Instead, Rousseau unloaded on me a relentless assault of silence. It was a message much louder than words. His silence had mass, a physical presence. It wasn’t just the absence of something, it was stuffy and dark, a hot knife plunging through my chest daily until I didn’t think I would ever breathe again. I lay awake every frigid winter night staring at the ceiling, violently lonely, confronting the meaninglessness of everything. And when morning finally came and I stepped outside again, the sunlight and the fact that civilization had survived intact seemed shocking and harsh. I feared those mornings more than anything. As much as I wanted to remain the person that he loved, in the cold light of morning the insult of Rousseau’s silence made me boil over with a rage so strong I thought I might lose my mind. I felt a visceral disgust with him and with myself and with the world in general that overshadowed every good thing with spiritual emptiness. I rode through the days on a wave of sick, motivating fury.
One day after Christmas, Gus, Lauren, Darren, and I sat around Gus’s dining room table watching Max, who stood next to his flip chart like the ringmaster at a circus. Gus seemed especially jovial, which Lauren pointed out in case the rest of us hadn’t noticed.
“Why shouldn’t I be?” Gus said.
Max smirked. “He’s just happy because I killed the spy cat.”
The rest of us stared.
“You killed a cat?” Lauren said.
“Yep.”
“How?”
“Slit its throat,” Max said casually.
I thought of Phil Collins, and my stomach began to hurt.
“Sick,” Lauren said.
“You’re overcivilized,” Max said.
“Let’s not forget the cat was a spy,” Gus said. “He had it coming.”
Lauren blinked at them, slack-jawed.
“Max,” Gus said, “you’re up.”
“Okay,” Max said, clearing his throat, “the moment we’ve all been waiting for. The Tantalus theme.”
He flipped a page on the flip chart to reveal scrawled in black marker on the page beneath:
Countdown Clock
Around the words were various drawings and clippings of countdown clock concepts, which Max described to us with purposeless phrases like “target profile” and “vision statement” and “brand promise.”
After Max was done, Gus said, “Great. Thanks, Max.”
If a single additional thing had been wrong with my life, this would’ve been the moment Halley Faust went postal.
“Wait a minute,” I said. “This is the theme we’ve been waiting eight goddamned months for? I proposed this idea at our very first meeting!”
There was a pause. Gus opened his mouth and then closed it again. Lauren and Darren both cracked a smile. Max studied me for a long few seconds, and then said, “Um, are you PMS-ing or something?”
“What?” I leaned in.
“Yeah, you heard me,” Max said.
“Okay kids,” Gus said, gesturing for us to take it down a notch. “The theme is fine. Max, I’ll make sure you get the promotion we discussed. Now,” his eyes focused on me, “we’re all under a lot of pressure and there’s still a lot to do, so let’s get back to work. But first, I’d like to offer you all a cappuccino.”
It caught us off guard, and we looked at each other for cues. Gus was going to make us cappuccinos? Max’s gloating smirk said, This is all thanks to me, motherfuckers.
“Are you . . . sure?” Darren said.
Gus huffed. “Well, do you want one or not?”
“Yes!” Lauren said. The rest of us voiced our agreement.
“Darren,” Gus said, “go get us some cups.”
Darren skipped into the kitchen like a dancing sprite. He returned a few seconds later, all smiles.
One by one, Gus put the cups under the Jura nozzle, toggled, and pushed the button. As the espresso and foam spewed forth, the air around us filled with the burnt, nutty smell of it.
“Have you heard of kopi luwak?” Gus said.
We all shook our heads.
“It’s the best coffee in the world. It comes from Sumatra and goes for about $300 a pound.”
Gus paused to eyeball us, and then continued. “The civet, a type of cat, eats coffee cherries, which pass through its digestive system, and then the coffee producers collect the feces, remove the beans, and roast them. The digestive process takes all the bitterness out of the coffee.”
“Wait,” Lauren said, “so . . .”
Gus followed her train of thought and nodded. “Just try it. You’ll like it.”
Our smiles faded as we looked down at what we now realized were steaming cups of liquid cat shit. I swallowed a laugh. Why, oh, why did we have to have it all?
I walked back across the golf course as a cold wind blew through the evergreens, stirring the rusty needles beneath. A few determined golfers ambled by in their pastel sweaters and caps, but the course looked bleak. The wild rosemary and lavender were dried to spiky stalks.
My condo was warm. Too warm. I opened the sliding door to let some fresh air in. Now that I had the theme I could finally finish the graphics work orders. Which I did, and sent them off to Molly. She called me within minutes.
“Unfortunately, Halley,” she said, “I don’t think we have time to get these graphics done.”
I almost screamed. “You know what we have riding on this project!”
“Then you shouldn’t have waited until the last minute.”
“I didn’t . . . it had nothing to do with me! I’ve been waiting months for Max to decide on the theme!”
“Well, maybe if you’d been a better manager—”
“Can we just cut the crap?” I said. “Why don’t you stop pretending to be a nice person for once and just say what you really want to say to me.”
The line was silent for a moment. “Fine,” she said, with a change of tone so profound that I half expected her skin to fall away and reveal an imposter underneath.
“It was you, wasn’t it?” I said.
“What was me?”
“You killed Phil Collins.”
“Phil Collins, your goldfish?” she said. She sounded genuinely surprised.
“I know it was you.”
“I didn’t kill your stupid goldfish, Halley.”
I didn’t believe her.
“Don’t try to make me feel sorry for you, like you’re some kind of victim,” she said. “I know what you’ve been doing over there.”
“Jesus, is that what this is about? I’m sure you started that rumor too, so let me just set the record straight: there is nothing going on between me and Gus!”
“How about Thomas Rousseau?”
The sound of his name sent a grief spasm vibrating into my throat. I didn’t say anything.
“Yeah,” she said. I could hear her wicked smile through the phone. “Lauren told me all about it. She saw you with her own eyes. I can think of a few executives who would love to know what you’ve been doing on the company’s dime, fornicating with our most important client like the Whore of Babylon.”
I shifted in my chair. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“I think you should quit,” she said.
“Quit my job?” I sniffed arrogantly. “Why? Because you think they’ll replace me with you?”
Molly cleared her throat. “That’s none of your concern.”
“I would love to see you try to do my job, Molly. I really would.”
She must have sensed an angle, because her voice softened. “Just think about it, Halley,” she said. “No more stress. You can finally get some rest. You can be free. If you walk away now, no one will ever find out what you’ve been doing. You’ll leave on good terms. And with all the experience you have and the recommendation you’d get from Gus, I’m sure you’ll have no trouble fi
nding something better somewhere else.”
It was like my conscience was taunting me. Those were my thoughts. I’d thought them over and over these past months. I could just quit. It would be so easy to quit, leave all of this behind. Go back home and sleep and sleep.
“Just quit, Halley,” she said. “Give yourself a break.”
But I couldn’t. Rousseau, Paris, Level 3. It was all still out there, still reachable, if only . . . And I’d come too far, I wasn’t giving up now. Now that I was almost there. Now that I was so close.
“What if I don’t quit?” I said. “You’ll go running to Gus?”
“Maybe,” she said.
“And what makes you think he’ll believe anything you say? You don’t have any proof.”
Molly inhaled loudly. “Oh, I’m sure there’s plenty of proof out there, if I need to go that route.”
It might have been true. Maybe she could find a way to dig up my emails, my text messages. Or maybe she was bluffing.
“I’m not quitting,” I said.
She didn’t respond for a few seconds. Then she let out a clipped, condescending bark of a laugh.
“You’re going to wish you had,” she said.
After we hung up, I wrapped myself in a blanket, walked out to the terrace and sat on a chaise, wondering if I’d just dug my own grave. My phone beeped with an email. Wearily, I looked down at the screen, fear and curiosity boiling in my blood. The name in the “From” line was one I hadn’t seen in months, and it filled me with butterflies.
Halley, I’ll be there.
Celeste
PART THREE
31
Something was wrong. I went to find Alec, the towheaded lead booth builder, who was crouched in the storage closet with a power drill.
“Hey, can I talk to you for a minute?” I said.
He lowered the drill and looked at me with kind eyes. “I know what you’re going to say.” He sighed. “This is the final layout we were given by Molly.”
I scanned the stark, blank wall in front of me. “There aren’t any graphics.”
“I was just as surprised as you are,” he said.
“I mean . . . there aren’t any graphics? This is the biggest launch Findlay has ever done, and she’s actually going to fuck up the fucking graphics? Fuck!” I kicked an empty cardboard box, and it went flying across the booth footprint.
Alec stared at me silently.
I took a deep breath. “What did she say?”
“Something about getting the work orders too late.” He cringed a little when he said it, as if I might really come unglued and clobber him.
I walked back to the entryway and looked at the booth in its entirety, wondering if maybe it would be okay.
Nope. Catastrophe. The managers might forgive a mistake like ordering too few dinner invitations or misspelling one of the reps’ name badges, but they wouldn’t overlook a blank booth. It would be the only thing about the launch that everyone would remember. “The biggest trade show booth fuckup in Findlay history” and oh how ironic that it was the result of the biggest and most expensive project the company had ever done, a project that had a dedicated Level 2 support staff person whose entire job it was to make sure things like this didn’t happen.
I heard Molly’s little squirrel laugh in my head. You won’t quit? You’re going to wish you had. She knew I’d be blamed. What had Gus said? You’re responsible for outcomes, so you’re going to have to find a way to do what needs to be done. And even if I could have blamed it all on Molly, she had the Rousseau story in her back pocket. She could call Gus up at any time and tell him. Goodbye, Level 3.
I looked at Alec. “What can we do?”
“Not much,” he said. “I have some old graphics that I can sub in, but they’re not going to be Tantalus-branded.”
“Do it,” I said. “Anything is better than this.”
I didn’t have time to discuss it because I had to go and meet Celeste. She waited for me at the entrance of the conference center—the famous Palais des Congrès—which was actually part conference center, part eerily vacant shopping mall. The building sat like a giant concrete island on the edge of the chaotic Place de la Porte Maillot roundabout. I crossed the all-white lobby, with its delicate blown glass chandeliers that looked like clusters of floating bubbles. Banks of automated conference registration machines lined the center, flanked by a perennially busy Starbucks.
I was nervous to see Celeste. I still didn’t know why she’d finally agreed to come to Paris. Maybe she was hoping for a front row seat to my failure. Or maybe she’d worked out a deal of her own with Gus.
“Hi,” I muttered as I opened the door. Wisps of cigarette smoke wafted over from the knots of smokers huddled outside.
Should I apologize again, try to break the ice? Or would it be better to act like everything was normal?
Celeste’s expression was placid, but underneath that I could see a spark of my best friend, folded up and put away in a drawer somewhere deep in her heart. She was understandably still angry, or maybe seeing me made her angry all over again. She gave me a quick hug and then stepped aside.
Behind Celeste were two French service staffers—Level 1s—from Clive Villalobos’s European office. Grace and Marion were their names, and they each gave me a double-cheek kiss and followed us inside. They were reserved and serious compared to Celeste who now seemed so confidently, ploddingly American. Grace had a button nose, hair almost as black as Celeste’s, and a coquettish way of walking. She was the more talkative of the two. Marion had lithe, elegant features and long, wavy chestnut hair. She was quiet and almost-beautiful, the kind of woman that drives men mad. I couldn’t help staring.
I gave them their name badges and the four of us crossed the airy lobby. Men in black suits stood on either side of the escalators leading up to the conference center. They scanned us through and we ascended, following the sounds of hammers and drills to the trade show hall and coming to rest at a table in one of the vacant cafés next to the side doors. The café would be full when DEVO started, but for now the dark bakery case held only cold steel trays and the promise of its imminent reanimation.
We got down to business. In my bag I had binders for each of us that contained the week’s operating specifications, hotel rooming lists by arrival date and alphabet, the transportation manifest, a local area map, a conference center map, a list of important contact information, and a hard copy of each customer-facing event invitation. I handed out two-way radios with official-looking earpieces that I’d rented from a Parisian destination management company.
“When we’re in the same building we’ll communicate via radio,” I said. They each unwrapped an earpiece from its plastic sleeve, inserted the metal tip. “Let’s walk through the specs.”
The three of them listened solemnly.
“Your binders are personalized. I’ve highlighted your specific tasks. Make sure you keep an eye on your individual responsibilities each day. When you’re not doing anything specific I want you to float around and be available for random tasks.
“Starting with today, I’ve already checked on the booth setup and I’ll tell you about that when we’re done. We have a pre-conference meeting with hotel staff at two and another pre-con with Susanne from the destination management company at three. At four we’re meeting the bell captain in the package room to organize. Susanne has arranged a trolley to transfer product and marketing materials from the hotel to the conference center. We’ll get everything transferred and unpacked on the booth this afternoon so it’s completely set tomorrow morning when the managers arrive.”
Workmen and booth builders passed our table pushing huge wooden crates on wheels. Hallway banners were released and fell from the ceiling in unnoticed fanfare.
“Okay,” I said. “Tomorrow morning most of the managers arrive. Marion, you’re responsible for ch
ecking on the cars that will pick them up at the airport. The managers and the transportation company have your mobile number.”
“Should I be at the airport to greet them?” Marion asked.
“No, I need you with me at the hotel greeting them when they walk into the lobby. I’ve hired greeters with signs to wait at the airport and direct them to their cars. Please also make sure the VIP amenities are delivered to their rooms first thing in the morning, and remind them that Anthony is allergic to chocolate. I’ve already given the welcome cards to Lorraine at the hotel.”
Marion made some notes in the margin.
“Celeste and Grace, you will be in the package room all day tomorrow. There are ten thousand flattened white boxes which need to have Tantalus stickers affixed to them. These are for the boxed lunches that will be served to all delegates on the second day of the conference. Once the stickers are done, I’ll take the boxes to Monique, the conference organizer. After that I need you to stuff the welcome packets. All the materials are here, they just need to be put together. Then please be ready to help me set up the room for Wednesday’s sales meeting. I’ll be back and forth between the conference center and the hotel all day tomorrow and in meetings with the managers, but I’ll be available by phone.”
They nodded.
“Okay, let’s look at the sales meeting specs.”
We walked through the whole agenda. Room setups. Audiovisual requirements. Transportation duties. Catering orders. The sales meeting. The booth. The luncheon symposium. The podium talks. The booth announcement. The gala. The more we talked, the more the week sat hugely before us like a great elephant we had to eat. We could only digest it in small bits. When we got to the end of the agenda we packed up our binders and left the café. I walked them into the convention space to show them the graphic-less booth.
“Wow,” Celeste said. “Did Molly do this on purpose?”
The Insatiables Page 20