Dietland (23 page)

On the night of my first blind date, I had taken to wearing pink gingham overalls that I cinched around my waist with an extra-large rubber band. Preston asked if I'd like to go to dinner at Christo's, but I said I didn't eat anything, ever, so we sat on my sofa and talked. Well, Preston talked. The inside of my head was blank.

By the end of the evening, predictably, Preston was thrusting on top of me, filling me with his juices, injecting me with calories, nothing by mouth. I didn't try to stop him. I didn't want to. When he finished, I thought I felt one of my bones crack.

“I'll call you,” he said on his way out.

“If that's what you want.”

The next night, a man named Jack was at my door. “Are you Plum?” he asked.

“Plum? She doesn't exist.”
Burst!
“I prefer to be called Alicia.”

Jack said he was a professor of literature and asked me what kinds of books I liked to read. I told him I had thrown my books away, that I no longer wanted them. “You're not one for conversation,” he said, so he took me dancing. During the slow dances, he nibbled my ear. Later on, in the ladies' room, I saw that one of my earlobes was perforated. Now I was even lighter.

Back at the bar, I stirred Jack's martini with my finger. He licked my finger clean and then bit off the top, chewing the tip and the nail along with his olive. “You taste so good,” he said.

My next blind date was with Alexander, who was a blind date, literally. He was fond of ribs and slathered my torso with BBQ sauce. There wasn't much meat on my bones, but he contented himself with the gristle, and by the time he left I weighed fifty pounds.
This is too low,
I thought.
At some point I'll disappear.

It wasn't Aidan who came next, as I had expected, but the man who had punched me in the subway. “No, not you!” I screamed, but he chewed my tongue and took a bite out of my neck. When the others came back for seconds, I couldn't object. They were all in my bed at once, devouring my pieces. This had gone too far. I wanted to scream but no sound came out. I wanted to hit them with my arms but I didn't have any. I wanted to cry, but they'd taken my eyes. Soon they finished me off.

I was the flame of a candle, blown out.

The telephone rang. It sounded as loud as a church bell in my quiet apartment. I opened my eyes and began to reach for it, but then I saw my hand in a strip of gray light coming in through the window.

My hand. It was pudgy and white.

I tossed back the covers and looked down at my body, patting my breasts and my thighs through the white and purple dress. At the end of the bed I saw my ten toes.
This little piggy.

I was still me.

There was the bottle of Dabsitaf on my nightstand and the aftertaste of medication on my tongue. I wasn't sure what was real, besides the ringing telephone. I picked it up.

“Plum?” a woman said.

I tried to place the voice. “Is this Kitty?”

“Plum, I need to see you right away.”

I rubbed my eyes. “Did I forget about our meeting?”

“This isn't about our meeting. I'm at home right now but leaving for the office soon. Come see me as soon as you can.” She hung up the phone without saying goodbye.

Kitty rarely called me. Something was wrong. My bladder ached, so I rushed to the bathroom. As I sat on the toilet, I looked at the rippled white of my inner thighs. In the dream I'd had perfect thighs and breasts and legs.

Thighs, breasts, legs
—an order of fried chicken.

As I brushed my teeth, I stared in the mirror at my bloated face, at my chin and the chin beneath that. In my dream the men had taken bites of me, crunching my eyeballs and fingers like crudités. The memory of it made me wretch in the sink. I hadn't eaten anything substantial in days, and there was nothing in my throat but the lingering taste of Dabsitaf.

After drinking some coffee, I dressed quickly and left my apartment, not knowing that I wouldn't return for a long time.

It was raining. I was awake, not dreaming, I was sure of it. Men didn't look at me. A woman in a business suit was doing butt clenches at a bus stop and eyed me warily as I passed. I was wearing a clear raincoat printed with colorful flower buds that in my size looked like a bedspread.

Storm clouds grew darker overhead and I decided to skip the subway and take a taxi instead. I didn't want to see other people. I didn't want them to see me.

As we drove through the rain, it occurred to me that Kitty was going to fire me. She must have found out I'd been deleting her email, or maybe she knew I'd given the addresses to Julia. No matter what the reason, I knew it was over.

The taxi driver was eating sunflower seeds. The sight of his stubbled jaw moving up and down, his Adam's apple jutting outward when he swallowed, was disgusting. The sight of a man eating anything was something I couldn't bear. I wanted to roll down the window, but it was raining too hard, so I wiped the fog from the glass and peered outside. We were crossing the Williamsburg Bridge, heading into Manhattan.

The driver turned up the radio. “We know Jennifer cannot be a single person. She has to be a group,” said Nola Larson King.

He dropped me off near Times Square, as close as he could get to the Austen Tower given the barricades. As I walked toward the building, my feet plunging into deep puddles, I heard someone call my name from behind. It was Kitty.

I turned to face her, but I wasn't prepared for what I saw. She'd been caught in the downpour. Her hair was wet and flat, the ends of it resting against her white blouse in sharp points, like snakes' tongues. I had only ever seen her with her red curls in their trademark formation, the carefully formed ringlets like a great strawberry bush.

“Kitty?” She was barely recognizable, a superhero without her cape.

“Let's go down the street,” she said, motioning to a coffeehouse. She didn't want me in the office in case I made a scene when I was fired. I followed behind her and noticed she wasn't carrying an umbrella. She was glum and I wondered if her mood, and her indifference to the rain, and most of all her hair, were because of me. She must have felt betrayed. I didn't know what I would say when she confronted me about the deleted messages. I looked at the sidewalk. Julia was down there beneath the wet concrete of Times Square, which now reflected a pretty pattern of neon light.

Kitty was far ahead of me down the sidewalk, and I considered turning around and running away. I hadn't committed a crime, after all, and maybe it was better to go home and send her a letter of resignation in the mail. Then I wouldn't have to face her. I slowed my pace, about to change direction and blend into the crowd, when I saw something ahead that made me stop and suck in my breath.

Leeta's face was on the side of a building.

I lifted the hood of my raincoat and wiped the wet hair from my face. The rain continued to splatter, but even through the water and the fog I could see Leeta's face.

Kitty noticed I wasn't beside her and started walking back toward me. “Hurry up, it's pouring,” she said, but I was frozen in place. It was really Leeta.

“Plum?” Kitty said. “What's wrong with you?”

I pointed to Leeta on the screen. “Do you see that?”

There was her face, then the faces of the Dirty Dozen, then the faces of Stella Cross and her husband, then the other faces associated with Jennifer, all flashing on the jumbo screen in Times Square. Leeta, with her thick black eyeliner and long dark hair, was staring out at the New York masses the way she'd stared at me in the café. It was her face on the screen, and now everyone was looking at it.

“Plum?” Kitty said again, but I was walking back to the Austen Tower and into the lobby. I went through the metal detectors and asked the guard to call Julia Cole in the Beauty Closet, but he said there was no answer. I could have used my employee ID to go past the guard and find Julia myself, but Kitty was behind me. “I've had enough,” she said. “You're fired.” Her words echoed around the marble lobby.
Fired,
fired.
People turned to look.

“I allowed you to write in my voice. I trusted you to pretend to be
me,
” she said, “and you threw my girls in the trash. Thousands of them.”

There were things I could have said to Kitty, but without the hair she had lost her power. I pushed past her, heading out into the street to find a taxi.

“Did you hear me?” Kitty shouted, but I had already left her behind.

When I arrived at Calliope House, I was in a state of near panic. I opened the door without knocking and was enveloped by the comforting red walls. Verena came from the back of the house, her pale hair and skin a light moving toward me through the long, dark hallway.

“I've been trying to get in touch with you,” she said.

“Leeta.” That's all I could say.

“You've seen the news.”

“This can't be happening. Is this real? I don't know what's real anymore.” I went into the ruby red living room and sank into a chair, wetting the fabric.

“No one knows what's happening,” Verena said, with Marlowe at her side. “Leeta's wanted for questioning, but she's disappeared. The police are looking for her. I'm sure she hasn't done anything wrong.”

“Then why are the police looking for her?”

“It must be some sort of mix-up,” Marlowe said.

I was vaguely aware of the news playing on television or radio, a monotone recitation of events. “My life is unraveling and now this, now
Leeta.
It's too much.”

Verena knelt down next to my chair and pushed the strands of wet hair from my eyes. “I think you're ready for the last task of the New Baptist Plan.”

“I've had enough of your stupid plan. Before I met you I had some semblance of a life. I had a job and now that's gone. I had plans for surgery and now I'm confused about that. Everything is slipping away from me.”

“I never said the New Baptist Plan would be easy.”

“No calorie counting and no weighing, right? If I don't become thin, what's going to happen to me?” I saw a calendar reaching years into the future and every page was blank.

“Let's finish the New Baptist Plan,” Verena said. “You can do it right here at Calliope House. We'll take care of you.” Being taken care of is what I needed.

Marlowe said, “Please stay here with us, Plum.”

And I did.

I followed Verena and Marlowe outside into the rain, down the front steps of Calliope House. To the right of the steps, unseen by passersby, there was another series of steps leading down to a red door, its frame overgrown with ivy. This was the door to the basement.

I followed them down the steps. Down we went, down to the very bottom.

UNDERGROUND

 • • • 

 

• • •

The
New Baptist Plan,
Task Five:

Disconnecting and Reflecting

The underground apartment was nestled into the earth beneath Calliope House, deep in the place where roots grow. The walls vibrated faintly whenever a subway train passed by. This dark, cool space was where I landed after weeks of falling. It was Leeta's appearance in the café more than two months ago that had caused me to lose my balance. I tripped into a hole, where strange things happened and even stranger women dwelled. Spinning and falling, trying desperately to steady myself, I kept reaching for something to cling to on my way down.

In the underground apartment, darkness wrapped itself around me. I didn't resist. I'd taken my last half-tablet of Y—— and a handful of Dabsitaf the night before I went underground. I slept deeply, but I was also restless at times, rolling around in the twin-size bed, sweating into the sheets. My body was screaming for Y—— in those moments, but it wasn't going to get it. I was finished with drugs.

When I finally opened my eyes after many hours, I swung out of bed and placed my feet on the floor. There was a lamp on the nightstand and I switched it on, surveying the bedroom, only vaguely remembering my arrival hours—days?—earlier. I was dressed in a baggy beige shift and black leggings, which Verena and Marlowe had given me after I'd followed them down the stairs. The clothes were my size, so they'd prepared for my arrival. Verena had given me her phone and told me to call anyone who would notice I was missing. I called my mother and Carmen. There was no one else. I made up a story about going on a retreat with Kitty and her staff. I explained that it was a last-minute trip because Kitty had forgotten to invite me, which is something that could have been true.

Then Verena and Marlowe left me alone. In the bed, on the edge of sleep, I recalled Leeta's face on the screens in Times Square and hoped I'd been hallucinating.

My bedroom in the underground apartment contained only the starkest, most minimalist furnishings. The furniture and walls were white, the linens were white, everything was white—I was living inside an aspirin. In the dresser, more beige shifts and black leggings, plus pajamas and underthings. I didn't know what had happened to the backpack I'd brought to Calliope House. My laptop and wallet and everything else must have been aboveground, in that world I'd left behind.

On top of the desk was a stack of books, including
Adventures in
Dietland
and
Fuckabilty Theory,
a cup full of pens in different colors, and a notepad with a message on top:

Plum, I'll see you tomorrow afternoon.

Rest until then.