Chapter 7 : The Weird One
Craft services at 7:30 PM had a different energy than the daytime version. The selection was worse — the good sandwiches went by noon — but the noise level dropped considerably once the day writers cleared out, and the lighting had a quality Albert associated with late-night television production: warm, slightly tired, honest about itself.
Tracy Jordan was standing in front of the hot bar when Albert came in for dinner.
Not eating. Standing approximately three feet back, hands clasped behind him, studying Albert the way a researcher studies something that has done something unexpected and hasn't yet decided what category it belongs to.
Albert picked up a tray. Tracy watched him pick up a tray.
Albert moved to the food. Tracy turned slightly to track him.
"You didn't run," Tracy announced.
Albert spooned pasta onto his plate. "Sorry?"
"The shark thing. Two days ago. The shark situation." Tracy unclasped his hands and reclasped them in front, a minor adjustment that apparently communicated something to Grizz, because Grizz shifted his weight. "Most people run. Or they start explaining things they didn't do. Or they get a face." He pointed at his own face. "A guilt face. Like their features go somewhere specific when they're lying."
"You said that," Albert said. "About the guilt face."
"And you STILL didn't have one." Tracy tilted his head. "Which is either because you're very innocent or you're very good."
Albert moved down the line to the vegetable options. Three-day-old broccoli or something that had once been asparagus. He took the broccoli.
"I didn't move the shark," he said.
"I know." Tracy waved this off. "Dot Com confirmed the Uber situation. Gerald is home, Gerald is fine. This isn't about Gerald anymore." He paused. "Gerald says hello, by the way. I told him about you."
"Okay."
"He approves."
Albert carried his tray to the nearest table and sat. Tracy followed. Not confrontationally — more like a man who had decided this was his direction and the seating arrangement was incidental. He pulled out the chair directly across from Albert and sat with the particular authority of someone who did not ask permission for this kind of thing. Grizz and Dot Com positioned themselves at a respectful distance: close enough to intervene, far enough to suggest this was voluntary.
"You're new," Tracy said.
"Three weeks."
"You know what most people do when they're new here?" Tracy leaned forward. "They try to be normal. They see all this—" he gestured broadly at nothing specific "—and they pull themselves in. Careful. Polite. They don't want to be associated with me." A beat. "They do that little lean when I approach. Backward. Like they're trying to maintain plausible deniability."
Albert ate some broccoli. The broccoli needed salt. He looked around for it.
"Grizz," Tracy said, without looking.
Grizz produced a small salt shaker from somewhere on his person and set it on Albert's tray. Albert salted the broccoli. This was apparently the correct response, because something in Tracy's posture shifted from assessing to adjacent-to-satisfied.
"I've been performing a long time," Tracy said. "Performing off-stage, on-stage, at my kids' school events when they let me come to them. People react to me a particular way." He made a gesture that encompassed his entire presence. "They brace. Or they perform right back at me. Or they start managing me like I'm a situation requiring management." He pointed across the table. "You stood there like you were waiting to see what I did next. Not scared. Not managing. Just — interested."
Albert ate more broccoli.
"I'm interested," he said. "You're interesting."
Tracy Jordan went perfectly still for three full seconds.
Then he leaned back and laughed — not the unhinged hallway version, not the performance-laugh. Something shorter and more genuine, the kind a person doesn't manufacture. "Dot Com," he said, "did you hear that?"
"I heard it," Dot Com said from his position by the wall.
"He said I'm interesting. Not the way people say it when they're afraid of you. He said it like—" Tracy looked at Albert. "Like it was an observation. Just a thing he noted."
"It is an observation."
"Most people either worship me or handle me." Tracy stood, which was his version of a conversational period. He picked up Albert's salt shaker, considered it, set it back down. He extended one hand. "You're weird. But I like it."
Albert shook it. Tracy's grip was firm and brief. He walked away with the direction of a man whose decision was made and the execution was already in progress, Grizz falling in a step behind. Dot Com waited a moment longer at his position near the wall. He was looking at Albert with an expression that wasn't suspicious exactly, but was very aware.
The HUD hit.
[HIDDEN ACHIEVEMENT UNLOCKED][TRACY JORDAN: ACCEPTED][Unlocks: Tracy-Specific Interaction Options]
No stat points. Just the unlock, and the broadcast warmth spreading from his sternum outward. At dinner hour the building was still populated enough for the ripple to reach fifteen people, maybe more. Albert set his fork down and pressed his thumb against his index finger under the table — a small physical anchor, something to hold onto while the wave went out.
Dot Com tilted his head.
Not much. A centimeter. The specific angle of someone who has heard a sound at the edge of audible range and is running a probability calculation about whether it was real. He had a Wesleyan semester in something — Albert had caught the reference twice — and that background gave his expressions a particular quality: they showed the process.
"You feel that?" Dot Com said. Not to Albert. To himself.
"Feel what?" Albert said.
Dot Com looked at him for two seconds. Thinking through something rather than reacting to it. "Nothing," he said. "Probably the building."
He walked after Tracy.
Albert sat alone at the table and finished dinner in the production-floor quiet. The broccoli was bad but the salt helped, and this particular silence was nothing like the silence of his previous life's late nights — those had been the silence of missed targets and delayed deliverables and the specific low-grade dread of someone who had learned to expect diminishing returns. This was a building working late because it wanted to. The show existed because people cared about it enough to be here at 7:30 PM eating bad broccoli.
Kenneth appeared at the table. He had his clipboard and the peacock pin and the expression of a person who had been nearby and had determined this was the correct moment to approach.
"Tracy doesn't like most people," Kenneth said, settling into the chair Tracy had just vacated. "I mean, he loves people — he genuinely loves people, that's one of the things about him — but he doesn't always like them." He delivered this distinction with great care, as if it mattered. "You should feel special."
Back on the first orientation walk, Kenneth had said this place was a gift. Albert had filed it under the category of things people said. Three weeks in, eating bad broccoli at 7:30 PM with the warmth of a broadcast achievement fading from his sternum, he was updating that file. Kenneth hadn't been performing sincerity. He'd just been sincere.
"I do feel special," Albert said.
Kenneth beamed.
From the dressing room corridor, Tracy's voice carried through the wall at the volume of a man who was not being cautious about acoustics. "GRIZZ. The new page can stay. Put him on the list."
A pause. Grizz's voice, more distant: "What list?"
"The list."
"Tracy, there isn't a—"
"Then make one. That's how lists start. I'll wait."
Albert looked at Kenneth.
Kenneth's expression was fond and entirely unsurprised. "There's no list."
"I assumed."
"He'll probably forget by Thursday. He forgets most things he decides before a full night's sleep." Kenneth stood, smoothing his blazer. "But he meant it when he said it."
Albert pushed his tray aside and pulled up the HUD panel — the achievement tab, the new branch that had opened under Tracy's name. He couldn't read the details at Stage 1 resolution; the text was too small, the icons too pixelated to distinguish. An entire section of the achievement tree had been locked an hour ago and was now accessible, and he couldn't see any of it clearly.
He needed better resolution. That was a Stage 2 problem and Stage 2 was not tonight.
Tomorrow Jack Donaghy was doing a full TGS walkthrough, and Albert had exactly twelve hours to figure out which version of himself Jack was going to see.
He took his tray to the return bin and went back to the archives.
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