Iris Darke is a picky eater. New Orleans isn’t the place for that, you know!
Eat Your Food! by xexnoncores
October 28th, 2017
“I don’t want this.”
“Iris, c’mon. Eat the food New Orleans is offering!”
“Chrysophilius, I want to go to a proper restaurant.”
“Iris, these are stellar, I promise. Skitter’s extremely right in that regard.”
Robert and Chrysophilius smile at the vendor while taking three po-boys from them and waving. Iris pouts with her fangs jutting into her bottom lip a ways away, tapping her foot. The standing pair hold in their snickers at how awkward she looks on such a little bench being so tall, not helped at all by a street painter exaggerating her to comedic proportions on their easel on the other side of the street.
“She’s not grown out of her pickiness?” Robert whispers to Chrysophilius. His gaze traces her but also the brass band marching just a couple blocks away in black masks and feathery outfits.
“Blame her mom,” he whispers back. “She’s spoiled her in the food department ever since she was little.”
Robert’s mechanical tail flicks. “Didn’t Madam Percival also put her through a finishing school?”
“Something like that. Ugh, at this rate, she’s going to take the piss out of us by proving all those stereotypes about billionaires to be true…”
“And English people too. Oh well, at least it’s been a while since she’s gotten like this. Are you thinking what I’m thinking?”
Chrysophilius nods. “Yeah, I am.”
Robert returns it. “Wonderful.”
They sit down next to her and divy everything up quickly, trying not to lament the sticky October mugginess. New Orleans was a beautiful city, but it was so goddamn humid. Sweat doesn't evaporate here—it clings like a second skin. The water running beside and beneath it were more than enough to drown everyone everywhere throughout the world, even on the hottest and sunniest of days.
Robert’s mechanical tail taps Iris on the shoulder as he pops the lid off his gas mask and presses the sandwich into the hole. Though normally he wouldn’t go out in public without his bodyguards, he’s not that much of a black sheep in a city teeming with costumed performers. The tourists prancing around in Halloween outfits help too.
“Hey, you should eat before we have to go to Hotel Monteleone tonight. We can’t have a meal until tomorrow morning because of the ritual.”
“I know, you don’t have to tell me,” she chuffs, turning her nose up. “And I’m going to be fine.”
Chrysophilius rolls his eyes, pulling a few shrimp out of his to eat them one-by-one. They’re perfectly fluffy, fried to pillowy perfection. Iris ate stuff like this before all the time and loved it, but only on porcelain plates or from a gold-trim laminated menu.
“Iris, you like seafood!” he snips at her while chewing. “This is like, the American capital of that shit! What are you so shirty about?”
“Language, you sod!” she barks.
“Bloody hell, we’re not at work! C’mon!”
He rolls his eyes as her stomach growls and her cheeks flush red with embarrassment. The smell is finally hooking onto her senses, rich with fatty mayonnaise, butter-toasted bread and soaking cayenne. It swells to fill every inch of her it possibly can, staining her face.
She’s not had anything since yesterday afternoon, having worked all through the night and morning to the tune of prospecting phone calls and an endless pile of emails from suppliers and the Loss Prevention Department. Her suit and skin still taste like the thirty-something cigars she burnt through just to get it all done on time with the insanely tight schedule she set for herself.
Because what else was she to do? If she was her mother’s daughter and heir, she had to do what was required of her, what was handed down to her from on high and from bloody, black gloves. Nothing was going to change itself, after all. Marshall, Carter and Dark Ltd. wasn’t going to run itself.
Robert taps her shoulder again with his tail, this time with its red jeweled tip. He cranes his head so the rest of the po-boy slides in while she flicks that sharp shape away like an unwanted ant, casting down a halfway glare that pierces him a bit more than he wants to admit. He knows she’s not judging him for how his food goes down, but the two passerby staring at him with gawking cheerfulness definitely are.
“It is Maine which is the American capital of seafood, by the way,” she continues, turning to face Chrysophilius. “Their lobster, and all lobster in fact, is superior to shrimp in taste, texture, nutrition and overall experience.”
“Except it’s only good in bisque or smothered in butter. Kind of defeats the nutrition point,” he replies on a finishing gulp.
Iris scoffs. “You’re nowhere near the level of connoisseur that I am to even think about judging me in such a way. Nor have you had those delicious tails grilled over mesquite… Just thinking about it makes my mouth…my mouth…”
Her face burns again as her mouth waters. She purses her lips tightly to avoid wiping it with her sleeve. She’s the only one among the three wearing her business clothes still.
“Food is food, Iris,” Robert says, his quiet voice struggling to rise above a trolley horn screaming some distance away. “It’s good most of the time, great in others, and excellent in the most rarest of situations. But often, it is just food.”
New Orleans was honestly the last place anyone should have been saying that, with the city’s rich melting pot of both culture and magic. There was a reason Percival was so fond of it, why she made it an annual and important trip such that she could peruse its French-laid streets, its Spanish inspired cathedrals, and its plethora of art galleries without the hassle of business blasting her incessantly.
Even the massive football stadium pocked onto the business district downtown could be considered art, when one really thought about it. It was art in the way business was a machine of veins, flowing through consumerism and screeching audiences like the endless waters of Lake Ponchatrain.
“Says you.” Iris resumes tapping her foot. “I’m not deigning my body to live like a pig, which means I’m above such laymen concepts like takeout and street food. It’s improper, and disgusting.”
“Yeah, you hating takeout is why the office can hear your stomach growling whenever you work late,” Chrysophilius quips. “If you’re going to run your mouth on this, at least do yourself a favor and remember to eat dinner whenever you get into the zone?”
Iris lunges at his collar and glares at him, dragging him up off the bench while he just chews. He doesn’t do anything except meet her eyes with lettuce hanging out of his mouth.
“Speak to me like that again and I will have you hanged, drawn and quartered for insubordination. You hear me?”
Robert puts a palm to his face. Chrysophilius laughs, swallowing. The both of them aren’t anticipating this going anywhere, especially with how much she’s drenching in her own perspiration. They’re proven right when Iris notices more people staring at them and drops him on his ass. Her shoulders tense harder than a spring under a hydraulic press.
“Ow!”
“S-Serves you right. Making me look bad in front of other people.”
“Iris, be careful.” Robert points to the fragile paper shell containing her sandwich. “You’re going to drop it if you keep wriggling like that.”
“Well, that’s my prerogative!” She waves it around for emphasis. “If I want to waste this, I’ll waste it. You gave it to me.”
“Yeah, and I bought them. Which means…”
Robert’s tail begins slinging back and forth as Chrysophilius forces the rest of his po-boy into his mouth messily, too-wide eyes gleefully staring into the both of them with golden anticipation. He smiles as Robert sighs the deepest he’s done all week.
Now, Iris is facing that gas mask with her buried brow reflected fully in the lens, her arms crossed and her thick legs closed. She blocks Chrysophilius’s silhouette completely, unnaturally blue eyes drilling like they were looking for oil, cat-like pupils thin as a needle.
“…You know what I mean,” Robert mumbles with a flat tone, despite her little display. He crosses his ankles as the cloudless sky sears the glitter in his chunky, star-shaped earrings.
“I’m not beholden to you,” Iris snips. “My money and rank in the company triumphs yours. You can’t make me do anything.”
“Money is money, Iris. The reason my father obeys your mother is the same reason I bought that for you.”
She points a finger at him. “Your father obeys my mother because if he didn’t, he’d have absolutely nothing! He’d be a sullen wretch toiling the fields out the arse end of nowhere. That’s not the same as my position to you, and it never will be.”
He waves her off. “And you’re going to have nothing to show for your efforts tonight if you get so hungry you…”
There is a pause for a single moment that consists of him trying to figure out how to word what he wants to say. This isn’t the office—there are some topics that can’t be discussed in conversations where others can eavesdrop.
“…do something stupid to someone important and fail to hide the ensuing escalation again.”
“Wha—!”
Robert and Chrysophilius shake their heads while Iris sputters in the aimless heat. She grinds her teeth as pedestrians trot on to the tune of hazy jazz. It spills wantonly as the sun blares, stripping the three of their desires to stay out here for much longer.
“…”
That ruby voice softens behind black plastic. “Please eat Iris. I want to see you with your best face on tonight.”
Chrysophilius follows his lead. “Yeah, Robert’s right. It took forever for us to get tickets to this game show. It’s gonna be hell if you’re too dizzy to watch how many ways a fairy can turn themselves inside out.”
“Mhm. Demons too. They’re very flexible.”
The both of them look to her with softened visages, accentuated by terrace-soaked shadows. Well, Robert just uncrosses his legs, but that’s enough for Iris to get the intention. As they gaze on, the pain from her stomach begins pulsating, traveling up her abdomen all the way into the back of her mouth where it finally bears its head.
She swallows her pride with a small peek of her black tongue before she huffs, stomps her foot with a pout, and swallows half of the po-boy in one bite.
Robert and Chrysophilius brace themselves.
Iris lets it all dissolve before she thinks of anything else.
Without warning, her vertical pupils widen into full black discs as her foot tapping stops.
“…Haha, I think she likes it,” Chrysophilius chides playfully.
Iris grunts, but just takes another mouthful.
“…I need to find out if my private chef can make these for me…” she mutters with a chirpy tone, but only when she swallows.
“You could probably buy the vendor and bring them home,” Robert replies. “This city’s full of people looking for their big break.”
“Maybe…but I don’t trust such common hands with my particular tastes. They have to be thoroughly vetted first.”
Robert and Chrysophilius exchange stares as Iris sighs, leaning back so that everything can all digest smoothly. Her face relaxes from craggy stoniness to a porcelain clarity, her eyes tracing seagulls flying high above the city’s low-cut buildings. Their white bodies bleed against the brick.
Chrysophilius’s voice, meanwhile, takes on a subtle quiver in tune to the shimmering of hot air.
“…What does that mean?”
Nobody speaks. Robert peeks out of Iris’s shadow to stare at him in the silence of salvia and satiation.
“…Don’t be daft, Skitter,” Robert says very, very flatly, almost as if he was restraining himself. “I was literally just talking about that.”
His tail flicks back and forth in uneven arcs while Chrysophilius looks to Iris. She only sighs with relief, not meeting his gaze.
Once again, back to Robert. After half a minute of him not reading the room, he points to a person buying something across from them and then to Iris’s mouth.
“Ughhhhhhhh,” Chrysophilius groans, unable to hide his disgust. He just ate too. “Don’t mention that in public, dude. That’ll get us in trouble.”
Robert shrugs. “I didn’t say anything.”
“Eugh. You know what I mean.”
“Tch,” Iris tuts. “You’re the one missing out. Who’s the picky eater now?”
“That’s not—”
“Don’t knock it until you’ve tried it, Chrysophilius.”
“Gross! Gross! Gross!”
She laughs loudly. “Hahaha!”
Her normally deep voice takes on a bell-chime tone, soprano up until it’s time to go back to eating. He narrows his eyes at her as Robert follows her mood with laughter, putting his head in his hands, his palm barely big enough to encompass his plastic cheeks. Iris falls in line with great enthusiasm, her fangs slipping out of her mouth unsubtly and glistening in the bare cityscape.
What a smile. The human imitations couldn’t compare.
Chrysophilius balks, twisting the corners of his mouth and spitting on the sidewalk, keeping that last bit of frustration he’s able to well up within himself. But soon, he’s breaking, joining in as he’s unable to keep himself from how buoying their laughter rings around in his head. Fifty million in salary per month was a good conditioner against taking her…quirks too seriously.
Iris sounds like bliss whenever she’s enjoying herself. Gold dust on the sidewalk, parade-laden happy. Robert—well, the way his head bobs up and down with his chunky star-shaped earrings brings a very quaint kind of comfort even in the most crowded of places.
Iris appreciates theirs too. Chrysophilius sounds akin to a neutered hyena, and yet he never veers into improperness like one would expect of such a cadence. Robert, meanwhile, sounds like a kitten mewling for milk, stumbling around helplessly and yet so cutely you couldn’t help but appreciate how rare of a sound it was.
He’s just happy to be here. Times like this were far too uncommon for his liking.
Their mirth smears into the waning afternoon as the sound of saxophones swells, the scent of bourbon and verdigris all rolling up into one sweet bayou-creeping picture.
This is what living is supposed to be like, isn’t it?