by Kit Reed
Danny laughs. “That’s nothing to me.”
“That’s what I’m afraid of,” she says to Dave. “Do you know how big fifty ounces is?”
“Chill, Betz.” Dave is the authority here. He is, after all, the driver. “We’re short on cash, so this is a deal.”
“I’m just warning—”
“Hey,” he says heedlessly, “what’s the worst that can happen? If we can’t finish, we’ll just pay.”
“—you.”
Too late. Both guys are already on the sidewalk.
Dave is all efficiency, but he has no idea what he’s in for here at the Bonanzarama: EAT ONE OF OUR STEAKS AND YOU EAT FREE.
He doesn’t know what Betz knows. Danny is in training. He is out to break the world record. It takes time and concentration to excel at Danny’s sport and with Annie gone, his concentration has been split. Break training for even one day and he’ll lose his edge. Everybody knows anxiety tightens up your throat and shrinks your gut. This is his chance to recoup. He’ll finish his fifty-ounce steak no problem. What Betz knows that Dave doesn’t know is that because Danny is in training, he will also finish theirs. He will be sweating and gasping by the end but he will sit there in Bonanzarama until he does it and he will do it no matter how hard they try to move him and no matter what it takes.
At the door to the restaurant Betz makes one last try. “Dave, one steak’s plenty for the three of us. I’ll pay!”
“Dog bags,” Dave says; clueless Dave. “They’ll last for days.”
Desperate, she grabs her brother’s arm. “Annie’s in trouble, Dan. We’ve gotta move fast.”
“Oh, I’m plenty fast!” Danny throws her the glorious smile of a true contender. “I’ll finish in no time, no problem.”
“Chill, Betzy,” Dave says, “worst-case scenario we pay the check and walk away.”
“You don’t know how much—”
Damn Danny for knowing exactly how to finish his twin sister’s sentences. “Time it will take? No problem. I’m working against the clock.”
“—Danny eats.”
Before she can stop him he gives the revolving door a spin and lunges inside.
And Dave, heedless Dave Berman pushes her in after him. As she leans into his hands: He’s touching me! he says gruffly, “Come on, Betzy, you’re wasting time.”
There are two facets to competitive training: honing endurance and expanding capacity, and search or no search, the Bonanzarama offer is Danny’s big chance to sharpen his edge. The clock is ticking. He qualified in the semis in Austin last month and he’s good to go for the gold. The finals are at Coney Island this July. Danny Abercrombie has never competed before, in fact at his age he’ll have to make the ’rents sign a waiver, but he expects to go all the way on his very first try. If Danny is as good as he thinks he is, if he can just keep his edge in spite of this side trip to rescue his sister, he’ll be lined up with all the other contenders up to and including the world champion on the competition platform at high noon on the big day. Formidable players, all of them, but they don’t have Danny’s guts! By the time July Fourth is over Danny Abercrombie will be the all-time world champion in any age, weight and class. Racing the clock and up against champions and runners-up from nations all over the globe—trust me!—he will have eaten more hot dogs with buns in one sitting than any other person in the entire civilized or uncivilized world.
4
Journal Entry, Sylphania, AZ, 200—
I am here to tell you, don’t believe everything you see in the ads, the Reverend Earl may be the last hope of the hopeless, but I’ve been here forever and he hasn’t shown me shit. Jeremy Devlin speaking, in case this journal makes it out and I don’t.
RIGHTEOUS REDUCTION, the signboards trumpet, neon streaking the skies, WEIGHT LOSS GUARANTEED.
God help me, I believed.
OK, I had reasons, I hate the way you look at me. I hate the way Nina looked at me the night we called it quits. I hated shopping at Big Men Outfitters and I hated paying for two seats every time I got on a plane. Me, J. M. Devlin, respected broker and person in his own right, damned for something I can’t help. You, with your knowing looks and ugly snickers, you rubbed my nose in it. The Reverend Earl promised salvation and I bit. You know how sometimes you decide to do a thing just because they tell you it’s going to be hard? Like hard is a religion. I sold everything and bought into Sylphania. Heaven in the Afterfat. Who knew it would be like this? Think maximum security. Think detox. Think results guaranteed.
Look at the slogan:
THINNER THAN THOU
Who wouldn’t buy in?
Success, the Reverend Earl preaches. Success through sacrifice. And all over the nation the middle-class faithful who can’t afford Sylphania build kitchen shrines to the gods of the Afterfat and fill their own little mite boxes to send in because the Reverend promises to stamp their initials into one of the bricks in the clubhouse which they are too poor and unfit and ungraceful ever to visit, let alone get close enough to look for their names.
You don’t want to be poor in this day and time. Not in this world.
Now, as for me. Financially, the clubhouse—and the Afterfat—are within reach. I can make it! I’m in the place. This is the time. “I am here to save you,” the Reverend Earl tells us nightly. Yeah, right.
Promises, promises backed up by the DVD they FedEx when you send in the application fee. Plus glossies of the Special Chosen Ones. The clubhouse. Heaven in the Afterfat. Make the down payment and the rest follows: the handbook, the T-shirt with the logo and the Reverend Earl’s special gift to us high rollers—the Morocco-bound, specially calligraphed and hand illuminated gold-leafed edition of the Afterfat Bible, complete with directions to the environs and a copy of the pledge. Let the common people atone in front of their TVs and mail order the Special Formula and hope. Only we movers and shakers make it to Sylphania, we who can afford the entrance fee.
By the time our bus nosed over the horizon and into the Hidden Valley I could hardly wait. The guy in the seat next to me was twanging like a tuning fork. He could hardly wait either, but what was his deal? “What’s with you?” I asked him. “You can’t weigh more than two fifty, um … Ah …”
“Nigel,” this Nigel said with a shiteating grin. Bulky guy, but with visible abs and pecs, unlike me. “I’m good, but the Reverend Earl is going to make me perfect. Perfect. You too,” he said. “It’s in your contract.”
My heart was high, riding into the territory. “Excellent!”
Some businessman. Why didn’t I know that in this day and time what you see is not necessarily what you get?
For instance, the Sylphania brochure. Buy a brick in the heavenly kingdom, the gold banner on the cover says. Earn your place in the Afterfat. There are foldout color pictures of the Reverend Earl’s great glass cathedral in the desert just here and the glittering clubhouse over there, a glorified oasis like a transparency laid over the arid Arizona desert map. Beautiful, sure, but look closer. I mean, don’t take it at face value, caveat emptor and all that, buyer take note. At first glance it’s gorgeous, but on opposing pages there are ghost images of each grand building stamped in red letters: YET TO BE BUILT.
Look what I was promised, see what I got. Plastic zipper bag with toothbrush and razor and trial sizes of toothpaste and deodorant, oh yeah, fine-tooth comb and hairbrush in the Sylphania colors stamped with the Sylphania logo in gold. Toxic puce coveralls so the locals can pick you right off if you try to escape; nobody walks free from this place until the Reverend Earl Sharpnack certifies them saved. Oh yeah, the fluffy beach towel, like this blasted, rock-littered wasteland was ever anything like a beach. Color-coordinated flip-flops, and that’s it.
And for this I am paying through the nose.
Welcome to Sylphania, the Reverend Earl’s high-ticket desert spa, his exclusive, high-end nirvana, the gilded Mecca of his global religious enterprise. Sure there are quickie spas and walk-in shrines in every strip mall but those are
only outposts for the hoi polloi. We who make it to Sylphania are special because we can afford to pay for what we want no matter how much it costs. I sold short to buy into the Reverend’s heavenly kingdom here, I paid through the nose to leapfrog the waiting list and what do I get? Rusty trailer at the perimeter, a few yards off the abandoned sweat lodge and dog years away from the unfinished clubhouse where the Reverend Earl and his special anointed chosen ripple their abs in the Jacuzzi or flex their pecs in the cloverleaf pool between takes. Yeah, takes, the Reverend Earl’s angels are the stars of the celestial infomercial. Guys and women like walking bronzes, every one of them chiseled to perfection and greased to a shine, sweet-bellied and taut and enviably buff.
Now, the special chosen ones get wraparound shades and gourmet tidbits, velvety robes with the Sylphania logo in gold for they are the stars, and me? My chances of scoring a walk-on in the 24/7 evangelical infomercial beamed into the global living room by satellite relay? Pretty much nil. I’m stuck here in my rusty trailer at the periphery until I lose all the weight and am declared saved.
Until then I am stranded in the desert with no money and no car. I can’t walk away because of the armed trusties and I can’t hitch to Tempe because local drivers burn rubber at the sight of a puce coverall. I can’t fly up to the clubhouse until I’ve lost the last fifty and I can’t call it quits and bail, because I signed the Sylphania contract including durable power of attorney and all that this implies, and yet—my secret: in spite of everything, I still believe. After all! One of the Five Stages, the Reverend Earl preaches in his nightly harangues, is despair.
“Rejoice,” he says, “rejoice in the dark phase you are undergoing. This is a Very Good Sign.
“It’s gotta get dark,” he preaches, “before it gets light.”
Promises. Hey, what if he’s right?
This is the genius of the Reverend Earl’s establishment. The pyramid of belief. Somewhere behind that picket fence is heaven—the clubhouse, the Afterfat—and we the converts are somewhere south of purgatory, because only the buff and perfect enter there. The clubhouse is just over yonder ridge, behind the fence in the green patch where the sprinklers whirl, and if I do everything he says and starve and work out and keep at it I may make it to gorgeous and if I can get even halfway to gorgeous I may make it to the top.
I started this journal because it’s gonna be a while. But I am not without my resources. I am, after all, a broker and a professional man. And like any hard-driving professional man, I have learned how to profit from any situation. If I tank here I can always do the exposé: interviews on all the network news shows, book deal with Talk Miramax, the works. Even the nightly strip searches won’t find this trusty PDA of mine, when I weighed in here the trusty who strip-searched me didn’t have a clue; when you are a man my size, no matter how much weight you lose, there are folds.
At our daily weigh-ins the Reverend gravely assesses me. Not worthy. Again. Unlike Nigel; he couldn’t sell me a used car in real life, but he is on the fast track here.
I stand there shivering. “I lost the weight.”
Icy, he is icy. “Some.”
“A lot.” It’s true. I was big when I got here, now I am thinner. Doesn’t he see? Apparently not. He frowns. I love him, I hate him, I want him to approve.
He pinches more than an inch. “There’s flab.” That glacial blue glare is killing me.
“I’m dying here.” This is the nature of the training. They starve you. You work out until you are exhausted and when you are at your lowest metabolic ebb, they preach, and over time it wears you down. It’s humiliating, pinching more than an inch. I am disgusting. I am ashamed. I will do anything to please him. The clubhouse and the Afterfat are so close. “I will do better.”
“Yes.” Ice crystals glitter in the air between us. “You will.”
Wait a minute, I think as he stalks away. What happened to the lovable reverend on TV, the one who shook my hand with a big welcome the day I signed? The smile vanished the day I walked in, and this is his genius. You will do anything to make him smile again.
He wheels and points a finger like an angry God. “Repent!”
“I’m trying.” Right, you are thinking, I, Jerry Devlin am a sinner. Well, listen. You think the Reverend Earl is warm and wonderful, but I have seen into his heart and I have news. The man is cold.
If you don’t believe me, all you sitting out there mesmerized by the heavenly infomercial, listen to me. On TV the Reverend Earl comes on all warm and loving, preaching from the crystal , cathedral on a perpetual loop. When he talks the talk the man is hot—hotter than Billy Graham and the Reverend Al Sharpton that you read about in your history books, to say nothing of the legendary Tony Robbins that you hear about in Top Forty songs. The Reverend Earl is the last great persuader, and this is how he works:
You’re safe at home in the dark when the Reverend Earl comes on to you, seductive and elevated all at once. Then, just when you’re feeling all uplifted and glorified, just when you mumble the Thirteen Steps along with him and therefore drop your guard, he sticks in the knife:
“Look at yourself,” he thunders, and you do, and you cringe.
He goes on, “You’re disgusting,” and you blush.
Then when he has you riven with shame and guilt Reverend Earl exhorts you, “You don’t have to be that way!” while a heavenly choir of lovely, emaciated angel girls hums backup and digital clouds skate across the sky behind the great glass arch; fix on those polar eyes and, zot, you are mesmerized. Hours later the Reverend Earl and his choir hit high C and no matter what time it is where you are the sun comes up via satellite relay beamed into every living room in the civilized world and trust me, your heart swells and you believe! Next comes the testimony of the converted, stories a lot like yours, even though the Reverend’s gaudy, ravishing converts look nothing like you. They step up to the mike like Ghosts of Christmas Future, I would do anything to be that thin.
They were never like me, you think, but they were. One by one the chosen testify. And look at the Before pictures: wow. Fatter than you!
If you’ve seen the Reverend Earl, you know the power. If you’ve heard, you understand. You are personally responsible for the way you look and until you figure out how to look perfect, you feel soiled.
It’s how he gets you.
It’s how he got me.
Like old-time religions, the system is built on guilt.
We’re not talking Sodom and Gomorrah here. We’re light-years away from all that. Sex is no longer the secret unspeakable forbidden, we’ve moved on. This is deeply personal and twice as intense.
The Reverend Earl has hit on the great weak spot in the fabric of contemporary life. It’s so big that it leaves the Seven Deadlies in the dust and us poor mortals writhing with delight and feeling all dirty and glad because this is our secret and we know it’s so terribly wrong, and it’s …
Think soft cheeses: baked Brie and triple crème dripping off your knife; think porterhouse steaks, so richly marbled that the fat streaks into your heart valves; think chocolate in any form.
Food is the forbidden fruit.
And eating? The primrose path to hell. It’s the ultimate seduction, the guilty secret you keep—that box of Godivas you sneaked before sex, the ice cream after and none for her—the joy of scarfing Whoppers on the sly, secretly larding your veins because it’s bad, and being bad makes you squirm with joy. Overeating is the last guilty pleasure and the hell of it is, other people get away with it because they check into clinics or work out or do drugs to burn it off or they scarf and barf and nobody knows.
So eating is the primrose path to hell, and the last big sin? You know as well as I do that the orgies I am talking about are the last jump on the diving board before the plunge into perdition. The next-to-last step.
Surprise, the last big sin isn’t overeating.
It’s getting fat.
I can see it in your eyes. I hear you going, eeewww. I see you leering, like
I’m an escaped Jumbo Jiggler, a walking piece of chubby porn that you are panting to touch. You’re excited to look, you’re ashamed to look. Staring, you squirm with guilty superiority: Oh man, I am never going to get like that. You want to touch but you’re afraid to touch; you’d like to poke that finger into my soft belly and see how far in it goes because I am the physical expression of your own secret, cherished vice. What would it be like? you wonder. What would it really be like? What if I let myself go?
Admit it. You are excited and revolted, squirming with excitement but shrinking as I pass, like I am overflowing into your personal space, and the only difference between us? Body weight.
Shrink says I’m overcompensating. Mom says I was born big-boned. I blame thyroid. Those pesky brown cells.
OK, it was the food: sausage grinders and pizza at midnight, the BLT with extra bacon—undercooked, all creamy with fat; ice creamy sundaes at 4 a.m., Ben & Jerry’s Everything But, with hot fudge sauce and white chocolate plus pork rinds crumbled on top to cut the sweet; slouch into the megaplex and buy out the candy counter, add two buckets of popcorn and gobble it all in the dark, and this is exclusive of my daytime three squares. See, foodaholics are not so different from those losers confessing over coffee at earnest, dismal meetings of AA: think secret debauchery, empties in the bedclothes, brandy flasks cached behind potted plants.
Addicts are all the same, but with us, there is a difference. Alcoholics can quit drinking cold turkey, any time they call the shot. Druggies can detox and drinkers can never touch another drop, but foodaholics? Nobody lives without eating. We face the devil three times a day. Eat or die, and you never know if the next bite you take is the one that will put you on the skids.
And we know ways of eating a thing that leave no trace.
When you’re addicted, nobody sees you binge. At mealtimes I was a model of restraint. Seconds only, and only when pressed. Sweet’n Low, no milk. Even Mother wondered; OK, I lied. The rest, I sneaked, in the dark hours when nobody sees you gorging and nobody hears you belch; after—ahem, Afterwards, slip out of bed and tiptoe downstairs after she goes to sleep, if she wakes up she will reproach you. Wasn’t I enough? OK I have not gone without women. Amazing what turns some people on. Girls came into my life and then they went; it was a mutual conclusion arrived at over time. I had my needs. No woman could compete.
