Hot Mess. Emily Belden

slim to none. But he’s certainly attempting to get me to believe that this life I’ve helped him create isn’t good enough.

      Needless to say, this is not the first time a normal conversation with Benji has gone sour. What hasn’t killed him has indeed made him stronger. But it also has caused him to develop unhealthy coping mechanisms and an uncanny ability to turn a neutral chat into a straight-up confrontation. Most of the time, I can defuse the situation before one of us throws something. A reminder that one call to the front desk from an angry neighbor is all it will take to get us kicked out of our building usually gets him to lower his voice. Tonight, I don’t see that tactic bringing him down. I’m just glad the days of him running to a pile of cocaine to feel better are over.

      That said, I need to find solid ground again. So I take a breath and try a different approach.

      “Why don’t you fill me in, then. What was in that attachment, Benji?” I keep my voice calm and, I hope, curious.

      “The number.”

      “What number?” I say, willing my hands not to shake with suppressed frustration as I resume eating.

      “Thirty.”

      “Thirty what, Benji? Just tell me, okay? Please.”

      “Grand.”

      I put my head in my hands and rub my eyes. “You need that kind of money to do this deal with them?”

      “No. For them to do the deal with me.”

      It might be my head spinning, but this is not adding it up. The confused look on my face signals Benji to explain his rationale.

      “If we can’t buy in, I tell them I’m out and this whole thing capsizes. Angela said so herself, they’re not doing this open with any other chef. If I bow out because I can’t have part ownership, the space goes straight to the MLS where it’ll be scooped up by someone else, probably Ross Luca to be honest, and the opportunity for Craig to have a restaurant on Randolph Street is over. So it’s ten percent, or I tell them to get fucked.”

      “And ten percent is $30,000?”

      “Yes.”

      “Well, then, tell them to get fucked.”

      With a steak knife in his grip, Benji slams his fist to the table.

      “God fucking damn it, Allie. You’re missing the point. Opportunities like this don’t wind up in your lap every day—or at least, not in mine, okay? You know my past. Angela knows my past. And this whole city knows my past. And guess what? She and Craig are still willing to do a deal with me. They’re willing to give me a chance that no one else is ballsy enough to offer. They know I’m the right person for this regardless of what they’ve read about me on that hack-job FoodFeed blog.”

      FoodFeed’s given him his platform in this city and he knows it. He may claim now, in this moment, that he doesn’t care about what they write, but he and I both know it’s the first and last thing he looks at every day.

      “Well, if they know so much about your past, they should know you’re still in recovery and ought to give you another six months to get your shit together.” It comes off snide, but I’m just being defensive of him.

      “Look, I’ve known I wanted to do something like this since I learned how to make barbecue sauce from scratch. Since I learned to make a roux for real mac ’n’ cheese. Since I said fuck you to my dad and turned my back on my deadbeat mom. Since traveling thousands of miles, sleeping on hundreds of floors and making shit money while staging at places that didn’t care about me. I stuck all of that out because I knew it would lead me to something like this. And now that something is finally here. I’m not saying no. I can’t.”

      Benji gets up from his seat, crouches down like he’s doing a squat and grabs my hand.

      “I’ve been sober for ninety-two days, Allie. That’s ninety-two days of doing nothing but sitting in this apartment, fucking around in this tiny ass kitchen and busting my dick doing one-off pop-up dinners for people who have the audacity to call themselves ‘foodies.’ Aren’t you tired of that? I’m tired of that.”

      I’ve been cheerleading so hard for these pop-ups; rooting for him not to give up on them. I don’t know what my obsession is with them, to be honest. They’re a lot of work, a little bit of money and would be completely frowned upon by a handful of governmental agencies if they knew about them. But they give me a sense of control that I find comforting. The moment I hop into the Excel document that shows his food costs or his current guest list, I see exactly what he’s up to—who, what, when and where. And I can breathe easier and sleep better at night.

      But if I remove that from the equation and make this not about me, then the truth is that, yes, I am already tired of the pop-up scene. Tired of having to wait for someone to submit their reservation payment so that I can buy a new shirt. Tired of black-market squirrel meat purveyors doing drop-offs in my lobby at 2:00 a.m. Tired of there being corn silks in my sheets at night because there’s never enough counter space. Tired of snapping at my friends because a conversation about these stupid dinners can turn into a full-blown fight about my relationship.

      But still, a couple hundred dollars every week makes more sense than $30,000 all at once. I mean, that’s just basic math, right?