Stephan Clark - Sweetness #9

HURRICANE IGOR PUSHED ASHORE shortly after we fell asleep, but rather than plowing through Chesapeake Bay as expected, he turned up the coast and moved back out to sea, where he soon encountered a cold front and absorbed enough dry air to lose much of his power.

My confession was in many ways equally anti-climactic. Betty sat through it with a patient smile, as if she were watching one of her children playing chopsticks at a school recital. Ernest, meanwhile, seemed more enthused to be in my company than he had been in months.

“Dead monkeys?” he said. “Rat suicides?”

“Well, this is what your father thinks he saw,” Betty said. “Isn’t that right?”

“Yes. It’s all subjective, I suppose, but I thought you should at least know this much.”

By now the lorazepam’s effect was waning, and I was beginning to think Priscilla might reach for the crystal candy dish on the coffee table and throw it at my head. But instead, she sucked in a long breath and got to her feet.

“Can I be excused?” she said.

It was the most threatening thing she’d said to me all night.

“Is that all you want to say? You haven’t even asked if I brought the Albanian report home.”

She started for the door, telling me she didn’t need it anymore. “Sarin ordered a copy.”

“What? When? Does she already have it?”

“For a couple of days now.”

“And you didn’t say anything?”

Priscilla looked back at me from the doorway as if this were a question I no longer had the right to ask.

“Well!” Betty popped up, clapping her hands and looking down at Ernest. “What do you say we make a pizza?”

We had two ready-made shells in the fridge, and so we all went down and decorated our own individual half of one pie.

“You have to promise to never do this again,” Betty said, while scattering olives over her side. “I know you were only trying to protect us, and that’s nice of you, it is, but you just hurt yourself in the end. You’ve been eating yourself up with worry all this time.”

I raised my hand in the style of a Boy Scout, amazed that so much fear and anticipation could be reduced to this. “I pledge a new policy of total transparency,” I said. “I promise.”

Priscilla leaned into the grater as she moved a block of vegan cheese up and down against it. She wouldn’t look at me. I wondered if she saw her hand in this. I never would have grown so anxious, after all, if it weren’t for the threat posed by the Albanian report. But it was also possible that she’d simply heard enough and was now retreating deeper inside herself, farther and farther away from me. She was so quiet, and how else does estrangement begin if not with language?

“Listen,” Betty said, perhaps sensing this herself, “don’t look so gloomy, okay?” She grabbed Priscilla’s hand and gave it a little shake. “I know you might be scared, but this is the Age of Negotiation. If something takes away five years of your life, you take a pill that gives you back ten. Do you hear? And, really, we can’t lose faith in the American supermarket, because do you know what?” She looked between Priscilla and Ernest. “Through the abundance of it and the miracles of modern medicine the average life-expectancy in this country has increased, what? Ten years? Fifteen? Twenty?” I was nodding to show her that I’d go that high. “That’s in this last century alone, and do you know what’s happened? Along the way my father grew to stand two inches taller than his father, and your uncle Peter grew to stand two inches taller than him. That’s right. We’ll be fine,” she said. “Everything in moderation, that’s all we need to remember. Because, really, regardless of what your father said, I think we’re threatened by nothing more serious here than the American Condition, just like that man Hickey said. Or can someone show me where those fat monkeys are buried?” She managed a little laugh. I tried to echo it. And then she smiled at me, the smile of Napoleon Hill and Ronald Reagan, a smile of strength and support that made me feel a love for her unlike any I’d felt in years.

I never once stopped to think it was only an act put on for the benefit of the kids.

THE OUTER BANDS OF WHAT had been Hurricane Igor began passing over northern New Jersey the following morning, flooding basements in low-lying areas and causing cars to stall out at the most problematic intersections. When the worst of it was over us, I sat behind the desk in my mentor’s office, going through the day’s mail. I knew not to expect Ernst that day, and not only because he wouldn’t dare take the bus in such weather. He’d need to preserve his energy for the annual meeting of the Society of Flavor Chemists, one of the most important and exhausting industry events of any calendar year. Scheduled for that weekend, it promised to be especially memorable for those of us at FlavAmerica, because in addition to introducing Koba to the Society as our new trainee, we were going to see Beekley certified as a member with full voting rights (if he passed his oral defense, as expected) and our leader honored with the Golden Beaker Award, commemorating a lifetime of achievement in the flavor sciences.

Finding an envelope addressed to Ernst, I opened it and read:

Dear Mr. Eberhardt, I am writing on behalf of the Board of Directors of Better Health and Flavorings to make a proposal for a business combination of Better Health and Flavorings and FlavAmerica. I spun round in my studded leather chair. The wind lashed at the window, throwing against it great sheets of rain. As you may remember, last summer I received a letter from you indicating that “now is not the right time” to enter into discussions regarding an acquisition transaction. I have chosen to follow up with you today to inquire if that sentiment remains unchanged. My hands shook as I skimmed through to the end. …Better Health and Flavorings would acquire all outstanding private shares in FlavAmerica for a per share consideration of…promises to be a compelling value realization…I hope you share our enthusiasm, and I look forward to receiving your prompt and favorable reply.

I shot up from my chair—“A prompt and favorable reply!”—and paced the room, frothing like Lear out on the heath (“Spit, fire! Spout, rain!”). The thought of working for them was inconceivable, for as devoted readers of the Wall Street Journal should know, Better Health and Flavorings and Goldstein, Olivetti, and Dark were essentially the same company. A few years after my departure from Animal Testing, Goldstein, Olivetti, and Dark had become known as Goldstein, Olivetti, and Dark — Fuchs AG, to reflect its short-lived merger with the German manufacturer of electronics and farm equipment. When the Germans soured on the flavorings industry, they sold their holdings, at a considerable loss, to Avantage Capital, SARL, a French private equity firm. Less than a year later, scientists in Japan announced that Sweetness #9, once run through a centrifugal separator, provided all the same benefits to commercial food production as high-fructose corn syrup, and almost as quickly the FDA expanded its approval of the sweetener to include baked goods and processed foods, as well as pharmaceuticals, candies, frozen desserts, and coffee beverages. Avantage was in the picture for less than four years, but it made such a killing flipping Goldstein, Olivetti, and Dark that one of its founders later purchased a club in England’s Premier League. The company it sold out to, a U.S.-based multinational agricultural biotechnology firm with headquarters in Moscow, Idaho, assigned the rights to Sweetness #9 to a newly formed subsidiary, the Sugar Hill Group, and unloaded what remained of the original Goldstein, Olivetti, and Dark to the world’s third-largest producer of fragrances and flavorings. At the time, this company was known as American Food & Chemical, but it has since been rebranded as Better Health and Flavorings.