The Insatiables

by Brittany Terwilliger

  Luke and Lindsay’s eyes glazed over, but everyone else at the table appeared rapt as this relic of the Greatest Generation recounted the hallowed past. Their smiling eyes revealed a desire to return to a time none of them could remember. Uncle Larry forked another piece of chicken and silently offered the plate to Aunt Jo, who took it from his hands and set it delicately back down on the table.

  “. . . I tell ya, Halley, my feet never been so wet for so long in all m’ life. You just take some good socks with ya when ya go honey, you’re gonna need ’em. And I’d steer clear of the mutton if y’can . . .”

  My mom and Aunt Jo collected our empty plates and took them to the sink to wash. Granny carried a fresh sugar cream pie to the table and cut it into thick, custardy wedges sprinkled with nutmeg that brought to mind all my favorite things about Ohio. The hot summertime smell of old car back seats. The rainbow glint of sunlight off jars of garden green beans and pickled peppers in my grandparents’ root cellar. Holding my mother’s strong, fine-boned hand as we traversed the Olive Garden parking lot for all-you-can-eat breadsticks. Now that I was really leaving, I felt a little sad.

  As the end of the evening drew nearer, everyone was nicer, I guess because we knew we wouldn’t be seeing each other again for a while. Why couldn’t it have been this way always?

  “Be careful over there,” Granny said. Her open arms smelled like soft, powdery gardenias. “Don’t talk to strangers.”

  “Love you, sweetheart,” Grandpa said, pecking me on the cheek.

  Aunt Jo squeezed my hand. “Have fun, honey. Send us a postcard.”

  “Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do,” Uncle Larry said with an awkward wave.

  My brother walked around the table and hugged me for maybe the second time in his entire life. “Bring me back something cool,” he snickered.

  My sister smiled up from her spot on the floor. “Send me your new address so I can send you a wedding invitation.”

  “Okay, I will,” I said.

  “Work hard, Hal,” my dad said with watery eyes, pulling me in close. “You know, anything can be achieved through honest hard work.”

  “I hope you’re happy,” my mom added. She wrapped her thin arms around me and kissed me on the forehead.

  The next morning, a few hours before my flight, I popped in to the office to finish the last of my HR paperwork. I dismantled what was left of my portion of the cubicle, filling the wastepaper basket with discarded postcards and receipts whose sentimental value I couldn’t recall. I wrote a parting email to Celeste, telling her I was sorry again, that I couldn’t believe what I’d done, that I’d been scared I’d never amount to anything and I’d panicked, that I thought she’d get the job anyway. I told her I wished I could see her again before I left so I could say all this in person, and that I’d make it up to her somehow. A second after I hit send, an email from Thomas Rousseau appeared in my inbox, and my chest nearly exploded. It was the first word I’d received since the elevator.

  “Hey you,” the email said. “I’ve been wondering about the verdict on the job in France.”

  I replied immediately. “I got it. I’m leaving this afternoon.”

  He wrote me right back. “Congratulations! That’s great.”

  “Thanks,” I replied.

  “You’ll have to start practicing your French.”

  “I know. We’re living in a town called Biot.”

  “Oh yes, near Cannes. I haven’t been there, but I’ve driven past it. That’s a nice area. Maybe I’ll see you there someday.”

  Maybe I’ll see you there. I read the words over and over again, closed the email, opened it back up, and read it again. I read it until I was full to the brim, until the words no longer had any meaning.

  I gave Phil Collins a few sprinkles of food and then headed down to HR. Dave the HR guy had two documents for me to sign, and an unmarked cardboard box containing a shiny new cell phone with an international plan. I thanked him as if he had bought me the phone out of his own pocket, and he “you’re welcomed” me likewise. I carried the box back with me to my desk, ready to say goodbye to my cubicle, grab Phil Collins, and head for the airport. Then I saw the knife. It didn’t register at first, what I was looking at. A black-handled jackknife sticking straight up out of my desktop, its blade impaling the lifeless body of Phil Collins. My sweet, innocent little Phil Collins. My friend. Murdered in cold blood.

  PART TWO

  14

  I felt sick as I made my way through the airport. My head ached from crying. Celeste hated me; Phil Collins was dead. Sidestepping crowded Newark gates, I felt the lack of him, the weight of his bowl I would no longer carry. I had no idea who had murdered him. I didn’t recognize the knife. What kind of twisted fuck stabs a goldfish? There were people at Findlay who didn’t like me, to be sure. Molly. Jamie. Celeste. Disgruntled San Francisco meeting attendees, maybe. But I couldn’t imagine any of them stabbing Phil Collins. It was a degree of cutthroat I didn’t know existed among our ranks, and I was ready to call a truce.

  If this was Level 2, it already wasn’t all it was cracked up to be.

  All throughout the flight from Cincinnati to Newark, a kid had kicked the back of my seat to the beat of his Leapfrog jingle while I sat in anguish, trying to roll myself into as small a human capsule as possible and disappear. Now the feeling had set in, the one you get when you find yourself at that crossroads between your own discomfort and someone else’s, when you start to notice all the ways in which life is a dance between cattle and butcher.

  “Well, if it isn’t Halley Faust,” a voice said behind me. “Who’d you have to fuck to get this job?”

  I turned. “Hey Max.”

  He flashed a testosterone-fueled grin. “No, really though. You and Gus?”

  “What?”

  Max raised his hands innocently. “Don’t get mad. That’s just what I heard.”

  I shifted my weight from one foot to the other. “What’s just what you heard?”

  “Nothing,” he said. “Never mind.”

  “Whatever.” I partially smiled, feigning an indifference I did not feel. Max was now a Level 4, and I felt an acute sense of inferiority next to him. Although I found him despicable in almost every way, I wanted him to like me.

  I pulled my carry-on over to a row of plastic seats and dropped my purse heavily. I’d been unwilling to leave anything important in my checked bag so my purse weighed about twenty pounds. Lauren approached, looking fresh. Level 3 looked good on her. I was jealous.

  “Where’s Darren?” Lauren asked over the din of a gate announcement. “Wasn’t he on your first flight?”

  “He said he was going to find something to eat,” I said.

  She picked at the chipped edge of one of her fingernails. “I wouldn’t eat anything in this airport.”

  I almost made a wisecrack about turkey sandwiches, but I didn’t have the energy.

  Lauren turned back to me. “Did they tell you what kind of cars we’ll be getting in France? Mine had better be at least an Audi. I heard Gus’s getting a BMW.”

  “I heard Volkswagens,” I said.

  “Ugh,” said Lauren.

  “I heard they’re thinking about giving us one of the company jets,” said Max. “We’re going to be traveling a lot, and Gus has a pilot’s license.”

  “They should,” Lauren said. “We’re practically giving up our whole lives to do this.”

  It seemed they had been appointed under different conditions than me.

  “Oh my god,” Lauren continued, “I already miss my boyfriend so much.”

  “Boyfriend?” Max said.

  “Well, we just started dating about a month ago, but it has been so intense. Like, we’re already talking about getting married.”

  Max’s bored eyes glanced idly around the building, so Lauren turned to me.

  �
�That’s nice,” I said.

  “I’ve already written him three letters. I brought different perfumes to spray them with. There’s one that smells like vanilla for when I want to be romantic . . . then another one that smells flowery for when I’m talking about the wedding . . . and one that has a strong sandalwood smell for when we discuss travel plans . . . and another one that’s citrusy for when I’m feeling cheerful . . .”

  “How about one that smells like barbecued ribs?” Max said. “I’m hungry.”

  Darren approached, carrying a giant pretzel and The Backpack. “Hey guys.”

  “I hope our condos are nice,” Max said as if Darren hadn’t said anything.

  “I told Gus I’ll need an extra bedroom,” Lauren added excitedly. “I have a ton of people coming to visit.” She shifted away from the wall as a beeping golf cart carrying two handicapped travelers pushed through the crowded terminal walkway. Next to us, a girl of eleven or twelve crouched behind a seat and flung Tic Tacs at people while her guardians argued.

  “I’m going to miss my kite club,” Darren said, chewing a bite of pretzel. “I brought two of my kites. That close to the Mediterranean . . . should have some good wind.”

  Max looked at Darren, as if for the first time. “Hey Darren, what all is in The Backpack anyway?”

  “Documents,” he said. “Mostly plans for new devices.”

  “Give us a peek?” Lauren said.

  “Can’t,” Darren said, taking another bite. “Gus said that if anyone tries to open it, they’re automatically fired. Also I have permission to taze them.”

  Lauren stepped backward.

  “Don’t worry, I put the Taser in my checked bag.”

  Max changed the subject. “Is it true that Gus commissions his own live porn?”

  Darren looked at the floor and smiled. “I’m not saying anything.”

  Lauren’s eyes sparked. “Is it true he has glacial ice shipped from Greenland to put in his drinks, and he wipes his ass with orange blossoms from Spain?” she asked. “I heard that from one of the RMs.”

  “Is it true that he keeps a tranny mistress in Rome?” Max continued.

  “Ew,” Lauren squealed. “Thanks, Max. Now I’ll never get that image out of my head.”

  “Come on, Darren,” Max said. “Just blink twice if it’s true.”

  “Nah, I’m not saying anything.”

  “Lame,” Lauren said. “I’m going to get a Frappuccino.”

  “I’ll go with you,” Max said. “I can expense it.”

  I sat down and propped my feet up on my carry-on. Two gate agents wearing blue vests and plastic credentials around their necks walked behind the clean gray counter and began tapping keyboards. One of them swiped her badge through a slot on the wall and passed through the boarding door, returning a minute later. The other one began calling names over the intercom system. “Jacinda Moore, please approach the check-in desk at gate seventy-three for your seat assignment.”

  Darren finished his pretzel and wadded the paper into a ball, picked up The Backpack and walked to the nearest trash can to throw the paper away, almost tripping over the feet of an old man sleeping at the end of our row.

  Another announcement boomed through the air above our heads. A line began to form at the counter where the gate agents stood. The upgrade list flashed onto the screen behind them, and I glanced over it idly, hoping that by some stroke of luck I might be on it. I wasn’t.

  One of the gate agents picked up the microphone again, her voice like a pre-recorded airline robot. “Ladies and gentlemen, in a few minutes we will begin boarding flight thirty-two with direct service to Nice.”

  My heart fluttered.

  “We will board this flight by zone, beginning with zone one. Please remain seated until your zone is called.”

  People started clustering around the gate, stepping in front of each other, as if our orientation within this crowd defined our relative superiority and inferiority in life.

  “We will now begin preboarding flight thirty-two with direct service to Nice.”

  I made my way to the back of the cluster.

  “What are you doing?” Max said from behind me.

  “What?” I said, turning. He was sipping something from a large cardboard cup.

  “You’re in first class with us, right?” he said. “You can skip ahead to the front.”

  Lauren walked up behind him and looked at both of us nervously, as if we might be talking about her.

  “No, Darren and I are in coach. We’re only Level 2.”

  “Oh,” he smirked and pushed his way through the crowd. “First class,” I heard him say. “First class, coming through. I’m an American.”

  When my zone was called, I inched my way slowly to the front, presented my ticket, continued down the jet bridge and onto the plane. I found an open space in one of the overhead compartments, stowed my carry-on, and sat in my assigned window seat.

  The seat next to me was empty and I hoped with a level of vigor incommensurate to the situation that it would stay that way. Give me SARS, take away my phone, but please don’t force me into awkwardly close proximity to a complete stranger. But the flight was full, and just as the flight attendant began the introductory announcements, a guy emerged in the aisle and sat next to me. He had long, gray, stringy hair and stank of stale cigarettes. He belched up smoke-and-rotten-Chinese-food-flavored wind for everyone in the vicinity to inhale and didn’t seem to care or even notice. I felt naked and permeable as the smell entered my nose, its molecules violating my body. The man put his bag on the floor and part of it was on my side, touching my right leg. When he wasn’t looking I nudged it over. Not because I really cared about it being there, but because he represented a world that would have swallowed me whole if I’d let it.

  I looked through plexiglass at the sun setting in the distance, the accordion folds of the jet bridge and the detritus of human existence, grime and black curly hairs, stuck in the corners of the window. I scrolled through the selection of in-flight movies and settled on one. We ascended, our bodies jostling, subject to our own fragile mortality, and eventually leveled out. Ephemeral specks floating above the crust of the earth.

  Soon dinner was served on plastic trays. I picked through the pile of pasty ravioli. Wilty lettuce. The brownie was decent. I wondered if Lauren asked them for turkey sandwiches. She was probably the kind of person who didn’t eat on planes. I could imagine her up in first class, being presented with champagne and warm nuts, breasts of pheasant on hand-painted china, and turning it all down. True luxury is having enough abundance to decline.

  I woke up as we began our descent. Flight attendants were passing through collecting dirty breakfast trays and empty water bottles. The guy next to me quietly farted under his blue airplane blanket. We all languished in a cloud of miscellaneous human stench. When the plane had safely parked at the gate in Nice, I speed-walked as fast as I could up the jet bridge and didn’t slow down until I got to an open space where I could breathe.

  15

  Then I walked into my dream. Sunshine. Palm trees. Sparkling blue sea. The Nice airport was full of Hermès bags and Ferragamo shoes and Longines watches. Giant clothing ads with thin, sexy men pouting in gray suits. The language, though unintelligible to me, sounded glamorous and beautiful. From a café called Paul, the smell of golden, buttery pastries. I wanted to consume all of it until my soul became saturated with its aura. A chauffeur-driven SUV picked us up at the warm, sunny curb outside of baggage claim. Darren, Lauren, Max, and I quaked with anticipation as we sped toward Biot, our new home, watching the beauty of the French Riviera flood past. Even Max, by far the coolest of our crew, was excited.

  Soon the driver was pulling through a remote-activated gate and into a posh resort complex next to a well-maintained golf course. The buildings were all parchment-colored stucco and clay tile roofs. Silvery
olive trees bordered the swimming pool, framed by green hills on the horizon. As each of us was dropped off at our assigned condo, the rest of us jumped out of the car to take a look. Each condo was different, each individually owned and furnished and rented to Findlay by a property management office on the other side of the golf course. Max’s place was owned by a British bachelor with a fondness for sports memorabilia. Lauren’s place (which, as she’d requested, had an extra bedroom) was light and airy and owned by Parisians. Darren’s place appeared to be owned by monks but was actually owned by an old Polish couple. It had no pictures on the walls and very little furniture, only a small twin bed, a table, and a chair. Gus would tell him he could buy some furniture and put it on his expense account, but Darren, thinking perhaps this was some kind of test, would say he didn’t mind. And we didn’t know who owned my place, but it was quintessentially Provençal: sunny yellow walls, rustic furniture, quilts, and a big pot of lavender next to the front door. I had a large terrace dotted with hedges and olive trees, overlooking the golf course. The minute I walked in the door I wanted to stay forever.

  Gus emailed that afternoon and asked us to come to his place for a five o’clock meeting. I had enough time to wash the film of travel grime off my body in the claw-foot tub, hang my suits in the perfumy closet, and take a quick nap on the toile de Jouy-covered bed. Around 4:30 p.m., I set out across the golf course. The air near the cart path smelled like green onions. Wild rosemary grew in the rocks around the sand traps. I listened for voices screaming “fore!” in myriad European accents, prepared to hit the ground if I had to.

  Lauren jogged toward me in painted-on black Lycra, and I tried not to stare at her perfectly sculpted body, fearful of violating some kind of coworker privacy code.

  “Are you heading to Gus’s?” she said, stopping to walk with me. “It’s amazing here, huh?”