***This excerpt is from an advance uncorrected copy proof*** Copyright 2017 Courtney Maum 1. Sloane Jacobsen was living in a world without peanuts. As the Air France hostess busied herself in the first class cockpit tipping prosecco into plastic flutes, Sloane bemoaned the protocol keeping her from her favorite snack. Someone had an allergy-- might have an allergy--so it was a no-go on all nut products. Normally, her future-focused mind would have started speculating--how would the normalization of food sensitivities impact consumer habits in the coming years? But instead, she just felt saddened that the current state of geo-politics expected people''s worst. Someone might also use their wineglass to puncture the pilot''s jugular so airlines had banned all drinkware made of glass, too. The stewardess, not French--Carly, read her nametag--served Sloane a drink along with a single slice of cucumber and a mauve wedge of something masquerading as foie gras. Yes, the world was a simpler, kinder place when Sloane could still eat nuts in public.
She peered into the confines of the egg-shaped bunker where her companion, Roman, was reading an article in the travel section of a newspaper: The Mediterranean : Is there anywhere safe left to go? "Is there?" Sloane asked, toeing his heel to get his attention. "Is there what?" he said, looking at her through the eyeglasses he wore more for aesthetic reasons than anything having to do with sight. "Anywhere safe left to go?" "Oh," he said, giving the paper a shake so it stood with better posture. "Portugal, apparently." She scoffed. "But that''s not in the Mediterranean." "That''s true," Roman shrugged. "Then I guess not.
" He flipped the page over as if to inspect it. "It''s not a very good article," he said, continuing to read it. Sloane reclined her seat and stared at the domed ceiling, beyond which was pure, unoxygenated sky. Flying wasn''t easy when you were a trend forecaster. Sloane had a spongy sensitivity to her environment that only deepened when she flew. She felt itchy, ill-at-ease. It annoyed her, that article. Although she was in the business of looking for the next big things, it was nonetheless exhausting, the greed for the undiscovered, the novel, the new new.
Lisbon wasn''t "new" of course--it was one of the oldest cities in the world, predating even Paris--but it had been anointed by the Conde Nasters as the new Berlin. Sloane tried to calm herself, quell the negativity--she could watch a movie too. Given the excessive in-flight entertainment selection, she could watch anything she wanted. But she couldn''t rid herself of a snaking anxiety. Something was wrong. Not wrong like the last time she''d been airborne, when she''d felt such a current of foreboding she wondered if "see something, say something" could include "getting a bad vibe," and thirty-three minutes into the flight plan, the plane was hit by lightening. It shook, it nosed. People screamed.
It righted. No, this offness was nothing like that. This was internal, a mechanical error inside of her. She needed more vitamins, probably. Vitamin D. Beside her, Roman had given up reading about the travel impacts of the European debt crisis and was scrolling through the airline''s film choices, his finger guiding him to ''New Releases''. Sloane knew with neon certainty that Roman would pick "Pitch Perfect 3." His Americaphilism was nondiscriminatory: fleece sportswear, SUVs, sub-zero refrigerators, discount superstores, the viralism of American patriotism: (flags sprouting up in window boxes and front lawn patches after grim events), pop culture, online culture--he was taken by it all.
To someone like Roman, trained to look for signs and signifiers in every experience, romantic comedies held the key to understanding the American way of life. Being inordinately excited about a cappella music was apparently step one. While Roman went starry-eyed at the Universal Studios logo spinning on his screen, Sloane pulled the customs immigrations forms out of her seat pocket, remembering how the stewardess''s eyebrows had arched when she had asked for two. One per family , Carly had repeated, certain that the polished people before her were espoused. Yes, well. In Paris, traditional marriage was about as popular as private healthcare. Roman and Sloane had been together ten years. His name was on her electric bill, but they were never having children; their careers were their children, there you had it.
In fact, their careers had been boosted by their joint decision not to breed. The famous American forecaster and the Frenchy intellectual--"The couple who has everything, except kids," ( Le Figaro, July 2013 ), "The ultimate Anti-Mom" was the headline of a recent profile of Sloane in British Vogue ( " Re-production is akin to eco-terrorism ," she''d been quoted in that particular mag). It had been the interview hour''s fault--3 p.m., her worst time. Low blood sugar, doldrums. She and the bouncy journalist, the chardonnay had been cheap. Eco-terrorism.
Yeah--it was a good thing that Sloane''s family didn''t read much. Or maybe they''d developed an interest in European fashion glossies since she''d last seen them three years ago--she wasn''t in a position to know. But per her sister''s annual Fourth of July newsletter (yes, she actually did this), Leila was pregnant with her third kid. In the wake of their father''s death when the girls were in their twenties, Leila--not Sloane--had turned out to be the family success story. She''d fought back death with birth. Sloane had made predictions that had revolutionized the tech industry--she''d presaged the symbolism of roots to the food industry before 9/11, predicted the now ubiquitous touchscreen gesture, the swipe. She''d lectured and consulted and symposium-ed in thirty-seven countries to date, she owned an apartment in the 6th arrondissement of Paris, had the kinds of friends known by their first names only. A lot of people cared about the life that she''d constructed.
She used to, too. Roman tapped the screen to pause the inanity before him. "Did you do this?" he asked too loudly, headphones still on. Sloane put a finger to her lips before she answered; passengers were sleeping. "Do what?" "Sing with girls?" She narrowed her eyes. "No." "And the boys sing, too? And they''re popular?" Despite herself, she laughed. "A Cappella wasn''t cool when I was in college," she said.
"It was made cool by a T.V. show called Glee. " Roman''s eyebrows arched. "Everyone knows Glee ." Sloane bristled against this new dismissiveness. Roman knew everything about everything now that he was a cyber star. For a trend forecaster, it was unfortunate that she preferred the old version of her boyfriend to Roman 2.
0. When they''d first met, Roman had been a brainy market researcher for the consumer goods company, Unilever in France. She''d been immediately taken by his inventive wit and a kind of bemused composure that she''d later identify as optimism, unusual for the French. They''d met at a focus group for a new line of male soap. The consumer feedback had been useless ("I want something that smells like charcoal, but also good, like soap," was one example), but when Roman bid the industry suits goodbye, he did so with a perfectly delivered anatanaclasis: "I don''t know what I''ll wash with, gentlemen, but I wash my hands of this." He''s a little pompous , Sloane remembered thinking. But he sure seems like fun . These days, he was mostly pompous.
Roman had transitioned out of market research into professional punditism: delivering lectures across Europe on the shifting paradigms of touch. He''d even coined a term for his research: neo-sensualism . Making him a "neo-sensualist"--the term had stuck. Between his op-eds on how physicality was changing in a digitalized world and his increasingly colorful social media presence, Roman had claimed a place for himself among Europe''s intelligentsia. But once he incor.