Fat Chance

“Well, we could make some other arrangement if you don’t like it there… L’Hermitage or… I mean, you could even stay here if you’d be more comfortable. I have a pretty big place—you could have your own wing—there’s an office…and I have a great kitchen. You could make my place home base, and just give me some coaching—you know, background stuff—on the way overweight women think, and how they’d react to me. I usually spend a couple of months preparing for a role, and it would be a tremendous favor if—”

“I…I don’t know—”

“I realize that it’s not easy to just get up and leave—”

“No, but—”

“Don’t answer now, just think about it.”

“Well—”

“We would pay all your expenses, and a consulting fee. The studio is usually pretty generous, I’m sure we could work something out so that at least financially it would be worth your while. Just consider it, okay?”

“Maybe, maybe, Mike,” I say, coiling a strand of hair around my finger like a tourniquet. “Can I get back to you?”

“Sure, sure, Maggie. This is great. I’m thrilled that you’ll even think of helping me.” Then his rich voice turns softer, intime. Caressing. And by God, it’s working wonders.

“Honestly, people out here really look up to you, you know? This is a crazy town, everybody’s into some diet routine or other, nobody’s happy with themselves the way they are. That’s why it would be so helpful if I could hear your take on it all.”

There are other experts—I can rattle off a dozen names off the top of my head. Bloated, academic types, but they knew the stuff, they could fill him in. Or he could read my clips. The column was easy to call up, why did he need the flesh-and-blood me? On the other hand, SHUT UP. Did it matter WHY he called me? He called me. ME. He wanted ME. Needed ME. Maggie O’Leary.

We say goodbye, but I’m still holding the phone. Finally I place it in the cradle, gently. Mike Taylor. Mike Taylor.

I lean back in my chair, pressing my fingers over my eyes, seeing shapes and colors collide like shooting stars. How often does someone get offered her fantasy on a silver platter, there for the taking? Lotto Jackpot. And the winner is… I’m nervous now, uneasy. Is my breath getting short? My panic circuitry is supercharged, as though my insides are a pinball machine and Mike Taylor the little steel ball that has been spring-loaded into my body and is ricocheting around, slamming the buttons and bumpers, setting off ringers and bells and arcades of pulsating lights.

I tear open the suffocating top button of my blouse, grab for my fan and open the bottom desk drawer where I stash the omnipresent reserve sack of Rainbow Chips Ahoy. I reach in and pull out a handful of cookies, admiring the gems of green, red and yellow chocolate that stud their rough surface. I lift one toward my lips. I can already taste it. My mouth knows cookies the way the fingertips of the blind know braille. Each pillow of chocolate…its dense, creamy center oozing satisfaction out along my tongue…washed down with a tall glass of chilled milk…comfort, fulfillment. I bite down and chew it slowly, as if mesmerized. Then another. But as quickly as I raise the third cookie to my lips, I pull it away.

Suddenly it becomes a grenade and I’m considering suicide. I hold it, just hold it, and wait. A moment later I put it on the edge of the desk, and, like a kid shooting bottle caps, use my thumb and pointer finger to flick it into the garbage where it lands with a resounding ping on the empty metal base. I shoot another and another until I’m out of cookies and the bag is empty. Bingo. I smooth out the bag and pin it to the bulletin board. It’s flat now, thin, and it weighs next to nothing.

Breaking the Mold

“Don’t change your body, change the rules.” Those aren’t my words, they’re Jennifer Portnick’s. Jennifer who? A girl after our own hearts. Jennifer, who weighs 240 pounds, and is 5' 8", is an aerobics teacher who reached a settlement with Jazzercise Inc. after being rejected as a Jazzercise franchisee because of her weight—she then proceeded to file a complaint with the Human Rights Commission.

In a decision that every plus-size woman should rejoice over, Jazzercise said, “Recent studies document that it may be possible for people of varying weights to be fit. Jazzercise has determined that the value of ‘fit appearance’ as a standard is debatable.” The announcement was made at the 10th International No Diet Day in San Francisco, which was dubbed a celebration of “diversity in shape.”

Ms. Portnick’s lawyer, Sandra Solovey, who is the author of Tipping the Scale of Justice: Fighting Weight-Based Discrimination, told the New York Times that Ms. Portnick was lucky to be a resident of San Francisco, one of only four jurisdictions in the country where it’s against the law to discriminate on the basis of weight.

“On one side of a bridge you can be protected from weight-based discrimination,” she said of the Bay Bridge between San Francisco and Oakland, “and on the other side you’re vulnerable.”

I’m about to press the send key on the column when Tamara struts in like a windup doll on a talking tirade that has a long way to go before it fizzles.

“So I’m in your office, on my way home, about to turn out your office light.”

I wait.

“I’m about to flick the switch on the M&M’s lamp, and what do I see?”

“I give up.”

“Your pink phone-message pad with doodling all over it.”

“Your point is?”

“Not just any doodles, Maggie….” Her voice begins to trail.

I won’t go for the bait.

“Mike Taylor doodles in all kinds of cutesy-poo little writing.”

Unmasked.

“Block letters, puffy pastel two-dimensional letters, calligraphy, flowery script, and then little red hearts.”

I’m not in the mood now for the drama queen who is studying me. She switches gears and is trying another approach as she drops the armload of mail she’s been holding onto my desk.

“You okay, Maggie? You been acting a little strange lately, you know what I’m sayin’?”

“Strange how?”

“Strange like…” She drums her iridescent green fingernails on top of a thick hardcover book called Aberrant Eating Behaviors. “Uh, aberrant…you’re not here, your mind is elsewhere.”

“My mind’s right here, Tamara, you want to take a CAT scan?”

“I’m not your doctor, babe, I don’t want to take no CAT scan. But I’ll tell you that you are most definitely not your ever-lovin’ self. You are adrift. Something bothering you?”

“My job, my column, a water pill, my next meal, the exchange rate of the yen, that’s what’s bothering me, okay? What else could be on my mind? WHAT? WHAT? There is nothing else whatsoever. End of discussion. You read me?”

Tamara holds up her hands in surrender. “Not another word from me, I swear. I’ll just sit myself back down outside and let you have your estro/progestero hissy fit. I’m out of here.” She cha-chas toward the door.

I should let it go, but I can’t. “Come back.” I point to a chair opposite my desk. My pencil turns into a drumstick. Tap tap tap tap. “You’re right. You know me. I wear my heart on my sleeve. I can’t hide anything from you…although Lord knows I try.” We eye each other over a drumroll.

Tamara crosses her legs and leans forward, twirling a corn-row around her finger. She raises her eyebrows and checks her watch. Then she sits back, and uncrosses her legs.

“H-E-L-L-O—”

“WHO has a body like no other man?”

She screws up her face. “Fabio?”

I fling open the paper to the TV page. “Ever heard of a show called The High Life?”

“Starring that lowlife…er…what’s his name?”

“That gorgeous lowlife, yes.”

“So?”

“So? The SO is that that sexy lowlife, Mike Taylor, called me last week. He needs my help. He wants me to fly to L.A. and help him with a movie he’s making.”