The Things We Do to Our Friends(63)

Then there was me. I was different then. I was loud and I was prone to shout if I thought no one was listening to me. I had worked to make them like me, but I was still working on being calmer. That was going well up to a point. There were no vengeful acts. There was no need to plot and plan. But things changed over the year.

We were always looking for ways to relieve the boredom of being teenagers in the countryside. Hot days down by the lake, where the light cast dancing shadows over the water. Drinking warm beer with sirop and smoking weed in the summer. Boredom, of course, and food.

Food was the catalyst. They talked about it all the time. I think it could have been something like an eating disorder perhaps, at least for Adrienne. Both of them had been vegetarian for a while, which back then meant they lived on cheese. Still, it just made them seem more exotic and exciting to me.

I loved rare steak on the bone; I still do to this day. Slithers of beef, fibrous between my teeth. When we were rich, we ate food like that at home all the time. But I was happy to pretend to be vegetarian around them.

Their enduring fixation was with foie gras, which made sense, because where we lived in France was infamous for the production of the stuff, and it was exported all over the world in old-fashioned beveled glass jars, an illustration of a jolly-looking goose or a duck on the side. It was a practice both girls talked about constantly.

I considered it myself a fair bit—an entire industry based around the ability that some waterfowl have to expand their esophagus. A food where sustained and methodical torture correlates to how delicious it tastes, and when you eat it, the fat sticks at the back of your mouth and it is glorious and disgusting at the same time. Their opinions were less lenient.

“It’s unforgivable,” said Adrienne.

“So cruel,” Dina agreed, nodding.

Adrienne and Dina were very interested in a man we met down by the lake. His daughters were a few years younger than us, and he was known in the area—he was a foie gras producer, a wealthy one with farms across the region. Adrienne and Dina homed in on him because we were obsessed with having a cause. The cause could have been anything, I think, but foie gras production struck a particular note. He was a brilliantly vile target whose depraved acts mainly took place in our heads.

We dived deep into the world of foie gras production.

“What do you think he has for dinner?” Adrienne said. “I bet he only eats foie gras. Gorges and stuffs it in his mouth on its own. Disgusting. Don’t you think so?” she asked, because we were always seeking speedy validation from each other. That’s the way we spoke, in a questioning circuit—What do you think? No, what do you think?—until we became far too wrapped up in our own uncertainty. That was how it always was until they stopped trusting me and consulting me on things.

I didn’t reply, I just sucked on a strawberry. We were scavengers that year. Because we didn’t board, we were regularly forgotten, living at the ragged edges of the school population, not accounted for by anyone, let alone our parents, piecing together meals where we could from old baguettes, scraping the remnants from a jar of jam. Eating with our fingers because we could and stealing beer and wine because we wanted to. Opening it too fast, so it fizzed over onto our palms.

I finished my strawberry, popped in two pieces of gum at once.

“Don’t you think?” she said again. Adrienne’s voice was low and persistent.

At that point I felt sure they were beginning to distance themselves from me a little. I was too intense. They were leaving me out sometimes, which I hated. But I tried to ignore the sharp bolt of pain of being excluded. I didn’t push it, as that would make things worse.

I think that was why I said it. To win them back.

“There are things we could do,” I said. An impulsive comment. I hadn’t thought anything through. I blew a final bubble with my gum, then took it out and stuck it underneath the picnic bench.

I remember the way they waited expectantly while I secured the gum, taking my time because I had their full attention. They looked intrigued. It was the first time I’d been the center of our threesome and in charge. I swelled in their gaze.

“We could make him pay for it,” I said.

“What do you mean?” Dina asked.

“Imagine if we could do something to scare him,” I said.

“Scare him?”

“Yes. Something exciting.”

I explained my idea, which wasn’t fully formed. We could do something to shock him.

Dina squealed with laughter. Adrienne smiled. We all dwelled on our shared hatred, a perfect three again. Luxuriated in the discussion as we thought about the things he did when he was alone.

He was all we talked about.

For a while, it was fine to plan, and they both seemed into the idea, until gradually the full horror of what I had in mind dawned on them. We discussed buying the food and I described how we’d force-feed him. The whole thing became something very elaborate, almost ceremonial.

They were nervous. I went the other way; I was excited by the detail. And then, the more excited I became by it, the more they pulled back from me. It would have been subtle to an observer, but I knew them well. Recognized the furtive look from one to the other and the edging away from me at lunch. “Ties! Are you sure?” or “Won’t that hurt him?” But although they were scared, I knew they were also intrigued.

It had been my idea that we would have the tube they used to feed the ducks and geese, a nod to the process of gavage—to show him why we were doing it. That wasn’t so difficult to find in the end. He would be confused and scared when he saw it. Looking back, it seems like a particularly odd touch, and even thinking about it now, the effort we went to was excessive, but we wanted to scare him, to make him see the sense of theatre.