Glamorous Disasters Page 21

  The girls are never able to adjust to the fact that in France, the food one eats still looks something like the animal it was. The pig in the couscous doesn’t become pork, the cow doesn’t become beef—it stays pig, it stays cow. Bones and phlegm-colored stripes of cartilage stick out of the bowl. Octavia, in desperation, orders a chicken soup. It is a slain chicken in broth—strategically severed, but with almost all the parts floating in the bowl. Later that night Octavia forages a meal of a McFlurry and acceptably processed chicken from McDonald’s. Tuscany, it seems, ingests only a diet Coke. Olena ventures into the girls’ hotel room that night to talk about food (mainly, Olena dryly summarizes to Noah, that it should be consumed). Olena goes in concerned and leaves frustrated and angry. That night she re-names the pair “No-Eats” and “Italian Princess.”

  6. Breakfast in the hotel. Noah has taken this picture: Olena, No-Eats, and Italian Princess are seated around a table in a beautiful, sun-filled atrium. Olena is smiling, but the smile does little to mask the look of mild horror that she will wear the entire trip.

  Noah has encouraged the girls to eat up, as this is the last meal that they won’t have to carry themselves. Tuscany, encouraged by his speech, has taken her croissant and peeled off each layer, arranged them in a star pattern on her plate, and then eaten half.

  7. Shopping for supplies. Noah pushes a giant grocery cart through a supermarché. Tuscany and Octavia are nowhere to be seen.

  The girls arrive at the checkout. They discovered a clothing section upstairs, which reportedly “sucks worse than the Gap.”

  8. Morning, on a trail leading up out of the foothills of Marseille. Tuscany wears her pack like an accessory, ignoring its weight through force of will, treating it as though it were only a prop on a photo shoot. Octavia is red-faced and sweating beneath her own.

  9. Benoît, the guide, adjusting Tuscany’s strap. A gallant pose: one muscled hand is perched on a boulder; the other reaches around Tuscany’s waist. His fingernails glow pink at the tips of his tan fingers. Olena and Octavia stand a few feet away, watching him intently.

  Tuscany and Octavia (as well as Olena, Noah suspects) developed an instant crush on Benoît. Noah reminds himself that perhaps this is over nothing more than the fact that he is French and in control. He’s a father of two. Maybe they feel protected. Whatever.

  10. Benoît on top of a rise, leading them up their first mountain. He exhibits an erect, purposeful attitude, not unlike that of a border collie.

  Benoît, Noah hears through Olena, was thrilled at the challenge of having been assigned an English-speaking group. Though he has conquered most of the mountain ranges of the world, he has not had a chance to use English since his years at lycée. And so he picked up some advanced English texts and learned some important phrases. Unfortunately, since lycée Benoît has forgotten all of his basic English, so these advanced phrases are the only words he knows. Three or four times a day Benoît will stop the group and announce that “It might be better if…” and be unable to complete the sentence.

  11. Lunchtime. No-Eats and Italian Princess nap on a rocky promontory in bikinis, having shed their fleeces. The Mediterranean glows blue far below. Benoît and Noah munch slices of sausage. Benoît looks crestfallen.

  Noah has just informed Benoît that one purpose of the trip is for the girls to speak French, so his English won’t be necessary.

  12. Noah and Benoît on a ridge ahead of the group, looking out at the horizon.

  Although they appear noble and apprehensive, like rangers determining the best trails for the womenfolk, Noah and Benoît are still squabbling over languages. Benoít is cowed by Olena’s language skills, and has conceded to speak to the girls only in French, but obviously doesn’t want to see the English on which he has worked so hard go to waste. As a result he reserves his nonsensical, if sophisticated, English for Noah. Noah, made cranky by the hot sun and his heavy pack, parrots Benoît’s earnest suggestions such as, “It might be better if no earth do!” back to him in similarly broken French.

  13. Campsite, the first night: No-Eats and Italian Princess sit on stones staring into a small fire, looking mutinous as Benoît stirs half a soup packet into a pail of iodized water.

  14. An artsy photo of the night sky, taken by Olena. The silhouette of Noah and Benoît’s tent cuts a triangular swath of black out of the swirl of stars.

  Noah shared a tent with Benoît, who, voluble and somewhat annoying during the day, is voluble and highly annoying at night. His snores have a prodigious, practiced quality to them. At the beginning of the night they are rapid and rhythmic wheezes, like Lamaze breathing exercises. Then Benoît segues into his full might, emitting great whooping snores that have a slight Doppler effect, like he is swinging a length of plastic tubing about his head. Noah, after tossing and turning for a few hours, tries to jostle Benoît into a lighter sleep. He shakes the sides of the tent. He shakes Benoît. Eventually he takes to vocalization. He whispers, “Quiet.” Then shouts, “Quiet!” Finally he finds the trick—translation into French. “Silence!” does it, when pronounced with a Parisian accent. Benoît quiets, and Noah finally falls asleep.

  15-48. A few dozen pictures of the Calanques—fjords hemmed in by verdant flora, iridescent blue water, primeval trees clutching sandy rocks like wave-swept gnarled men, blah blah.

  49. Another picture of the scenery. Olena and Benoît can be spotted at the horizon, eagerly mounting a rise. Octavia is a few hundred feet behind. Tuscany, filling half the frame, is a thousand feet behind that.

  Benoît assigned Noah to the position of rear guard, and since Tuscany is stopping every few feet to complain, “rear guard” is certainly very far in the rear. Noah’s replies to Tuscany’s complaints are all of a kind: “No, we can’t turn back…no, there’s no road nearby…” They follow the coastline from above, twisting around canyons filled with Mediterranean water. By the end of that day Tuscany’s complaining lessens, and she apparently comes to the grudging realization that this hell can be escaped only by plodding forward. Noah, meanwhile, watches Olena and Benoît enviously. He wants to be in the lead as well, to be the one to share each new vista with Olena. His jealousy is a hot, incisive sensation—like gripping a hot stone close in his fist—and a novelty for a guy who is always the first to leave his girlfriends. For Olena to be inaccessible makes him want nothing more than to abscond with her into the surrounding hinterland.

  50. Tuscany scaling a cliff. Scaling a cliff! Note Noah standing below, body tense, ready to catch the flurry of blond hair and slender limbs should Tuscany fall.

  Since Tuscany winds up surviving the trip, this is the image that Noah will enlarge and give to Dr. Thayer. Tuscany is scaling a cliff. A cliff is being scaled by Tuscany. And, conveniently, Noah is there to catch her. Good PR.

  51. The campsite, night. Olena has snapped the picture because it is a warm, touching moment: Tuscany and Octavia are eating handfuls of powdered milk. They giggle and make as if to attack one another with hands covered in yellow clumps of powder. Note Noah and Benoît standing behind the campfire, arms crossed and locked, in tense discussion.

  The group has nearly run out of food.

  52. Morning: Noah and Olena, wearing packs streamlined to the essentials, wave goodbye to Tuscany, Octavia, and Benoît. Their cheerful smiles are cotton fabrications with a gray undercurrent of guilt and anxiety. In Noah’s mind they look something like the woodcutter and his wife leaving Hansel and Gretel in the woods.

  The Calanques are inaccessible by car, which, yes, makes them serene, but also means that as far as the hiker is concerned the modern world might as well not exist. It is decided that Noah and Olena will go forage, like pioneers. Or better, find a road and hitchhike to a town with a store. Benoît will hang back with the girls. The official word is that they are taking a day’s break to relax. Noah and Olena leave them with the remnants of the powdered milk and half a liter of water.

  53. Wooded French countryside. Wide horizons, the land green and beauti
ful and empty.

  54. Again.

  55. Again.

  56. What appears to be a citadel of some sort rises from the emerald hills of Provence. Olena has raised her arm in a cheer.

  The citadel turned out to be France’s only maximum-security prison. They approach the razor-wired walls slowly and in plain view, hoping not to be mistaken for marauders or escaped convicts and shot, or chattered at, or whatever the Provençal reaction to escaped prisoners is.

  57. Noah standing in front of the prison, scratching his head.

  There is no doorbell.

  58. Hours later: Olena, smiling resiliently, climbs a cliff. Full black garbage bags are tied around her waist.

  A guard finally came out and seemed mystified, even after Olena explained their situation carefully and explicitly, that anyone should come to a prison for nourishment. He finally brings them into the holding area, where they meet with the chef. He laughs for a good minute at the Albanian and American come to a penitentiary for handouts, and then finally sells them powdered potatoes and water, which they carry back to the campsite in bulging garbage bags.

  59. Noah reaching the group’s campsite. The garbage bags tied around his waist give the appearance of a fat suit. A piece of paper is in his hand.

  The paper reads:

  Chèr Noah et Olena:

  Seeing as long you were took, thankful a canyoning expedition to cross our path! Upon knowing badness ours, having joined them. (sake of girls). Your road to continue upon/along water. It might be better if meeting at Hôtel Alizé à Marseille (we are?).

  Avec salutations, Benoît

  60. Olena sits outside tent overlooking the Mediterranean. Sun is setting. She stares at the horizon, chewing a glob of crusty mashed potatoes. At the corner of the frame: Noah’s hand entwined with hers.

  This would seem to have been their lowest moment—Tuscany and Octavia, lost and without provisions, have been carted off into the French wilderness. But Noah trusts Benoît—his overweening sense of duty, which rankled Noah so much earlier, is now a source of relief. And to be alone with Olena! Having her near to him the past week, away from the pressures of work and her family, and yet perpetually a few hundred yards ahead, has crazed him. She is finally next to him, and yet he can’t pull the moves he would normally try on a girl he had a crush on. To seduce or charm her at all seems obliquely condescending, to approach her as a challenging game that, however complex, he will eventually master. He can’t treat her like other girls. She strips him of his cockiness, consumes him with the fear of unwittingly doing something to displease her. He wants to know every part of her and, in their tent hundreds of feet above a barren and beautiful stretch of Mediterranean water, he learns a great deal, just by talking to her. Then he kisses her good night. They wake up in the same sleeping bag.

  61. Hôtel Alizé (interior), Marseille: Noah and Olena sit perched at opposite ends of the gloomy reception area, staring out the windows on either end of the room, like concerned bookends.

  Olena has informed Noah that canyoning involves climbing to the top of a mountain and then throwing oneself down a river, rappelling cliffs beneath torrents of rushing water, diving dozens of meters into rocky pools, and otherwise inviting maximum bodily harm. The idea that Tuscany will be doing this fills Noah with alarm and also something not unlike pleasure. Canyoning is, after all, not Wednesday nights at Pangaea.

  62. Hôtel Alizé (exterior): Noah and Olena have rushed outside upon arrival of Tuscany and Octavia (note frantic and sloppy angle of shot—the picture is composed in a diamond). Tuscany and Octavia approach in canyoning outfits, which are full-body wet suits topped with smart red plastic helmets. The girls look like crash test dummies, or members of an avant-garde rock band.

  Octavia arrives first, stomping the ground like a four-year-old in a tantrum, and slams past Noah and Olena without a word. Tuscany approaches second, gamboling down the gray and littered road. She whips off her helmet and out comes a stream of excited words: oh my God, that was the most fun ever, has Noah ever been canyoning? She jumped off this huge cliff, she was scared at first but then she did it and everyone was watching and Octavia was totally lame about everything and did Noah plan to tell her that they had run out of food? That was so crazy and made the whole trip like a life-or-death thing, and so awesome, and did you see this? (Tuscany pulls down the shoulder of her wet suit at this point to reveal a tremendous bruise, purple ribbed with khaki-colored broken veins.) She has to run inside now, they need their wet suit back.

  63. Close-up of Tuscany’s bruise, taken at her request. The clotted hemorrhage is multicolored and extensive, an antique map that stretches from below her earlobe to the point where her pronounced collarbone terminates in her shoulder. The broken veins are lakes and tributaries, the regions of yellow, blue, and purple mountain ranges and forgotten lands. Note hint of a proud smile at the beginning of her lips, at lower left.

  Tuscany is thrilled to have been left with this souvenir, this proof that she has been on a quest, that she has met with some distant and powerful realm, and that it has touched her, struck her, and wrapped its image around her throat.

  Noah’s thoughts at time of taking of picture all focus on Dr. Thayer, and alternative sources of employment.

  Chapter

  9

  Noah. Is it my understanding that you had Tuscany jump into a river and throw herself off waterfalls? Call me as soon as you get this. This is Dr. Thayer.

  Noah received the voicemail before he even arrived home from the airport. He sits at the kitchen table. He has gotten his arsenal of information in order: itineraries and flight information, hotel receipts, guidelines sent to him by the hiking company, copies of Tuscany’s score reports, his work contract, his training manuals. Olena offered to serve as his second, handing Noah whatever weapons he should need during the phone battle, but in the interest of sounding as casual as possible it was decided that Noah will make the call alone while Olena showers. The sound of the water hitting the plastic of the shower curtain and echoing within the thin walls of the apartment soothes him. Or perhaps it is just the knowledge that Olena is nearby.

  Dr. Thayer picks up immediately.

  “Hello, Noah,” she says. She is gruff, but there is a razor edge of mirth within her voice.

  “Hi, Dr. Thayer,” Noah says. “I guess you’ve heard what happened. Can you believe it?” He has put on his crazy-world routine ( What an amazing turn of events! )—best to start with his most powerful defense.

  “Yes. I have heard about it.” Noah listens as Dr. Thayer’s breath makes static against the receiver. “What are your thoughts?” she continues.

  “My thoughts?” His mind leaps about as he tries to determine if Dr. Thayer is playful or serious. “I think…the trip went very well.”

  “Very well? What do you mean?” The doctor is on the offensive.

  “Yes, Tuscany seemed to really enjoy herself. She wasn’t too willing at first, but the outdoors seemed to really grow on her.”

  “Grow on her. What does that mean to you, exactly?”

  They are in a session, like Noah is the latest intake at a mental ward. He stares furiously into the kitchen table. “How does Tuscany seem?” he finally asks.

  “Tuscany seems like she slammed into a rock at forty-five miles an hour.”

  “Yes, that might have—”

  “Octavia was horrified when she saw it. She said Tuscany spun around in the waterfall, hit the rock, and then fell over a cliff, her arms and legs ‘going all over the place.’ ”

  “I’m sure there was a lot of water at the bottom…”

  “I guess my question in all this is: Where were you?”

  “You see, I was out with Olena—”

  “Olena?”

  “The other chaperone who came with us on the trip.”

  “Oh yes. Tuscany didn’t mention her name. Please, go on.”

  “Olena and I were out…in the hills…doing…has Tuscany told you about any of this
already?”

  “She might have.”

  “Then I guess you know we ran out of food. Olena and I went to find some.”

  “Let me fill in the rest here.” Dr. Thayer’s voice breaks, and she sobs. Or no—it’s a laugh. The laugh continues. It sounds like a dry extended cough. “Oh, sorry, oh dear.” The laughing dies down, picks up, and dies down again. “You and this girl just wandered into the woods hoping to…hoo hoo, spear a rabbit or something, or find a fairy godmother, hah hah, and instead you find France’s maximum-security prison, this fortress just sitting there out in the wilderness, and you just walk up and knock on the gates. And meanwhile, the real tour guide Ben-Hwa thinks you have died or gotten lost—”

  “We were gone for a while, yeah…”

  “So when he comes across a bunch of people taking a canyoning trip, he just decides, why not? We’ll join up, and float Tuscany and Octavia down the river like logs in a flume!” Dr. Thayer breaks into unrestrained laughter. Her laughs, bizarre as they sound, loosen Noah’s anxiety, and he is soon laughing along with her.

  “I’m telling you,” Dr. Thayer says. “You don’t get adventures like that in the Hamptons. Maybe I should have gone.”

  “I was worried you were going to be angry,” Noah says.

  Dr. Thayer’s laughter stops. “Who said I’m not angry?”

  Noah’s own laughs take on a restrained, nervous quality.

  “I mean, really, Noah, I could slap you with a lawsuit so easily over this.”

  “A lawsuit!”

  “Oh, settle down, Noah, I’m only teasing you. Don’t take it all so seriously.” Dr. Thayer begins to laugh again, but her laughs seem hollow, as though she is only remembering the good feeling. “No, the truth of it is, Tuscany had a good time. I don’t know how much French she learned, but she had a good time. I suppose that’s what matters. Octavia seems a little scarred, but that’s the Carotenutos’ problem.”