27
Gus was already at the table with a plate full of scrambled eggs. I crossed the clubhouse lobby, put my sweater on a chair across from him and went to pick up a plate. A tourist’s kid in knee socks was trying and failing to spoon up some tater tots—or whatever they called the French equivalent—from a big silver chafing dish.
“Do you need some help?” I asked him.
The kid looked at me quizzically, then picked up a tater tot with his thumb and forefinger and chucked it, hitting me squarely between the eyes.
“You’re a dumpling!” he shouted and ran away.
“Little bastard,” I mumbled, wiping the salt from my forehead. I spooned up a whole plate of tots and grabbed four croissants. Gus had witnessed the entire exchange and was still chuckling when I got back to the table.
“I see you’re good with children,” he said.
I ordered a cappuccino from the approaching waiter.
Gus scooped a spoonful of eggs. “Let’s talk about Thomas Rousseau,” he said, then shoveled the eggs into his mouth.
I picked up my water glass and took a big drink. “Okay.”
“Have you heard from him lately?” He looked me right in the eye and I was sure he knew something. My eye started to twitch.
I paused to swallow another gulp of water. “No,” I said.
“Really?”
“Why do you ask?”
“Just making sure everything is on track,” he said. “You know, for the podium talks. Is everything set for my gala night entrance?”
I took a deep breath. “Yes, the entertainment coordinator is going to install the zip line.”
“Great,” he said.
“They want you to come over and do a few practice runs with a trainer the day before.” I took a bite of croissant. Ah. The buttery layers crunched in my mouth. By now I’d eaten so much cheese that the thought of cheese made me feel a little sick. I’d moved on to croissants. Croissants were the source of all that was good and right in the world.
“Impossible,” Gus said. “We’ll be way too busy with the meeting. Besides, I don’t need any practice.”
“If you’re sure,” I said. I started on another croissant.
Gus took another bite of scrambled eggs.
“Have you decided what time to have the meeting with Clive on Friday,” I asked, “to talk about the theme?”
“Oh, didn’t I tell you? There won’t be a meeting,” Gus said. “Clive had to cancel.”
“Oh,” I said. “When do you think we’ll be able to talk about the theme then?”
“Let Max handle it. He’ll let us know when he’s ready.”
I scowled into my third croissant but didn’t think it wise to protest.
Gus looked down at my plate. “That’s a lot of croissants,” he said with one raised eyebrow.
I stopped chewing. “It’s not that many,” I said.
He chuckled as his phone rang. “Excuse me,” he said, getting up and walking toward the lobby. “Ciao bella,” he whispered.
That night Darren elected to stay home with The Backpack, so it was just me, Max, Lauren, and the rest of Cannes. It would be the first and last time I ever went out with the two of them alone. I didn’t know why they’d asked me in the first place. Maybe they thought they needed a buffer. Something bad had happened between them that filled the air around us with an angry fug. Max had become even more sadistic than usual, and Lauren vacillated between conspicuously chipper and conspicuously stricken. Tonight she was a little of both, depending on whom she was talking to.
“Did I ever tell you about the time I met 50 Cent?” she shouted over the din of music, hooking her arm through mine. She kept her eyes locked on Max, who was clearly conducting an inventory of the physical assets of every woman in the room.
“Yes,” I said.
She took a sip of her vodka cranberry and pouted.
“Have you noticed the way Gus sneaks around talking on the phone sometimes?” I said.
Lauren perked up at the suggestion of scandal. “You mean the whole ‘ciao bella’ thing?” she said. “Yeah, Max and I have been trying to figure it out for months.”
She turned. “Max,” she shouted in his direction. He didn’t hear her. “Hey, Max,” she repeated, waving one arm.
Max had homed in on a doe-eyed brunette who stood alone near the bar, apparently waiting for someone. He stood to go and talk to her.
Lauren took another gulp of her drink. A text message from Rousseau blinked on the screen of my phone.
“Where are you?” he said.
“At a club called Mixer with Max and Lauren,” I replied, “which appears to have been a bad decision. Why?”
“Just wondering,” he wrote. “Why was it a bad decision?”
“I don’t know exactly what’s going on, but there’s some bad juju.”
I put the phone back down. It was too loud to try to carry on a conversation with Lauren, so I sat back and looked around. This club was a place for forgetting yourself. People jostled and tripped through the black, strobe-lit halls. A man in tight leather leggings and thick black eyeliner tended bar.
“Let’s do a shot,” Lauren shouted, pulling me up with her.
She positioned herself at the bar near-but-not-too-near the spot where Max was speaking in broken French to the brunette. Every few seconds they laughed, and he flashed that mischievous, boyish smile that made him so irresistible.
“Two Jägerbombs,” Lauren shouted, holding up two fingers. The bartender nodded and poured the drinks. I almost declined the one Lauren pushed toward me. After getting really sick on Jägerbombs one time in high school, the smell of Jägermeister made my stomach heave a little. But I rallied.
“To the Tantalus,” Lauren said, clicking her shot glass against mine. She glanced at Max again, dropped the shot and chugged. “Two more!” she shouted at the bartender.
With every shot we took, the chatter, the drinks, the music, the lights and walls and clothes and shoes and people became louder, floating. The louder the noise grew the more I withdrew into myself. People danced and kissed. Lights flashed. What was I doing here? It all felt forced and empty. And yet, there was some insane animal beauty in the possibility—always the possibility—that the night might abruptly and without warning turn magical.
I went upstairs to find a bathroom, hugging the wall for balance. Lauren followed me, and as soon as the door closed she sank to the dirty floor in tears.
“How can he treat me this way?” she cried.
“Who?” I asked stupidly, wishing she’d get up.
“Max!” she said, collapsing into her hands.
“Um, have you not noticed?” I said. “Max is a complete asshole.”
“No, he wasn’t like this,” she slurred. I bent down over her as two stick-thin girls in sequined miniskirts pushed past us and entered toilet stalls. “You don’t know him. He was really sweet.”
“I’ll bet,” I chuckled. “You probably think Kim Jong-un is sweet too.”
“Who?” she said.
“Never mind. Look, Max is a jerk. Seriously, don’t waste your tears on him.”
“No! You don’t understand. He was sweet.”
She proceeded to tell me about the day they got together. It was the day we moved into our condos. Max called her over to his place because he needed to steam one of his shirts and he couldn’t figure out how to put water in the steamer. When she got there, he was holding a hand mixer without the beaters in it. He was so genuinely confused that his guard was down in a way Lauren had never seen before, and it made her feel like she had privileged access to some secret part of him. She was special. They laughed for a long time, and she immediately forgot all about her boyfriend back in California and fell into his arms.
“So what happened?” I asked. “You guys broke up?”
“I don’t really know,” she said, still teary. “He never said he wanted to break up, but we never talked about whether or not we were really ‘together’ either. He just seemed to be getting bored with me, and then after a while we didn’t hang out as much. I tried talking to him, but he won’t talk about it. He just won’t talk. And now we’re here and he’s picking up other women! Did I do something, Halley? Do you think I did something?”
“No, I think he’s an asshole.”
A steady line of women shuffled past us, slammed stall doors. We heard the clicks of door locks, the swish of urination, the gorge of toilet flushes and sinks and hand dryers. Lauren laughed a drunk-person laugh, pushed herself off the floor, and wiped the mascara drips from under her eyes.
“You’re nice, Halley,” she said, staring at herself in the mirror across from us. Her face turned serious. “I’m sorry you had to make all those sandwiches for me. I’ll make my own sandwiches at the Paris meeting, I promise.”
“Oh,” I said. That one caught me off guard.
“Tell me if you need help, okay? I mean, if I can help you. I always thought your job must be so much easier . . . you know, less responsibility . . . but after being here . . . it doesn’t sound easy anymore.”
“Thanks.” I wondered if she would even remember saying it. I should have recorded it.
“I’m going to get a cab,” she said. “Are you coming?”
“Yeah, I’ll go tell Max we’re leaving.”
On the way to find Max I heard someone descend the stairs behind me. I turned to look but it was so dark I couldn’t see. I could only make out his outline, tall and slender. Then he said my name.
But it couldn’t be.
“Thomas?” I slurred.
Was it really him? How did he get here? Maybe I was imagining this. He came closer and I reached out and touched the cotton of his sweater, his familiar hair, the temple of his glasses.
“Stay with me,” Rousseau said in my ear, and then he kissed it.
Disbelief, maybe some shock, and then the overwhelming safety of him. I pulled him around to a dark place behind the stairs where nobody would see us. His hot mouth on my shoulder. My hands pressed against the wall, fingertips rubbing across the cold painted concrete. His hands grasped, and his lips kissed. And then there we were, walking through the door of a hotel room. There was a hard kiss on the mouth. Then shoes off . . . hands searching . . . knee bumping the bed . . . cursing and smiling . . . his sweet breath on my face. A whole glorious night ahead of us. I would have given anything to stay there with him forever, despite the fact that I was slowly becoming an animal.
28
I woke up still fully clothed. When I opened my eyes, I recognized nothing. Not the white duvet or the blue-striped wallpaper, the dripping chandelier or the flat screen TV. I did recognize Rousseau, who’d fallen asleep on his side next to me, also fully clothed, holding my hand. I turned my head and was slammed with hangover nausea. There was a phone on the nightstand next to me and I reached for it.
A French voice answered, “Allô.”
“Yes, hello?” I croaked quietly, trying not to wake Rousseau. “Room service?”
“Oui,” the voice said.
“I need a bowl of soup and a bottle of Nurofen.”
“Madame, it is 6:00 a.m. We do not serve soup until lunchtime.”
“Look, I don’t care how much I have to pay you. I don’t care if you charge me a thousand dollars. I need a bowl of soup and a bottle of Nurofen.”
“Madame . . .”
“I am begging you, sir. Soup. Nurofen.”
“Please hold for a moment,” he said. He came back a few seconds later. “Okay, Madame. Will there be anything else?”
“Water.”
“Oui, Madame.”
“Thank you.”
The knock woke us both up. Rousseau got up to open the door and sign the bill. The waiter rolled the linen-covered room service cart up right next to my face. A single pink carnation stood between my bowl of soup and my medicine. The waiter left silently, pulling the door shut behind him. My head throbbed.
“You’re a mess,” Rousseau said.
“I’ll be okay as soon as I drink some water.” He handed me the bottle, and as I drank, a thought occurred to me. “Hey, what happened to Lauren last night? She was waiting for me to get a cab with her.”
“You don’t remember?” Rousseau’s eyebrows went up. “You must have been worse off than I thought. You went out and told her you were going to stay at the club.”
I ran my fingers through my hair and pressed on my temples. “Great,” I said. “She probably thinks I stayed with Max.”
“You said that last night too, but at the time you thought it was funny.” He smiled.
I looked around. “Where are we anyway?”
“A hotel a few blocks from the club. You kept saying we were going to get caught by Gus if we went back to your condo. Can I have some of your soup?” He grabbed the spoon. “I didn’t have any dinner last night.”
We finished the soup and drank half the liter of water, then went back to sleep again. I was restless as my body metabolized the remainder of the alcohol coursing through my veins. A couple hours later I woke up sweaty, but better. I drank some more water and got in the shower. A minute later Rousseau opened the shower door and stepped in behind me.
“Excuse me, sir, do I know you?”
“I must be lost,” he said. “Have you seen my girlfriend?” And then he kissed me.
I wrapped a big white towel around myself and looked in the mirror, lips red from kisses. I wondered how long it would be, how many kisses I would need to store up, before the next time.
“Thomas,” I called, walking out of the bathroom, “I keep meaning to ask you. Gus wants you to give one of our podium talks at DEVO. Are you going to do it?”
Rousseau stood in front of the closet door, buttoning his shirt. “Oh, yeah. He sent me a couple emails about that. Well, I’ve got a pretty packed schedule for that meeting, but I could make some time on the last day.”
“Perfect,” I said. “I’ll email the conference organizer.”
“I got you a copy of that journal you needed,” he said. As I towel-dried my hair, he fished around inside his briefcase and produced a publication, set it on the desk.
“Sweet. Thanks,” I said, picking it up and idly fingering through it. “Gus will be impressed I was able to find it.” I smiled at him and we made eye contact for a few silent seconds, and there was that warmth in his eyes that I loved, the kind that made the lines appear at the corners. I registered the ease with which we coexisted. It could be like this, always. Why couldn’t it?
“Do you think we’re bad people?” I said, looking down at the floor.
“No. What makes you say that?”
“You know. This.”
Rousseau frowned. “It’s not like we haven’t done this before.”
“I know,” I sighed. “I just wish we didn’t have to be so damned secretive all the time.”
“Me too,” he said.
He looked so good in his gray jacket, white Oxford shirt, and jeans. I felt a pang of ownership. I wanted the world to know that he was mine.
“Hey, can you do me a favor?” he asked.
“Sure.”
“The company needs a new picture for the website. Tell me which of these you like.”
I stood behind him while he pulled them up on the screen, from a photo shoot he’d done a few days before. Then I burst out laughing. Not only was he smiling the biggest high-beam smile humanly possible, but all four of the pictures looked exactly the same. Soon I started belly-laughing and couldn’t stop. Maybe I was still a little drunk. My eyes began to water.
“You’re a jerk,” he said, but he started to laugh too. “What is so funny?”
&n
bsp; “I’m sorry,” I said. “I can’t tell the difference.” I could barely get the words out. Tears were streaming down my face.
“You could at least pretend I look hot.”
I looked back at the pictures and doubled over again. “I think the third one is the best one,” I said.
“I hate you,” he said, smiling.
I wanted to stop time. It was such a stupid, inconsequential moment, and yet it was so perfectly lived that I was simultaneously there and not there, watching us from outside myself and mourning the loss of everything we could have been, would have been, if things had been different. The days were always so short, and I would spend so much time remembering.
I looked away. “What should we do today?” I said.
His phone started to ring. We both knew it was her before he pulled it out of his pocket. He looked at me nervously and turned around to answer.
“Allô,” he said tersely. “Oui. Mmhmm. Oui . . .”
My heart sank. I could hear her voice through the earpiece chattering away in French and I coveted the nonchalance with which she could talk to him, the certainty she must feel every day, knowing that he would always be there. Actually, it made me angry. She didn’t know scarcity. She could gorge herself on him until she was sick, until she barely noticed him anymore. To be able to sit on the bed every morning and just watch him tie his tie . . . to laugh as he dorkily tucks his shirttails into his underwear . . . to have unimpeded oceans of time sprawling out in front of them, time to really talk, time to do everything together . . . I was dying of thirst and she stood in front of me with a cup of water, pouring it on the ground.
The Insatiables Page 18