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They do not end up shaking hands or eating octopi. After the terse and fruitless exchange, Logan grumbles a bit about losing his appetite, then excuses himself to use the restroom. The hostess leads Logan away; suddenly, it’s quiet enough to hear the waves, gently rocking below.
Stewy takes his arm off the back of the bench, shifts his torso towards Kendall: “Ken, your board seat? Fuck. I think he literally just offered to castrate you on my consent.”
Kendall takes off his sunglasses, rubs between his eyes where the nose pads have left reddish indents. Naomi got him these in Paris last weekend, and the optician hasn’t made adjustments yet.
“Well, he probably genuinely thought you would like that.”
Stewy makes a sound of bemusement, not quite a laugh. “And did you also—genuinely think that?”
“I don’t—” Kendall chuckles, shoves the sunglasses aside. He still doesn’t look at Stewy. “There’s not much left to think.”
Stewy turns away from him, squinting a bit under the sun. “Fuck, man,” he says, the words come out like a sigh but heavier. It’s a matter of time before the cards fall where they will; Logan all but conceded as much, just now.
“Dad got your robocall, by the way. Were you guys too cheap to pay for a proper scrubbing of the call list, or is Sandy’s syphilis treatment bleeding him dry?”
Stewy laughs out loud, properly this time. “Oh my god, really? So sorry I wasn’t there when he got it. He must have been pissed, huh?”
Kendall smiles faintly. “I wasn’t there either. But yeah, I heard he was mad.”
Stewy nods. This time they look at each other, in the face and not other parts of their bodies. Kendall looks well; maybe he’s finally getting enough sun, this time of the year. Or maybe Logan has been fattening him up for the slaughter, or both. Either way, he looks less like a ghost, and more like someone who will bleed when the guillotine actually drops—better theatrics for the masses, Stewy supposes.
“Your dad’s taking a while. He okay?” He picks up the lavender and twirls the stem between his fingers again, for the lack of something better or appropriate to say. The view beyond the canopy is picture perfect, the air serene and fragrant. They can very much frame this moment and hang it in their offices if they want, call it something like the end of an era, when the time has come to stop sniping at each other with ugly sexually charged metaphors about power. Words are empty but without them, somehow everything feels emptier still.
“Yeah,” Kendall answers, mindless. “Yeah he’s, uh, giving me some time to psych you out.”
Stewy snorts. He’s very aware of how Kendall has been making him laugh, and he hates it because it feels like every second that passes between them now gets them closer to the beginning of their friendship, to the way things never will be again. Even back at the shitshow that was Argestes, there was something to sink his teeth into, like the hate which swelled in his chest when he saw Kendall walking toward him with Jess at his flank. Now there is only sunshine, waves, squealing calls of the seagulls, as they sit and wait in the wings.
“All the world’s a stage for your family,” Stewy didn’t mean to say that out loud, but fuck it, he’ll play along. He’s not the one who needs to worry about losing, or losing his head. “Your dad’s gonna burn your paper-mache-meat-puppet brother-in-law at the stake to get through this, or what?”
“Yeah I…I can’t say. Dad’s gonna do whatever it takes to get us through this.”
“Right, yeah, but of course he won’t turn himself in. It’s like you said: he’ll never retreat.”
Again, Stewy didn’t mean to say it, but they are in this weird liminal space here and it’s all coming out somehow. Kendall turns to look in the direction where Logan has gone. Still no sign of the older man.
“He’ll do what’s right for the company. We’re gonna figure this out.”
And just like that, Kendall seems a bit paler and sweatier like a ghost again. Those invisible puppet strings are built in to insulate him from the state of reality itself.
“There’s no ‘we’ in this, Ken. Logan is probably in the bathroom making a call right now, and you’d have never known.”
“Uh-huh. Does that matter?”
“No, not really. I just felt compelled to tell you what I see from where I’m sitting. That part of the old habits is also hard to kick, I guess.” Stewy kind of hates himself for letting something like nostalgia soften the tone of his voice, as if they are a billion years old already on their deathbeds next to each other. As if things will really be different after today.
“Well, if it happens to be me,” Kendall’s voice suddenly goes quiet; Stewy is not sure what to make of it. “If it’s not Tom, or Gerri, or whoever else…if it’s me, don’t feel bad.”
And just like that, Kendall turns his confusion into irritation. “And why would I? You’ve made you bed, you lie in it.”
Kendall sees his scowl and smiles. It is at once familiar and unsettling. “Yeah that’s…yeah. I'm with you on that.”
Stewy doesn’t want to think about what this means, or what to say to it, so he sticks to “right, fuck you.” Out of the corner of his eye he sees Logan walking over, calling out to him. As if on command, Kendall resets to an expressionless blank.
“Let’s go, son. Stewy,” Logan nods at him as a formality, then turns to walk towards the dock, leaving Kendall to catch up.
“I won’t say it was nice to see you, but,” Kendall says, setting his wallet on the table. But Stewy is quicker, extending his arm across the table. He finishes the sentence for Kendall before Kendall stands up.
“This one’s on me.”
Their pinkies almost touch; Kendall doesn’t flinch, though. The heat of the sun fills the minuscule gap between their fingernails. Both of them look, and neither of them moves. The pause is felt, and then it passes.
Kendall gets up from the booth, puts his sunglasses on. There’s no way to say goodbye properly from here on out, but Kendall says anyway, before he collects his wallet and goes:
“Bye, Stew.”
But Stewy has already leaned back on the bench, tuning him out. He looks to the sea, not to the dock, and thinks about putting more sunscreen on.