“Your life ain’t over, sugar. Anyway, I’ll buy you a steak when you’re back.”
“Well, maybe some sole.”
“Why, did you sell yours?”
“No, I didn’t go that far…. Well, I’ll miss you, Texan.”
“Damn right you will. Take care, kid.”
“Yeah.” I cradle the phone in my lap before hanging up.
As the plane takes off from JFK, I listen to my scolding conscience lash out like a genie that escaped from the bottle. What the hell have you done? How could I have been deaf to it? Why am I all dolled up in shoes I can hardly walk in, wearing a dress that barely fits my butt, and underwear that has its own way and needs a good slap? Two weeks later I’ll be back, hit with bills for a second wardrobe that I’ll outgrow before I have time to save up and pay for it.
What do I hope will happen anyway? Is Mr. Movie Star going to fall deeply in love with me? Is the divine Miss Maggie O’Leary going to open his eyes to the fact that chubby broads can be as sexy as skinny ones? More likely I’m going to bat my Lancôme-sheathed lashes at the hunk and appear a pathetically sorry sight. A sinking fear begins to spread through my gut.
I have a respectable job back home, a column to write, readers who need me, believe in me, and here I am in LaLa land, deluded by fantasies from a grade B movie. What a stupendously stupid move.
Why didn’t it occur to me to just e-mail him a contact in L.A. and be done with it? Was my life so bereft that I had to embark on this makeover charade? I‘ve never really felt my age, didn’t think I looked it, but playing the role of a groupie? The stage door matron, more likely, waving a play-bill in the face of a departing actor. It’s clear that I’m spiritually bankrupt, clueless about fulfillment and psychic rewards. What in the world am I searching for?
What I should have done was book a room at a spiritual retreat, or gone trekking in Nepal. Make a spiritual connection to the universe, not DreamWorks.
He called and I flipped, slimming down to a weight that in a million years I’ll never maintain. One hour of abandonment—a plate of ribs or fried chicken (with garlic mashed potatoes, please)—and I’ll unravel, pig out and slap it back on. Was there a parachute?
To calm myself, I breathe in, count to ten, and then blow it out. It’s too late for regrets. For the next two weeks, chin up, shoulders back, tummy tucked in. I am CONFIDENT, SELF-ASSURED, EASY, BREEZY, THIN AND GORGEOUS. I repeat the words as if I’m parroting a self-improvement tape. If you assume a role for long enough, you eventually become that person. Someone said that, anyway, inane as it sounds. If that were the case, I would now be Kate Moss.
I pull a magnifying mirror out of my makeup bag and stare hard into it. I put on a light layer of lipstick, blot it, then dust my face with powder. I examine my teeth, and regret neglecting to bond my two front teeth. The hint of uneven color…. I begin combing my hair, then stop and pull the mirror closer, noticing for the first time what I think is a gray hair in the line of my part. Already? And not there at the beginning of the flight. Where was I going, back into the future? I search through my bag frantically and extract the tweezers. Narrowing my eyes, I trap the wiry rogue between the sharp tips and pull.
Then to distract myself, I open my laptop and begin writing:
When Food Becomes Ammo and You’re Pointing the Gun At Your Own Head
Savor your food, inhale the aroma, feast on the flavor, enjoy and nourish. But leave the table content and thankful for the offering. Don’t use food to punish yourself. Easier said than done? Undoubtedly, but to help, I offer just a few tips that I’ve stolen from others:
Brush your teeth after every meal. That means you’re finished. Don’t go back. Want something to do with your hands? Knit. Sew. Black out winning numbers on your lottery tickets. Want to keep your mouth busy? Keep a thermos of hot tea within reach.
Remember white space. On the printed page that means a rest for the weary eye. On your dinner plate it means smaller portions or islands of food. Think St. Kitts and Nevis, not Australia.
Where do you put leftovers? Not near the TV. Not on your night table. Not on your kitchen table. In the freezer—where it’s too cold and hard to enjoy any more today….
I close the laptop when the attendant comes around to serve lunch. “Hamburger or fishwich,” she asks.
“Fishwich?” my seatmate says. “Who’s catering the food these days, McDonald’s?”
“It would be an improvement.”
The flight attendant turns to the woman, a cherubic blonde in her early thirties who fills out her pleated skirt.
“I’ll have both,” she says, laughing.
My kind of girl.
“No, just kidding. I’ll have the fish too.” She turns to me. “Perpetually dieting.”
“It’s the American way. You traveling on business?”
“I’m going home to see my parents.” She stares off for a moment, her eyes vacant. “I left my husband.”
I barely nod. Should I say I’m sorry? Maybe he was a bastard and she was doing the right thing. Unfair to assume it was him, but wasn’t it usually?
“It must be hard.”
“Not as hard as staying.” She brushes a lock of hair off her face and shrugs. “The cheerleader grew up and let herself go.” She pats her hips. “So I was replaced with a better-looking clone.” She stares at the fingers of her left hand, studying the one that now has no wedding band encircling it.
“Maybe eating was your escape route out of the marriage,” I suggest.
“Yeah, sometimes I think I should thank Ben & Jerry’s.” She starts to laugh, but the laugh gets stifled in her throat and escapes as a pained cry. She turns her head and looks out the window. The plane dips, as though the gods are admonishing her, and her salad tilts into her lap.
“Damn, now I’m a mess,” she says, brushing furiously at her skirt.
I wet a napkin with club soda and help blot up the stain. “No, you’re not,” I say, touching her arm. “It’ll be just fine. You’ll see.”
As we approach L.A. I stop writing to prepare for landing, and turn off the laptop so that the pilot doesn’t lose contact with the control tower and mistakenly land in Libya. My seatmate is asleep now, and I can’t help looking over at her now and wondering how her life will turn out. Maybe something or someone will come along, and like me, she’ll do everything in her power to become the best of herself. Or maybe she won’t. Maybe she’ll give up, or just do nothing and go on for the rest of her life reexamining the past and being ruled by it, convinced that somehow she’s failed and that she’s now powerless to change that.
Out of the window, I see the unwelcome cloud of smog that hangs over the city like the exhalation of a wrathful automotive deity. I’ve never noticed the same dirty schmatte of smog over New York.
As the plane circles lower, I search for the legendary homes, and notice the tiny squares of turquoise swimming pools that dot the landscape like shimmering mosaic tiles. What would Taylor’s house look like, the Getty Center?
Finally, the plane bumps down, and I feel like applauding. I can’t help it. Sure plane travel is the safest way to go and all that—assuming no one from over there takes over the cockpit, but what a relief to hit terra firma. After all the work I’ve done, I’m sure as hell not about to be vaporized in a goddamn 747.
I pull down my ballistic nylon bag from the overhead storage bin and edge my way toward the front of the plane. Not a particularly challenging walk ordinarily, but in this case the forty-pound bag doesn’t help me balance in four-inch high heels no thicker than #2 pencils, particularly when they have been off my feet for the entire flight, and my little piggies have expanded, inexplicably, and wee wee wee, I want to run all the way home and come back with my fat, wide, thick-as-a-mattress, unsightly Nike cross-trainers.
The L.A. sunshine embraces me like a lover’s arms, hot, encompassing. Gray New York is now worlds behind. Nonexistent. Irrelevant really. My dour New York demeanor that I’ve long blamed on sun deprivation is a
thing of the past. I can almost feel my vitamin D level rebound. INSANE, but HERE I AM. I feel like singing in a loud Ethel Merman voice.
I walk toward the exit, unconsciously going slower and slower, about to step off the gangplank. A few more feet… He’s out there, somewhere. I walk closer and closer, remembering the child’s game of hide-and-seek. You’re getting warm, warmer, hot, HOTTER, HOTTEST, ROASTING!
A bloodred Ferrari Testarosa heads the line of waiting cars. I put my bag down, searching. I want to see him before he sees me. Sneak preview. I want to study him. I search the parking lot, and then, there he is, and I just stare.
The arms first. Tanned, strong, folded over the black vinyl roof of the Porsche. Then I stare at his body, which is muscular beneath a snug black T-shirt. Dark sunglasses, and a pulled-down red baseball cap that shadows the face. An insignia on the cap, but too far away to make it out. He stands out as if in bold relief, three-dimensional among a flat, blurred backdrop of moving cars, towering palm trees and passengers coming and going, like a movie clip that is played and replayed to make some existential point about rootlessness.
Involuntarily, I smooth my hair, pushing it back away from my face. I reach behind me and tug slightly at the black spandex dress to reverse its upward crawl. I step toward him and smile. At that moment, I feel blessed. Hundreds of thousands of women around the world would trade places with me right now. That’s a situation that I’ve never ever been in before and that I’ll probably never be in again, so I hold that thought. Bask in it.
He seems to look in my direction, but he doesn’t move. No sign of recognition. I wave, but he hesitates. Then he quickly moves toward me, realizing that no, it’s probably not a fan after all.
“Maggie?” he calls, a questioning look on his face. “O’Leary? Maggie O’Leary?”
“C’est moi.”
“Oh, hey, I’m sorry, I didn’t know for sure… I…” He doesn’t finish the sentence for a minute. He’s tongue-tied. Irresistible. He pushes his sunglasses down and looks over them. Who taught him that? The eyes. I feel a rush, as though I’m watching him strip.
“I thought you looked different,” he tries, holding himself in check so he doesn’t stumble over his explanation. He’s self-conscious, almost embarrassed. I smile, looking down to stifle a laugh. I’m not helping him out of this one.
“Well, hey, it’s great to have you here. Let me toss your bag in the trunk, and we’ll take off pronto.” I open the door and slide back into the soft black bucket seat, canvassing the car like a detective to find out whatever I can about him. An open wallet tossed into the leather compartment between the two seats, loose change, matches, folded slips of pink paper, the scent of cowhide, a faint whiff of smoke. No breath spray, thank God, or Tic Tacs. He slides in on his side, and slams the door. I’m now a part of his intimate world, and for the length of the ride, it will be just the two of us, just inches apart. He looks over, smiling awkwardly.
“Welcome,” he says, pecking my cheek. “Welcome to L.A.” I reach over and tug lightly on the visor of his cap.
“Thanks, Taylor,” I say, suddenly overcome with an unnerving calmness. “It’s super to be here.”
ten
The speedometer needle quivers at around 90, and the world seems to be fast-forwarding past my window. Taylor leans back, at ease, his right hand loosely guiding the wheel. I steal a glance at his profile as he chats, hoping to find some angle, some wrinkle, a fat pad maybe, an ice pick scar, an incipient boil, something that I can seize upon to make me feel that “AHA! See! Even he really isn’t that perfect in person after all.” But, of course, there’s nothing, not even an ingrown hair. Smooth tanned skin, a powerful neck, the perfectly sculpted jawline. A furtive glance at the way his faded jeans outline his muscular legs, the length of them, the worn black leather belt with the steel buckle, the swell of his zipper. Looking at Mike Taylor, it occurs to me that God has really put himself out. Gone that extra mile.
I study his features. The eyes dominate his face. Honey-brown, fringed with thick lashes. If he were female, he would have secured a lifetime contract with Maybelline. Okay, his nose is just a mite too small—but all to the benefit of the eyes. Lips that are born to smile, that curl easily into a 1000-megawatt glow showing white teeth with just the barest hint of crookedness. Comfortable with himself, easy.
If he senses that I’m studying him, he doesn’t let on. Used to that. He probably feels naked without eyes on him. We chat about the flight, how many years I’ve been doing the column, school—“NYU? Really? One of my directors taught at the film school”—and occasionally, he glances over at me offering that small, confident grin that my body registers in every molecule like a mini-Richter scale. He tells me how much he likes New York, and how sorry he is that he doesn’t get there more often. I admire the car, and am about to change the conversation when he swerves off the road abruptly.
“Here, take over.”
“I…I don’t know how to drive a stick—” I’m stuttering now. That’s cool.
“Come on, I’ll teach you, it’s easy.”
“Now?”
“Now.” He jumps out and walks around the front of the car to my side.
“Slide over, go ahead, it’ll be fun.”
Oh no. Well, at least I can now maneuver myself over the stick shift without becoming impaled on it and land—thump—in the driver’s seat. Eight weeks ago, all of me would definitely not have made it. That accomplishment alone justified two months in the gulag of self-denial. The leather feels warm from his body. Can I learn to drive, feeling like this?
“Look,” Taylor says, jumping into the passenger seat and putting my hand over the smooth rounded head of the vibrating gearshift and covering it with his. It feels like…like… Oh God! My face is flushed. Is he thinking what I’m thinking? Our hands slide together—left then right. Up and down. In… YES, YES.
“Neutral, okay? Now think of the shape of an H.” He moves it left and then up. “This is first, down to second, up, across and up here to third and then down to fourth. To go in reverse, you push it down across and back. Just remember to press down on the clutch when you shift, and ease your foot off the gas at the same time.” He looks deep into my eyes.
“You got it?”
No, I don’t think so, let’s do it again. Damn, the telltale blush.
“You sure you trust me with this baby?”
He sees it and smiles seductively. “It’s only a car.”
“Tighten your seat belt,” I say, doing my most polished imitation of Bette Davis. “It’s going to be a bumpy ride.” The car stalls at several points, and then lurches painfully at other junctures as I shift gears. We come to a fork in the road. As Yogi Berra said, “If you come to a fork in the road, take it.”
“Right,” Taylor says tolerantly. “Up that hill.”
I turn to him and pat his hand. “You okay?”
He buries his head down under his shirt. “Who, me?” But he’s smiling. I reach a set of gates and he grabs the remote and punches in a code. The gate opens. Then I drive up a long winding driveway to a second set of gates. I nearly stop short when I reach the front door of a contemporary glass mansion.
“Not bad for a starter house,” I say, trying to sound blasé.
He smiles. “Three years ago, I couldn’t have afforded the pool house. But that’s what happens around here. Make-believe city.”
I pull up to a garage filled with L.A. status symbols—motorcycles, a Jaguar XKE, a vintage Thunderbird, a Range Rover, even a formula-something-or-other racing car. He smiles and gestures around. “My toys.”
“You better pull it in. I don’t have enough collision insurance.”
“You can leave it right there. I’ll show you around after you’re settled in.” He springs out of the car and grabs my bag heading toward the front door. A moment after he opens it, I catch my own reflection flung back at me in the cold blue orbs of the skimpily clad Jolie Bonjour. She’s dolled up in a black lace tank top
and white cutoffs that are so cut off that they reveal the rounded bottom of her doll-size rear end.
“Jolie—Maggie,” Mike says.
“Alo,” she says with about as much enthusiasm as she would show to a tax auditor.
“She, ah, lives with me,” Taylor says.
“Great to meet you,” I say, graciously extending my hand, although I really felt like exhaling hard to see if I can blow her away, maybe all the way back to France. Introductions out of the way, he seems to forget Jolie.
“I’m sure you’ll be really comfortable here,” he says, his voice trailing off as he climbs the staircase, two steps at a time. I start to follow him.
With Taylor out of earshot, Jolie turns to me. “I thought you were a fat columnist.”
That stops me. I turn around. Some Gaul. “I guess it’s a matter of interpretation.”
Jolie remains at the bottom of the staircase, glaring up.
Architectural Digest failed to do justice to the place. Aside from ten sun-flooded bedrooms—if I counted right—and an expansive living room, there is a library, a screening room, Taylor’s office, his secretary’s office, a gym bigger than the newsroom at the paper, and a kitchen with an island just smaller than Manhattan. The cabinets hold a kitchen computer stocked with international recipes, a TV, DVD player and sound system. I have lost count of the phones. There is a pool, two tennis courts and a handball court. Why no polo field or Alpine ski run? Why would anyone ever leave this Xanadu?
Wherever I walk, I see tiny red flashing lights. Security is Pentagon tight. “A royal pain,” as Taylor puts it, but a necessary evil. I watch him sprawled out on the bed in what will be my room, marveling at his…at my good fortune, as he elaborates.
“I came home one night and found a dizzy blonde who had climbed through a window. I tried to talk her out the door with an autographed picture, but she pulled a knife and said she’d kill both of us if I didn’t marry her.” He shakes his head in disbelief. “I thought it was just a fluke until about a week later. Another nutcase showed up, this time sitting out by the pool naked. She was waiting for me to make it with her. Said it was the right time of the month, that she had taken her temperature.”
Fat Chance Page 9
