Half an Eggplant

“Let’s EEEAT!”

Joey Bites leaned into the camera and tore into a wing like it had personally challenged him. The lights above the table were harsh and white, flattening the colors of the sports bar into something shiny and disposable. Neon signage buzzed behind him. Flatscreens lined the walls, each tuned to a different game no one was watching. The place was called Firebox Wings, a campus-adjacent spot built for volume and turnover.

Joey Bites chewed loudly, nodding with exaggerated concentration, eyes half closed as if parsing something sacred.

“Okay. Okay.” He raised a finger. “Crunch is there. Sauce is bold. Heat creeps.” He held the stripped bone inches from the lens. “Joey Bites official rating is….four point five eggplants. That’s a Bites Review!”

He tossed the bone behind him and wiped his hands on a napkin without looking at it.

“Before I keep eating,” he said, already reaching for the next wing, “quick shoutout to Up Pills. Fellas, you know what I’m talking about. Confidence starts where it matters.” He grinned, winked to the camera and pointed down. “No waiting. No excuses.”

He cracked open a can beside him. “And Lift Off Energy. Clean fuel. No crash. This is how winners energize.”

He took another bite, chewed, swallowed, then snapped his fingers like he had remembered something important. “Oh and today’s video is also brought to you by Patriot Mutual Insurance. Coverage for real life. You never know when things go sideways. Link’s in the bio.”

Behind the camera, Joey's assistant, Maya didn’t look up. Her tablet was split into quadrants: raw footage, trending audio options, comment sentiment, and projected engagement curves. Her fingers moved constantly, already visualizing the cut.

“This one’s clean,” she said. “Tight edit, fast hooks. We lead with the crunch. TikTok loves that. I’m thinking two million by tonight if we time the drop right.”

Joey Bites smiled, pleased. “That’s hot.”

Near the counter, the owner of Firebox Wings hovered just outside the frame, hands clasped together in front of his apron. He had been told where to stand. He smiled when Joey Bites glanced his way.

By the door, his bodyguard, Stevie, leaned against the wall, arms crossed. He was six-foot-four and built like a door himself, eyes scanning the room with practiced boredom. Last year, someone had tried to grab Joey Bites’ phone outside a burger place in Hoboken, and Stevie had been hired the next day.

He finished the tray, licked sauce from his fingers, and leaned close to the camera.

“You gotta come to Firebox Wings. Four point five eggplants,” he said. “Let’s EEEAT.”

Maya cut the recording.

Almost immediately, Joey Bites' phone buzzed. Payment received. $5,000.

“Send him the clip,” Joey Bites said, already standing. “Tag the place. Push it.”

“Already on it,” Maya said. “I’ll tighten the middle and punch the close. This one’s a hitter.”

The owner exhaled.

Outside, the noise hit all at once.

A cluster of frat guys crowded the entrance, phones already raised. “Joey Bites!” one of them yelled. Another shouted, “Let’s EEEAT!” A few exclaimed eggplant numbers like they meant something.

Joey Bites smiled, practiced and indulgent. He leaned into selfies, repeated his catchphrase on command, slapped shoulders.

Stevie stepped forward and the crowd parted. Joey Bites slid into the back seat of a black Lincoln Navigator without looking behind him.

As they pulled away, Maya pulled up the schedule.

“Tomorrow’s the pizza place,” she said. “Old-school spot downtown.”

“Pietro’s,” Joey Bites said, pronouncing it wrong. “That place looks like a dump.”

“Forty-five years in business,” Maya said. “Cash only. No socials. No website.”

Joey Bites smirked. “Perfect.”

“Do you want me to call ahead?”

He waved her off. “Nah. That ruins it. We just walk in.”

Maya hesitated. “What if they don’t want filming?”

“They will,” Joey Bites said, scrolling through DMs. “And if they don’t, that’s content too.”

Maya nodded and typed.

“We’re doing them a favor.”

The SUV merged into traffic. Firebox Wings disappeared behind them, already forgotten.

***

Pietro’s was quiet in a way that did not advertise itself.

The bell over the door rang softly when it opened, then settled back into stillness. The air smelled of dough, the accumulated scent of pizza made the same way for decades. The register was old and nicked from years of use. The menu hung behind the counter in block letters that had not changed long enough for no one to remember when they last had.

The walls were crowded with photographs. Little League teams posed in crooked lines. Couples stood shoulder to shoulder, smiling awkwardly, dates and names written in pen along the edges. A yellowed newspaper clipping announced the shop’s opening, then another its tenth anniversary, then nothing at all. Time here was not documented, it was absorbed.

A small television murmured above the counter, a game playing that no one was fully watching. Men sat at a corner table eating slowly, arguing about a call from last night. A woman leaned across a booth to pass a slice to her grandson. Credit tabs existed without paperwork. Cash slid across the counter and disappeared into the drawer.

Pietro Albano moved behind the counter with the ease of someone who had stood in the same place for most of his life. He was thick through the middle, his shoulders rounded from years of leaning forward, his hair more gray than black and combed carefully back. His forearms were dusted white with flour no matter how often he wiped them clean. He checked a pie, adjusted a slice, wiped his hands on his apron.

He greeted people without hurry, without performance.

“Welcome to your dining room,” Pietro said with a smile to everyone who stepped inside.

The door swung open hard. The bell rang sharp and loud.

“Fellas,” Joey Bites said, already filming, already smiling into his phone. “If your thing ain’t workin, Up Pills will pick up the slack.”

His voice filled the room before anyone could react.

“She’ll give you five out of five eggplants every time,” Joey Bites continued, pointing down, laughing at his own line. “That’s Up Pills for your confidence, your performance, your manhood.”

He stepped farther inside, phone raised, the camera turning the shop into background. “Okay guys, we’re at Pietro’s. Old-school pizza spot. Cash only. No frills. We’re about to see if this place still has it.”

Pietro looked up.

“Please, sir,” he said calmly. “This is a family restaurant.”

Joey Bites didn’t stop filming.

Pietro stepped closer, still polite. “Would you mind shutting off the camera? We have a no cell phone policy.”

He pointed to a small sign on the wall near the register. It was handwritten, taped at the corners, the paper curled with age.

NO CELL PHONES

PLEASE ENJOY YOUR MEAL

Joey Bites glanced at the sign and laughed.

“Come on,” he said. “Nobody cares about that anymore.”

He turned back to the phone. “Quick shoutout to Lift Off Energy. Clean fuel. No crash. This is how real men energize.” He gestured toward the counter. “Two slices. Regular.”

Customers stared. Conversations stalled.

Pietro did not raise his voice.

“I don’t allow filming,” he said. “Not my staff. Not my customers.”

Joey Bites finally looked at him, surprised, then amused.

“Do you know who I am?” he asked.

Pietro shook his head once. “No.”

Joey Bites smirked. He gestured to the phone, to the invisible audience beyond it.

“This brings people in,” he said. “Thousands. Places like this don’t survive without attention.”

“People have been coming here for pizza for 45 years,” Pietro said. "We don't need all of that noise."

Joey Bites kept filming.

“This is great content.”

Pietro looked at the phone, then at the faces around the room. He repeated himself once more, calmly, and when Joey Bites ignored him again, Pietro asked him to leave.

There was no argument. No shouting. Just a statement.

Joey Bites scoffed, backing toward the door, phone still trained on his face. “Unbelievable,” he said. “This tells you everything you need to know about this place.”

Outside, he paced the sidewalk with the shop framed behind him.

“Yo, listen up. Pietro’s, straight up trash. Half an eggplant,” Joey Bites yelled confidently. “They kicked us out. It's Dirty. Outdated. Rude energy. Awful pizza. Would not recommend.”

He cut the recording and walked away.

Inside, Pietro served the next customer. The slice slid onto the plate. Cash changed hands. The game played on the old screen.

***

Weeks passed without consequence.

Joey Bites kept eating. New restaurants replaced old ones in his feed. New sponsors rotated into his scripts. Pietro’s slipped into the archive, buried beneath higher scores and louder meals.

One afternoon, scrolling from a hotel room between shoots somewhere in the Southwest, Joey Bites stopped on a photo he didn’t recognize at first. A local account he didn’t follow had posted it.

"Sad to see it go," the caption read.

In the background was Pietro’s.

The windows were papered over. The sign was dark. A FOR LEASE notice hung crooked in the glass.

Joey Bites paused long enough to register it, then kept scrolling. Places closed all the time. That was the market. That was how it worked.

Later, he scrolled again and an obituary slid past his thumb. He stopped, squinted, then tapped it open.

Pietro Albano.

The photo showed Pietro behind the counter, apron on, smiling faintly. The text was plain. Forty five years in business. A fixture of the neighborhood. Husband. Father. Grandfather.

Joey Bites skimmed.

At the bottom was a line he read twice.

Donations in memory of Pietro Albano may be made to the St. Joseph Church Food Pantry.

Joey Bites snorted and shook his head.

“Guy was fat and old. It was his time,” he muttered.

He closed the obituary and opened a DM from a restaurant offering a free tasting. Another message came in from Maya about a potential sponsor bump. Someone tagged him in a clip of guys arguing over eggplant ratings.

Joey Bites set his phone down, turned on the television, and ordered room service.

The knock came twenty minutes later.

He tipped without looking and carried the tray to the desk. Steak. Potatoes. Something green he would not eat. He sat on the edge of the bed, scrolling as he cut into the meat.

“Let’s EEEAT,” he said quietly, out of habit.

The smell came before the bite.

Not steak. Not butter. Dough.

Warm flour and yeast, faintly sweet, like something just pulled from an oven. It did not belong in the room. It did not belong to the food.

Joey Bites froze, fork suspended, then laughed under his breath.

“Get a grip,” he said.

He ate without filming, finished quickly, and shoved the tray aside. The smell faded.

Later that night, it returned—differently.

Joey Bites lay back against the pillows, phone glowing inches from his face. The feed blurred until something slowed him.

Pietro.

One photo. Then another. Pietro behind the counter. Pietro smiling with strangers. Pietro holding a baby. Joey Bites sat up.

The feed kept going. Old photos. Newer ones. Reposts. Tagged memories. Comments full of hearts and people saying they remembered his kindness.

He scrolled faster.

More Pietro. The same face at different ages. Flour on his hands. An arm around someone’s shoulder. A caption that read “Welcome to your dining room.”

“What the hell,” Joey Bites muttered.

He closed the app. Opened another.

Pietro again.

Different account. Same images. Different angles. The same moments resurfacing, rearranged, pushed back into view like something the algorithm refused to bury.

He locked the phone and tossed it onto the bed.

The room felt too quiet.

The smell returned, thicker now. Dough and oil and something sweet underneath. Joey Bites checked the door, the bathroom. Everything looked normal. The smell stayed.

“Enough,” he said aloud.

Just before sleep, the ceiling creaked.

A soft sound. Then another.

Joey Bites opened his eyes as a fine dust drifted down from the vent, settling on the desk, the bedspread, his phone.

White.

Flour, he thought, absurdly.

His chest tightened. He swung his legs off the bed, stood, then sank back down, dizzy.

“No,” he said. “No, no, no.”

Panic came fast and sharp. His hands shook. His breaths turned shallow. For one terrifying moment, he thought of the obituary.

He slid to the floor, gasping, palms pressed to the carpet until the air finally returned.

The dust stopped. The smell receded.

Joey Bites stayed on the floor long after the room went still again. No voice. No ghostly figure. No accusation. Just the certainty that this was not coincidence.

When he finally stood, the room had changed.

The framed hotel art was gone. In its place were photographs. Old ones. Yellowed. Little League teams. Couples standing stiffly in front of a counter. Men shoulder to shoulder, smiling without posing.

Photos from Pietro’s.

A counter appeared against the far wall where the desk had been. Behind it, more photos. A church basement. Folding tables. Cardboard boxes. A crooked banner.

ST. JOSEPH CHURCH FOOD PANTRY

In one picture, Pietro stood smiling, presenting an oversized check, flour dusting his forearms. Calm. Present.

Joey Bites grabbed his phone and went to the simple church website.

The donation page loaded instantly.

He typed the amount without thinking.

$100,000.

He checked the box marked Anonymous.

When he hit submit, the room exhaled.

The counter vanished. The photographs dissolved. The smell faded. The television sound snapped back on, too loud.

Joey Bites stood alone in a hotel room again.

He lay back on the bed and stared at the ceiling until his eyes closed.

***

Joey Bites was already filming when he stepped inside El Comedor del Sol.

The restaurant was loud in the easy way, bright with painted tile and papel picado strung across the ceiling. The air smelled of roasted peppers and citrus. Families crowded long tables. A new group of the same college-aged guys clustered near the bar.

Joey Bites slid into a booth, angled his phone low, and smiled like he always did.

“Let’s EEEAT,” he said.

From behind him, a voice called out, warm and practiced.

“Bienvenido a su comedor.”

Joey Bites didn’t flinch. He adjusted the angle, checked the light, tapped the screen. A basket of chips landed on the table. Salsa glowed red in a ceramic bowl. He leaned closer to the lens.

The voice came again, closer now.

“Welcome to your dining room.”

Joey Bites froze.

The smile stayed on his face a fraction too long, then slipped. He looked up.

The owner stood behind the counter, thick through the middle, shoulders rounded, hair more gray than black and combed carefully back. His forearms were dusted white, though there was no flour anywhere in the room. His eyes were calm. Familiar.

Pietro?

Joey Bites lowered the phone. The camera caught a blur of lights and tile before going still.

Around him, the guys at the bar surged forward, phones raised. Someone shouted, “4.2 Eggplants!” Laughter rippled through the room.

Joey Bites didn’t respond and sat in silence, staring forward blankly.

The noise shifted. Confusion turned to irritation. Someone booed. Someone else laughed, thinking it was a bit.

Joey Bites stood abruptly, knocking his knee against the table. He moved toward the counter. The hauntingly familiar owner was already turning away.

Moving slowly, as if he had finished saying what needed to be said.

“Hey,” Joey Bites yelled out, his voice rough.

The crowd closed in, bodies and phones blocking him, jostling for position, laughing too loudly. Someone grabbed his sleeve. Another shoved past him, trying to get a selfie.

Joey Bites forced his way through, knocking a phone to the floor without stopping.

By the time he reached the counter, Pietro was gone.

Joey Bites pushed through the swinging door into the kitchen. Heat and noise hit him at once. Steam rose from grills. Pans clattered. Cooks moved with practiced focus, never looking up.

Pietro was nowhere.

Joey Bites stood there, breathing too fast, realizing he was still holding his phone but no longer recording.

On the wall beside the door hung a simple sign, printed cleanly in two languages.

SIN TELÉFONOS.

NO PHONES

Joey Bites stared at it.

Behind him, the restaurant roared on. Laughter. Shouting. Plates hitting tables.

Joey Bites turned his phone over in his hand, then lowered it slowly, like setting something down for good.

He walked back through the dining room, past the noise, and out into the bright Southwest sun.

For the first time, he didn't post anything.

And still, faintly, he could smell dough.