Chapter Text
So, there’s no need to panic.
Chefs, 61, 32, 43!
Yes, Chef!
“You think you’re so special, don’t you. Don’t you. Say yes, Chef, I think I’m so special.”
Yes, Chef, I think I’m so special.
The door’s about to open, Carmy can tell. The light—which, there hadn’t really been much light before, it had all been dim and blue-ish white—has begun creeping in through the crack of the threshold, growing larger with each passing second. If he focuses, he can hear voices and a, a saw, maybe, through the rush of blood in his ears. It’s loud. f*cking loud. Not the saw. The blood. It’s pounding through his skull, pulsing in the hollows of his temples. He can almost taste it, even though that’s stupid as anything, ’cause it’s all in his head. That’s it. Just in his dumb f*cking head.
“Everybody thinks they’re f*cking special. You are most especially not. f*cking. Special. Say, I am not f*cking special.”
I am not f*cking special.
“I am not f*cking special, Chef.”
I am not f*cking special, Chef.
He clutches at his hair, tries to coax feeling back into the numb tips of his fingers. They’ve turned to clumsy ice blocks but they almost feel warm, strangely, and in a distant part of his brain he knows that’s, like. Bad sh*t. Pneumonia? No, what’s the f*cker—frostbite. Yeah. Frostbite. Makes you so cold you forget about it. He remembers Mikey, grasping him by the shoulders in The Beef’s kitchen and instructing him to never, under any Godfor-f*ckin’-saken circ*mstance, let himself get locked into the walk-in. You got that, Bear? he’d said, and Carmy had nodded, barely able to keep his feet flat on the floor for the excitement of it all swelling inside of him like a balloon.
“You don’t deserve to be here. Say no, Chef, I don’t deserve to be here.”
No, Chef, I don’t deserve to be here.
And he had, he had gotten it. He’d been listening even though he’s pretty sure Mikey never believed he was.
“You should be dead.”
I should be dead.
Yeah, well: Watch this, f*cker. I can recite every last instruction you ever gave me like it’s written on the back of my hand.
“I should be dead, Chef.”
I should be dead, Chef.
There’s a rattling thud; he nearly leaps out of his skin. He’s—he is shaking, even though he’s been trying to pretend he’s not, knees knocking against each other where they’re tucked up to his chest, heart a juddery staccato in his throat. And he can’t really breathe. That’s fine, he thinks. Completely normal for the situation.
“Carmy?” someone calls through the door, and this voice is. It’s different, than Chef’s; not realer, necessarily, because Chef’s voice sounds pretty goddamn f*cking real, but. But kinder. Softer. Warm, in a way that few things in New York were. Cousin Michelle and the press of her fingers to the nape of his neck at breakfast, silently asking him to stay home. Stevie and the well-worn corners of his Saturday morning newspapers, wet with ink from the crossword. “Carmen? Are you still alive?”
“Yeah,” Carmy says back. His own voice is f*cked. Raspy. Distant. Everything is so distant.
There’s a long, long pause. Or maybe there’s not. Time is going sort of—warped, and slippery, and weird. Sand in an hourglass. So f*cking much of it slipped away and Carmy didn’t even try to f*cking catch it and now Mikey’s gone, he’s gone, he’s at the bottom of the goddamn hourglass and he’s just. Gone. And Carmy’s locked in the dumbest f*cking place he could’ve ended up in. Idiot. Idiot. Jesus f*cking Christ—
“Staying in here would be best for everyone. Do not leave. This is where you belong.”
“This is where I belong,” he whispers. Presses the heels of his palms to his eyes. The dull ache is almost tender.
“This is where I belong, Chef.”
“This is where I belong, Chef.”
A sob catches in Carmy’s mouth and he swallows it down before it has a chance to spill out, and while he’s busy choking on that he hears, through the door, again:
“Carmen? I am not hearing very much alive sounds in there!”
He said yeah, didn’t he? He’s pretty sure he… he’s pretty f*cking sure he—
“I’m fine,” he croaks, and. Okay. Maybe he didn’t say yeah. Maybe he imagined it. Maybe no one’s even talking to him through the door, maybe he’s imagining it and everything and the only things still true in the world are the cold slate eyes above him and the looming presence of a shadow at his shoulder. Swallowing all the space. Swallowing all the light. Making him nowhere and no one and nothing. “I’m fine!”
There’s no response. Fair. Whoever’s out there, if there is anyone out there, probably got tired of waiting for him to remember how his f*cking tongue works so he could talk. Reasonable. He can’t blame them for that.
Except then—except then—
Except then the door swings open, and the voice is suddenly right there in front of him, and Carmy squeezes his eyes shut because he can’t bear to look, can’t bear to find Chef staring back at him, but:
“Carmen, you are cold as balls. Come, stand up.”
That’s. That’s not. That’s not Chef. Carmy dares to crack open one eye, then the other, until Ebra’s face swims into view. It’s, like—furrowed and concerned and very unlike Ebra, who Carmy has always known to be quick to smile and to laugh. Unconsciously, his fingers dig into the soft space behind his knees. He’s not sure how, or why, but he is sure that he’s the reason for this worry. A sick acid rises up and he has to grit his teeth to keep from hurling everywhere. That would be completely sh*tty. Ebra saves him from the walk-in, and he spews bile all over the guy’s shoes. Great, Carmy. Real good. Top-notch stuff, there.
“Carmen,” says Ebra, and his palm is abruptly cradled to the curve of Carmy’s cheek and he—he would flinch, he thinks, if the distance between reality and his brain weren’t so large. “Can you hear me? I called a man with a stick to get you out. You can come out, now.”
“It’s not a f*cking stick, dude,” says someone from outside the walk-in, in an incredibly put-upon way.
Ebra’s mouth tugs up at the corners in a smile that’s meant for Carmy and that Carmy can’t manage to return because he’s a f*cking asshole. “It is a f*cking stick,” Ebra whispers, conspiratorially. His thumb rubs across the arch of Carmy’s cheekbone. The touch is—it’s nice, even though it makes Carmy want to throw up even more than he did before. “Come, Carmen. Let’s get you out of here.”
Later, Carmy won’t really remember, like. Anything, to be completely honest. Not the process of standing, which was probably difficult for no f*cking reason, and not the steady, constant presence of Ebra at his side as he ventured out of the walk-in and into the kitchen, where everything was empty and everyone had gone home. Not Ebra dismissing the man with the f*cking stick, and not the way he’d had to bend over the sink with his elbows propped on the counter for a long time until the knot in his chest unraveled. Until the cold slate eyes disappeared. Until the looming presence of the shadow at his shoulder retreated. When he tries, when he reaches his mind back, it’ll just be fuzzy. White noise. A sharp, metallic sting in his mouth. A tight fist in his stomach, squeezing. A monster with his face, screaming through the door, telling everybody who’s ever loved him that they’re nowhere, no one, nothing.
But he will remember this:
Ebra, stopping him before he leaves for the night. The one who stayed even though he really f*cking shouldn’t’ve. Meeting Carmy’s eyes and asking, “Are you all right, Carmen?”
Carmy, feeling like a cornered animal, something that would gnaw off its own leg to escape the trap, shaking his head. Frantically, he’s pretty convinced. He’d probably looked so goddamn dumb. “Yeah. Yeah, m’fine. M’fine. Don’t—you go home, Chef, don’t worry about me. Just—just stupid, y’know.”
Ebra, hesitating. Lingering by the door. “If you want to come home with me, Carmen, then—”
“No,” leaping from him all jagged and piercing and knife-sharp. Cruel. Mean. He’s already hurt everybody else—why not Ebra, too? He f*cked it. The most important night of their lives and he f*cked it. “No, I don’t—I’m fine, Chef. Just go.”
And Ebra, finally leaving. The kitchen empty except for Carmy, alone in the middle of it all, and the voice in his head still telling him to die.
**
He doesn’t die, though. Which means it’s fine.
**
In the morning, Carmy gets to the kitchen at three and starts the mise en place. The constant up-and-down of the knife as its blade slices through the chives; the clean, clarifying smell of the herb blooming in the air; the sterile quiet of the room, the only noise that of his breath—when he remembers to breathe—and the scrape of his fingers against the cutting board—when he remembers to move them out of the way—and the tick of the clock behind him. These are all familiar. Not comforting, but. Familiar. He can exist here. He can exist and he can keep his mouth shut and he can fix what happened last night.
The chives finished, then the mushrooms and the habanero peppers and the onions, he sets them aside and goes to get the meat from the freezer. This is. This is harder. He looks at the door and the fixed handle (the one he didn’t fix, the one Ebra had to, because Carmy’s so f*cking out of it he can’t do one simple f*cking task—) and thinks about the empty, hollow, white-hued room waiting for him and he can’t. Everything goes real vivid, for a minute. As if this is just a photo with the saturation turned all the way up. Not real. Not real. Not real. Just another dream.
“This is pathetic. If you can’t open a f*cking walk-in freezer, you are worthless. Say yes, Chef, I am worthless.”
Yes, Chef, I am worthless. The shadow looms closer, nearer, stealing the air from Carmy’s lungs. He says, whispers, “Yes, Chef, I am worthless.”
“Why are you even here? Tell me, why are you even here?”
“I’m—I’m—” You’re a leech! I should’ve f*ckin’ cut you out! “I don’t know.”
“I don’t know, Chef.”
“I don’t know, Chef.”
“—army? Carmy? Carmy!”
“Wh—” Carmy’s head jerks upright, a puppet yanked by the strings, and he realizes with a terrifying bolt down his spine that he’s not in front of the walk-in at all. He’s still at the cutting board. He’s still chopping the onions. Was he ever at the walk-in? How—what the—who— “What?”
“Yo, Carm,” says—says—says Marcus, and how long has he been here, how much did he— “King of Antarctica finally got off his throne, huh?”
“What?” Carmy says, again, and it’s way more snappish than he means it to be.
Marcus’s smile falters. “The, uh. The walk-in. Freezer, cold, the, uh. Y’know? Never mind, bad joke. You good, man?” He ventures closer, coat draped over his forearm, staring at Carmy like he’s some animal at the zoo. Glass separating them. Neither of them of the other’s world. “You look kinda… pale. Paler than usual, I mean.”
“Yeah, yeah, ’course I’m good—”
“f*cking Christ, Carmy, you’re bleeding!”
The pitch of Marcus’s voice goes high enough that it almost squeaks, and it pierces through the veil of Carmy’s head with such potent fear that he stalls before bringing the knife down on the onion again. He’s what. He’s. What. He stares at Marcus blankly as Marcus hurries closer, too dazed to even think about taking a look at his hand to assess the damage, and says, “No I’m not.”
“Yes, you are,” says Marcus firmly, and takes Carmy’s arm into his grasp. “Let go of the knife, Carm. Lemme see.”
The knife. Right. Carmy flexes his fingers, and it to slips through and thuds dully on the counter. That’s when he allows his eyes to finally drop, following the track of his arm as Marcus raises it in the air between them, and the first thing they see is a crimson rivulet, carving across the muscle of his forearm. How the f*ck did I cut my arm, is his first stupid thought, before Marcus takes hold of his hand and turns it palm-up to the light. And there, along his index finger, is the source of the blood.
“Yep,” Marcus says, popping the p. “Not bleeding, huh? f*ck, that’s deep. We’ll need to wash it out. How’d you not realize?”
But Carmy’s not listening. He’s focused on the onion, half-chopped on the board, gone slick with his own blood. Completely unusable. Completely wasted. Because of him. “Can you get me another onion?”
“Wh— Carm, no. We’re cleaning this. C’mon.”
The shadow. Looming. Carmy’s neck goes cold. “Everything that is f*cked up here is your fault.”
Everything that is f*cked up here is my fault.
“Everything that is f*cked up here is my fault, Chef.”
Everything that is f*cked up here is my fault, Chef.
“It’s just a nick,” Carmy says, trying to shrug Marcus off but unable to make it work. f*cking Marcus and his unfair height advantage. “I can do it.”
“Oh, yeah, that’s why you were in here chopping up a horror scene,” says Marcus. “Dude. Seriously?”
“Seriously, it’s fine. Let me f*ckin’ do it.”
He expects Marcus to keep arguing, but instead his arm is released and Marcus backs away, hands raised. That forces Carmy to stumble, for a second—he was so geared up for an argument, to dig his heels in and refuse to budge, and now he’s left floundering for air. “Okay, okay,” Marcus says, placating. “Chill, Carm. You can do it. Just thought you might like the help.”
He would, is the dumb part. He would really f*cking love the help. To stand there and let Marcus pour hot water over his hand and feel the stinging pain wash away. It would be—it would be nice. But he can’t. He can’t accept it. This is his fault. This is his fault and he needs to make it better.
He shrugs a shoulder. Says, “Can you start prepping the dough for focaccia, Chef?”
Marcus doesn’t respond immediately, but Carmy’s already turned away to the sink, so he’s not sure whether he’s being observed. His body feels taut and coiled anyway, ready to spring apart, to shatter, at the slightest touch. At last, over the gush of running hot water, he hears a resigned, “Yes, Chef.”
He sticks his finger beneath the water, hisses at the boiling impact of it to the wound. It’s not even that bad, basically a paper cut, but it stings like absolute f*ck. He watches the bright red vanish into the drain, leaving behind the parted flaps of flesh white and wrinkly with damp, and inexplicably feels a hot lump rise in his throat. Idiot. He did this to himself ’cause he wasn’t paying attention; he doesn’t get to cry like a f*cking baby about it.
The soap scrubs away the last of the pain, bringing it to a point before sending it down the pipes. That’s all that Carmy needs to forget it had ever existed. He twists off the tap; hurries to the back office to scrounge for a bandaid, which he wraps sloppily around his finger before considering the job done. It’ll be fine. The knife was clean, and the cut’s been washed, and it’ll heal even though it shouldn’t. Even though he deserves to watch it scar, a forever reminder of the cost of failure. He’s got others, scattered across his hands, but apparently none of them were enough to drill the lesson into his thick f*cking skull.
“If you don’t fix your mistakes, you’ll be worth less than nothing. How much are you worth?”
“Less than nothing,” Carmy says softly to himself in the dim loneliness of the office.
“Less than nothing, Chef.”
“Less than nothing, Chef.”
When he returns to the kitchen, Marcus is kneading the dough. Neither of them say anything. The bloodied onions go in the trash and the knife gets deeply scrubbed and the cutting board disinfected, and Carmy keeps waiting for it. For the confirmation of his inadequacy. For Marcus to turn to him and say, You know, we did fine without you last night. Why are you even here? But it never comes. It never comes. It never comes. And maybe, f*cking maybe, that’s a good thing.
Because Carmy’s not at all sure how he would answer.
**
The day goes—Carmy’s not sure, actually, how the day goes. Later that night, he’ll think back on it, and he won’t. It’ll be a void. Some vast emptiness, some eternal abyss. What he knows is that early on, he gathered them all together in the kitchen and told them that he’s sorry about last night, that he won’t let it happen again, and that they did a great job without him. He thinks. He thinks that’s what he said. He hopes that’s what he said, ’cause otherwise it might’ve just been him standing silently in the middle of their circle while they waited for him to speak.
He does recall… something. Tina. Materializing out of thin air at his elbow has he stirred the pot with the broth. It’d been boiling, and it should’ve been simmering, and he’d been determinedly circling the spoon through it until Tina scared the ever-loving sh*t out of him.
“Jeff,” she’d said. He remembers the cadence of her voice. That’s how he can trust that this, at least, was true. “Jeffrey.”
It had taken a second for Carmy’s brain to make contact with his mouth. “Huh? What? What, what’s—what’s wrong, what’d I—”
“Nah, nothing’s wrong,” Tina had said. There’d been a furrowed crease between her brows; for what reason, Carmy hadn’t been able to parse, and he still couldn’t. “Just… you doin’ okay, baby?”
“What? Yeah, I’m f*ckin’—I’m f*ckin’ fine, and you should’ve said behind, T—”
“Behind,” Tina’d said, rolling her eyes. “C’mon, Carm. I know you. You talk to Richie since last night?”
And Carmy has no idea what happened after that because his entire body had gone numb and far-away. No, he hadn’t talked to Richie. He hasn’t talked to Richie. The more important thing is, there’s no f*cking way Richie wants to talk to him. Which. Carmy can’t blame him, he can’t blame him for any of it, because it was his fault. His fault. His fault. If Richie’s decided to leave, to go off somewhere nice and sunny and Carmy-less like f*cking… Los Angeles, or some sh*t, it’s only Carmy that’s responsible.
But: No Richie. Carmy can’t remember much, but he remembers the absence of his cousin. It had clawed its way in through the fog. It had made itself felt.
It makes itself felt even now, at home, curled into the arm of his couch while a siren wails past the window and the favorite to win Bake-Off drops their coconut Panna Cotta on the floor. It’s almost funny, except Carmy can’t help the way his entire body seizes at the sight. He goes stiff, suddenly awake even though he’d been half in dreams already, and his fingers curl into the cushion of the couch. The fabric is scratchy, complete sh*t. He knows if he invited Sugar over she’d have some complaint to make against it. Get up on her soapbox and wax poetic about the thread count, or whateverthef*ck. But Sugar hasn’t been over. He hasn’t let her.
He covers his eyes with his arm. He can’t watch. He wants to tell the lady on the TV, Quit f*ckin’ around and he wants to tell her, You could’ve won if you’d just been better and he wants to tell her, If you keep standing around they’re gonna get up on you and tell you exactly how f*ckin’ worthless you are and you’re never gonna amount to anything and you’re stupid, by the way, for dropping that. But he can’t, and besides he doesn’t think she’d really appreciate his opinion.
“You should look. Don’t bury your face in the cushions. Absorb their failure, I’m sure it tastes familiar. Hey, when you came up here from Chicago, what’d you think? That everybody was going to fall at your feet? With your dumb f*cking hippie tattoos and poser bullsh*t? You’re not real. Are you real?”
“I’m not real.”
“I’m not real, Chef.”
Carmy lifts his head. Stares at the screen. The contestant is crying. Or—he’s? Crying? There’s something wet on his cheeks, some dampness that he feels only when he brings two fingers to his face. A stray bit of bandaid catches on his skin. Sticky. Gummy. “I’m not real, Chef.”
“No one was going to fall at your feet. You’re fake, and everybody knows it.”
“I’m fake, and everybody knows it, Chef.”
Everything is cold. He’s so f*cking cold. Maybe—maybe, here’s an idea, maybe he never left the walk-in at all. Maybe he’s still in there. Maybe he’ll never get out.
**
He doesn’t sleep. At least, he doesn’t dream. At least, he gets to The Bear at two in the morning and he can’t get the thoughts in his brain to make much sense.
The exhaustion is good, though. It basically wakes him up. He can’t—he cannot—fall asleep at the cutting board, or in front of the burning stove, or while holding a knife. Yesterday he got distracted. Not tired. Today he’s tired and he’s awake all at once, and there’s no room for distraction. He can do it. He won’t make another mistake. The logic is… well, it’s good f*cking logic, by his account, even if when he tries to reason through it he can’t get the pieces of it to fit together. Whatever. Doesn’t matter.
He can do it. He won’t make another mistake.
Syd gets in around five thirty and immediately halts on the threshold.
“Dude,” she says, “you look like sh*t.”
Carmy doesn’t look up from rolling the dough for the pasta, finding a simple comfort in the press of his fingers to the warmth of it, the dusty flour coating his skin until he can’t tell where it ends and he begins. “You look like sh*t.”
“Wow, good one. You practice that, oooor…?”
“D’you mind going through the grapes, Chef? In the bowl.”
A low whistle. “Aw, you went and got them out for me, too? You shouldn’t have. Carmy.”
“Uh-huh?”
“Your eye bags? Have got eye bags. Seriously. I feel like I’m at, like, baggage claim, and you know I f*cking hate baggage claim, dude. This is harassment, borderline.”
“You should, uh—” File a complaint, is what he means to say, but his attention catches on the oven and alarm spikes in his chest. “f*ck!”
“f*ck what? What f*ck? Carmy—”
“I forgot to set the timer for the f*cking—” Deep breaths. Right? Deep f*cking breaths. Count backwards in your head. What’s the time. It’s five thirty four. You’ve been here since two oh one. You put the focaccia dough on the oven at five ten. Five ten. Yeah? Five ten. Five ten. Sure, sounds right. Possibly. Or not. Maybe—maybe not. That might—that might be wrong, actually, it’s gotta have been longer than that. “The f*cking dough, for the f*cking—goddamnit!”
Syd jolts at the impact of his fist into the counter. “Jesus Christ, can we, maybe, chill? Take a chill pill? And not abuse our very new, very expensive, equipment?”
“No, no, I can’t—f*cking—it’s been in the f*cking oven for—for f*cking—”
For who knows how f*cking long, and he pivots to go check it. The instant the oven door opens, he can tell: No good. No good. There’s no acrid stench of smoke, but the dough is burnt instead of golden-brown, crumbly on the sides and slaking black ash onto the rack. No good. He reaches in to grab it out and immediately the hot scorch of it sears at his palms and a sharp hiss wrenches through his teeth as it slips from his fingers and slams onto the tile. Just like the contestant from last night on the TV. He can practically hear the thud of it against the ground, reverberating through his bones like the bang of a gong, and over the sudden roaring of his ears he can barely make out Syd saying,
“Don’t try to touch it again!” in that specifically high whine she tends to use on Richie more than anybody, to inform him of how un-seriously she takes him.
“I’m not, I’m not,” Carmy says—thinks he says—even as he forces himself to stand up straight from where he was about to kneel down to pick up the fallen loaf. He runs a hand through his hair and the agony that blooms from the motion has him biting on his tongue so hard he probably almost cleaves it in two. Metal blossoms along his teeth, along his throat. Thick and copper-bright. He draws his hand away from his head to assess the damage: The palm is a bright, blistered red, but it’s fading fast, basically already gone. “I’m not. I’m not. It’s— sorry, sorry, it’s—it’s fine. Sorry, Chef. I’m sorry.”
“Dude,” says Syd, and when he draws his eyes up to meet hers the expression on her face frightens him. She looks scared. She looks f*cking scared and he’s the one that put it there. “What the hell was that?”
“I know, I—I know, I’ll make a new loaf, I—”
“Oh, yeah, the loaf,” says Syd. “Um, no, Carmy, I actually, like, am a human person who cares about other human people instead of bread loaves, and I’m kinda looking at your hand and just, you know, wondering if maybe we shouldn’t focus on that right now?”
Carmy glances back down at his palm, uncurling his fingers centimeter by painful centimeter. It doesn’t even hurt that bad, and the vivid burn of it has almost returned to his normal skin tone. He rotates his wrist; shakes out his hand. The injury isn’t severe—it had startled him more than it had actually wounded, and all he needs to do now is run some cold water over it and it’ll be back to normal. “Nah,” he says, wagging his head back and forth. “Nah, Chef, it’s—this is normal—”
“This is normal?”
“We work in a kitchen, Syd, of course it’s f*cking normal—”
“You were distracted, Carmy,” Syd says, so firmly that the hot, mean spill of words pressing up against the boundary of Carmy’s lips gets suffocated and dies. “You didn’t set a timer, and you grabbed that thing without mitts, and, sure, the—the burn isn’t that bad— Actually, I don’t know if I trust you, lemme see that—”
Carmy’s ribs constrict. I don’t know if I trust you. His vision swims. Vaguely, he recognizes Syd taking a step towards him and without purposefully meaning to he takes a step back from her. “No, don’t,” he begins and then stops because he can’t quite figure out where he wants that sentence to go. “I said it’s f*cking fine. I can handle it.”
“I know you can handle it, you big baby, but you’re clearly not with it right now—”
“I’m f*cking with it,” Carmy snaps, curling his arm to his chest. Animal caught in the trap. He’s felt like that a lot recently. Like he’s stuck in a cage and there are eyes everywhere just watching, waiting for him to f*ck up so they can wash their hands of him and leave and never return. The fist in his chest tightens, squeezing the breath from his lungs. He can’t—he can’t—he can’t. He can’t. “It was one mistake, okay, and I said I’m f*cking sorry so can you please just drop it?”
He’s aware of how he sounds and he still can’t stop. All he can do is stare at Syd warily, daring her to come closer, wishing that she would, until she shakes her head with such quiet disappointment that it’s like a punch to the stomach. “Heard, Chef,” she says, already turning on her heel to go drop her bag off and change. “Consider it dropped.”
Breathe. In. Breathe. Out. Do not f*cking pass out. Yeah, those black spots are normal. Happens every time I can’t breathe. Yeah, I can’t breathe a lot sometimes. Happens every time I’m a jackass. Happens every time I ruin something good. No big deal.
Carmy presses up against the edge of the countertop, the dull pressure to the small of his back enough to ground him even as the world seems to fall away beneath him. The heels of his palms go to his eyes, push into the sockets. It hurts, then, his hand—the contact of it to his face, igniting the faint burn to a fierce throb. But it’s. Deserved, probably. He should be in pain. He should be in as much pain as he causes everybody else.
“She doesn’t trust you. Nobody trusts you, because everything that you are is worthless, including your word. Do you hear me? Nod so I know that you’re hearing me.”
Carmy nods into the cradle of his palms.
“Say, yes, Chef, everything that I am is worthless.”
“Yes, Chef,” he whispers. “Everything that I am is worthless.”
The dark behind his eyes accepts it as the truth, and so does he. A shuddery inhale rattles through him, through vein and blood and spine and throat, and he lifts his head from his hands and goes to clean up the spilled loaf. There’s crumbs all over the place that he mops up using a damp paper towel, and the loaf itself goes in the trash. Waste. Such a f*cking waste. No wonder Marcus thought he needed help bandaging a cut. No wonder Syd doesn’t trust him.
More flour. He’ll do better. More oil. He’ll be better. More yeast. He’ll make up for it. More water. He’ll make up for everything.
**
What happens is: Richie comes back that afternoon.
What happens is: He walks into the kitchen, still wearing his suit, all ironed out neat and perfect and professional, slapping Marcus on the shoulder and giving Tina a sideways hug and offering Syd a nod of mutual respect. He goes in the back to lean against the wall and shoot the sh*t with Sweeps and Manny, and then he returns to the kitchen and starts helping gut and clean the fish for dinner, and then he taste-tests Ebra’s dish for Family, and all the while he’s smiling and laughing and cheerful.
What happens is: He doesn’t say one f*cking word to Carmy.
What happens is: Carmy doesn’t say one f*cking word to him.
What happens is: Carmy deserves what Richie’s giving him, but Richie doesn’t deserve what Carmy’s giving him.
What happens is: Mikey will never forgive Carmy for a lot of things. For leaving to New York, for not calling, not texting, for cutting him out completely, for ignoring Sugar, for ignoring Ma, for being born, for not going to his funeral, for being too f*cking stupid to scrape The Beef together and stitch it up, for being the reason he brought a gun to his head and blew out his brains all over the river in the dead of the night, alone.
What happens is: Mikey will never forgive Carmy for a lot of things. But most especially not this.
**
But it’s okay. It is. Carmy’s got sh*t to focus on—mainly, prepping for dinner without letting the washed-out blue lights of the kitchen drag him back to New York, without letting another focaccia loaf burn to a crisp in the oven, without letting one of his fingers get sliced open on the counter, without letting the awful f*cking monster in his chest grow into something that he can’t hold inside of himself anymore. He portions the fish once Richie’s gone to the back again; he adds salt to the broth and continues to stir; he manages what is hopefully a smile at his sampler of the sambusa Ebra’s making for Family, though it might’ve been more of a grimace. His face isn’t working right. It feels numb in some places and impossibly tight in others. Like someone’s glued a mask over the real one and now he can’t get it off.
It’s easier, though, than it was. The sallow glare of the lights is becoming familiar to him again. The necessity of getting things right on the first try is becoming familiar to him again. The churning nausea in his stomach, the trembling reach of his fingers for the knife, the perpetual shadow looming at his shoulder, is becoming familiar to him again. A few more days, and he’ll be back to normal. Just like before. Just like New York, when he was fast and precise and efficient and good at what he did and didn’t hurt anybody by getting too close to them.
The hours pass in a blur of sweat and nerves and his pulse thrumming like bird’s wings in his throat, and dinner goes. It goes smoothly, he’s pretty sure, even though after he can’t recall much of it. Any of it. Whatever, it’s not, like, an issue. It’s something that happens sometimes. That’s it.
And he does—it’s not a complete void, the way yesterday is. There are glimpses, flashes of memory all saturated with vivid color and static, the way the TV screen used to get when he was little and parked on the couch for hours waiting for Ma to come downstairs for breakfast, and he can grasp onto them with both hands as a reminder that it did happen, it did exist. He hasn’t f*cking… he hasn’t f*cking disappeared from this plane of existence, or anything. He’s still here. He’s still here.
“Chefs, fire three focaccia, four bucatini, two fishes, please!”
“Yes, Chef!”
It’s hot. The air’s thick with adrenaline. From the front, the soft murmur of customers. From the kitchen, flame and fingers scrubbed raw and orders wrenched from the throat as if by a fish hook.
“Chefs, I need hands, I need hands!”
“Yes, Chef!”
“Behind!”
Hair, curled to sh*t and damp against skin. The sting of lemon juice discovering all the tiny, insignificant nicks on hands. A spill, splattering across tile, cleaned away by a soapy mop.
“Corner!”
“Behind! Behind!”
“Why do you believe you have a place with them? They all hate you. None of them even like you. You’re going to f*ck this up the same way you f*ck up everything else. Say, yes, Chef, I’m going to f*ck this up the same way I f*ck up everything else.”
Yes, Chef, I’m going to f*ck this up the same way I f*ck up everything else.
Terror, bright and sharp. Don’t make a mistake. Do not make a f*cking mistake. If you make a mistake they will all see it and they will all know that you’re nothing.
“Chefs, fire four donuts, please!”
“Yes, Chef!”
“Corner! Corner, f*cking—corner!”
The dull ache of a shoulder colliding with another.
“Sorry, Carm, sorry—”
“Hands? Can I get hands, Chefs, please?”
A voice. Loud. Commanding. Ringing through marrow, through bone. Making the rest of it all so small.
“Yes, Chef!”
“They’re tired of you. You are tired of you. Say, yes, Chef, I’m tired of me.”
Yes, Chef, I’m tired of me.
“Uh, Chefs, let’s 86 the Michael, okay—?”
Swallowing, depthless emptiness.
“86 the f*cking—no, no, Chef, what—”
“Yeah, we don’t—we, like, literally cannot do—”
“Why do you care so much? All of this caring, you should have given it when he was alive. You killed him. You are the one that killed him. Who killed your brother?”
I killed my brother.
“I killed my brother, Chef.”
I killed my brother, Chef.
“We can’t—we can’t f*cking do the Michael? It’s not that f*cking—”
“Jesus, Carm, chill the f*ck out! What’re you—”
“Do you think any of them will ever be able to love you after that? After you took away the person they loved most? Mikey was everything to these people. You are nothing.”
I am nothing.
“I am nothing, Chef.”
“Okay, guys, ignore Carmy, we’re gonna just 86 the Michael and keep it going, yeah?”
“Say it. I am nothing, Chef. Say it.”
“Hey, Carmy, c’mon—”
“Say, I am nothing, Chef.”
“Carmy—”
“Shut the f*ck up!”
Everything clarifies to a single, sharp point. The world returns in fragments, bit and pieces that Carmy’s been conscious of but hasn’t felt a part of for—for who knows how long, really, maybe hours or days or, or f*cking years, even, how’s he supposed to keep track—and the first thing he’s aware of is Richie standing in front of him, which is. Just really not great. The second thing he’s aware of is the fact that he can’t breathe. That’s a problem because, like, the main detail he’d like to make clear is that he’s usually not able to breathe properly, but right now he’s really not able to breathe properly and his throat feels like it’s been cinched in a rat trap and his chest hurts, it f*cking hurts, and he thinks maybe he’s about to die at this exact moment in front of everyone. And he also thinks, maybe, that’d be a good thing.
“Cuz—” Richie begins, and Carmy can’t. He can’t. Jesus f*cking Christ, he honest-to-God can’t. Why is Richie even here? Why are any of them f*cking here?
“We’re not f*cking—I don’t want to—to do the—” Yep, real good job, Carmen. “I d-don’t want the—the—M-M-Mich—” And he’s seven years old again, and his f*cking brain is stalling out because he’s too stupid to speak the way other people do, and his hands are shaking so he has to tuck them up against his sides, creating a protective wall around his stomach, and he’s looking into Richie’s eyes and all he can see is Mikey, Mikey, Mikey. Mikey, who was there when Carmy was born. Mikey, who wasn’t there when Carmy came back. “I d-don’t want to—f*ck! f*ck! G-get—g-g-get outta my way, R-R-Ri—”
“I’m gonna need you to take a coupla deep breaths before I get outta your way, Carm, you got that? C’mon, in, out, they shoulda taught you this sh*t at NOMA—”
They shoulda. I shoulda cut you out. I should have cut you out. You f*ckin’ need me. You f*ckin’ need me.
Is it possible to be dead without dying? Sometimes Carmy wonders if it wasn’t him that went that night, and Mikey that stayed, and now he’s just some ghost clinging to the world furiously by the nails, refusing to let it go before he ruins it, the way he does with everything else. Sometimes he wonders if there’s any universe where it was Mikey that got to live, and Carmy that got to die, and sometimes he wonders if that universe is better than this one.
“I said out of my f*ckin’ way, Richie,” Carmy snarls. “I’m breathing fine. Move!”
And he—he shoulder-checks past his cousin, using enough brute force that Richie stumbles back, palms raised, and storms in the direction of the office without pausing to check on Richie, or on any of the rest of them, and then he’s suddenly in the solitary, musty dimness of the room and there’s no light on and no one else around to watch as he collides with the far wall and slides down, down, down, feeling as if he’s about to shake apart at the f*cking atom. His forehead goes to the pointed peaks of his knees. His fingers curl into his calves, pressing deep into flesh, so hard he wouldn’t be surprised if they bruised. An exhale jerks out of him, like water spurting from a clogged pipe, and then another, and he thinks for a second that he’s fixed everything that’s wrong and it’ll all go back to normal, but then his entire chest almost—it caves in, almost, and before he has a chance to know what’s happening, there are tears everywhere and he can’t breathe even worse than he already couldn’t breathe.
It hurts, to cry, which might not be fully healthy. Sugar’s told him that crying’s like a release for her, a purge of all the bad sh*t inside getting drained and evaporating in the air, where it can’t touch her. Carmy’s not sure exactly how a release should feel, but he is pretty sure not like this: Like his interior is being scraped out by the flat edge of a blade. Like he’s being hollowed out into a corpse. There’s something latched beneath his lowest rib and it’s yanking, it’s yanking and it won’t stop until his heart is spilled onto the floor to be picked apart by the vultures.
He’s being quiet, at least. And after his stupid display out there in the kitchen he’s convinced no one’s gonna come after—
A knock.
“Yo, Cousin.” It’s Richie. Of f*cking course it’s Richie. “You good?”
Carmy tucks his nose into the pleat of his pants, sniffles. He’s shivering. Or—or trembling, that’s probably it. His body is a cage and he’s trapped inside.
“You don’t deserve him. You don’t deserve anything, but you especially don’t deserve him. Do you understand me?”
Yes. I understand.
“Yes, Chef. I understand, Chef.”
Yes, Chef. I understand, Chef.
“Carm? Carmy, you better f*ckin’ answer me.”
“I’m good,” Carmy snaps without raising his head from the cradle of his knees, the stifling dark. He hopes that the evidence of his tears aren’t obvious in the croak of his voice, the rough crack of it.
“You locked the door, you jackass.”
Did he? He doesn’t… he doesn’t remember that. His fingers tangle in the sweat-damp wilds of his curls and tug until a dull ache spreads across his skull and pounds in his temples.
“Everyone who loves you ends up dead. Are you going to do the same to him? Say, yes, Chef, I am.”
Yes, Chef, I am.
“’Cause I don’t want you in here,” Carmy says, hoarsely. “I told you I wanted you out.”
“Yeah, Cuz, all right—”
“I’m serious, Richie,” says Carmy. “Go away.”
There’s a long, long pause. A stillness. As if the world’s ceased moving. Then—
“Jeff,” and it’s Tina, now, and why the f*ck is Tina outside the door, “c’mon, hell you doin’?”
What’s he doing? What’s he doing? Carmy almost chokes on an ill-timed laugh that crawls unbidden up his throat, wet with the leftovers of his stupid tears. He doesn’t know. He doesn’t know. He doesn’t—he doesn’t know. He wishes someone would tell him. He wishes someone would take his face between their hands and tell him exactly what brand of sh*tty he is, exactly how to fix it, exactly how to be better. But to do that they’d have to get close to him, and he can’t. He can’t let them. He can’t, he can’t, he can’t.
The peaks of his knees dig into the upper curve of his eye sockets, sending black spots blooming across his vision. There’s a ringing in his ears, and he can’t figure out if it’s in his head or if someone in the kitchen forgot to turn off a timer. His skull hurts. It—it hurts, like his brain is pushing up against its confines, like everything within him is trying to escape. Something is gnawing at him, but not from the outside. From the inside. Something is gnawing at him from the inside and it’s alive, and it’s real.
Was that how Mikey had felt, too? When he’d stood there on the bridge at dawn and watched the rosy light crack and spill over the horizon? Had he felt something gnawing at him from the inside and known that he had to get it out or else it would eat him alive?
Carmy’s palms prickle, and he imagines for a moment that he can sense each individual nerve, lit on fire, set to burn him to ash. He scrubs them against his pants and lets the scratchy fabric scrub it away, forces them to go numb again. It’s nicer that way. It’s nicer if they’re numb.
“Look at you. Curled into a ball like a f*cking baby. You are pathetic. You are pathetic.”
The words drag themselves from Carmy’s throat of their own volition. “I am pathetic.”
“I am pathetic, Chef.”
“I am pathetic, Chef.”
“You should be dead.”
“Yes, Chef.”
“Say it back.”
“I should be dead, Chef.”
“Carmy? Carmen Anthony f*ckin’ Berzatto, if you don’t open this goddamn door I swear to the Almighty I will kick it down myself—”
“I told you to go the f*ck away!” Carmy screams, and it cleaves him open right down the middle, like everything jarred up inside of him’s just been waiting for a chance to come pouring out, and he lurches to his feet and strides towards the door to jab a finger against the wood. He’s already told Richie that he’s a leech, that he’s obsessed with their family, that he’s nowhere and no one and nothing, and yet Richie’s still here and Carmy can’t. He can’t have that. He can’t f*cking have that. It’s no good. It’s no good. He’s no good. “Jesus f*cking Christ, Richie, how many goddamn times do I have to tell you? I don’t like you. I don’t like you. I want you to go. I want you to go and leave me the f*ck alone!”
A sharp burst of—of Richie’s high-pitched, slightly hysterical giggle, the one that used to wrench out of him at the worst moments, when Donna was at her lowest ebb and none of them could figure out what to do about it. It was something he and Steve bonded over, once, the fact that they have hysteria-induced hysteria, they’d called it. Carmy’s heard it a thousand times. He’s never really heard it directed at him. “Oh, you don’t like me? You don’t like me, Cuz?”
“Nah,” says Carmy, off-hand, as if they’re discussing the number of forks left in the sink. “Nah, nah, I don’t, I really f*ckin’ don’t.”
“That’s real convenient, Carmy, ’cause right now I don’t really f*ckin’ like you either,” Richie snaps back, and Carmy can almost see him—a memory, imposed over the rest of it. Richie, rolling down the windows after picking Carmy up from school and the May afternoon was too hot to breathe straight. Richie, taping up one of Carmy’s stupid kiddie drawings on the fridge in the apartment that he and Mikey and Tiff had shared for a couple of clustered years when Carmy and Nat were still too little to leave home. Richie, sweeping Carmy into a hug that lifted him off his feet during the reception for his high school graduation, proud of him even though he hadn’t gotten into college, proud of him even though he hadn’t deserved it. “Yeah? Yeah? I love you, but I don’t really f*ckin’ like you either.”
Carmy’s teeth buzz in his mouth. It’s like he’s—like he’s viscerally aware of each of his bones, and how they fit into his body, and how they’re bound together by flesh. Like he’s not even a person anymore. Only a skeleton. “You’re just guilty,” says his skeleton. “You’re just f*ckin’ guilty, that’s it. That’s all it f*cking is.”
Needle drop. Start the music. Everything else fades away.
“Is that right? It’s guilt? Yeah, Dr. Carmy, go on and tell me more about the f*cking guilt.”
“You didn’t save him. You didn’t save him and you’re gonna make up for it by f*ckin’—”
“I didn’t save him? I didn’t save him? And where the f*ck were you, Carmy, where the f*ck were you? That’s right, a thousand miles away in goddamn New York ’cause you were just too f*cking high-and-mighty to be anywhere near the rest of us—”
“Yeah, I wasn’t here, Richie, but you were and you didn’t do f*cking anything and now he’s gone and it’s all your f*cking fault!”
“Okay, Carmy, let’s play the blame game, yeah? If we tally it up, you think you’re gonna win? Think you’re gonna beat me? I was there by Mikey’s side the whole—”
“Don’t say his f*cking name—”
“—the whole goddamn time, you know, and he’d always tell me that he felt like he’d failed you, jackass, he felt like he’d f*cking failed you and you never did sh*t to disprove that fine f*ckin’ notion of his, so, yeah, let’s play the goddamn blame game. C’mon. I’ve got the Expo, Cuz. I’ve got the f*cking Expo.”
Carmy’s skeleton presses its head to the door. It can’t comprehend itself. “He loved you more than he ever f*ckin’ loved me, and it didn’t even matter ’cause you weren’t enough.”
There’s another eternal silence, longer than the first. Splinters dig into the skin of his brow. He can’t breathe again.
“Sure, Cousin,” Richie finally says, sneer-sharp and distant. “I wasn’t enough, and neither were f*cking you.”
Then he’s gone, he’s gone, Carmy has no way of knowing it but he does, somehow, in some deep-down intrinsic part of himself. His fingers splay where they’ve been knuckled to the door, so that his palm lays flat and trembling. “Tina?”
But there’s no response. There’s no response.
**
“What the f*ck, Carmy?”
Carmy pulls the phone away from his ear, takes a deep inhale, and then brings it back before saying, “Hey, Sug. Uh, what’s, uh… what’s up?”
“What’s up? What’s up is that I heard what the f*ck you said to Richie, and, oh, yeah, I also heard that you bled all over an entire onion so I’ll ask again: What the f*ck, Carmy?”
It’s Saturday. Sunday? Dawn is a pale smudge through the windows, and Carmy’d been, like, adjacently sleeping—propped against the arm of the couch by the elbow, chin cradled in his palm, eyes staring half-lidded at the wall—when suddenly his phone had started buzzing in his back pocket and he’d jolted awake, scrambling to hit the accept call button before realizing who it was that he was actually accepting a call from. Because he, he loves Sugar, he does, but he can’t. He doesn’t want to argue with her, not now, not with Richie still visible in the rearview mirror, and not when he can tell from the tenor of her voice that she’s already pissed at him.
“What does it matter? Everyone is pissed at you. That is what you do: You piss people off, because you are a disgusting, needy person and they all wish you were dead. What are you?”
I am a disgusting, needy person.
“I am a disgusting, needy person, Chef.”
I am a disgusting, needy person, Chef.
“And what do they all wish you were?”
They wish I was dead, Chef.
“Carm? I’m just gonna remind you that I know where you live and I have a very enthusiastic chauffeur.”
f*ck. f*ck. He drags a hand down his face; squeezes his eyes shut. “Sorry, sorry, Sug. I, uh. S’all true, yeah.” He captures his bottom lip between his teeth and worries at it until the skin breaks and metal floods his mouth.
“And, um,” Sugar’s doing her best not to lose her sh*t at him, he can tell by the way she’s biting off the end of each word like a square from a bar of chocolate, “just, real quick follow-up question: Why... why the f*ck?”
“Shouldn’t you be asleep?” Carmy asks, aware of the hypocrisy and praying Sugar doesn’t call him on it. “For, like, the baby or some sh*t?”
“It’s because of the baby or some sh*t that I’m awake, and this isn’t about me, this is about you.” There’s a pause, and a faint rustling across the line; bedsheets, or maybe she’s rearranging the dinner napkins, ’cause she and Pete are adults and bought embroidered dinner napkins when they moved into their adult house. “What’s going on? I know I wasn’t in a lot this week, and I’m sorry, but what’s—what’s going on?”
“Nothing, nothing’s going on, I just… just haven’t been sleeping.”
It’s enough of a truth that he thinks Sugar’s gonna accept it and move on, but then she says, “You haven’t been sleeping so you told Richie he’s a leech? Carmy.”
Carmy scoffs, even as acid burns at the base of his throat. He has the sudden, strange desire to throw up. Just. Get the poison out. Whatever it is that’s screwed inside of him, tear it from his chest and smash it to a pulp. “What, he f*ckin’ tattled?”
“Jesus Christ,” says Sugar, but she mutters it, so he can’t tell if she’s saying it to him or to the potential embroidered dinner napkin situation she’s dealing with. Probably to him. He shifts, presses his spine to the back of the couch, tips his head and stares at the ceiling. It’s lumpy, popcorn-white, and there’s maybe a couple of damp spots that he’s sure Sugar’d have something to say about. She always finds these small things to fret at until it feels like his whole life’s unraveling between her cautious, anxious fingers. “You know Pete told Mom about the pregnancy?”
“He…” Carmy blinks. Pete and Ma. That doesn’t fully compute. “Huh?”
“Yeah, she, um—” Sugar’s voice hitches, briefly, before she continues. “Apparently she showed up, at the— and Pete met her outside and I guess, I guess he thought I’d already told her, for some reason, and—”
“sh*t,” says Carmy. “f*ckin’ Pete.”
“f*ckin’ Pete,” Sugar agrees, though it’s fond.
“I’m—I’m sorry, Nat,” Carmy says, and he does mean it, even if he’s pretty sure Christ and everybody are currently of the opinion that his capacity for empathy is below none. He knows that Ma’s gonna be a f*cking disaster about it, that she’s just gonna use it as another instance of none of them caring for her enough to share things with her. He can hear her voice, imposed over Chef’s: I give so much to the rest of you and I get nothing in return. It clamps down cold around his throat, and it’s difficult to force out his next words. “Did she—has she, um, is she, y’know?”
He imagines Sugar running two fingers along the creased length of her brow, trying to smooth the stress away. “I haven’t heard from her yet.”
“Oh. f*ck.”
“Yes, Carmy,” says Sugar. “f*ck. And meanwhile I’m getting texts left and right about how you’re grabbing things from the oven without mitts and screaming at people through doors and I just, I love you, Bear, but I need you to fix this, okay?”
The request cleaves right down the middle of Carmy’s chest and splits his heart wide open. His ribs constrict and he rolls his knuckles deep into his chest, as if he can knead out the terrible, awful grief rising in there like a tidal wave, and he wishes he could tear himself from his own body and toss it onto the street, where it might get trampled by a car. So sad, people passing by would sigh. But it’s not like we didn’t expect it. And then he wouldn’t have to feel the tremble of his pulse, the scald of tears behind his eyes, the disappointment from Sugar coating his skin like poison.
“She needs you to amend your failures. Can you do one f*cking thing right, for once in your life?”
Yes, Chef.
“O-okay,” he says, barely managing to keep his stutter—perpetually caged in his throat somewhere, liable to rattle the bars at the slightest provocation—under control. “Yeah, Sug, I can—I can fix it, I promise. I— sorry, I’m sorry.”
A silence. Then, finally, Sugar heaves a breath and says, “Thank you. Okay. Thank you, Carm.”
“Sure,” says Carmy, and it sounds distant to his own ears. Like he’s deep underwater. Like he’s drowning where no light can reach. “No problem.”
“I think I’ll be back at the restaurant Tuesday, yeah?”
“Uh-huh. ’Kay.”
“Carmy?”
“Yeah,” says Carmy, louder, and hopes that he’s actually speaking and not just imagining that he is. His fingers tighten around the phone, so hard he wouldn’t be surprised if it cracked beneath his grip. “Yeah, Sug, I heard you.”
“No, I—” An inhale. An exhale. Carmy’s arm goes to his stomach, bracing it, almost, keeping it protected. “Take care of yourself, Bear. Please? For me?”
“I know,” says Carmy. He does. It’s not a lie, not like it is sometimes. He needs to be better. He needs to quit f*cking around, quit slicing his thumbs open and letting them spill across the floor, quit—quit it all, all of it, everything. He needs to focus. Try harder. He can do it. He can. If it means making Sugar happy, if it means convincing the rest of them that they can trust him even after what he’s done, then he can do it. And he will. “Bye, Sug.”
She possibly says goodbye. Probably. She usually does, but Carmy hangs up without registering it and tosses his phone onto the cushion next to him. There’s a deafening buzzing in his skull. A drill, carving its way through bone. The press of his hands to his face doesn’t seem entirely real.
In the next moment, or maybe hours later, Mikey’s crouched in front of him, palm cupping the arch of Carmy’s kneecap. His thumb rubs in small circles, a soothing, steady motion, and his eyes, when they glance up to meet Carmy’s, are a pure, depthless black. No separation of pupil and iris. Just a void, all the way down. “Hey, shrimp,” he says, gentle the way he used to be when Carmy was real f*cking small and could still be hoisted onto even Natalie’s shoulders. “You’re hurt.”
W-what? Carmy wants to ask, but he finds that his tongue is gone. He tries to reach for it, tries to probe at it, but Mikey stops him with a hand to his elbow. “Don’t,” he tells him. “You’ll make it worse.”
Make what worse?
“They asked us if we wanted to get it treated,” says Mikey. His voice is still so gentle. His eyes are still so empty. “We said nah, man, what’s the f*ckin’ point? You’re gonna bleed out one way or another.”
Get what treated?
And that’s when Carmy feels it—the slick, viscous liquid, the heavy metallic stench of it. It stings at the apex of his nostrils, like the dull pinch of the Covid test ramming up against the bridge of your nose, and he almost gags but his tongue still isn’t there so he just makes a weird retching noise and looks wildly into Mikey’s face. Help me, he speaks with his eyes. Please help me, I don’t—I don’t know what’s happening, please—
“You’re good, shrimp,” says Mikey. “It’ll be over soon.”
But Carmy doesn’t want it to be over. He doesn’t—he doesn’t, he doesn’t, he doesn’t. His fingers grapple for Mikey’s shirt and yank, as if to make Mikey understand, as if by bringing him closer something will change.
“Yo,” Mikey says, sharper, harder. He clamps down on Carmy’s wrist. “Don’t do that sh*t. Let go.”
Carmy shakes his head. He can’t feel his mouth anymore. He can’t feel anything. There’s laughter, somewhere, far away and echoing, echoing. The cold is almost warm.
“Carmen,” says Mikey. “Let f*cking go.”
And that’s when Carmy realizes there’s a gaping hole in his chest. Straight through to spine. Ragged flesh and mangled tissue. He releases Mikey’s shirt and prods instead at the wound, runs his fingers along the exposed nerves, the veins and marrow and bone. He should be able to see his ribcage, his heart, but he can’t. And it doesn’t hurt, to touch it. It just feels like an acceptance.
“What’s happening?” he says, because he can—he can speak again, now, and he gazes up wildly and repeats, “Mikey, what’s happening?”
But Mikey doesn’t answer. His face is going weird. Long. Stretched. He’s staring at Carmy like he wants to kill him, like he’d do it with his bare f*cking hands. Then he smiles, and there’s something feral to the twist of his lips. “You’re gonna die, Bear,” he says, and it’s so, so gentle that Carmy could almost cry despite the rest of it, and he grasps a handful of Carmy’s curls in a fist and jostles a bit. Not hard, but it hurts more than the hole in his chest. “And I’m gonna watch, yeah? I’ll be here the whole f*ckin’ time.”
“But I don’t—I don’t wanna die,” Carmy says desperately. “Don’t—don’t let me die, Mikey, please—”
“I’m gonna do it!” Mikey says, laughing. “I’m gonna do it, Carm, and ain’t nothing you can do to stop me. C’mon, it’ll be quick. I know.”
And there’s—there’s water, suddenly, everywhere, up to Carmy’s chin and lapping fiercely towards the shore. The river. He’s in the river. He’s in the river and Mikey’s body is in front of him, pale and bloated, bobbing along with the waves, face turned up to the sky. Carmy chokes, swallows briny, oil-slick water, resurfaces. He’s treading, and he thinks how easy it would be to stop. To sink. To slip and fall and die down there, alone. He can feel the river flowing through him, through the hole in his chest. It’s weird. Freezing. Like a fist keeps hitting him but there’s nothing for it to make contact with.
He splutters, slips a little farther. The shore is so far away.
Mikey’s body shudders. Its head lifts off from the water, but it’s not Mikey’s head. It’s a bear’s.
Carmy tries to yell and can’t—something yanks at his ankle—there’s a vivid flash of fangs—
It’s the collision of his knees to the carpet that wakes him up, the jar of his chin against the rickety coffee table. His tongue splits beneath his teeth and he tastes blood and it’s—his hands go to his chest, and it’s solid but he keeps searching, grabbing, convinced that his fingers will finally meet an empty space, a hollowed-out piece of him. His pulse thrums in his skull. He can’t—he can’t—he can hear Mikey’s voice, ringing against the confines of his sh*tty apartment, loud and clear and impossibly true. C’mon, Carmy-bear. You’re gonna die. I’ll be here the whole f*ckin’ time. Let it rip, yeah?
A sob spills from his mouth and he curls over his knees, digs his forehead into the floor. f*ck you, Mikey. f*ck. You.
The fibrous scratch of the carpet is good. It draws him back to his body, forces him out of the water, onto the shore. He keeps his eyes open because if he were to close them all he’d see would be Mikey’s corpse floating along the river’s path, all he’d see would be that bear lunging to tear him to pieces. Up close, the carpet’s not all dull, ugly brown. It’s got flecks of color: A wiry green, a smudge of bruise. f*ckin’ weird colors for a carpet to be. Unless they’re just in his head. That might be it.
Finally, he can move enough to sit up, lean back on his heels. Then he has to plant his elbow on the edge of the coffee table and rest his head in the cradle of its curve, breathing deeply, in and out through his mouth. His stomach’s f*cked. Absolutely, well-and-truly f*cked. He tastes the acid boiling at the base of his molars. He hasn’t eaten in—he’s not sure, exactly, which is fine, and that means there’s nothing really to throw up which makes it a little easier to convince himself not to. But if he hasn’t eaten anything, he’s got no f*cking clue why he’s wanting to hurl.
Stupid. f*cking… just f*cking stupid. None of it’s real. Mikey’s gone and the dream was a goddamn dream and none of the sh*t that Chef tells him is wrong. He’s being a crybaby. He’s being a f*cking loser crybaby all ’cause he can’t handle his mistakes the way normal people do.
He sits up, rams his knuckles into his brow. Again. Again. The dull pain is good—it helps him focus. It’s like: the slice of the knife through your finger, the tongue of flame lapping at your forearms, the incisive murmur of a cool voice in your ear, the swallowing sense of failure eating you up from the inside out. It’s grounding. Solid. Constant. Familiar. He knocks his fist into his head once more, hard enough that it aches but light enough that it won’t leave bruises, before clambering to his feet.
Once standing, he—he sways a bit, woozy all of a sudden, with a sort of abruptness that informs him it’s possibly been a few hours since he last drank water. More than a few. Lots.
If he shows up to work dehydrated, someone’s gonna notice, and they’re gonna report straight back to Sugar, and then she’s gonna call him full of disappointment all over again, and it’ll never end, it’ll never end. He’ll be trapped forever in this cage, unable to convince any of them that he’s worth having around, unable to prove that he’s better than this, he is, he is, he is. But as he’s moving to fumble blearily towards the cabinets, his phone starts to ring again from the couch. Loud. Insistent. Weirdly insistent, like it means something important, even though it sounds the same as every other time it goes off.
Water. Phone. For a minute, Carmy’s torn, struck dumb in the middle of his living room. Which one. Which one. What’s—what’s happening. The phone’s real. The thick, gauze-y dryness of his mouth is. Maybe not as real. Maybe not as important?
He’s got his phone in hand before he knows he’s made a decision, and the number isn’t one he recognizes but the—the number that had called him first, when they’d found Mikey’s body half-submerged in the water, hadn’t been one he’d recognized either. And he hadn’t answered. He hadn’t answered. He hadn’t answered. Heart in his throat, he accepts the call. Thumb goes unwillingly to his mouth. He gnaws. Tastes the salt of skin splitting from the corner of nail, metal blooming bright.
“Hello?” he manages. Later, he won’t be sure how. Muscle memory. You live with the grief long enough that you learn to exist around it.
The voice that responds is calm, clinical, prim. Like a polished ice sculpture, sparkling shiny perfection beneath dull fluorescence. “Hello, my name is Georgia, and I’m calling from Northwestern Memorial Hospital. Is this Carmen Berzatto?”
Everything fades into silence. Into nothing.
Mikey? he nearly says, f*cking idiot, idiot, idiot. His fingers clench around the phone. It can’t be Sugar. It can’t f*cking be Sugar. He just talked to her. She’s not due for, like, years, probably. “I’m he,” he says, and then is aware of how absolutely f*cking dumb that sounds, and amends, “That’s me.” Is he stammering? He may be stammering. That’d be embarrassing.
“Hi, Carmen,” says the voice—Georgie?—, even though they already said hello, unless he’s going f*cking crazy. Hearing sh*t. “I’m calling to let you know that your mother has been admitted to our emergency care unit after a car crash earlier tonight. She’s sustained a compound fracture to her right arm and we’re prepping her for surgery, but she asked that we call you to inform you of the situation. If you’re able, she’s requesting that you come down to see her.”
Um. Well, no. It’s right there, right on the boundary of his mouth. And that—that must make him the absolute sh*ttiest person in the universe, probably, the ultimate paragon of f*cked-in-the-head disease, and he can hear Sugar in his head asking him to fix this, for her, and he knows Ma’s pissed at her but everyone’s pissed at him, so maybe. Maybe he can take this, too. It doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter. He’s already gone. He’s already cut Richie out and he’s already cast aside the rest of them and he’s already proved that he’s worth less than nothing and he’s already gone, he’s already gone, he’s already gone.
The phone is ice against the curve of his cheek. Ma. Ma’s in the hospital. And he’s hesitating, he’s f*cking hesitating. “Yes,” he blurts, and it sounds a little—a little slurred, a little not fully there, so he repeats, “Yeah, yes, I can come down. I’ll be there in, uh. Soon. I’ll be there soon. Tell her—tell her I’m coming? So she knows?” So she doesn’t go f*cking crazy. So she doesn’t smash the doctor’s face in with her IV bag because she thinks her son’s ignoring her. So she’s not angry when I finally get there. Who’s he kidding? She’s gonna be f*cking angry. Whatever he does, she’s gonna be f*cking angry. “Actually, that’s fine, you don’t gotta—”
“I’ll let her know, Mr. Berzatto,” says the—says Georgia. Georgia. She’s Georgia, and Ma’s in the hospital. “Thank you.”
“Yeah, uh, thank—thank you,” he says, which might be dumb, ’cause he’s basically thanking her for telling him that his mom’s gone and got herself hurt driving at two in the morning, or whatthef*ck-ever, and what he means is that he’s grateful that she’s the one who called him and not Ma, but before he has a chance to explain his logic the line’s dead and he’s left holding onto an empty silence.
**
He goes to the bathroom. Throws up. Throws up again. He hasn’t eaten anything in he can’t remember how long—a bite at Family on Friday definitely, and then he probably had dinner last night, he must’ve—so it’s just bile and spit and the painful contraction of his empty stomach, but Ma won’t like it if he goes in the hospital bathroom, so he’s gotta get it out here before he’s in front of her and she can parse the evidence of his weakness by the hard clasp of her palm to his face. He rests his brow against the cold porcelain rim, tries to convince the staccato of his pulse to settle.
Sure, okay. Ma’s in the hospital. Ma’s in the hospital with a compound f*cking fracture, whatever the hell that’s supposed to be, and he’s the only one left to deal with it. And that makes him feel sh*tty, that phrase: Deal with it. Like he’s such an awful son he can’t even find it in himself to care about her beyond how her situation is gonna f*ck his situation. Because it is gonna f*ck his situation, it is. He’s meant to be at the restaurant in a couple of hours, and if it’s Saturday they’ll be busy—if it’s Sunday it might be fine for a night, but he’s got no idea which of the two it is—and he’s just started to prove himself again, and not showing up will put him right back at square one. Worse. Square zero. Square negative.
But Ma. Ma asked for him. So he’s gotta go.
He flushes the toilet; washes his hands in the sink, then splashes cold water in his eyes to clean out the sleep. Stares at himself in the mirror for a long, long time.
He’s never looked much like Mikey. When he was really little, and even sometimes when he was a bit older, people would assume that they were father and son, because they shared the same silhouette but not the same features. Kind of broad-shouldered, strong noses, hair that flopped across their foreheads like fish on the shore. They assumed Carmy’s blue eyes and blond curls had been strained through Mikey’s brown and black, and for a while the two of them had played along. Mikey’d thought it was funny—Richie’d thought it was hilarious—and Carmy’d thought it was obvious. Yeah, Mikey was his dad. Wasn’t like he had another one to choose from. And Mikey was so much older, so much taller. It had been a lie, when they’d said yes, I’m his dad and he’s my kid, but in another sense it hadn’t been a lie at all.
But Carmy thinks, staring into his own eyes, the wallowing depths of them, the void he can’t find an end to, that they were similar in ways that only siblings can be similar. Like: two sides of the same coin. Like: maybe the hand of God flipped it and there was a fifty-fifty chance, Mikey or Carmy, one of them had to end up on that bridge with the gun in their mouth and by some f*cked twist of fate it landed on Mikey, and that’s the only reason Carmy’s still here. Because it’s really, breathtakingly stupid that Mikey thought the rest of them could survive without him. Because he’s the one whose hand Carmy used to hold when he got scared, and now he doesn’t have anything to hold onto, and it’s all in pieces, it’s all to sh*t. He doesn’t have a dad and he doesn’t have Mikey and everyone wishes he was dead and Ma’s in the hospital and how did it go like this, why didn’t that coin land the other f*cking way up.
The Carmy in the mirror offers no answer. It slaps some color into its cheeks, brings them to a wound-pink flush. Offers a smile Ma might be convinced by. Then the light turns off, and it disappears.
