Fat Chance (17 page)

He dangles the keys in front of me. “Want to drive?”

I shake my head. We drive up the Pacific Coast Highway. He left the studio early so we could spend the afternoon together. I turn and stare out the window at the ocean as the waves break against the rocky coastline, glittering like faceted stones—the
second
perfect thing my eyes feasted on when I woke up in his bed. I open the window to breathe in the cool, salty air.

I hate goodbyes—that gnawing fear that the harsh winds of fate might change your life from that moment on, separating you forever. The air charged with the unspoken. Airports were the worst, particularly after September 11th.

To relieve the discomfort I'm feeling, I start blathering on endlessly about weight loss. “…the absurdity of looking at a
weight chart and finding your ideal weight. I mean there are fifty different tables, some take into account frame size, sex and age, others don't. They don't distinguish between excess fat and muscle. You can look fat but have a high percentage of…”
I'm boring myself to death, but I can't tell what he's thinking. He seems to be caught up in driving.
I catch my breath and stop in midsentence. I don't think he notices.

“So now you're an expert. Maybe you should take over the column for me.”

“What would
you
do, act?”

“I can't act, I can't even lie—well, not for long. And my problem now is that my readers want to know how the hell I lost weight and what's happening to me. A lot of them are going to hate me now. My message is going to get a lot more complicated.” I shake my head. “I just have to sort out what to tell them.”

“Tell them you had a crush on a movie star and wanted to test out the fantasy, but it passed and you realized that in real life fantasies burst like soap bubbles, but you decided to stay thin anyway, and you ran back to your New York life to pick up the pieces.”

“That's not my story.”

“So what is?”

I shrug.

Taylor's watching me stare ahead. “So what is?” he says, reaching over and holding my arm. “You've got to figure out your moves pretty soon, you know.”

His face is so close to mine that I don't move. I can almost feel the warmth of his skin. I want to touch it, but I don't. I shift in my seat, uncomfortable.

“Maybe the New York columnist goes home, and before her plane lands, the movie star starts living with another leggy blonde who weighs ninety-five pounds and wears a size
four, and they live happily—and then unhappily—ever after until he meets a sexier one with a different accent who wears a size two. The actress du jour, or maybe a Scandinavian cover girl this time—”

“You don't give me much credit do you? Or yourself for that matter.”

Why am I doing this? Do I have to test out his allegiance to me? And why am I putting myself down like that?

“Maybe you're right,” I say in a whisper. “Guess it comes with the territory.” Neither of us knows what to say, but I'm getting edgy as he starts racing around the turns as though he wants to permanently imprint his tire tracks on the road.

“Are you trying to smash us both up? Would that solve things?”

“No, but some coke might help. Want some?”

“I prefer Pepsi.”

“You're always on, right? I can't get through to you.” He drives faster, turning up the radio.

“I'd prefer not to be cremated in your car just now,” I shout above Aerosmith, “so would you mind slowing down—no, pulling over?” He doesn't seem to hear, then suddenly swerves off the road. I pitch forward in my seat—glad that I didn't have lunch—and feel the seat belt stretch and snap back on me. I reach for the radio and turn it down. It seems like such a long time ago that we were heading to his house for the first time. I'll never forget how he stopped—more slowly then—to teach me how to drive a stick.

“Okay, let's run off to Vegas. How many times have you been proposed to before, anyway?”

He shrugs.
No one could accuse him of being a braggart
.

“Is that what you want—to tie yourself down to one guy for the rest of your life?”

“I've never thought about it in those terms, but at some point…I guess you meet someone and…you can't imagine life without them. You don't feel like you're giving anything up or losing anything…just the opposite.”

“But that's not what's going on here.”

“It's so different here for me,” I say, shaking my head. “I'm facing the wrong ocean. And the prices on Rodeo Drive are starting to look normal to me….”

He smiles. “I don't know of too many girls who make me laugh,” he says, running his hand along my chin. “I'm going to miss that.”

“It's a survival tool of the overweight…anyway a good friend of mine is getting married. I have to be there.”

“So send her a solid gold fondue pot—on me.”

“It's a him….”

“Him.” He nods, exaggeratedly. “He's not marrying
you
, is he?”

“No, smart-ass. But I've known him for a long time….”

“You really like the guy.”

“He's just a
friend
at work…. I'm crazy about
you,
Taylor, but—”

“It'll pass—”

“Don't say that. It's just that I can't run away forever. I have to go back to my column, my life…. Does that make any sense?”

“I don't know,” he says, tapping the wheel nervously. “I'm no expert. I skipped out on one bad marriage, and I've slept with an awful lot of women that I haven't loved—”

“Slut.”

“You got it. Aside from my three-month marriage, I've only been crazy in love once maybe. She was nineteen, and I was twenty-two. But then she moved a thousand miles away and I lost her. And now I meet Maggie O'Leary from New
York who broke the mold, and got to my heart through my stomach. And what do I get?”

“Indigestion?”

“No, dumped for some—”

“Stop—”

“Anyway, I got you a going-away present.” He pulls a small red velvet box out of his hip pocket and places it in my lap. Cartier. I look at him warily and slowly open it. I lift up a shimmering gold chain with a charm hanging from it in the shape of an open book. There are emerald-cut diamonds running along the spine.
Dangerous Lies
is engraved on the cover. I flip it over and see the engraved words:
With love, Mike
.

“You're making going home very hard, you know?” I don't want him to see my eyes, but he does. I open the chain and he lifts my hair and closes it behind my neck. I get a shiver as I feel the teasing touch of his fingertips on my neck. He looks at the necklace, then turns and stares out the driver's window.

“Well, there is a positive side to everything,” he says, rhythmically tapping the heel of his hand on the steering wheel for the second time. “At least you won't be stripping the damn gears of my car anymore.”

“I'll miss this car,” I say, closing my hand over his on the wheel. “I really will.”

I
n atmospheric colic, the 747 from Los Angeles to New York swoops, dips and ricochets through the atmosphere. From a world of sunshine, I'm hurled into a raging nor'easter.

I stare out the window, taking deep relaxing breaths to overcome my nausea and chills. Are we even going to make it? On top of everything, I feel like I'm coming down with the flu. Is this Mother Nature's way of punishing me for flying off to L.A.? Adding to my malaise is the haunting vision of Taylor's face growing fainter and fainter as I walked from the gate. “It was a sweet time, Maggie.” No, it was more. I was leaving wonderland.

But there was no time to nurse my misery—I had a column to write. Offer the hug, the Band-Aid, another shot in the arm. I needed a shot all right—curare maybe—to stop my own heart. I glare at the screen of the laptop.

Three false starts, and after two hours in the air, all of the words I've written have been dragged into the electronic
trash bin. Have my writing skills evaporated? Where was that warm, caring, intimate voice with readers? Maybe now that I had become thin—or thinner—I had grown cold, angry, strident and unfeeling. I could see the letters. W
hen you lost the weight, you lost your heart.

No, my heart was still there, but I had changed. Things hadn't turned out the way I figured. I never imagined my boy-toy fantasy would warm to me. Actually, I hadn't thought about
his
feelings at all—how liberating!

I finger the necklace.
Dangerous Lies.
Loaded words. I had been given the rare chance to walk into the cotton-candy clouds of imagination and explore blind longing. Maybe
blind
was the operative word. It reminded me of a cartoon that a friend had on her refrigerator: A princess is sitting, eyes closed, dreaming of her Prince Charming and just at that moment, he passes by her on horseback.

The flight smooths out and we begin to descend. I recognize the lights of Queens, the gray waters off Long Island. I look over Manhattan, spotting the Empire State Building, and the glittering 59th Street Bridge, and am haunted, like every New Yorker, by the absence of the twin towers of the World Trade Center.

I look for glimmering swimming pools and mosaics of twinkling turquoise, but there are none. Just tall buildings, and traffic-snaked roads. Tie-ups on the Cross Island Parkway, the glamorous Gowanus. The plane gets closer and closer to land, and finally, the reassuring BUMP as it hits the ground. I'm thrust back in my seat, feeling the rush of speed as it approaches the terminal. Tear-size rain pellets pound the glass. The northern half of the sky is a swath of charcoal gray. Home.

I zip the laptop case and reach for my handbag, then sit while others file out first. They move like cattle, lugging heavy bags that pound the sides of the seats as they amble
down the narrow aisle. The plane is nearly empty when I get up. I slip on my jacket and head for the terminal with my swollen suitcase. It feels as though I'm dragging home a corpse.

I'm looking toward the taxi line when I spot him. Six foot five, always high above the crowd. But this Tex…has a look. Not newsroom anymore. Downtown. Sleek haircut, faint outline of a sandy beard along the jaw, steel-framed sunglasses, weathered-leather bomber jacket. He has that “just back from St. Bart's” glow that blends with the clothes, and I'm wondering if he went so far as to visit a tanning parlor. I look him over, head to toe. Was he even trimmer? Whose hands had remodeled him, some Fashion Institute ingenue? Couldn't have been Sharon—she could use some updating herself. He waves.

I hesitate, then wave back, walking closer. He's leaning up against a railing, smiling expectantly.

“What did you do with Tex?”

He points to the ground. “Down there with the old Maggie.”

I run my hand over the sleeve of his jacket. “Sample sale?”

“You underestimate me.”

Under the jacket he's wearing a tan cashmere turtleneck instead of his usual standard-issue blue pinpoint oxford shirt and poly tie. I feel the sweater. “Nice, but what's going on around here? I go away for a lousy two weeks and you become Richard Gere?”

“Not ‘You look good, Tex, I like the clothes. You lost weight.' Just ‘What's going on here?'”

I catch myself. “Okay. You look good, Tex. I'm impressed. Stunned actually. Mr.
GQ.
”

“Jesus, you're something.”

“Sorry, I was in California, remember? I guess I lost some of my brain cells. They're airheads out there, you know? The
state flower is the golden poppy, a natural source of opiates, you believe that?”

He looks at me without saying anything for a minute, then shakes his head disapprovingly. “Well, the endearing personality is intact.”

“Thank you.”
Bastard.

I know I shouldn't, but I can't help myself. “Next, you're going to tell me you have a part in a TV series.”

“No, I'm still Metro editor, very happy with my job. I know who
I
am.”

I open my mouth to reply but before I do, I see his eye on the necklace. He reaches out for the charm, lifts it, then turns it over. For a split second a look of incredulity passes over his face, and he snorts and shakes his head.

I want to kill.

“Don't tell me you had a love affair with that clown.”

“First of all,” I say, cocking my head to the side. “He's not a
clown,
as you so articulately phrased it. He's a world-famous actor. And second of all, it's really none of
your
goddamn business what
I
did.”

“No, you're right,” he says, shaking his head in agreement, talking loud enough for people around us to halt their own conversations and start staring. “You are free to mess up your own lousy life. But if your sweet, private life is nobody's business, then don't hang a sign around your neck advertising it, okay?”

Everyone around us seems to turn into an audience, watching to see how the play will end.

“Actually, it's not a sign at all,” I say as haughtily as possible. “It's an eighteen-karat gold charm with diamonds made-to-order by Cartier. And you can just go screw yourself.” I viciously pull my bag from his hand, nearly toppling him. “You know what? I'd really rather take a cab with a kami
kaze driver than have to endure spending another second with you.”

“Well, that's just fahn with me.” He's yelling now, and thanks to the high ceilings, the sound waves are echoing throughout the terminal. “I don't know wha I wasted mah whole afternoon coming out he-ah anyway.” The accent again. Stupid hick. Why didn't he just go back to the armpit of Texas where he came from? Maybe because where
he
came from they probably didn't have newspapers, just notices of cattle auctions. The nerve of
him
to humiliate me.

I run out into the pouring rain, throw my bag into the back seat of the first cab that stops and bark, “Manhattan.”

I slam the door and am a victim to an air supply that's been beamed by the cloying vapors of bottled air freshener suctioned to the driver's dashboard. Imagine jasmine, bathroom deodorant, B.O. and decay, all together inside a dark bottle. I know the fetid molecules are invading the fibers of my clothes like cigarette smoke in a crowded bar. I start to gag, and lower the window as far as it will go, welcoming the rain that lashes my face. I sit back and listen to the driver whispering into a cell phone for the entire fifty-minute ride, convinced that I'm being driven by someone who has now plotted a new terrorist attack against my city.

In my elevator lobby, I stab the button for my floor and ride up to my apartment. I turn the key and enter an apartment that looks strange and unfamiliar as though I'm reentering somebody else's old life. I throw open the living room windows and stare out blankly at the view. Concrete and steel. Bad enough that I left the sun-soaked world of California, I've come back to a city that now seems like it was shoehorned inside a dark, drafty elevator shaft. I strip off my clothes and toss them into a pile on the floor. As I walk into the bedroom, I glance at the row of plants along the win
dow sill that my elderly neighbor promised to take care of. The edges of the leaves are black and drooping. Even the poor resilient cactus looks as though it's succumbed to dehydration. My tiny teardrop of a New York garden has perished in my absence, starved of the few pathetic droplets of water, all it needed just to simply stay alive.

 

The next morning, just as I'm about to enter my office, I hear the click of a camera.

“Got ya,” Tamara says, grinning. I give her a small smile. The gossipmongers quickly congregate around me. “How was your pupil?” a secretary from Foreign giggles. “An A-plus?”

“So is he really like the character he plays in
The High Life?
”
Well, he gets high.
I look at Tamara. She knows something's amiss, but we don't have time to talk. There are candidates waiting to be interviewed for her job. I want to cut through the stereotypes and hire a male, but few apply. One of the most promising is a gorgeous acting student, grounds for immediate rejection.

Meanwhile, I dismantle the gallery of hunk posters with the solemnity afforded a series of shining presidential hopefuls who, through no shortcomings of their own, drop by the wayside. I stare at a blank wall, studying the hairline cracks as if they are seismic fissures in a planet that is about to implode.

“Redecorating?” Tamara says.

“Huh?”

“How about a poster of some really wanted dudes.” She holds up the FBI's “Most Wanted.”

I wave it away. “Unwanted.” I look back down at the desk as if I'm lobotomized, skimming letter after letter. Readers are keenly aware of my weight loss, image change and the
trip. I don't have secrets. Now I know what it's like to be running from the bulls at Pamplona. I try to concentrate on the column, but everything I write is garbage. Finally I bat something out.

Before I press Send, it goes to Wharton with a note: “I hope this addresses all of the questions and concerns. Glad to be back, Maggie.”

He messages back: “Liked the column. Happy you're back. Just one thought: Should we change the name of the column now to ‘Slim Chance'?”

“Bill. I've changed enough. Let's leave
something
the same.”

 

No party in Santa Monica tonight, and no lobster spring rolls and black bass. Instead the choice is a carton of take-out stir-fry shrimp and broccoli from the Tang Dynasty Palace or a tin-foil pan filled with tomatoes, black olives, iceberg lettuce and chunks of feta—the Parthenon salad—from Niko's Diner.

I stop at Blockbuster Video first and eyeball the Mike Taylor section, pulling out a copy of
Super Sleuth,
then look for his first movie,
The Trainer.

“He's so hot,” a girl standing behind me says when she sees the cover of the video. I turn around. She has long, straight hair and is wearing tight jeans and high-heeled boots. A college freshman, maybe.

“I heard he's gay,” I say, shoving the box back into the shelf.

“Really?”

“Hard to believe, huh?”

I take out
Leaving Las Vegas.
Halfway into it, I press Stop. What a downer. Home for two days, and nothing more from Tex. What exactly was eating him?

As well as I thought I knew him, he remained something of an enigma. Here was a guy who took comfort in edit
ing—cleaning up other people's messes, making life neater, cleaner, more comprehensible, more to the point. And he was good at it. When parts of a story didn't read smoothly or make sense, bells went off in his head. He was familiar with the language, its clarity, its subtlety, the various shades of mood and meaning each word had the exquisite power to convey. It served his needs, really. It made sense out of the jumble of life. But aside from the way he performed at work, how finely honed was his own life? Was his smug, self-satisfaction really a cover-up?

I'm feeling frustrated, out of control, but instead of going into the kitchen and seeking fulfillment in a pint of Rocky Road, I head to a corner of the bedroom closet where I keep the free weights. Biceps curls. I lift the weights up angrily, pumping, heaving hard. Whatever his motivation, he could have opened up, told me how he felt, not just show up at the airport, think he had it all figured out because he glanced at the charm, then put Taylor and me down at the same time.