Dietland (25 page)

(jules, did i tell you the rumor that's rampant on the 4th floor? apparently, the kitty-cat is a secret lesbian & the b-friend is just an accessory. heh. makes me think twice about her new column—“why are boys so baffling?” hardy har har.)

7:00 p.m. i'm outside louise b.'s place now. lights are on, curtains drawn. she's not gonna budge. she never does. i'm outta here.

may 26th–28th:

memorial day weekend. i sat outside for **hours** this weekend. you're lucky i brought some good music but i'm getting tired of this jules. there's nothing to see here. she went out for a while on saturday but that's it. it's such a pretty day & her curtains are drawn. if i lived this life, i would slit my wrists. louise b. is making me seriously depressed.

i know you've forbidden me from speaking to her but i'm going to give her a copy of your friend verena's book. hear me out: louise b. needs a kick in the ass. watching her is like watching a caged animal at the zoo, except she doesn't know she's in a cage, she doesn't see the bars. i really think i could come back here in 30 years & she would still be living this same existence—still dieting, living alone, working at a job that's beneath her. she deserves more than this. i like her, jules. she depresses me but i like her. don't be angry at me for giving her the book, k?

my verdict: i think you can trust her to help you spy on kitty. she might not agree to do it but ask her anyway. push her. maybe this is what she needs??

p.s. i wish she could meet your friend verena. can you make this happen, jules? pretty please?

I read through the notebook greedily, my eyes moving swiftly across each line. Leeta's observations about me would have stung much more if I'd read them back then, but since I'd met Verena and the others, unflinching commentary about my life had become the norm.

As an observer, Leeta had gleaned a lot about me, but not the whole story. She didn't know about the surgery, my plan for escape so that I wouldn't be in the same place thirty years later, filled with regrets, having only lived half a life. I knew this wasn't the kind of escape she'd envisioned for me: surgery and weight loss, the ability to blend in with the crowd. She wasn't the blending-in type.

The margins of the notebook were decorated with doodles of butterflies and daisies and a stick figure hanging from a rope. I thought again of Leeta's face on the screen in Times Square. It wasn't real—it couldn't be. I didn't know where she was or what she'd done, but she had led me to Verena. Her notebook read like a story about me, but the next chapters were missing. She'd started the story in motion but hadn't stuck around to record the rest of it. I turned to a blank page. I started to write about the New Baptist Plan and the underground apartment, telling my own story. I realized I had no idea how it was going to end.

In the morning, or what I pretended was morning, I showered in the mirrorless bathroom and dressed in a fresh set of clothes from my closet. I'd never gone so long without seeing myself in a mirror. I patted down my hair, wondering what it looked like.

I went to the kitchen for a glass of water and saw that someone had been there. On the table was a plate with a cinnamon roll and a cherry Danish; next to that, a bottle of orange juice, a granola bar, a banana. The room smelled pleasantly of butter and icing, but I still didn't feel like eating. Also on the table was a file folder. I opened it to discover a cache of articles about Leeta.

LEETA ALBRIDGE LINKED TO “JENNIFER”?

NEW YORK: . . . After a tip from her roommate, whose identity is being protected, the authorities have sought Ms. Albridge for questioning . . . FBI Agent Lopez explained that Albridge's roommate said she confessed to knowing the identify of “Jennifer.” Albridge also claimed to have done something wrong, but provided no details . . . With no one else linked to this baffling series of crimes, Ms. Albridge is quickly becoming the face of the mysterious group referred to in the media as “Jennifer,” even though there is no evidence that she is involved . . .

WHEREABOUTS OF LEETA ALBRIDGE UNKNOWN

AMHERST, MA: The family of Amherst native Leeta Albridge, 23, held a press conference last night . . . “Leeta, please come forward. We know you're not a criminal,” said her father, Richard Albridge . . . “There's not a violent bone in her body,” said Albridge's mother, Ruth . . . Ms. Albridge's older half brother, Jakob Albridge, a Hampshire County police sharpshooter, said he taught his sister how to fire a gun, but “she was never any good at it” . . . Ms. Albridge graduated from the University of Southern California last summer and moved to New York City afterward . . . As a student in Los Angeles, she had volunteered as a rape crisis counselor and was considering graduate study in her home state of Massachusetts this fall . . .

AUSTEN SHOCK! WORRY SPREADS OVER “JENNIFER” INTERN

NEW YORK: . . . Albridge quit her internship at Austen Media before her disappearance . . . Editors liked the dark-haired young woman, though one recalled she had a penchant for snooping. A
Glamour Bride
editorial assistant claims she spotted Albridge photocopying a list of staff home addresses and telephone numbers . . . Austen Media chairman Stanley Austen has paid tribute to the company's nearly 300 unpaid interns, who he said are not violent or political . . . counseling offered for Austen staff . . . Julia Cole, Albridge's former supervisor in the cosmetics department, insists that Albridge has not done anything wrong . . . “I am simply shocked that her name has been connected to Jennifer,” Cole said. “Leeta has a bright future ahead of her in cosmetics management. I know she'll be vindicated.”

Julia. She'd been forced out of hiding into the spotlight. I wondered how she would fare.

I read through the articles several times, trying to reconcile the Leeta from the news with the woman who'd written about me in her notebook. The notebook, despite its incisive observations, was also girlish and in some ways reminded me of the Dear Kitty letters. It seemed absurd that she could know anything about the mysterious “Jennifer,” but I had to admit that her behavior, at least according to the articles, was suspicious.

I left the kitchen with the articles, and once again the noises from yesterday filled the hall. This time they were louder. Could the person who'd left the articles and the food still be in the apartment? My stomach tensed at the thought of that room.

I moved down the dark corridor, approaching the light, and stepped through the archway into the circular room. Stella Cross appeared on the screens, undead, animated and full of life. I had never seen her in action before. She writhed around naked on a bed before the camera moved to a close-up of her bare vulva, framed by the insides of her white thighs. This image, repeated on every screen, appeared like a flock of white birds with their wings spread open.

Into Stella's vagina went various objects: a penis, a dildo, and then other things—a Coke bottle, a string of rosary beads, a man's fist. I closed my eyes, wanting to erase the images from my mind, but Stella's vagina remained on the backs of my eyelids, as if imprinted there. She had nothing more than a sanitized slit between her legs, like the coin slot on a vending machine. All the women I'd seen on the screens looked that way. That's not the way I looked.

I recalled another screen: my womb on the ultrasound monitor.

With my eyes still closed, I turned around in the direction of the door and crashed into someone. “Don't close your eyes,” a woman's voice said. “This room is about keeping your eyes wide open.”

The woman with the burned face was standing before me, smiling calmly. I had seen her in Calliope House the day I began the makeover with Marlowe. She'd been eating an apple. I'd thought of her as a freak.

“Sorry I scared you. I'm Sana,” she said. She pronounced Sana as sa-
naw,
the emphasis on the second part. She pushed a button on a control panel near the archway and the sound was muted, but the images continued to play. Without the sound for context, some of the scenes on the screens could have been from a horror movie, the women's faces twisted in what looked to be terror.

“Can't you turn off this porn?” I asked her.

“It doesn't turn off,” she said. “It stays on all the time.”

Apparently, the pornography was like wallpaper.

Sana explained that she worked upstairs with Verena and had brought down my breakfast and the news articles. She looked Middle Eastern and spoke with an accent that was pleasing but faint. Only one side of her face was scarred, I assumed from a fire. The flesh below her right cheekbone looked as if it had caved in, like clay on a potter's spinning wheel that had lost its shape and sunk. The scarring went from her face and down her neck and crept underneath her clothes. The left side of her face was unblemished, giving her two distinct profiles.

I didn't know where to look. I was so uncomfortable that I almost turned to the screens, just to have something else to focus on. To stare at the burned flesh would have been rude, but to avoid staring might have also been rude.

“I'm worried you're not eating,” Sana said. “The food we've left for you hasn't been touched.”

She was worried about me, even though she didn't know me. “I don't have an appetite.”

“You're going to get sick if you don't eat. I'll bring you something tasty for dinner. How about a burrito?”

“I don't feel like eating.”

“Vietnamese? Thai? I'll continue this tour of Southeast Asia until you tell me what you want.”

“What I want is to leave this room.”

“Don't leave,” Sana said. “I know this room is crazy and sick, but it's also necessary. It's Marlowe's creation.”

With the mention of Marlowe's name, the room instantly made sense. “I should have known,” I said, feeling foolish for not seeing the connection sooner.

“She wrote
Fuckability Theory
in this room and she spends time down here working on the companion volume now. She says that if you're going to write a book about the sexual objectification of women, you need to face it. She says too many women look away. They close their eyes, like you did.”

My eyes were open now. On the screens, Stella Cross was replaced by another woman. A man shoved his enormous penis so far down her throat that her face turned red. She gagged and choked. He went through a string of women this way. They lined up like baby birds with their mouths open, accepting whatever was shoved in.

“Does wanting to make yourself fuckable mean turning yourself into that?” I pointed to the open mouth on the screen. Not a face, not a body, just a mouth belonging to an anonymous woman.

“You're thinking about it too literally,” Sana said. “Think of this room as the curtain pulled back.”

I would have preferred that the curtain remain closed. I moved away from Sana and took refuge under the archway.

“You're lucky to experience this,” she said. I glanced at her skeptically. “Women come to this room from all over the world. Two Egyptian activists left the day before you arrived. They'd been down here for two weeks, living in this room practically day and night. They'll never be the same again.”

“I don't doubt that.”

“No, it's a good thing,” said Sana. “They're going to change the world. That's the power of this room. You do have to be careful, though.” Sana explained that a young Ph.D. student from Toronto stayed in the room for a week. One night, everyone in Calliope House was awakened by her screams. They found her in the middle of Thirteenth Street, ripping out chunks of her hair. An ambulance transported her to Bellevue. “The mother called Marlowe a few days later to say that her daughter had completely cracked up,” Sana said. “Of course Marlowe paid for her hospital bills. The point is, it's important to experience this room, but don't overdo it.”

There was little danger of that. After only minutes in the room, I was feeling dizzy. Even without looking directly at the screens, I saw the pornography in my peripheral vision—the blur of rhythmic movements, pelvic thrusts, and forced entries. The repetition gave the sensation of rocking back and forth, as if I were on a ship, floating at sea. I leaned against the archway for support.

Stella Cross appeared on the screens again. “Why is Marlowe playing so much Stella?” I asked, breathing deeply in an attempt to quell my nausea.

“Marlowe doesn't control what plays. Everything on the screens is streaming from Porn Hub U.S.A. Right now there are countless men and boys around the world with their pants around their ankles, masturbating to a dead woman,” Sana said. “In a different age, a great poet would have written a ballad about that.”

Standing in the middle of the room, Sana, with her brown skin and burned face, was incongruous among the cookie-cutter white body parts surrounding her. Her presence had filled the apartment with a different kind of energy. She was chatty and friendly and seemed too vibrant for this dim, underground place. I would have preferred to have met her aboveground.

“Do you come down here often?” I asked.

“When I need to. All the Calliope House women spend time down here.”

The sight of Stella Cross on the screens again made me think of “Jennifer,” which made me think of Leeta, who was never far from my mind. Had Leeta ever been in Marlowe's room?

“No,” Sana said when I asked. “Access to this room is strictly controlled. Marlowe never met Leeta and she doesn't allow anyone down here unless she assesses them first and feels confident they can handle it. She made a mistake once, but I think she was right about you.”

“What do you mean?”