Later that night I sat up in bed, three pillows stuffed behind my back, while Rousseau and I played our usual game of conversation volleyball.
“I would punch a baby for some Mexican food right now,” I texted.
“Forget that,” he replied, “you’re in France. Do you like oysters?”
“I’ve never had one that wasn’t fried.”
“Someday I’ll take you to this place in Paris. Best oysters in the world.” He added, “Hemingway used to go there.”
I mulled this over, the idea of going somewhere public with him. Not just the way it would feel to be near him, but how it would feel to be seen by his side.
“I think I killed most of the fruit flies in my kitchen,” I typed. “I used the swat method. Very effective. It’s like a fruit fly holocaust around here. I left the dead ones out as an example for the others.”
“How very Saddam Hussein of you,” he replied. “How’s work? Settle on a theme yet?”
“Plenty of ideas floating around. Most of them involving combustion.”
“Ah.”
“What about you, how was your board meeting and dinner thing?”
“Well, the chairman was in top form.”
“I hope you fired a series of questions that were impossible to answer, and then slyly gave him the finger while coughing.”
“I didn’t. I was too busy daydreaming about San Francisco.”
I smiled. “Oh really?”
“I was thinking about when I first saw you, at the dinner table. I thought you were the most authentic person I’ve ever seen. Everyone else at dinners like that always has this plastered-on smile and a list of conversation starters in their pocket. But you were so real. You blushed every time I asked you a personal question. There was a guilelessness about you that I almost never see in people.”
“Is that a nice way of telling me I’m a yokel?”
“I’m serious. Talking to you made me remember what it felt like to be like that. Before the world crushed it out of me. I wanted to talk to you forever. Then there was the elevator.”
I sunk down lower, willing him to keep going. More of this. I wanted more. “I think that was my favorite part,” I replied.
“In the elevator,” he wrote, “I wanted to smell your hair.”
I shifted in bed again and started to hear a noise. It came from the hallway outside the bedroom door, which was closed. At first I ignored it, thinking it was the condo settling, or maybe the wind. But it was more of a scratching sound, not very windlike. When it didn’t stop, I quit typing and listened. The noise seemed to move across the room, at times sounding in different places, eventually landing in the wall behind me. It was one of those horror movie moments when I should’ve just cut my losses and bailed, but I went to investigate instead. I slipped on a pair of rubber wellies and leather winter gloves and pulled a flashlight out of the bedside table that I might use as a weapon if need be. My mind cycled through all the possible origins of the sound, from serial killers outside the door to little animals eating the carpet. I crept across the room and decided it was definitely coming from the region of the bed, a queen-sized outfit made of two twin-sized mattresses pushed together. I started to take the quilt and the sheets off and pull the mattresses apart, and as I did, three tiny brown field mice scattered across the floor.
“GAH!” I screamed. I couldn’t decide which was more disturbing, the scampering mice themselves, or the fact that I’d been unwittingly sleeping atop a rodent village for weeks. I imagined them consuming me, one tiny nibble at a time.
There was nothing to jump onto, and I didn’t want to step on a squishy mouse, so I stood with feet planted, alone and screaming, flailing my arms in the air in terror. I stood like that for a long time, debating with myself about what to do. Obviously I couldn’t stand there forever. I could call someone, but it was late.
Stepping carefully, shaking every article thoroughly, I packed a bag with enough stuff to get me through the next two days. The following morning I would call Fleur in the property management office, but that night, sufficiently traumatized, I checked myself into the hotel across the golf course and resumed my work in a plush white hotel bed, sans rodents.
20
“Some mice got in bed with me tonight,” I said.
“Like, in your bed?” my mom said. Seeing her face in the Skype window made me surprisingly homesick.
“Yup.”
“Jeez, they’ve got you living in squalor.”
To her, living in France was the same as living in Somalia. If I wasn’t the U.S., it must be the third world. I felt defensive all of a sudden.
“Actually, it’s a pretty nice place,” I said.
“Can’t be that nice if it’s full of rats.”
“I think they were just mice and, so far, I only saw three.”
“Where there’s three, there’s a hundred,” she said. “What’d you do?”
“I left. I’m at the hotel across the golf course.”
“You really should just come home.” She said it with the tone of someone who’d just won a bet.
I could, I thought. I could leave. There was nothing stopping me. I had chosen this path, and all I had to do was turn around. But if I did go back, who would I be then? The same ordinary old Halley from Dayton, Ohio. Unwed sister. Level 1 daughter. Nobody from nowhere.
“I can’t,” I said.
My mom cleared her throat. “Well, you missed a new Faust family first last weekend. Your father got smacked by the sample lady at Sam’s Club.” She rolled her eyes.
“What? Did he know her?”
“I’ll let him tell you about it,” she said. She got up from the table and shouted “Lewis!” out the back door.
My brother walked into the frame and looked for something in the refrigerator, then noticed my face on the computer and did a doubletake. He stepped closer until his head filled my screen.
“What’s going on with your hair?” he said. “You look like Ted Nugent.”
I didn’t respond.
He chuckled, and I heard the pssschlk of his soda can opening. “See you later,” he said and walked away.
Then I saw my dad’s tall figure come into view. He looked like he’d put on a few pounds. He stopped at a cabinet and took out a drinking glass, walked to the sink and filled it with water from the faucet. He took a long drink, wiped his brow with the side of his arm, and then walked over to the computer and sat down.
“Hey Hal,” he said.
“Hey. What’s with the water—are you off the Coke kidney stone treatment now?”
“Yeah, I overdid it on the Cokes. Can’t stand the sight of the stuff anymore.”
He made a face, and I laughed.
“What else is going on?” I asked.
He reached up to scratch his face stubble. “Well, let’s see. Mr. Wheaten died. You remember Bill Wheaten, the pharmacist? He used to give you suckers when you were a little girl.”
It took me a few seconds to recall the man’s face. “What happened to him? He wasn’t that old, was he?”
“No, it was pretty tragic. He was driving across the train tracks and got hit by a train. His wife and daughter were in the car too. They all died.”
“Jeez, that’s horrible.”
My dad sat back in his chair, then leaned forward again. “Yeah, that family is cursed. It’s the weirdest thing, his grandfather got hit by a train in his horse and buggy back in the 1930s. He was a farmer during the depression, you know. Raised pigs. Lived right down the road from here. And then his son, Bill’s father, got hit by a train in his car back in the early 70s. They say he was drunk driving, but I’m not sure I believe it. He was as nice as they come, that guy. Levi was his name. I knew him when he was in school; he was in the same class as your Aunt Jo. Then Bill’s brother got hit by a train about ten years ago.
Really cursed, I tell you. Bill has another brother, and by god if I was him I’d be buying up life insurance policies and getting right with the Lord.”
I got the feeling there was a significant life lesson I should take away from this story, but I couldn’t quite figure out what it was.
“That’s a pretty big coincidence,” I said.
“Yep.” He took another drink of water.
“What’s this I hear about the Sam’s Club sample lady?” I cracked a smile.
He sighed. “Well, this lady was set up at the kiosk in the frozen foods section giving out free samples of those little sausages. You know, the ones that look like tiny hot dogs?”
“Yeah.”
“Well I tried one and it was pretty good, so I went back for a second one. And I ate the second one, and I thought, ‘Man, this is really good,’ so I went back for a third one, and the lady smacked me.”
I grinned. “What did you do?”
“Well, I guess I stood there sort of surprised for a second, and then I apologized. Your mother felt so bad she bought two big boxes of the sausages and made sure the sample lady saw her put them in the cart. Guess we’ll be having sausages at every family dinner for the next six months.”
I glanced out the window of my hotel room, which looked out onto the third hole of the golf course. There was some movement on the green that caught my attention, two shadows that looked familiar.
“Dad, can I let you go?” I said, getting up.
“You be careful over there. And keep working hard. It’ll pay off in the end.”
“I will,” I said.
I turned the lights off in my room and opened the window, letting my eyes adjust to the dark. The full moon came out from behind a cloud and turned the grass silver. And there, next to the third hole pin, I saw Max and Lauren, vigorously kissing. Wasn’t she engaged to some guy back in California? Were they drunk? They swayed a little, but that could have been a factor of their height difference. Max held her face with the palms of his hands like he was afraid someone might show up at any minute and snatch her away.
I watched them, hoping they’d do something really scandalous. Actually, I was envious. It had been a long time since anyone had kissed me like that. Max reached over and pulled the flagstick out of its cup and whipped Lauren on the ass with it. She jumped back and shouted something I couldn’t hear, and he began chasing her around, poking her in the back with the flag. Then he tripped and fell, and the flag went flying. He rolled over onto his back. She coughed with laughter and fell down next to him.
I continued to stare like a nosy neighbor, picturing myself in her place. A pressure built in my chest as I imagined the ripples of barbaric joy in their kisses and jumps and falls. I willed him to kiss her again, put his hands on her. My hand pressed against the glass. Then Max looked up. He stopped what he was doing and stared in my direction, and then Lauren did too, squinting. I quickly shuffled the curtains back into place, leaving the lovers to the vagaries of the night.
21
“Why do we even need a theme?” Molly asked sweetly, as if she was only trying to help.
What followed was the sound of my head exploding. It was our fourth attempt at establishing a theme, and now we had to stop and have a conversation about whether or not it was necessary to establish a theme.
“You can’t run a campaign without a theme,” Chad pointed out.
“Why do we need to run a campaign? Can’t we just do the launch?”
Max sighed. “How are people going to know what we’re launching?”
“We’ll tell them it’s the Tantalus,” Molly replied.
“How will they know how the Tantalus fits into the context of their own lives?” Max asked. “How will we even get their attention to tell them?”
“The campaign,” Chad suggested.
“Right,” Max said.
“Okay, so back to the fireworks,” I said. “They told me we could have them at the gala but not at the booth.”
“We need them at the booth,” Max said matter-of-factly.
“They won’t let us have them at the booth.”
Max’s voice flattened. “You need to play hardball, Halley.”
“How can I play hardball? We don’t have any leverage.”
“Threaten to pull out of DEVO next year.”
“We’re a Platinum sponsor, that’s not even something I can decide. They’ll just laugh in my face.”
“You’re overcivilized,” Max said.
“What . . .?” I didn’t even know what he meant by that. “Why don’t you call them?”
“Not my job,” Max replied. “I’m here to think up the ideas. You’re here to execute them.”
I began to reminisce about a simpler time when I was a Level 1. Sitting in my happy little cubicle, listening to Celeste’s latest travel story, watching Phil Collins blow bubbles. I missed them so much I almost cried. Now I had twice the workload, an off-limits married client as my only friend, and I had to deal with Max.
“If you’re the ideas man, why are we still debating the theme?” I said. “Why don’t you come up with one?”
“Fine,” Max said.
Everyone was silent for a few seconds.
“Well?” I said.
“I will announce the theme when I’m ready, Halley.”
“Fine,” I said.
It was Friday afternoon, and the exterminator had cleared my condo of rodents. I headed to Le Clerc to buy some cheese, because maybe cheese would temporarily ameliorate my increasing inability to control any aspect of my life. These days I couldn’t seem to get enough cheese. Cheese was the source of all that was good and right in the world. Actually, there was something about French food in general that had begun to elicit addictive tendencies in me. Considering I’d spent the first twenty-three years of my life in a place where gravy was a food group, I guess I needed to make up for lost time.
I was standing in front of the dairy case trying to decide between a Cabecou and a Brie de Melun, when the cheese lady approached and spoke to me in words I didn’t understand.
“Blah blah blah, blah blah?”
I flipped through my dictionary, but I didn’t even know where to start. The cheese lady smiled, pulled a knife out of her apron, sliced off a little piece of the Cabecou and offered it to me. I popped it into my mouth. It was tart and creamy.
I pointed to the Brie de Melun, and she sliced off a little piece and offered it up. Mmm.
When I looked up again, she was holding a new slice on the end of the knife. Don’t mind if I do, I thought. But when I reached for it she snatched the knife back and clicked her tongue at me sharply, as did the guy standing next to me, whom she had actually been offering the cheese to. Oh my god, I thought, I’m becoming my father.
Before I had a chance to feel the deep psychic consequences of this realization, I picked up four random hunks of cheese, put them in my basket, and walked away. I could throw myself a little cheese party later.
My phone buzzed with a text. I parked my shopping basket next to the charcuterie to read it.
“Come to Paris,” Rousseau had written.
We both knew I couldn’t go. “What will we do?” I replied.
“Visit museums,” he wrote. “Drink wine.”
“Let’s drink wine in a museum,” I typed.
“I think that’s forbidden,” he replied.
I smiled. “Well that hasn’t stopped us so far.”
“You’re right,” he wrote. “So why aren’t you here?”
I sidestepped a woman who reached behind me to grab a salami. “Why do I have to come up there? It’s nicer down here.”
“Am I invited?”
He wasn’t being serious, right? We were just bantering like we always did.
“Of course,” I replied.
“W
ell that’s settled, then,” he wrote.
I walked to the checkout, packed the groceries into my reusable plastic sack, paid with cash from the surplus I now carried with me at all times, and headed for my car. When I arrived back to my condo I was already thinking about calls I needed to make and emails I needed to send. The air inside was damp and warm, and I could smell the trash that needed to be taken out. I put the hunks of cheese on a plate and ate mouthfuls as I typed. My hunger was vacant and compulsive, a giant vacuous hole. I ate thoughtlessly, making room inside my head for more urgent things. Before I knew it I’d polished off the entire plate, and I continued pecking and scrolling until it was time to eat again.
Thunder woke me up, then rain. The room was dark, and I walked over to the desk to read the fifty or so emails that had rolled in since I’d dozed off. The computer screen glowed eerily on the wall behind me.
Around the thirty-fourth email, I heard a knock at the front door. Assuming it was Lauren or Max coming to complain about a cat or a broken appliance or their inability to find a ride to the airport on Sunday, I pretended I wasn’t home. But a minute later I heard the knock again. Louder this time. I mumbled an obscenity, pushed back in my chair, stood and walked to the front door. Opened it. No one was there.
I was about to sit back down when I heard shoes on the terrace. A figure moved in the dark, past the sliding glass door that faced the golf course. Adrenaline. Did 9-1-1 work here? I grabbed for my phone on the table. Then I looked right into the oceanic eyes of Thomas Rousseau.
The Insatiables Page 13