming here is that people ask me about Benji. And because there are only a few office-appropriate sides of him that I can discuss with my coworkers, my office is a place where I get to bask in the more delicious reasons I love him. When I can only talk about the good, it helps me reaffirm that my feelings for Benji are stronger than ever.
“What’s for lunch today, Allie?” Stacey asks, waiting her turn for the microwave.
“Um, not too sure. Looks like Benji reimagined some of our dinner leftovers,” I say as I stir them around and nuke them for another fifteen seconds.
I’m not giving the man enough credit, I just don’t know the technical terms for what he concocted and threw in a Tupperware for me. I do know, though, that whatever it is is a long way from barbecue sauce and mac ’n’ cheese—the first things he ever learned to cook on his own from scratch.
I’ve never asked him to explain the history of his culinary career to me because I feel like that’s a job for a fawning food blogger—not his other-side-of-the-industry girlfriend. But I know his first kitchen job was when he was in high school. His dad left his mom for a much-younger woman and Benji wrote him off completely. He chose to live with his mom, who moved them to a small apartment in Austin, Texas. That’s when he got a job as a dishwasher at a BBQ joint to help her with the rent.
A few months into the gig, the owners gave him a bit more responsibility—let him toy around with rotating chickens in the smoker, stirring the vat of coleslaw every thirty minutes so it wouldn’t crust over, things like that. One area they did not let him play around in so freely was the bar, but his teenage angst led him to a habit of topping off his free shift fountain drink with a shot of Jim Beam when no one was looking. One day, he got a little more buzzed than usual and decided the mac ’n’ cheese tasted like shit and the barbecue sauce was bland. So he afforded himself the liberty of redoing them both and sent the next twenty dishes out to the dining room with his altered menu choices. Regulars started complaining that something was different, which was when the bosses figured out the root of the problem was the teenager in the kitchen who smelled like whiskey.
From there, Benji bounced around at a few more restaurants. Meanwhile, his mom became depressed and started acting crazy and belligerent from all the medication she would take mixed with the vodka she kept on her nightstand. She was impossible to be around, according to Benji, so he started hanging out with the cooks after work instead of going home. From them, he adopted new kitchen skills along with some bad habits.
Eventually, he tried coke. The drug allowed him to be fearless behind the stove, unintimidated by any ingredient and never in the weeds despite his age or lack of any traditional training. No one could deny that Benji had talent. Talent that went beyond just scrubbing dishes or spicing up a few condiments. But no one in the Greater Austin area was willing to let a teenager who required two smoke breaks an hour be in charge of the kitchen.
At eighteen, he packed up the same black duffel bag that’s currently in my apartment, left his mom $500 cash and bought a Greyhound ticket to New York City. Through the power of social media, he built a following and made connections, setting up a staging gig at a new restaurant every year in all the major foodie destinations. Next came DC, then San Francisco, Miami and Vegas to name a few.
One hot spot at a time, he added skill after skill to his culinary repertoire. One hot spot at a time, he added drug after drug to the shit he was willing to try, ultimately always coming back to coke. Lots of it.
Ultimately, he wound up in the Windy City. He says that’s because it’s the capital of modernist cuisine. I say it’s because Chicago is the capital of girls who put out for chefs. (Guilty.) Regardless, he came here to “settle down”—meaning, to take his first ever full-time cooking job. While the same people who offered him the gig ultimately let him go, it was the first and only time he could really say he made it as a chef.
“Oh my god, that smells amazing,” Dionte says when he happens to catch a whiff in the break room. I have to admit, I feel special. Food may be the way to a man’s heart, but as my colleagues assemble around me, I’m convinced it’s the way to a woman’s ego. It’s like I’m dating da Vinci and I’ve just hung the Mona Lisa in my cubicle. Everyone is oohing and aahing, reminding me just what an awesome perk it is to be dating Benji Zane. I’m the cool kid at the lunch table, just like I was at Republic.
“What did he make?” Dionte asks.
“She’s not sure, but it looks like ditalini pasta with cream and pancetta,” Stacey answers for me. It’s like they’re gathering enough info to send TMZ a tip.
“You’re so lucky,” a girl from a different department gushes from the kitchen table. I don’t even know what her name is, but she begrudgingly stabs at her lackluster salad and shoots jealous death rays my way.
I escape the public scrutiny of the lunchroom and return to my desk to eat quietly alone in my cubicle. Words cannot describe the peace I feel in this little cubby. I used to think my apartment was my own safe haven. Now? Not so much. My cubicle, though, that’s indisputably mine. All twelve and a half square feet of it. I close my eyes and inhale a big whiff of the ditalini-whatever before taking a bite. It is pure heaven indeed. My mouth waters and I am reminded just how talented this beautifully flawed man is. And just like this lunch, I’m not sharing.
I go to throw away my brown paper bag and a few scribbles of black Sharpie marker catch my eye. I flatten the bag out on my desk. A love note.
Allie Simon. Every day, I thank my lucky stars that you are making me a better man. Deciding I wanted to do what it takes to be with you was the best thing I’ve ever done. I LOVE YOU. -B
My favorite three words from this man (other than dinner is ready). The first time he said it was when I was sitting there on the floor with puffy, red eyes in an oversize college hoodie, stuffing my face with thousands of calories of pizza and wondering how the hell this thing was going to work, but not really worrying about it either. Because next to me, tucked away in our own little enclave in the city, was somebody I was never supposed to meet but was always meant to have.
A few things have changed since then; some for the good, while others...well, like I said, the momentum is rolling and it’s hard to know whether I’m keeping up or falling behind. But a surprise note like this tells me that, for the most part, he’s keeping his promises. He makes my lunch most days of the week, keeps the place (somewhat) tidy and has (sort of) figured out what he wants to do. Or at least, he had that last part figured out, until Miss Angela Blackstone decided to come out of nowhere and dangle a restaurant in front of his face.
I finish my lunch and I still haven’t heard from Benji. Under ordinary circumstances, I would take the silence to mean the worst: an overdose or an arrest during a drug deal gone bad. I know I saw him just hours ago and he was totally fine, but I usually hear from Benji at least five times by lunch; his addict’s personality makes him incessant. Everything he likes, he loves. Everything he hates, he abandons. Everything he wants, he needs now or better, yesterday. And most days, what he wants is to talk to me. All the time.
But today is different. Today he has his meeting with Angela, and I’m sure she’s still blowing smoke up his ass or I’d have heard from him by now.
I look her up on LinkedIn to verify she is, in fact, the chick who scolded me for leaving the money unattended. I’m in the social media business, after all, and frankly curiosity got the best of me.
From what I can tell from her profile, Angela checks out—which is both a good and a bad thing in this case. I mean, according to her résumé she worked where she said she worked during the times she said she was there. And she was definitely a manager, too. Not just some entitled server who appointed herself with a new title after claiming to “practically run the place.” No, she’s a bona fide back-and front-of-house professional with ten people who have written recommendations for her. Glowing ones, too.
In the time it takes me to rinse out my Tupperware and return to my cubicle, I somehow miss six calls, four texts and an email from Benji. Apparently, Benji’s meeting is finished.
Of all the communication, the email is the most frantic. It says: Why the hell aren’t you answering? Bout to call your desk phone.
I’ve made it very clear that Benji is never to call my desk line. For one thing, I don’t have a direct number, which means to reach me, you have to call our receptionist, Linda, and ask specifically for me. Then she forwards the call to my landline. He did this once a while back that day he wanted permission to splurge on cable. I was busy in a meeting, away from my desk, email and cell—but that didn’t stop him from asking Linda to personally go find me for a wellness check. I’ll never forget Linda’s face as she stood outside the all-glass conference room and tried her best to nonchalantly get my attention. I thought there was an emergency. I thought my dad’s blood pressure problems had finally gotten the best of him.
Benji seemed baffled that in the corporate world, you can actually be fired for having your boyfriend pull you out of a meeting to find out what channel Shahs of Sunset is on. But once I explained that no job would mean no way to make rent for our cute little Lincoln Park abode, he cut the shit. Since then, he’s been pretty good at steering clear of Linda and my landline, but that doesn’t stop him from blowing up all other mediums of communication.
His texts grew more frantic by the second—literally:
Yo. U around?
Hello??????
ALLIE. WHERE THE HELL R U
Ugh, just checked Locator. I know UR @ work. CALL ME.
I know it sounds insanely controlling for him to track my locale with an app. But adding Locator to our phones was an even trade; I’d put it on mine if Benji put it on his. I rarely check his anymore, but I used to, just to confirm he was always near Lakeview and Diversey, the intersection of my apartment. And before you tell me the plan is flawed because an addict could just leave his phone there while out hunting for drugs, let me remind you that Benji wouldn’t part with the device that links him to his social media feeds. Plus, how do you complete a drug deal without unlimited texting?
Relax, was eating, I write. Call u in a min.
K. Love u.
Like most things concerning Benji, communicating with him while at work takes a bit of science. I used to chat with him on Google Hangouts. I thought that was safe because I could just minimize it when someone walked by, but one day I saw IT run a company-wide troubleshoot, which proved they have the ability to see what’s on our monitors at any given moment. Since then, I blocked Benji from contacting me that way during work hours. He was pissed at first, but the last thing I need is for someone to let HR know that at 10:13 a.m., Benji Zane wrote Allie Simon, My dick still smells like your pussy and I kind of love it.
Most people would keep a thought like that to themselves, but not Benji. Benji will talk about life’s more personal details the way other people talk about the weather. I have to give him points; a good lover is a good communicator, and Benji never hesitates to tell me what he wants, when he wants it. But highly graphic instant messages about my lady parts while I’m at work? I have to draw the line somewhere.
I grab my phone and make my way to the server room. There are about 150 people who work on computers on our floor, so essentially this room has rows and rows of hard drives stacked about five feet high that hum, flicker and vent a slight amount of heat. Buried in there, four rows down and one row in, is the perfect place to take five and call Benji back. In this nook, no one can hear us argue about money. No one can hear us discuss what days I need to take off for his pop-ups. No one can hear us chat about the amazing sex we had that morning.
Not surprisingly, he picks up on the first ring. “Hey.” Real casual, like he hasn’t been in a complete frenzy for the past fifteen minutes.
“Hey. What’s going on?” I ask.
The good thing about chatting with Benji is that he’s direct. Whatever he wants, whether it’s sex with me, twenty dollars from the ATM or for me to put his cell phone bill on my credit card so it doesn’t get shut off (he always gives me cash from a pop-up after), he doesn’t beat around the bush.
“It’s happening,” he says. “I’m getting a restaurant.”
I was afraid he was going to say that.
“Really?”
My stomach fills with anxiety. I should probably see my doctor, get something prescribed for these moments when his antics send my nerves into overdrive. But a bottle of mood levelers would be too big a trigger for Benji. Even if I hid them somewhere, he’s like a bloodhound with narcotics. It’s a risk I’m not willing to take.
“I met with Angela. She’s a cool chick. Knows her shit. Totally legit.”
“Yeah, I looked her up online earlier.”
“She has this investor guy,” he goes on, as if I hadn’t spoken. “The one from the ’burbs. He’s ready to make his city debut and they want me to design the culinary concept. Get this: they have a space in mind already and he’s basically ready to buy the space and make it happen for me.”
“They already have a location?”
“Not just a location. An actual restaurant that’s ready to be flipped. It’s a pocket listing.”
“What’s that mean?” I ask.
“It’s basically like a secret listing at this point. The previous owners need to sell it quick. Their Realtor was friends with Angela’s investor, so they called him to see if he had any interest. Now he gets first dibs and it stays off the MLS or some shit like that.”
“Got it.” Eight ball, in the weeds, pocket listing...the vernacular I learn from Benji is the gift that keeps on giving.
“Right now, they’re the only people who know about it,” he continues. “If they don’t strike by the end of the week, the building goes to auction and they’ll be outbid by someone who wants to turn it into a trendy office space just so they can say they’re on Randolph Street.”
“Wait. It’s on Randolph Street?”
“Sure is,” he says.
I’ve learned to basically take everything Benji says with a grain of salt, but if what he just told me has any merit, then he, Angela and this investor dude are onto something.
Admittedly, I don’t know much about the food industry. But even I know Randolph Street is Chicago’s famed restaurant row. Every nice dinner we’ve had since being together has been on Randolph. In fact, it’s where Ross Luca’s place, Republic, is. Though the area had basically been decrepit for years, it’s since turned into a mecca for the Michelin-minded because rent downtown is way too high. Granted, the West Loop is getting pricey due to the celebrity chefs, hour-long waits, prix fixe menus and artisanal cocktails—but hey, that’s Randolph Street for you. A foodie’s paradise.
“You have to be kidding. How does no one know about this?” asks Due Diligence Debbie.
“I don’t know. I told you, it’s some secret listing. We’ve got to move fast here.”
We. An interesting if undefined pronoun that I’ll sweep under the rug for now. No time for semantics. The server room is making me hot; I need to get back to my desk.
“Can it wait until I get home? Can we talk about it more then?”
“Sure, yeah, that’s fine. But can you come home a little later today? I didn’t get a chance to do the laundry and cleaning and I have no clue what I’m going to make for dinner yet.”
Benji’s brain is in a constant state of overdrive, especially when he’s excited about something. So the fact that housekeeping is at all on his mind in the midst of believing his dream is coming true right before his eyes helps me regain my bearings. No matter what’s going on with the restaurant on Randolph Street, Apartment 1004 will at least be clean and tidy.
“No problem. See you around six thirty.”
Back at my desk, I find an email sitting in my inbox from Angela Blackstone. For a second I assume it’s something Benji’s forwarded, but, sure enough, it’s a note directly from her, addressed to both Benji and myself.
Benji,
Great meeting with you today! Thank you so much for taking the time to speak with me about 900 W. Randolph. I think we can both agree it’s something spectacular, and an opportunity we cannot afford to pass up.
As per your request, I am copying Allie, and will on all future communications. As I understand it, she will play a large role in moving forward with our plans and I am delighted to welcome her to the team. I have no doubt that you two are a true power couple and am so excited to get to know her more in the coming days, weeks, months.
I spoke with the Realtor this afternoon. He gave me the entry code and we are a “go” for a self-guided, private tour of the space on Friday, August 27th at 11am. Craig will meet us there and Allie will be there too, correct? She really should see this for herself.
Finally, attached you will find the blueprints of the space, as well as the proposed budget I put together based off of the initial investment numbers we talked about today. This all can be tweaked, but it shows you where we need to hover around in order to move forward—plus or minus $10k.
See you Friday.
-Angela
What. The. Breathe.
I won’t read too much into it. I won’t overreact. These phrases become my mantra and I run them through my mind on repeat. Still, it’s hard to ignore all those pesky plural pronouns. And this budget...what has Benji promised? And how am I involved?
It’s just an email, I remind myself. It’s just an email that can be deleted as quickly as it came through. But instead of pressing delete, I press the pause button on my freak-out. Maybe this is one of those things that’s best not to bubble up.
I try to look on the positive side. Benji and I are a couple. We freaking live together. He obviously wasn’t receptive to committing to the pop-ups much longer, so I’m in no position to give the cold shoulder to anything that could potentially mean more income. I cling to the small, bright hope that maybe this isn’t as bad as it seems. What’s definitely a pleasant surprise is the fact that he’s requested that Angela copy me on everything from here on out. Hey, Ang, remember the girl who couldn’t manage to handle the tip-out to your standards? Well, we’re a package deal, so get over yourself.
My email dings again. Please, no more from these two, I think to myself.
Google Alert is the sender. I click to open and read a paragraph from a blog that this handy little tool has scraped from the internet.
Dating in Chicago is a complete and total nightmare. Aside from Benji Zane & Allie Simon (omg, can we please start calling them Zimon?!), who after last week’s pop-up dinner are basically Relationship Goals, the rest of us are screwed...
It takes seeing my relationship from another angle, this time from some chick on the web who calls herself a dating expert, to loosen the knot in my stomach. I may have no idea what we’re getting into, but the world seems to think Benji and I have something special and I happen to agree.
And that’s when it hits me: maybe this whole restaurant thing is actually that “something bigger” I always knew was in store for us.
* * *
Since Benji requested I come home late, I find myself with an extra hour to kill after I get off work. So I hit up Jazzy and Maya for a quick Happy Hour at a place that’s central to all our offices.
At Roka Akor, a swanky steak house, Maya shoves her blazer into her work bag and Jazzy clips her bangs back with two bobby pins as our first round of cocktails is served.
“Okay, guys, before you say anything,” I begin, afraid of how hard they may come down on me, “I have to admit I haven’t watched The Bachelor yet so no spoilers, please.”
“Oh my god, don’t freak me out like that,” Maya says. “I thought you were going to say something crazy...like you and Benji got engaged.”
I can’t tell if that would be a good crazy or a bad crazy in her opinion.
“Speaking of Sir Benji, what’s the latest?” Jazzy asks. “Any more pop-ups we can finally get on the list for?” She nudges me as she takes a sip of her mojito.
The two of them wanted to come to Benji’s dinner last week and I told them it wasn’t a good idea. We were already oversold and I’d comped my parents’ meal, obviously. If I ate the cost on two more free seats, it would have created more work for Benji in the kitchen and less profit for us. If they knew how hard it was worrying about my paychecks for the first time in my life, maybe they’d cut me some slack. But of course, I’m not letting them become privy to the gloomier side of things. Instead, I decide to hit them with the good news.
“Well, actually, no. Because he’s in talks right now with some investors about opening a restaurant. On Randolph Street.”
“WHAT?” They react in unison with the same big eyes and high-pitched exclamation. It feels so good to get that off my chest to people who actually care. Who get what it means to have a spot in the West Loop.
“Yeah, it’s really early on and I don’t have many details, but it sounds like it could be happening. Soon.”
There’s a longer pause than I’m comfortable with given the big news I’ve just shared. I want them to ask me what kind of food he’ll serve, if it’s located next to any of our favorites, if they can get on the list for opening night. But, nothing.
Eventually Jazzy says, “Wow. That’s cool,” and Maya just sips on her drink.
“Okay. What am I missing here, guys? I thought my boyfriend having his own restaurant would be a good thing?”
“It is,” Maya confirms. “It’s just that...I mean, my dad knows this guy who’s a chef and he, like, never sees his wife and drinks a lot. He said he’s surprised they’re not divorced yet.”
Oh, well, if your dad knows a guy...
“Yeah, opening a restaurant is great,” Jazzy says. “But it’s going to be super stressful. And on Randolph Street? Every eye is going to be on him.”
“Every eye is already on him,” I correct.
“My point exactly. What happens if he slips?” Jazzy asks.
“If he slips?”
“He’s only been sober for what, like, a few months?”
“Three.” I lick the salt off the side of my margarita glass.
“Maya and I just want to make sure you’re prepared if he relapses.”
There, she said it. The R-word. The word I’ve barely let myself think. I’m surprised how much it hurts to hear it aloud.
* * *
“So that’s how it is. You have no problem eating his food, screenshotting the articles we’re in and talking about how hot he is on our group texts. But deep down, you just think he’s going to relapse? Maya, do you think that, too?”
Maya goes pale. But if an intervention is what they’re turning this into, then I have no choice but to flip it on its ass.
“Maya?” I prompt.
“I mean, statistics show—”
“Oh, don’t even go there with me. I live with the guy, I see him work his program every day and every night. I kiss him goodbye before he goes to his meetings and have his sponsor’s number written on a piece of paper taped to the fridge. He’s going to be just fine, ladies. In fact, he is just fine. So you know what I say? FUCK statistics. That’s what I say.”
I set my glass down as my hands start to shake. I fix my gaze to the left and stare out into the bar at nothing in particular. I just know that if I make eye contact with my so-called friends, I’ll start to cry. Or drop another round of f-bombs.
“Try to understand where we’re coming from.” Jazzy jumps in to play referee.
“I can’t. Because I was under the impression that you two supported me. Supported us.”
“We do!” They sound feeble and unbelievable. I just shake my head and take my phone out. For once I’m not concerned about the shit they might give me for doing so.
When I look down, of course I have a text from the man of the hour. Benji wrote to let me know it’s now safe to come home. Dinner is just about ready and he can’t wait to see me. I smile and reply with a single heart-shaped emoji.
That’s when Maya puts her hand over my screen.
“Yo, can you stop texting and listen to us?”
I tighten my grip on my phone and spring my arm back. Something about her attempting to put a physical barrier between me and Benji just to drive home a moot point sends me into a blind rage. As if I wasn’t in one already.
“Yo, can you stop poking holes in my relationship? Both of you need to either find your own or get a hobby that isn’t dissecting my life.”
I throw down a wrinkled twenty that I keep in my purse specifically for this cash-only frozen yogurt place I go to and tell them that should take care of my margarita plus tip. Then I grab my bag and head home to the meal Benji’s prepared just for me.