Truly(68)

What she understood was that he’d cared deeply, and he’d suffered for it. She understood that he’d chosen a particular sort of life for himself, and then he’d let it consume him.

And that probably he’d wanted to be consumed, or he wouldn’t have done it.

When she nodded, he said, “So the kitchen was crowded, because it was always crowded, and Friday’s the worst. Sandy’s got these assholes with cameras right in my face, screen testing me for a two-bit cooking show she was all excited about. I kept telling her I didn’t want to be on TV—it was all I could do to handle the kitchen—but she insisted that this was how we were going to make it big. She had a talent for the money stuff, the marketing. I mean, that’s obvious, right? Look how far she’s gone since she got rid of my sorry ass.”

Another little smile, cynical this time.

“The kitchen was supposed to be mine, though, and these guys were fucking up the rhythm. The grill guy kept burning shit or sending it out undercooked. When I lost my temper and yelled at him, the TV producer was like, ‘Do that again, we want to get it from another angle.’ As if I was this cartoon character, you know? A caricature of myself. And I was—actually, I just lost it.” He met her eyes. “Imagine that.”

May moved around the pinball machine to stand in front of him. She slid her hand down the inside of his arm to touch the skin at his wrist and gripped his hand. A risky move, but he would either take her comfort or reject it. She had to offer.

He looked down at her, his expression tolerant. “I have a temper,” he said, with a hint of humor. “You might have noticed?”

“Just possibly.”

“You know, when I was younger, I never got mad. I was one of those colorless, invisible kids. Teachers forgot my name. Never said much. Never felt much. That’s what most of my memories are like—kind of washed-out and vague. Except for the farm. I can still smell the farm. If I were artsy, like you, I could paint what the lake looked like from up on top of the chicken house. I can hear the bees and remember what the handle of the big honey extractor felt like in my hand, and I don’t remember ever being angry when I was doing that. I remember my parents being angry. But I was okay, I think. I had this way of removing myself.”

She saw him again as she’d imagined him on the Brooklyn Bridge. That skinny adolescent Ben, shoving his feelings into his pockets, pushing them down with his fists.

He’d had years to practice. A whole childhood spent learning how to feel nothing.

“And I don’t think I was too bad in college, either,” he said. “You could ask Connor. In Europe, and then back here in the city, working in other people’s kitchens, I didn’t have the luxury of being pissed off. But once I was in charge—once I had a little power, and people working under me—well, by then I’d worked under a lot of chefs in a lot of kitchens, and most of them are assholes. You can’t run a restaurant with finesse. Everybody’s crammed together, bumping into each other. There aren’t any windows, usually, and you’re in there together for ten hours or longer, cut off from the rest of the world, busting your balls. Somebody’s got to run the place.”

He shook his head. “And this is going to sound weird, maybe, but that was how Sandy wanted me to be. The kitchen version of myself. Right after she got hired on where I was the sous chef, I got ticked off at one of the prep cooks and dumped a whole bunch of his work in the garbage, yelling at him to do it over again until he got it right. She saw it, and half an hour later she asked if I wanted to get dinner later. She liked it when I was like that. At first anyway.”

“I hate it,” May said.

“I know. You should. I hate it, too.”

She felt herself soften in relief. He reached out his hand to catch her hip and hold her in place. “But the thing is, I don’t completely hate it,” he said. “There’s this … righteousness to it. I’d never felt that way before I started running a kitchen—like I could be a pissed-off, self-important bastard, and that was fine. It was my kitchen. I was entitled to it. Have you ever felt that way?”

“When I stabbed Dan,” she said. “Except I feel bad about it now.”

“Well, sure. But in that moment, just for a little while …” He met her eyes.

“You feel like you can do anything.”

“Yeah. Yeah.” He squinted, looking past her at nothing, and she touched his arm to bring him back. He glanced at the spot where her fingers met his skin, inches above their joined hands. “It’s addictive,” he said quietly. “Even though it’s no good. Even though it kind of rots you, it’s hard to stop.”