“That’s—”
“Ironic? No. Maybe it’s Alanis-ironic. The goats are cute. Cass posts a lot of photos on Instagram.” Ari takes a huge breath in, shrugging her shoulders tight against the side of her head. He just barely stops himself from reaching out to touch her shoulder. Is that a thing that people do to comfort each other? Too intrusive? Too intimate? “Anyway. That’s my sob story. How are you?”
Josh blinks, still trying to process the last two minutes. It’s been so long since he’s had a conversation with someone who’s not trying to set him up with a catfishing victim.
“Fine,” he lies.
“Really?” Her eyes move back and forth across his face. It’s the kind of close scrutiny he’s been avoiding for months.
“Do I not seem fine?”
“You’ve literally never seemed ‘fine.’？” She lets out a little burst of laughter. Her right hand—the one that’s not holding the tentacle dildo—jerks up, as if she’s about to touch him on the arm. Josh braces himself in anticipation but she moves it at the last second, grabbing something that looks like a giant purple tongue. “Do you want to talk about it? We could finally share that bottle of white zinfandel?” It’s something between a question and a suggestion punctuated with an ellipsis.
“No.” He pauses for a half-second—just long enough for Ari’s expression to shift into disappointment, ensuring that the invitation was genuine. “How about an actual drink instead?”
5
“THE TIMES RAN A HIT piece instead of a review. Suddenly it was open season on me just because my dad owned a deli.”
Ari sits next to Josh at a bar in a boutique hotel around the corner from CreamPot, with a tumbler of Jim Beam and a glass of malbec, respectively. Josh looks less polished these days: There’s a slump in his shoulders, like he doesn’t want to take up so much space in the world. A patchy beard covers the lower half of his face, muting the way his feelings are written on the surface.
“The phrase ‘just because my dad owned…’ doesn’t exactly make you more sympathetic,” Ari observes. The place is quiet in the lull between late brunch and early dinner. It’s a relief to sit elbow to elbow, rather than across a table, where Josh would be able to see her every microexpression.
“That fucking piece made me radioactive. I was trying to breathe new life into the business. Suddenly, all these people who probably hadn’t eaten at Brodsky’s in years were accusing me of dishonoring my father’s memory.” He sets his glass down on the coaster with a bit too much force. “I’m not the heir to some great culinary legacy. My father believed that any dish with more seasoning than schmaltz, salt, and pepper had no place on the menu. I’m allowed to want more than that. I was supposed to create something important. I was supposed to have a Michelin star by now.”
“Maybe to some people,” Ari says, “a pastrami sandwich with just the right amount of mustard is more impactful than an award from a tire company.” Josh stares at his wineglass, unconvinced. She clears her throat and grasps for a subject change. “Well, at least you have…Sarah?”
“Sophie.”
“Right.” She leans in. “Your ‘good girl.’？”
He rolls his eyes. “You don’t remember her name, but you remember that?”
“Seared into my brain,” she says, tapping her temple. “Did she end up being the missing half of your black-and-white cookie with the arms and legs and the weird little penis?”
The bartender looks up.
“That drawing was not a self-portrait.” He swallows another gulp of malbec and shakes his head. “Sophie had only seen me at my most successful. That’s the part she signed up for. Not…this.” He gestures vaguely at himself. “You know what bothers me? I spent my best years on that relationship. Two years ago, I appeared on Chopped. I had a spread in Food & Wine. I got invited to festivals and food events. I’d get messages from women. One of them always referred to me as ‘the biggest boy’ and kept asking me to step on her neck.”
Ari nearly spits out eight dollars’ worth of whiskey. It might be her first unforced laugh all week.
“And now when a woman googles me, the first thing they’ll see is…” He trails off, like he’s unsure of the right terminology.
“A dumpster fire?” Ari suggests.
“A feature on Eater where I’m portrayed as a petulant child, ruining his father’s legacy by adding orange zest to a blintz recipe.” He exhales and his whole torso seems to crumple.