Nothing To Lose (A fat girl novel) (14 page)

“I don’t understand.” Missy had put everything back into the binder and zipped it neatly. “Ms. Greene said you had soft goods experience. Why do they always send the wrong people?” She looked ready to cry.

“Oh, I do. I do.” April felt sorry for Missy who was rejecting her for something real – her lack of experience – and not for her weight. “Why don’t you give me a test? Let me write an ad for something you need right now.”

Missy rolled this over in her mind and, seeing it made sense, nodded toward the corner of her desk. “All right. Write me an ad for that ghillie.”

April looked in vain for something that looked like a ghillie. Was it a fish? There was no fish on the desk. “A ghillie?”

“This shoe is called a ghillie. It laces up the front and has a closed toe…and this blouse,” she gestured to a softly bowed white blouse that hung on a peg. “Write me an ad for the shoes and the blouse.”

She directed April to a small booth, one of about twenty that flanked a long narrow aisle. There was a Royal manual on a gray metal desk. “There should be paper in that drawer,” she said and left.

April looked around the partition, which was half wood and half a rippled plastic. There were two full-page newspaper ads taped to the wall. One was for a lawn mower: The workhorse you can guide with your pinkie! Adjusts to seven cutting heights. The other ad was for bathroom shelving: Hold everything! Behind the bathroom door!

She stared dully at the wide-planked dusty floor, feeling displaced. There was a perpetual buzz in the air like the noise they played to comfort assembly-line workers. She assumed each cubicle held a person like herself, their mind abuzz over some piece of merchandise.

She stared at the blouse. In the overall scheme of things, you could live out your life happily without a blouse, especially a blouse you had to tuck in. She had tucked nothing in for years. Three weeks before her marriage to Harald, unable to eat or drink, manic with her strange new body, she had worn a sweater tucked into her jeans for seven days.

During that week, she thought of little else but the sweater blousing delicately over her waistband, her stomach flat. The contours of her back, brave and optimistic, were finally visible. At the end of that week, she fell into a stunned, dreamless sleep for most of two days.

April took the shoe Missy had given her into her hand. It was the type of shoe worn by people who had lost interest in sex. It was square-heeled, perforated in front and tied sensibly up the instep. In desperation she wrote: CLUNK! CLUNK! CLUNK! For those secure enough to go in comfort.

She tiptoed to Missy’s empty office and placed her headline on the desk. Minutes later, Missed waved her in. “Why would you want to point out the deficiency?” she asked, as if April’s intentions were malevolent.

“It’s reverse chic, ha, ha. Whoever buys them wants to look clunky. They’re saying: ‘I’m wearing these on purpose,’” She hated her high-pitched, nervous voice. She hated what she had written.

“I don’t think so,” said Missy.

“What would you say?” April asked numbly.

Missy didn’t hesitate. “The shoe you need. The shoe you’ll wear most. The shoe that’s you…in your own words, of course.”

“Of course.” She returned to her cubby and within five minutes typed: If this shoe fits, wear it! Wear it walking, shopping, around the house.

Missy smiled approval and April felt giddy with relief. There was a formula to the ads. She could learn to do them in her sleep. It was a piece of cake to do the blouse ad: The blouse you’ve always wanted. Clingy, supple – so fickle, it goes with everything.

“What do you expect to get out of this job?” Missy asked soberly when April was seated primly across the desk.

A place to go. “Try my hand at something challenging and worthwhile,” she answered.

“We do our best for Burdie’s and take it seriously,” she warned.

“Absolutely.” It would have been more courageous to say nothing, the appropriate response to a thinly veiled accusation. But she was too overcome with gratitude.

She stopped in the ladies’ room, peed, and then sat there exhausted by the interview. With great effort, she roused herself, washed her sweaty hands and waited for a blast of hot air to dry them. Her eyes burned and she felt stiff and tired, as if she’d been driving on a hot, dusty road for a long time. She left the store and began the walk to the train station.

The streets looked war-torn. There were grave miscalculations everywhere, too many stores out of business. Yet several corners sported crisp white signs: We’re putting the New In Newark. It seemed too optimistic. She sighed, bought two slices of pizza from an unhealthy looking woman in a luncheonette and ate them walking along the street. Still, she was starved when she boarded the train. It was a train that had come from farther south and was littered with food wrappers and soda cans. In front of her was a poster: Four days, three nights in Grand Bahama complete – even a welcome rum swizzle – could cost as little as $199. Call American or your travel agent. She had four days and three nights before she began work at Burdie’s and a little sun would do her good.

On the way home, she stopped at a deli and bought a bag of Fritos and a quarter pound each of turkey breast, salami, and Swiss cheese. She added a box of croutons and a jar of Marie’s Blue Cheese Dressing. She would make a big chef’s salad when she got home. The thought of the salad made her feel cheerful and calm, but when she got home the head of lettuce was frozen and the leaves stiff and translucent. She had told the super that the refrigerator froze lettuce on the low setting. “Well, that’s as low as you can set it,” he replied. He looked as if he didn’t believe she ate lettuce.

She opened the cold-cut wrappers and began to roll the individual slices and put them in her mouth. Then she put the turkey breast and salami between two slices of Swiss cheese and ate it like a sandwich. In between bites, she popped a few croutons into her mouth. The croutons were fantastic, cheesy and crisp, a little oily, with a hint of oregano. She made herself a plate of croutons and the cold cuts and ate sitting on the sofa bed and staring at the opposite wall. The room was totally quiet. She felt safe and contented with her plate of food and tremendously relieved, as if she had climbed a cliff – the escarpments on the edge of the Sahara. How treacherous the business world could be. And how brave she had been to try. It could have all gone the other way and she could be sitting here no better off than before.

She made a resolve to rid herself of at least part of the weight as soon as she settled into some sort of routine. It would be pointless to start now when there would be all that stress ahead of her. Better to wait. She finished the box of croutons and the cold cuts and opened the bag of Fritos. They had a different taste from the croutons but were just as crispy and just as good.

When she finished eating she called American Airlines and told the clerk who answered that she wanted the four-day, three-night package to Grand Bahama beginning the next day and was told to pick up her ticket at the airline office in midtown. She had never done anything so spontaneous in her life but it seemed the perfect thing to do.

She arrived at Kennedy Airport two hours early, which turned out to be the only way to get a seat. The flight was hopelessly overbooked. After checking in she went to stand by the window to watch the planes taking off. She turned away and saw coming into the lounge a man whose looks and demeanor completely absorbed her. He had the kind of magic, carefree stride they catch for cigarette ads to take your mind off the seriousness of cancer. His hair and heavy tweed jacket trailed a few millimeters behind him, as if it were windy. There was a woman with him wearing a sweater that fell below her calves and a gypsy style scarf on her head, the kind that made real gypsies look alien but made her look powerful.

The man stood in line, glancing reassuringly at the woman from time to time. When his turn came, there seemed to be some problem. He argued earnestly for a few minutes, and then went to stand next to the woman. He rubbed the back of his neck as if deciding what to do. He cupped the woman’s chin in his hand and said, “Don’t worry.” Or at least that’s what it looked like he said. It could have been ‘I’m sorry’ or ‘You’re pretty.’

He looked around the lounge slowly as if trying to find someone he knew and then, inexplicably, he began to stare at April. There was no mistake; he was really looking at her. She regretted not wearing her raincoat, which had needed cleaning but was more appropriate than the green Melton tent that made her look large and matronly – the meat loaf queen in a bake-off. Her new sunglasses, that only turned dark in sunshine, gave her some protection to stare back at him without looking stupid.

He was coming toward her. Yes, it was her he wanted. She pushed back her shoulders and waited. His eyes were outstanding, inconsistent with the rest of his coloring. “Are you interested in selling your seat?” Momentarily, she thought he meant something lewd and didn’t respond. “They’re overbooked,” he said, “and my friend needs a seat.”

“Who’s your friend?” He needed something only she could give him. Who would have thought?

“She’s over there.” He pointed to the blonde on the other side of the lounge.

“I can’t sell my seat,” she said conversationally, as if she’d known him for a long time. “I really need this vacation.”

“Of course, you do but there are other flights and I would give you a bonus.”

“What kind of a bonus?”

“Money.”

“Oh…” she said thoughtfully, as if it were an unexpected answer, “money.” What had she thought the bonus would be? A kiss? A hug? A night on the town? “What good would money do? I need the sun as quickly as possible. I’m starting a new job. This may be the last time off I’ll have for a while, so I can’t take any chances.” He was becoming edgy. He had further canvassing to do but she wasn’t ready to have him leave her. “I took this trip on the spur of the moment. I’m not ordinarily a spontaneous person. People should do things once in a while that are against their nature, don’t you think?

He was writing on a piece of paper. “If you change your mind, page me,” he said.

“I’d be willing to go as high as five hundred.”

“What makes you think I’d change my mind?” She crumpled the paper and put it in the ash receptacle to show him what she thought of his idea.

“Nothing,” he said apologetically. “Nothing would make me think that. You’re a woman with a will of iron.” Then he smiled and walked away.

My god, he must have been crazy about the woman to spend all that money, practically the cost of the whole vacation. When everyone else was walking out to board the flight, she retrieved the paper with his name and smoothed it out. Luis O’Neill. She folded it carefully and put it in her wallet.

Throughout the flight, that both he and his girlfriend finally boarded, she stared at his neck and profile. He read US News & World Report, cover to cover, then dipped into his chocolate brown duffel for the Wall Street Journal – a serious businessman. They drank two bloody marys.

“I’m glad you made it,” she offered when they disembarked and she was close to him.

“Thanks.” He smiled again. He was so attractive it made her shy. “Have a good vacation.”

The sweetness and sincerity of his response was so unexpected it made her think of him as someone to love. She felt foolish, but there it was, a surge of feeling, an incorporation of him into her heart and mind.

She looked for him each of the four days. It was an island, how far could he go? She bought an orange and white batik beach wrap – an oblong cloth that tied over the breasts and fell to the ankles. You could be out of it in three seconds. At least two of those nights, she imagined that she would be out of it in three seconds for Luis O’Neill.

It was wonderful to have someone to love again even in such a circumscribed way. She had been so sure it wouldn’t happen to her again.

Chapter Fourteen

“This is what the American woman will be wearing on her feet this fall,” Martin Sedaris, the better shoe buyer, held up a beige wedgies to the circle gathered in the merchandise manager’s office for the Monday morning ad meeting. The shoe had a dark toe that dissolved into a lighter shade, as if it had been rescued from a fire. “Wedgies are the thing.” He looked meaningfully toward Erica, the copy chief and April’s immediate boss. Erica was tall and big-boned and had worked out a set of diminutive movements to minimize her size. She was not unattractive and April suspected that when naked, she was a knockout.

“That’s the fashion story?” Erica was incredulous. “Wedgies? That’s not news. There’s got to be something else.”

“There’s nothing else. It’s a nice-looking shoe,” Martin Sedaris folded his arms in front of him meekly.

“We can’t say, ‘Come and buy our nice-looking shoe,” Martin. What’s it made of? Is it leather? Is it comfortable? Maybe we can call it the eighteen-hour shoe, like the eighteen-hour bra.”

“At 17.95, you know it can’t be leather,” said Martin smugly. “It just looks like it.”

“Then that’s the story.” Erica wrote busily in her notebook. ‘The look and feel of leather at half the price,’ Okay, Martin, give me the shoe.”

April wrote busily in her notebook, too, lest she miss the one advertisable difference in each piece of merchandise. She thought about getting down the facts and also keeping her knees covered. Today, all the seats on the couch had been taken and she had been forced to take a wooden chair facing the merchandise manager, Alan Leeds. The seat was high. Her skirt didn’t quite cover her knees, which she considered the most embarrassing part of her body.