Foodie

   The next plate came in a matter of minutes. In the hour she spent at that restaurant, she tasted more than 10 dishes and almost the same amount of beverages. She only got to taste a couple of desserts because time was running short and she had to make it to a previous appointment. She thanked the people at the restaurant and promised then the review would be out soon. Their faces hoped for a good one but Laura would have to take her notes and think twice before writing one way or the other.

 Just outside the place, she took a taxi and headed straight to her best friend’s house. His name was Samuel and he was celebrating his birthday at home, with a nice dinner and party with many people that he loved to hang out with. Whenever Laura and Sam were together, they were normally just the two of them. It would be one of the only times she would join him in a big party and she did it only because he had always being so good to her, including recommending her to the job she had at the moment.

 As Samuel worked as an software developer, he knew a lot of people in the world of journalism and such. He recommended Laura for a job at one of the biggest newspapers in town and she was very eager for the opportunity but he interview was a real nightmare. It was obvious they preferred to hire someone they knew and, for the looks of it, there were at least three other people the day of the interview that were very well acquainted with the editor that was handling the process.

 She waited a long time until she was called and then she felt he cold attitude of the editor. It was clear that woman didn’t want Laura there, so she just answered her questions the best way she could and, in only ten minutes, she was out of there. She felt so bad after the interview that she decided to buy a big tub of ice cream to eat at home watching cartoons or something. It was only a two weeks after the interview when Laura finally heard from the newspaper. She had been selected for the post.

 The day she went in to sign her contract, Laura asked why it had taken so long for them to call. After all, it was a writing job and those were assigned fairly fast in normal circumstances. The man that greeted her there told her, in confidence, that the editor than had ran the interviews had been fired because of several misconducts and potentially criminal behavior. Besides, the person she had selected was clearly not the best one for the post. Laura did not ask any further. She was very happy to get a job in she could finally do her two favorite things.

 When she got to Samuel’s house, Laura hoped she was early and could talk to him a little bit before more people arrived. However, she didn’t realize her time at the restaurant had been too long and that her taxi ride had been too slow because of the traffic jams that plagued the city at that time of night. When she entered the apartment, she saw several people all over, more than she had ever seen in such a small space. She moved around carefully, trying not to push anyone.

 Samuel had not been the one to open the door. Some girl that didn’t even say a word had done that and she had disappeared almost instantly. Laura moved around, looking for him friend. Eventually she got to the dining room table were all the food was in display. She grabbed a plastic plate and grabbed some of the things around the table. It was an assortment of food, not only sweets or savory stuff. There was a little bit of everything and she could bet Sam had not done any of them.

 Laura turned around to look for a place to eat what she had taken but there was no place to do so, so she stayed put and grabbed a piece of quiche from her plate and ate it whole, because of the size. Something funny was that Laura never really felt full when eating, so she could do it for a long time and she would only stop once she felt really full. That’s why her job was so ideal for her. Nevertheless, the piece of quiche she had in her mouth was not the kind of food she liked.

 In seconds, she grabbed four or five napkins and spit the whole piece of food into that. She placed the ball of napkins and chewed quiche on her plate and headed for the kitchen. She was sure she could find a garbage can there and maybe even a space to eat the rest of the stuff. Although, maybe, everything else was as dreadful as that tiny piece of quiche. She had never tasted something that tasted so bad before. It was difficult to describe, in the worst way possible.

 Once in the kitchen, she found the garbage can and a spot besides the burners. She couldn’t see her friend there but Laura knew she would eventually see him. It was a bit ridiculous to be in his house and not been able to talk to him at least for a while. The thought of her talking to Sam was interrupted by a cramp, one of those that make you squeal. It was very fortunate that the music was so loud. If it hadn’t been like that, people would have heard a dreadful scream coming from the kitchen. Laura grabbed her belly and looked for a glass or something similar to have some water.

 As she didn’t find any and had no problems with shame, she drank directly from the faucet. No one was watching anyways, they were all very concentrated on their conversations. Weary of all other food elements on her plate, Laura decided to smell them and taste only the tiniest pieces. There was one that looked like cake but it was very salty. She had grabbed some cookies but they were rock hard. And something looking like Chinese rice was undercooked.

 There were some other things in there but she decided to throw away everything. She chose the worst moment to do so because it was right then when Samuel entered the kitchen and saw her. He waved his hand but she clearly didn’t see him while drinking more water and then doing this face that made it clear how awful the food was. When she noticed Sam, her expression changed and she launched herself at him, hugging Samuel very hard, as they usually did.

 When they did, she realized she had not taken off her coat because she could still feel the gift she had brought to her friend. It was in a box on one of her pockets. Laura took the wrapped box out and gave it to her friend. Samuel didn’t look very happy. Nevertheless, he took her by the hand and travelled through the mass of people in order to get to his room, which was empty except for a big mountain of coats and similar clothing. Laura was surprised she could hear her own thoughts there.

 She apologized to Samuel for being late and waited for him to open his present but he didn’t. He looked at her with a very serious expression, a very judgmental expression to be precise. For a moment, she didn’t really understand what it was but then she realized he had seen her throwing out the food, so she explained that it was just dreadful. She detailed the flavors for him and advised him never to let his friends cater ever again. It was obvious they had no idea about cooking.

 Samuel threw the box she had given him to the bed and said that his guests had not cooked anything for him. If that had been the case, he would have wanted her to do something for the party, like the cake for example. Instead, he explained how he had cooked every single dish.

 He had wanted to make it a surprise for everyone but especially for her, as he wanted to be supportive of her recent job and just to connect with her in his own birthday. He sighed and left the room, leaving a very confused Laura, whose belly roared as soon as Samuel was gone.

Louis's party

It had not been love at first sight. That would have been impossible, as they had met in a place were no one could actually see the other person’s face. Of course, that party was a very secret one and only people that knew other people could have been invited. But the point is that both Rémy and Luc had been invited that night and they had both participated in one of the largest secret parties to take place in all of France and probably all of Europe too. No one knew for sure how big the whole thing was, as one of the most powerful people in the country had organized it.

 The party took place in an actual palace, where other such parties had taken place, maybe three hundred years ago or more. Of course, in those times people did things like crazy, like animals, and they had no rules to make everyone feel their best and leave without any concern. This modern party had many rules and one of the most important ones, the first one in fact, was that it was forbidden for anyone to remove the mask they had been provided by the organized via mail. All masks were identical and there laid one of the key features of the party.

 Technically, every single person was the same. And, according to the rules, they were all the same to the eyes of the organizer and also each other. Of course, they were women and men but, as large as the palace was, there were lots of smaller parties within the big one. Some of those were gender exclusive, some others completely forbid clothes and there was even one where clothes were actually mandatory. It could be said that there was something for everyone and the statement would be true because Louis had made that happen.

 Louis was not his real name but it was the name he liked to be called. He was obsessed by everything that had to do with the reign of Louis the XIVth, so he had chosen that name as his secret identity for everyone to know in order to organize those parties. Of course, no one in the country knew that those gatherings actually existed but there were many rumors and people all around thought it wasn’t that farfetched as rich people tend to have things that no one thinks anyone would need. And a lot of something is always in the mix.

 The location of the party changed every year and after it had happened everything was returned in the most perfect of conditions, in the case the place was rented which happened a lot. Louis was smart enough not to use his own estates, although he was always tempted to do so. He was obsessed with everything being perfect and interior designing was one of his many obsessions. He had houses and flats all over the place and he loved to make them look their best. So he did exactly that with the rentals for his parties, everything had to be perfect.

 Luc was not as rich as Louis but one could say they ran the same circuit. It wasn’t difficult to see him in all “must” parties in the cities, always showing his face in all kinds of events. Luc’s parents had died ten years ago and had left him with a very large fortune. Now his uncle managed the company that his father had built and he let his nephew do whatever he wanted to do. Having been rich from such an early age, Luc had gone crazy in all sorts of predictable ways. His uncle had done a lot to avoid the press trying to destroy him with pictures and other “evidence”.

 He had done a lot of drugs when he was around sixteen years old. He had dated publicly both men and women. He was one of those jetsetters that travel around the world just showing their money to anyone who was willing to watch him. But the interesting thing about him was that he was the most charming young man ever to be found. He never seemed to be showing off and he even had a very caring heart that made him make big donations to many charities and institutions that really help people around the globe.

 Luc was a very weird mix and that’s why some loved him and others loathed him. Of course that happened because of how rich he was and we all know people love to hate people that are out of their reach. But even so that was the case, he didn’t care at all about how people perceived him. He really knew how to live a life where the first thing was to be himself, his original self. That’s how he met Louis, at a party where Luc was being exactly the same guy he always was. And that was very interesting to Louis who loved authentic people.

 Right away, having met him only minutes before, Louis invited Luc to his party and Luc accepted. Of course, he had been to many other parties like that one before, but never one so exclusive and lavish. His normal parties were much raunchier and he didn’t even care if it wasn’t as private as it could be. Of course, that had been a headache for his uncle for many years but now it was him that knew how to handle the press and all other people that the only thing they wanted was a big piece of his wealth or a fragment of his fame.

 It was there, in the annual party thrown by Louis, where Luc met the first person in the world that made him feel something he had never felt before. He wasn’t ready for it, not at all. He had never thought that he would actually fall in love one day. But he did. Not at the party of course, or right away, but it happened in the following months and he suffered, as he had never felt something like it before. It was almost torture but bearable and worth the pain.

 Rémy was the son of a baker and a housewife. He had been raised in one of the more modest neighborhoods in all of Paris. From a very young age, he had realized he liked other men. The day he realized it was one of the few anecdotes he liked to tell his lovers right after having sex and he didn’t really know the reason for it. He just liked to tell them how he looked at all the other boys in his class when he was fourteen years old, in the classroom, in the yard and in the bathroom. He stared and was very attentive of everything they did.

 Some lovers lasted for a few days, even one night. Others lasted much more, even as long as two years. That one was the hardest thing for him because he became numb after that relationship ended. It had been both toxic and ideal, beautiful and a disaster. He never wanted to go through that again so that’s why, every single Friday and Saturday after work, he would go to his small flat, change clothes and then leave for many hours, to visit his favorite places in the city. Some were sex clubs, some were dancing clubs, and some were bars.

 The choice of the day depended on how his week had gone for him. He worked two jobs: one in a magazine were he was practically a delivery boy, even if his parents had sacrificed themselves to give him the best education ever, including an university degree, and another job working as a barista in of the many cafés in the city. He left the second job late at night and he had two hours to prepare for his night out. It was then, in the dark, when he could finally be himself. In time, he heard about Louis’s parties and he really wanted in.

 However, money was needed to enter one of those. Not that the actual entry had a fee but that only people with lots of money could enter one of those meetings. So he did something he had never done before and that was using his sexuality to convince another man to get him invited. Of course, the trick work because, as Remy said himself, there’s nothing easier than convincing a man of doing anything when you have him by the balls, sometimes literally. So he got to the annual party and was surprised to see how others lived a life like his own.

 There, he met Luc. At first it was all about sex, which was fun even with those white masks. But then Luc found him in the “real world” and they began to talk between more sexual encounters. After some time, they stopped with the sex but kept seeing each other, getting to know one another in a way none of the two had ever thought possible. Rémy was very scared of it all as he had never felt like he could be loved, he felt himself too ugly and awful for that. He didn’t know, but Luc felt exactly the same.

Phalanx mystery

   Everyone that crossed William’s path was always amused by what he did for a living: he was the marketing manager in a company that sold condoms called Phalanx. He was very popular at parties, telling one and ten stories about the funny things that happened both in his department and in the factory where the condoms where actually made. He even knew some other stories about people that had called the Phalanx hotline in order to ask silly questions that no one ever knew if they were real or false.

 The point was that he had a lot of fun at work and out of it. However, for a person that saw condoms so often at work, he didn’t really get to use a lot. In one of those ironies of life, William had not had a real sexual encounter in a long time. He was a very busy person and he always failed to have time to party or socialize except for the events hosted by Phalanx. The few times he met people was in those parties but they were always funny for a while but not for the long haul.

 Every single Monday at the office, they held pitching sessions in which any of the employees of the company could present new ideas to make the product more attractive. Normally, they would laugh a lot more than do actual work but sometimes, once every six months almost, they got a very clever idea that could easily become a big thing in the world of condoms. Anyhow, it was a very fun thing to be in and most people were very serious about their ideas.

 There was the typical things like making condoms into different sizes or different flavors and colors, but then they were the crazy people telling them to sell condom certain foods in supermarkets, or not only having flavors but also smells, which everyone thought was absolutely awful. They laughed a lot the time that someone proposed to print images on the condoms and even the possibility of personalizing them with your signature. It seemed like a good idea but it wasn’t.

 There were some good ones like having a guy dressed like a penis or condom in some popular area and make him do funny dances and stuff and then handing out pamphlets about how important it was to use condoms. Others had made proposals about the packaging and image that they were really considering. As in any industry, they needed to keep innovating and doing different stuff or they would get obsolete.

 But there was one presenter William remembered for weeks after they moved on. William had always identified as a straight man but somehow that man had captivated him and he had no idea why. It was something more than looks and his idea. It was something he could really pinpoint.

 The man’s idea was very simple: in each one of the condom packaging’s, putting a drawing of a different position in order to kind of make it like a challenge towards the couple that was going to use the prophylactic. Everyone received the proposal to mild enthusiasm and only William seemed to be distracted by the guy that was in front of him. For weeks, he had him inside his head moving around, appearing in the weirdest moments and it was a long time after that, when they were executing some of the ideas people had pitched, when he realized why he thought of him so much: he knew him.

 That day, after all work was done, he went to the archive room and asked fro the file on that man. Apparently, he had been working in the office for as long as William had been there. He was his same age and had gone to the same college too. The difference was that that guy hadn’t been able to ascend in the company whereas William had climbed that ladder a lot faster than anyone else ever before. He was very talented at what he did.

 When he got home that day, he was relieved to realized he didn’t like the guy for his looks or something like that but because he unconsciously knew something weird about him. He couldn’t really remember him from any of the classes in college but apparently something inside his brain did remember him and had been curious to reveal that.

 As tired as he was, William relaxed that day with a bubble bath. He was so tired that he fell asleep inside and only woke up because he was slowly sinking into the water. When he got out of there, he just dried himself up and fell asleep naked as he was on the bed, above the sheets. He must have woken up at four in the morning only to crawl under the covers because of the cold.

 After the weekend, he stumbled into his old college partner in the elevator on the way to his office. It was kind of an awkward moment: there was some tension between them but William had no idea why. He knew now that he wasn’t interested in that guy physically and that was the only thing that had been weird before. But now everything was tension and looking down to their shoes and it was very strange.

 For the rest of that day he didn’t really pay attention to anything else because his mind was still trying to understand what had happened in that elevator. He tried to remember anything about that man but he just couldn’t remember him in college. Maybe crossing him one or twice in the hallways but that was it. He was so distracted during the pitching session that day, that he missed every single one of the funny presentations. His fellow managers would laugh and he would just smile.

 The following day, he was lucky enough to have dinner with a friend from college he had not seen in a while. She had always been one of his best friends back in college and now she worked out of the country in a job that paid very well. So they got together and talked and laughed and drank and ate. It was a very fun evening. When the dessert was brought to them, William remembered the man from his office and instantly asked his friend about him. He described him as well as he could and she was surprised by the degree of detail he was able to give her.

 His friend had no idea of whom he was talking about. Then, William looked for a picture on his cellphone and showed it to her. Crazy as it seemed, William had taken a picture of the file on the guy in order to remember his face the next time he saw him and now he got to show to his friend so he didn’t see how awkward it was.

 Then, she immediately recognized him. Trying not to laugh at her friend for having some random guy’s picture on his cellphone, she reminded him that that guy had been a good friend of the people they used to hang out with during college. He would even go to some parties with them although she didn’t even remember his name. He wasn’t a particularly social person but she knew she had seen him a number of times around there with them.

 William thought about that for a long time. He looked at the guy’s picture that night before going to bed and then spent a good half hour trying to sleep but really thinking about why he had no idea of who that person was. The next day at the office, he got the rumor that many people were being laid off because the company had decided to wipe out a whole section in order to make room for new people that were going to be in charge of social media and such.

 As he went to get coffee, he saw the guy from college with a single box, eyes very red, standing in front of the elevator. He had no idea why, but he walked towards him and asked what was wrong. The guy was obviously surprised to see William but he just answered the question: he had been fired. William offered to help him with the box and in the time from there to the first floor, he was able to remember who that guy was.

 They had kissed once in a party. William had been very drunk. He was sure to have vomited at least a couple of times that night. And somehow, in between all that, they had kissed. He gave the box to the guy and told him to call him if he needed any help. The guy seemed confused by that and honestly William was too. He didn’t know why he had said it but he thought it was the right thing to do.

Candidate

   Thousands of cameras flashed at the same time and then over and over again when Amy came out of the house. They al wanted to ask the same question: “How well do you think it’s going to go for you tonight?” And Amy wanted to answer but she just entered the car that was waiting her and drove away without saying a word. Her publicist praised her for not saying a word but she didn’t even heard her. She was too busy trying to answer the question the media was asking.

 Would she win the election? Maybe. There was a strong possibility that it might happen for her. It was no mystery that her campaign had been primarily focused on the fact that she was a woman and the she was not one of the political elite. She was just a councilwoman in the most populated city in the country and she had become an important part of politics in a single day.

 The party she was running for had chosen her over many other candidates because they had thought they could mold her into someone people would like and vote for, someone that did not look at all like all those older men that had dominated politics for so long. They wanted to restart with a fresh face, especially after failing to win the election for a third time in a row. They had to take advantage of the opportunity being offered by the fact that the current government was shaking.

 One scandal after the other had taken its toll on people’s opinion and, according to the latest polls; the two candidates were virtually tied. So everything could be decided by a handful of votes and that was very important. They had to ensure that they had every single possible vote in their pocket and that’s why Amy had travelled across the country, without a rest, for the last five months.

 She wasn’t an experienced politician but what the party liked about her was that she could be able to be close to people in a way most politicians just couldn’t. She didn’t look fake when talking to a mother or a person that had lost it all. They could take Amy to a prestigious country club or to a soup kitchen in the most horrible part of a city and in both cases she would be able to be sympathetic and relatable.

 By the time she entered that car, the truth was that she felt exhausted. She didn’t want to walk anymore. She just wanted a good night’s sleep but that wasn’t possible on Election Day. They had paraded her around all day and she hadn’t even been able to properly eat anything, only some fruit her assistant was able to pass to her before the day properly began. And she couldn’t even eat it all because someone took the box away from her to give her a speech she had to memorize.

 Amy Walker was almost forty years old and that apparently was something people liked. They also liked the fact that she looked modern and seemed to know everything about the world today. She had all the gadgets and even tried to run her own social media but that was difficult because of the amount of things she had to do in a day. So, normally, Amy would only write herself a message once a day and the rest were images and phrases posted by her team.

 To her, that seemed a little bit like cheating but she reminded herself that it was all part of being a public figure. Most of those people had no way of managing anything by themselves because of their schedules and priorities. She would have wanted to be more in touch with her voters, but she could only do that in some events and even then it was extremely hard to get really close to any of then.

 In the car, her assistant gave her a box of sushi. She was so hungry that she ate five pieces in less than five minutes. Someone was trying to explain to her something about how the election work and such, but she was to hungry to even care. She asked for a bottle of water and has some, drinking almost half of the bottle in one gulp. Amy not only felt hungry and thirsty but also desperate. She felt like the space she was in was too small. In a second, she had fainted.

 When she woke up, she was still in the car. They had apparently stopped because the doors were opened and, as soon as she opened her eyes, her assistant got closer and grabbed her hand. She helped her sit down properly, as she had been lying down in the back seat of the big car. In a strange moment of privacy, they hugged and her assistant told her she was sorry for not being able to give her more time to adjust to it all and to eat. She felt guilty somehow.

 But Amy didn’t say anything about that. Instead, she asked where they were. One of the bodyguards helped her out of the car and she realized they had arrived at the convention center but they were in a lonely part of the parking lot. Policemen had possibly closed it only for her. She was thankful for that. Amy told her assistant to walk her wherever she had to go and the poor assistant did exactly that, a bit scared she might not have recuperated fully.

 Indeed, Amy did not feel very good, but there was no point in turning back and laying in that car forever. It was her night and she had to be there to see if everything went as they thought it would go. It was the final step of the road and she couldn’t just miss it.

 They all entered a backroom and then descended some stairs to the place where she would get her makeup done and a new outfit. She asked her assistant to update her every time there was something big happening and the younger woman just nodded as the candidate entered her prep room. Inside, many more people were waiting for her, in order to turn her into one of the many images that people liked.

 One group washed her hair and the other retouched her nails and toes. She had undressed behind a curtain and taken off her dress and everything else and put on a white bathrobe to be more comfortable. As she had sat down in the chair, her assistant had told her that the polling centers had closed and that results would start coming in very soon.

 It was a tense moment for her but she tried to enjoy being pampered and taken care off. That always helped her get a bit more relax. Besides, she really needed to be refreshed because of all that she had done that day: visit a school, then greeting the military and visiting a factory. And all of that had happened before noon. Afterwards she had done so many things that she was sure she couldn’t even remember them all.

 The first state had been called within the next five minutes and it was for her rival. Then the second and the third, also for her rival. Her team reminded her that those territories did not make part of their plans, so it was a predictable thing that they hadn’t gone their way.

 Another two were called as they blow-dried her hair: another for her rival and one for her. They celebrated but the cheers were not precisely happy because of the disadvantage she was in. Amy thought to herself that, if she had to make a speech from a loser’s point of view, she could even pull it off in a better way than if she had won. Maybe all of that fancy politics stuff wasn’t just for her and she needed to go back to the city council and stay there.

 Two more states were called: both for her. As they finished preparing her and changing her into a new, more modern dress, the race became an almost tie. It was really going to be close and everyone in the room was as tense as they could be. When she was done, they all watch the TV screens together and waited until it came the time to go out to the stage.

 At least half of the votes had yet to enter the race and Amy realized she might become president. She might be the one to lead a whole country. And she knew that it would be difficult and hard on her. She didn’t know if she was the best for the job. But there she was. Only a few more votes…