Stephan Clark - Sweetness #9

Koba put his glass down, having taken only a sip. “Everything all right, David?” I looked at his dessert — chocolate pudding topped with a curl of ketchup and a sprig of parsley — and turned for the door, reaching for my stomach. The carpet was a dizzying pattern of geometric shapes, chosen for its ability to hide stains. I tucked my chin into my chest and turned out toward the men’s room — but it couldn’t wait. I fell to a knee as the back of my throat opened, and then I was crouching there on the floor like a wild animal, panting over a slick of orange vomit.

As I recovered my breathing, I wiped my forehead with the back of my tie and looked up to see a man in a red coat and a black bow tie pushing a room service cart toward me. With a small flourish, he removed a metal cover from one of his plates and set it down on top of my mess. Voila! He smiled like a magician who’s just made the Statue of Liberty disappear.

I stood, apologizing and reaching for my wallet, but he wouldn’t hear of accepting a tip, so I gave him something more valuable still: the truth. “I don’t deserve this,” I said.

His smile began to falter.

I hurried into the bathroom, propelled by a return of my gag reflex. To be silent all these years, to only now tell my family and be rewarded for this — I tried to vomit into the sink, but I managed only a sick-sounding cough that sent a man out of a bathroom stall, still buttoning his fly. As he left, I turned on the water and rinsed my mouth, wondering if maybe I was wrong — maybe I did deserve this or shouldn’t think of the question of merit at all. Because had I deserved what I’d received in Animal Testing? Or on that day in Texas when my parents had lost their lives? I splashed my face and rubbed water round to the back of my neck. Maybe this was simply how the Wheel of Fortune spun. You were pinned to it at birth and sent rolling away into your life. There was no profit to be had in trying to line up where you were with what you had done. You got dunked in the waters when you should be lifted up high, then raised toward the sun when your every action said you should be hidden in a low, dark place.

Someone came in whistling then, so I turned the water on and splashed my face a second time. It was an older gentleman in a navy blue double-breasted suit who had perfectly groomed silver hair. He addressed me while turning to the urinals.

“Congratulations, you little devil.”

“Pardon?”

“I said, ‘Congratulations, you loyal fellow.’”

I made a show of drying my face and fixing the knot of my tie. “Oh, thank you. Who are you with?”

“Better Health and Flavorings. I’m one of the suits, mind you. Not a creative.”

“Didn’t think there’d be anything of interest to you here.”

“Came to talk with Ernst. Sent him a letter earlier this week. Maybe you read it?” He flushed and dipped his knees while zipping up. “It must have been good to flee the madhouse.”

“What?”

“I said, ‘It must’ve been good to see him stay in-house.’”

He joined me at the sinks to wash his hands.

“Ernst has always done the right thing,” I said.

“You don’t know it.”

“What do you mean?”

He shut the water off and flicked his hands dry. “I said, ‘Don’t you know it.’ Are you all right? You look a little peaked.”

“I’m fine. Thank you.”

“We should talk. I’d like to present you our best offer.”

He gave me his card, then leaned into the mirror and pulled his lips back to look for food between his teeth.

“That’s my direct line,” he said, gesturing to the card. “When you’re ready, give me a call, and I promise: next time”—with a glance he took in our surroundings—“I’ll take you somewhere fancier, buy you a proper lunch. How’s that sound?” He gave me a slap on the shoulder, then started for the door. “Again, you have my heartfelt congratulations.”

Or at least that’s what I told myself he must have said, because it was either that or “my heartfelt strangulations.”

When I reemerged from the bathroom, the doors to the banquet hall were open and everyone was streaming out toward the bar. I wanted to retreat to my hotel room, but I was like a piece of flotsam caught up in the current. “David! Let’s get a drink. We’ll celebrate the good news!” I felt like a politician, glad-handing my way through the crowd with a frozen smile, and laughing at jokes whose punchlines didn’t merit much more than a chuckle. (“Why did the tofu cross the road? Because nobody wanted him!”)

I ordered Ernst and Eliza a round of schnapps, and listened with averted eyes as Koba toasted me as if he owed me his life. But as the drinking continued and the crowd thinned out, it seemed only those intent on misery-making remained. Tennessee pulled me close in a bear hug and slapped me hard on the back before leaving. “Why do the slippers fit you?” he said. “Five years’ seniority I’ve got on you, the respect of my peers, and still whenever Ernst deigns to invite me over for breakfast, I’ve got to squeeze my feet into slippers that fit you and not me.”

When he had left, there was only one person sitting on my side of the bar, the outgoing Society president. He downed the last of the red wine in his glass, then came over to shake my hand and say we should have lunch. “There’s a lot we need to talk about.”

I told him I looked forward to the opportunity, but it was one of those lies we all so easily tell. After he too had gone, I stared down into my glass of diluted scotch, imagining myself as the captain of a great seagoing vessel, a man in command of one of those massive tankers that transport oil or a fleet of new cars. My cargo was something else, though, the future of an industry that I now found so questionable: flavored effluent. Enough to feed the whole world.

I set my drink down and looked to the other side of the bar as a man stood from a stool, tilting back his head to empty his bottle of beer. It was then that I recognized him, a man I hadn’t seen in twenty years, but a face I’d never forget.

“Hickey?” I said.

He turned away from me while setting his empty bottle on the bar, showing no sign that he’d heard me. I started round toward him, calling for him again. “Charles Hithenbottom!” He walked with an uneven gait, but as I dropped my head down to one side to look for the play of his pants against a prosthetic limb, I hit my forehead against a bistro table and fell to one knee. When I looked up, holding the side of my head, a black woman in a tight-fitting sparkly blue dress stood over me. “Are you all right, sugar?”

“Fine, yes.” I stood, but did so uncertainly enough for her to point me to a love seat by the fireplace.

“Maybe you’d better sit down.”

As she walked me over there, I looked round her for Hickey, but saw him nowhere. Had I only imagined it?

“Are you here with your wife?” she asked.

The question was as sobering as a whiff of smelling salts. “I’m fine, thank you,” I said, and the steeliness of my voice must have convinced her to go.

I sank into the love seat, looking down at the low table that stood before me. On it rested an ashtray, a red bulb candle, and a white porcelain sweetener caddy, with the sugar organized neatly on one side and the sweetener on the other. A row of pink bars ran along the tops of the packets of Sweetness #9, and looking at them, I couldn’t help but think about how far I’d come. Look at me now, Ma! Top of the world!

I know what happened next, but not when: I fell asleep, and then was awoken by a security guard who shook my shoulder and asked if I had a room.

I stood, apologizing, and sent my hands into my trousers. When I pulled them out, I held a key card in one hand and a packet of Sweetness #9 in the other. My possession of the former convinced the security guard to leave, while the sight of the latter kept me rooted in place like a tree. How had it gotten there? My eye twitched, my shoulders jumped — I reacted as if I had been splattered with paint. My anxieties were no less vivid and incomplete. Instinctively, my mind called up an image from earlier that day — the leader of Better Health and Flavorings pulling back his lips to look for food in between his teeth — and then I heard a sound, a hard knocking sound like that of a pirate walking on a wooden leg, and I spun round looking for Hickey. But no, it was the security guard chatting with the man who worked at the front desk. He had his baton out and was tapping it down against the counter, emphasizing some point he was trying to make.