Faster on My Own: Chapter 8
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Dim candles lit the restaurant’s foyer. Steven stood in front of the hostess’s podium, but no one was there. Snippets of conversation within filtered their way to Steven out from the darkness, lit only by distant flames. He could see people’s faces, a nose here, a chin there, but only in parts. Yet none of the faces he saw were the hostess’s, and none were Ben’s. He was here, though. He’d said as much, and Steven could sense Ben’s particular menace in the room. After five minutes, approaching an intolerable risk of lateness, Steven accepted the hostess wasn’t coming. He stepped into the dark on his own.
He turned his phone’s flashlight on, but all of the tables around him gasped or laughed–the derisive laugh that recognizes a failure of manners, that Steven had heard all too often in his life. Footsteps clapped against the ground and a hand slapped his phone to the ground. It landed flashlight down. A confusing message in content, but clear in meaning. So instead he wandered the dark, whispering his brother’s name. At one table, he saw his brother’s chin, but it was someone wearing a Reagan mask. Backing away, he watched a young woman’s hand spoon soup into the mouth hole. It was rational to wonder if this was hell, but hell had nothing on the horrors which lived in the minds of the rich.
Each table was danger. A colleague, a friend of his father’s, any of them could notice him acting strangely, wandering around a restaurant in a perplexed fog. Steven’s reputation couldn’t bear the weight of eccentricity and of course Ben had planned this. He’d known that Steven would fail to grasp the etiquette of this place. He must have known. But why bother with sabotage? Steven thought he saw Ben again, but when he shout-whispered Ben’s name at the man sitting alone, the man slumped to the table and, muffled by his arms pulled tight around his face, said, “the dark has no answers for you.”
Two explanations: Ben had a particular enmity towards Steven, or played these power games for fun. Both were plainly true. Steven hid around the corner from a table and said, “Did Ben Williams hire you? If you tell me, I’ll pay you double.”
But the three men sitting at the table ignored him. Instead each turned to the man on his left and they said at once, “It’s okay if you slept with my wife. I slept with yours. Fair is fair.” Steven held his position and heard them repeat it over and over again. Were they trapped here? Were they compelled to repeat their cycle, unable to ever tear their thoughts from the drive to say it again, one more time?
They weren’t his problem. Deep in the corner of the restaurant, he saw a smile in the candlelight and the gleam of candlelight reflected in a pair of shitty rectangular wireframes. With his back to the wall, he scooted over toward Ben. No more surprises, no more striking hands in the darkness, no trap doors or whatever Ben had worked up to humiliate him next.
Ben stood as Steven finally reached the table. “It’s about time. I’ve been waiting.”
All Steven wanted to do was yell at Ben, to humiliate him in front of the freaks hiding in the dark all around them. But Ben could end The Plan with a single text to Mr. Williams. Steven was taller, stronger, more handsome, smarter, and had no choice but to cower in fear of the sheer power Ben wielded over him. “I’m sorry, I had some difficulty navigating this restaurant. How did you find the table?”
“The hostess lead me to it. How else?” Ben sat down, inviting Steven to join him with an arrogant little wave. The wrist movements are where arrogance lives. The little flourishes or impatient twitches always revealed themselves. But Ben’s arrogance was no secret. He wore it proudly in the candlelight. “How have you been faring working at Vita-Tech?”
“Well–”
“I’ve heard… mixed reviews.” Interrupting him to express dominance over the conversation. A technique he learned from Mr. Williams. The cruel pause, flexing his confidence that Steven wouldn’t interrupt him back, though? That was all Ben. “You’re carrying out your duties just fine, but still struggling with mindset. Do I have that right?”
“That’s about right.” No waver in Steven’s voice. No twitch in his eye. No tight grip on the tablecloth. The only way he’d fool Ben was total immersion in the act. “I’m trying my best, it’s just kind of a culture shock. Old habits, you know?”
The candlelight flickered out, then back alight. A steak sat in front of Ben, but there was no food in front of Steven. “Aren’t you going to eat anything?”
“Yeah. There hasn’t been a waiter around or anything.”
“I see. I’ll get you a steak.” Ben lifted his knife with a surgeon’s steady hand. “I’m not sure what I can do for you, Steven. Killer instinct is just that, instinct.”
“And it doesn’t do you any good if I’m a success.” The wheels of competition always turned behind those dead eyes. He wasn’t an enemy, he was an obstacle. One that can be predicted, manipulated. Just a more difficult obstacle than usual.
“I’m not worried about that. You’re a fraud.”
The candlelight flickered again, and when the light returned, Steven had a steak already oozing its red juice onto the plate. “A fraud? I don’t know how that would work. No one trusts me anyway.”
“I don’t know if you’re just trying to scam some money to help your friends stay in heroin or whatever drug they do now. And I don’t care.” Ben laughed with a bite of steak in his mouth. “I don’t. Your little scams or whatever are beneath my interest.”
“I’m not running a scam. I just want your help.” Steven tried to get himself into supplicant mindset. Let the barbs and jabs slough off of malleable skin. Let the pain and shock wash away. The only option is to bow before the monster, and to fear him. “I know my past is suspicious, but I’ve grown up. I know what I need to do now.”
“Just don’t fuck with the company. If you want to scam mom out of a few grand, I’m not going to stop you. Everyone deserves a crack at that piñata. But don’t get greedy or I’ll hunt you down.” Ben smiled and tore off another hunk of stake with his teeth. All rich men identified themselves with the predator animals, lean and ready to pounce on the weak and vulnerable. None of them knew they were the overfed pigs, too hypnotized by the trough to look up and see the axe coming down toward their necks.
“Ben. Can we just let bygones be bygones? I know I’ve been rude to you in the past. I was wrong. I admit it. Isn’t that enough?” The guilt trip would fail. It was supposed to. But it would make Ben overestimate his position of strength over Steven, which could benefit him later. Every conversation with Ben was a chess game, and every move had so many possible counter-moves. But Steven knew his opponent. Even though it’d been a decade since their last game, Ben was the same player he always was. More interested in enjoying the thrill of dominance than actually doing what it takes to win.
“I’ll be looking forward to seeing you gone again. Your absence was productive and profitable. If your presence is just as profitable, I’m not going to make any noise. That’s up to you. I have better things to do.” Ben stood from the table, his face swallowed by the darkness. “But if I see you step out of line even once, you’re done.”
With a few steps Ben was gone and Steven was alone, eating a steak that tasted like nothing, the dark endless in all directions.