The Cinderella Pact (31 page)

Or the “diet” granola bar I've been grabbing for breakfast. Jim had a total fit about that. Turns out the granola bar has fewer nutrients and as much sugar as a Pop-Tart.

Cruel, cruel world. Why do you mock me with chocolate-chip cookies and Pop-Tarts?

“Processed sugar.” Jim flicks out a finger. “And unnecessary fat.” He flicks out another finger. “These are the two enemies hidden everywhere that are making Americans huge and are keeping you from getting below—”

“Watch it,” I warn him. “Keep your weightstimates to yourself.”

“Knowledge is power, Nola.”

“Yeah, yeah. Why don't you tell me what I'm supposed to do.”

This is the moment Jim's been waiting for, the opportunity to stand on his soapbox and preach to the fat girl. “You're going to learn to eat like nature intended you to eat—as an omnivorous mammal.”

Such big words for a Cro-Magnon. “Which means?”

“A diet made up mostly of raw, organic vegetables followed by a little lean protein—chicken, some beef—and the occasional fruit.”

Yummy.

“You're going to eat according to when you're hungry, not by a clock, and you will not overeat. Until you have trained your brain to tell you when to stop, we'll be limiting your portions so you can develop instinctive portion control.”

“This does sound like fun. What about the four most important food groups—bread, cheese, cookies, and margaritas?”

Jim rolls his eyes, his Cro-Magnon brain not quite able yet to grasp the concept of a joke. “All those things you mentioned are processed or unnatural.”

“Margaritas are so not unnatural. They're made from limes and tequila, which I happen to know is a derivative of a very natural cactus plant.”

“
Processed
from a cactus plant. Plus, they contain alcohol, a sugar in a certain chemical form that your body will work to metabolize first, thereby neglecting other more important duties. You don't see mammals in the wild drinking alcohol, do you? Nor are they downing four cups of coffee every day.”

“They would if they could. Remember that bear with the cocaine—”

“Don't get distracted.” Jim goes over to the tiny cabinet above my refrigerator, removes my one item of alcohol—a bottle of tequila—and an unopened bottle of margarita mix. “Look at the high fructose corn syrup level in this. If the tequila doesn't kill you, that damn corn syrup will.”

I stand by his side solemnly as he dumps both down my sink. I fight back memories of my margarita-fueled disaster with Chip.

“As for bread, that's processed food too, I don't care how whole the grain is. Hey, you want to eat some quinoa or tabouli, more power to you. But don't even think about steamed white rice.”

I vow not to think about steamed white rice.

“Brazil nuts are good,” he continues. “High in selenium. So are sunflower seeds for magnesium and vitamin E. Both must be consumed raw and unsalted.”

No salt? Why bother?

Jim's only exception on “processed” food is yogurt, but I will have to make it myself, using bacteria purchased from the local co-op and organic milk.

Already his diet is working. I am beginning to feel ill.

“I'm telling you, Nola, six weeks on my whole-food, no-sugar, no-fat, no-alcohol, no-caffeine eating plan . . .”

Jim does not like the word “diet.”

“. . . and your body will begin to settle, as I like to call it, to its natural weight. That might not be super thin, but it'll be healthy and you will live longer and live better because of it. Better yet, you can skip all this low-fat, low-carb marketing hype and all the chemicals that come with those stupid so-called foods. You can stop counting your stupid points. You're going to have more energy, more happiness, more vitality.”

“Like you?”

Jim disregards this and draws up the plan.

For breakfast he suggests I have a small bowl of either oats or brown rice topped by blueberries and a half an orange. Lunch is either a homemade soup, perhaps miso with tofu or tomato vegetable with a little diced chicken, or a piece of broiled chicken and an artichoke (no butter). Jim is big on artichokes, though, honestly, who packs an artichoke to take to work?

Dinner is a large salad made up of at least five different vegetables including, but not limited to, spinach, carrots, red cabbage, broccoli, sprouts, avocado (though high in fat, it's a good fat), minced raw garlic (yipes!), and perhaps some black beans—the highest antioxidant legume around. For dessert there's a couple of dried prunes, a couple of dried apricots.

Apparently, crème brûlée is right out. Go figure.

Beef should be limited to no more than four ounces a week—if that. Fish, though desirable, should be eaten in moderation due to high mercury content. Farm-raised salmon is not acceptable.

Ideally, I should outlaw all cooked foods forever, he says, which rules out meat. Gnawing at uncooked flesh, he tells me, is not an option. Fortunately this also rules out gelatin, which is a check in Jim's column.

For beverages, I may drink herbal tea until I sprout chamomile buds. Like Weight Watchers and every other diet plan I've been on, it is mandatory that I consume at least five glasses of water a day. He swears that I can avoid all sorts of problems, cancer, heart disease, bad skin, an unpleasant personality, by drinking tons of water.

Finally, all the food must be organic.

“People claim you spend more on higher quality food, but lookit”—he holds up a bunch of broccoli—“ain't no label on this sucker. No marketing budget. No packaging. If you stick to this eating plan, you'll end up paying a smaller grocery bill because you won't be paying the man to return dividends to his fat-cat shareholders who don't give a hoot about your health because they want you to get sick so you'll by the pharmaceuticals they've invested in.”

I know he's right. I also know that Weight Watchers is right when they harp on reducing
how much
you eat as well as
what
you eat. And that Atkins probably had a point too with all that protein, or South Beach with the protein and vegetables. Jane Brody, on the other hand, hit the nail on the head by noting we humans were meant to be gatherers, not hunters, and that nuts, berries, and whole grains are the way to go.

Low-carb. Low-fat. High-protein. No-fat. No-meat. All-meat. Everyone's right. We lifelong dieters know that intellectually. That's not the problem.

The problem is that until they find a healthy substitute for ice cream or a nonfattening pan of brownies that can be consumed while reading a Daphne du Maurier novel, I will have to deny my upbringing, which taught me the most natural cure for life's disappointments is not to exercise or have another glass of water, but to sit down to a roast chicken dinner with all the trimmings.

Chapter Thirty

 
“OK, what the devil is up with Belinda? A remote island off the Irish coast? One might assume she's become a monk.”

Nigel Barnes stands over me, holding his cigarette to the side so the smoke won't blow into my face while I lace up my Saucony running shoes, which Nancy has insisted that I must own. I am in old black sweats and a purple ADWOFF T-shirt. Nigel, on the other hand, is completely kitted out in Spandex running tights and a matching top, which do absolutely nothing to enhance his skinny body that I've just noticed is remarkably devoid of muscles.

“What's your obsession with Belinda, anyway?” I bend down and touch my toes.

“It's obvious, isn't it? We're meant to be together. She's British, I'm British. She's witty, I'm witty—though a bit more erudite, if I do say so. And of course there's the physical thing. Clearly she's attracted to me. How can she not be?”

“How can she not?” I wince as I stretch a somewhat sore hamstring.

“I mean, I've paid my dues. I've been patient and attentive. I don't quite understand why she's treating me rather brusquely. I thoroughly expected to be tromping the moors around Balmoral by now.”

I give him a look. “Am I to infer that you've been so quote unquote attentive to me so that you can curry favor with Belinda?”

“Heavens, no. Though . . . is it working? Has she said anything?”

“Nigel!”

“Drat it all.” He takes one last drag on his cigarette and gives it a loving glance before tossing it toward the tombstone of Henry J. Wallingford 1923 to 2000.

I point to the butt and he picks it up dutifully, pinching it between his fingers until we reach a garbage can. “You are such a Puritan, aren't you? God, Americans can be so tiresome.”

How Nigel is able to smoke before running, then run faster than I can, in fact, is a physical accomplishment I can't even begin to fathom. It makes me think of those little air sacs in his lungs, straining with each intake of oxygen, the poor dears.

“So,” I say, when I am past the initial I-hate-this-my-chest-hurts part of the run, “let's go back to the screenplay. I've gone over a hundred and fifteen pages. Is that too much?”

“I should say so.” Nigel waves to a couple of students passing us in the early morning fog. “ 'Ello.” They seemed shocked to see him doing anything besides inhaling tobacco or listening to music. “You've got to get that page count to under a hundred, luv.”

“But it's hard. How am I supposed to condense my life story into one hundred pages, double spaced with margins so wide they would have made us giddy in high school English?”

“Your life story? I thought this was fiction.”

“It is . . . kind of.” Stark horror. I've slipped and given away too much.

“I mean, isn't this about a fat girl who disguises herself as a thin girl à la Cyrano de Bergerac? How, exactly, is that you?”

I launch into a sprint—one of Jim's commandments is that for every quarter mile I run, I must sprint until I count to sixty—hoping to avoid Nigel's enquiring mind.
You nincompoop. You have to be more careful. You totally let the cat out of the bag.
Speaking of which, where is Otis? He must have sauntered off when I was stretching.

Nigel catches up to me as I am bent over, panting, exhorting myself to go on because stopping decreases all the benefits of a heart-healthy workout.

“A terrific thought just occurred to me. One wonders if the rumors are true. That perhaps Belinda Apple never existed. That she is . . . you.”

I pop up. “What?”

“It makes sense, really. Here you are, her editor, the only one who seems to have any contact with the bird.”

“There's her agent. Charlotte Dawson,” I trill, thereby sounding even more guilty. “Charlotte's where I get all my news about Belinda.”

“What news?” Nigel steps closer to me. He really is extremely attractive in that British twit kind of way, the long, angular face and constant half-smile. Straight out of the eighteenth-century drawing room.

“You know.” I turn and begin a slow run away. “The news about her taking a break.”

“A break? Where?”

“To the remote island off the Irish Coast.”

“Would that be the Kilkenny Island or the Tooraloora Island?”

I think fast. Tooraloora. I've heard of that. “Tooraloora, I believe.”

“Aha!” He grabs me by the elbow, yanking me back. “There is no such island as the Tooraloora Island. I knew you were fibbing.”

“I was not. I just forgot.”

“All right. Then if Belinda does exist, as you say, I want to set a time and a place where I'll meet her. One on one, in the flesh. Otherwise, I just might have to blow your secret. I don't care if I have to fly to bloody Galway and take a bloody boat to the Arans . . .”