by Kit Reed
“Where are they now?
“Everybody’s gotta sleep sometime,” Kelly says. “Anyway, the thing breaks down and since they think I’m hors de combat, that’s planted like a rock to you, they go off to the supply bay for a replacement lift and ergo, voilà, magically I am alone. For the first time since the parents sold me down the river cuz I don’t fit their personal design concept for us as a family, I am alone. So I wait and wait until I can’t hear them any more and then I get down and spend a little time scoping the place and wuowww, this is sooooo cool!”
Excited, she gets up too quickly and the bed shudders into motion like a seesaw when one person jumps off. Annie yips, “Kel!”
She sits down before Annie’s end hits the floor with a thump. “So that’s what I came to tell you.”
“What?”
“I found a way out of this place.”
12
Journal Entry, Sylphania, AZ
Don’t pretend you know me when you have no idea who you’re dealing with. All you see is the shell. And don’t for God’s sake imagine you are better than me, you out there tapping your flat belly and sneering at me because Jeremy Devlin, your broker, doesn’t fit the national template, like it’s something evil I did instead of who I am.
I know who you are and I know where you’re coming from. I see you glide by those bakery windows with that furtive, sideways glance. I’ve watched you choking back the drool. You want what I have. Wrong, you want what I used to have. You want the freedom to eat and eat and never look back, so what’s keeping you?
Me. I am your walking object lesson.
Well, I am paying for it now.
The Reverend Earl isn’t kidding when he advertises: Results guaranteed.
Truth in Advertising? Shit no, it’s a trap. Sign in and they put you out in the wilderness—a metaphor, I guess. Then there is the fence. Squads of security people. Trusties in orange coveralls seeing to it that nobody escapes. No cell phones—you might call Domino’s. No Internet because you might order in See’s candy or the Dean & DeLuca mozzarella box, the only reason they haven’t found my PDA is because I haven’t tried to connect. But compared to the unspoken system of appropriate punishment, that’s kid stuff.
The extent of the Reverend Earl’s security system is nowhere stated and still not clear. I don’t know where it’s written or whether it’s even written, but the Reverend Earl’s establishment is run according to a strict code. The problem is you’re supposed to know without having to be told. We’re on a need-to-know basis here, and all I know is this. Nobody transgresses and gets away with it and nobody makes it into the secret parts of the compound and survives.
Cases in point. The Rev’s trusties nabbed a runaway the first week I was here. They marched in like avenging angels in their orange coveralls, dragging the guy along sobbing at the end of a rope. The Reverend Earl dusted him off and laid it out for us: transgression in the third degree. For transgressions in the third degree you get booted off the place. His trailer is empty now; he’s been wiped off the face of Sylphania, but nobody saw him go, And this is the terrible thing. It was wrong of me, it was strange and savage but when they marched him into the courtyard something inside me leaped with joy: Yeah, right, I thought, laughing, because I was so glad it wasn’t me. And at the end that was me yelling along with the rest of them as the Reverend Earl read him the riot act and the trusties ripped off the puce coverall and drummed him out. I, Jerry Devlin, was yelling right along with the rest of them: “Let that be a lesson to you.”
Then two acolytes caught the Jellicoe twins pilfering the clubhouse kitchen. They dragged them back to the men’s compound and kicked the shit out of them, but first they called us out in the middle of the night to watch. Then they put the Jellicoe brothers in the stocks and we had to file past and deliver our reproaches. After that we fell in and listened soberly while the acolytes hammered out the charges and the culprits confessed. After which, of course, they were stripped of their coveralls and drummed out. This is called the public shaming, and it’s for transgressions in the second degree. And for transgressions in the first degree? Not clear.
For the guy who scarfed a friend’s Fourth of July celebration granola bar, there was the ritual shunning. Transgression, I suppose, in the fourth degree, unless it was the fourth degree once removed; nobody’s speaking to him, but at least the guy’s still around.
Last week we learned the hardest lesson of all. At Sylphania the great unspoken tenet is: never mix and match.
See, the Reverend caught one of his precious special chosen sneaking food to the women in exchange for favors, and made him pay the price. He was marched up the mountain and stripped naked and tied to a rock while the buzzards circled and down at the mess hall we stopped eating dinner to watch it on a remote feed because the Reverend Earl provides closed-circuit television here. I should have been shocked and horrified, but in these matters you develop a threshold. A month ago I would have been storming the clubhouse and screaming for justice but discipline reduces you.
There I was in the mess hall, banging my tin cup on the table right along with the others, shouting, “Serves you right!”
So I’m definitely with the program. I guess.
Then why do I feel so trapped? And why am I hungry all the time? The Sylphania brochure claims the less you eat the more your stomach shrinks, but that could be another lie. I’m hungry all the time. I wake up with the hunger and I walk away from the mess hall with the hunger and in spite of double slugs of the Reverend Earl’s special herbal formula that’s supposed to fix all that, I lie down with the hunger every night. Sure the fat’s coming off, as advertised, but this is the puzzle and the mystery. The more I lose, the hunger I get.
Later
If the Reverend Earl is pushing us up the ladder to salvation in the Afterfat, I just moved up a notch. After weeks in the wilderness with the other guys, no women in sight and none in prospect, the Reverend Earl pronounced me thin enough to work in mixed company. His lip curled when he reassigned me, like I was still beneath contempt, but he reassigned me, maybe the 10K gift to the Clubhouse Expansion Fund had something to do with it. No more processing shed for me. I’ve flown up to the air-conditioned packaging plant. A handful of us lucky guys get to work the assembly line along with the experienced packagers from the women’s compound, the ones who, like us, have started losing the weight. We are lined up at the long tables in double rows, packaging the Reverend’s patented herbal formula for shipment to high-end shops worldwide.
So we are back to Truth in Advertising. I am working with the women, but they aren’t as pretty as you think. They are nothing like the buff, carefully oiled babes you see in living color on the Reverend Earl’s Hour of Power. The Reverend Earl only shows you the winners: the Special Chosen beauties like Maritza and Britney and Eve, and the Earlettes, his sexy choir and the ranks of sleek, nameless girls in bikinis who sing backup, but I have to stop and ask you, do you care? Like, do you really turn on your television to check out the Sylphania successes?
I don’t think so.
If the Reverend Earl has secrets, this is one. He secretly knows what you really want.
You tell the wife you’re tuning in for inspiration, but I know. You’re waiting for the stills. You sit through hours of preaching and singing, but you’re really waiting for the good part. It takes longer than you want but eventually the preaching ends and they come to it: the testimonials. Complete with stills. This is it, guys—the Before pictures, those huge, humiliated women with pink, wobbling arms and massive rosy thighs, blushing for the camera in bathing suits stretched so tight that the edges sink into the folds of flesh—and how do I know? I have watched you guys watching me for a long, long time, customers and strangers and women I thought I wanted to date. Oh yes, I have observed your habits and I have studied your ways for so long that I’ve learned the truth about you. I know your dirty secret.
You are hooked on chubby porn. Admit it, you get off on Food Cha
nnel excesses too, drooling over bare naked Bananas Foster and Nipples of Venus and Christmas pudding bombes. Girls come easy for you but fat women are a forbidden pleasure, like the desserts you lust after and can not have.
You would go bananas here.
OK, the women I work with in the plant are walking Before pictures, every one of them! Girls that you can see even going by at a dead run are never going to make it to the Afterfat shuffle around the plant in pink coveralls that hang off them in folds, like the skin off my shrinking belly. Some of them are pretty but I hardly look. When you’re starving, you have bigger things on your mind.
Truth in Advertising? It all depends on where you’re standing when you read the ads.
What’s advertising but empty promises? I am here to tell you that the Reverend Earl is stringing you along on promises that he will never keep. I bought in to Sylphania, sure, I am totally with the program, but a deep, suspicious part of me begins to think it’s all surface, but surface covering … what? I need to sit down for a long time in some place with no work and no sermons and no motivational speeches before I can figure it out but in spite of misgivings I am still with the program here at Sylphania, who wouldn’t want to get thin and buff and beautiful enough to fly up? The trouble with the program is that it is a program. When you’re with any kind of program, you don’t get time to think.
OK, the plant. It’s hot and noisy in here, and my job is to slap labels on the herb packets as they come down the assembly line. The price tag makes me blink. It isn’t exactly a scam, but what the Reverend Earl is advertising is not what his customers get. You suckers haunting the health boutiques in big cities and out there in the boonies are forking over a bundle to buy stuff that I happen to know is second-rate. Take it from me, the formula the Reverend ships is nowhere near as concentrated as the formula they dish out to us here in Sylphania. I sneaked a little and the rush I got was nothing like the kick I get with every dose the trusties make me take.
So there’s another failure in Truth in Advertising, which I’m beginning to think is the least of it. The problem, I mean. Sometimes guys disappear from the men’s compound with no advance warning. Once I woke up before dawn in spite of the sedation and when the sun came up I was standing on the doorsill of my trailer, looking out. There was this line of black figures on the horizon like a design on the edge of a plate. It was a little procession crossing the desert at a great distance: people I could not identify going along on foot. They were being herded——herded?—by a pair of Sylphania Jeeps.
I mentioned this to Nigel Peters, who’s graduated to a yellow coverall and has been put in charge of the plant. He said, “Chill, Devlin, what do you care how we do things here, as long as we get results?”
“When did you get to be we?”
Fucking Nigel grinned like a smug third-grader. “That’s for me to know and you to find out.”
“Is that Truth in Advertising?”
“Just be grateful at Sylphania you get what you pay for.”
“Like?”
“Top-grade formula, for one, instead of that crap we sell to the public.”
“That’s another thing!”
“Shut up.” He handed me a glassine envelope. “Take this with the Rev’s compliments. It’s a distillation. Wait till you’re alone and rub a little on your gums.”
It took me two days to come down off the rush. But Nigel as much as acknowledged that the Reverend Earl is stiffing you, the public. How can I be sure he isn’t stiffing me?
I am here to tell you nothing is what you think.
Journal Entry, Tuesday
When I punched in today a woman I almost recognized rushed in to slide her card before the whistle blew and accidentally bumped into me. She let out a sweet little Ooof and turned away before I saw her face. I thought she looked familiar but we are all so altered by Spartan desert life that I couldn’t tell. I called after her, “Sorry,” but I guess she didn’t hear. We collided, ricocheted and peeled off to take our places in the line. I looked up later to see which one she was and I could swear I saw one of the packet-sealers sneaking a look at me from behind her boiling mass of red hair …
Journal Entry, Some Monday
This morning I found a Hershey’s kiss taped to one of the packets slithering toward me on the conveyer belt. I looked up. Who called? At the head of the line, where girl converts line up to heat-seal the packets and throw them back on the belt, a great big redhead—looks familiar, so much has happened, is that who I think? Does she know me? Do I know her? Would we recognize each other even if we do?—a great big redhead caught my eye. Whoever she used to be, I guess she likes me; as I looked over, she lifted her head and smiled.
Journal Entry, Thursday,
It’s all changed.
She came to me in the night. Something huge nudged the outside of my trailer and the earth shook. When she leaned against the side of my rusting Airstream, it rocked. This rocked. Out there on my doorstep, there was a force to be reckoned with. Something tremendous had come to me in the dark. My world turned over, at least I think it did; I may have been asleep. I woke up drooling with excitement. I stuck my head out. “Who’s there?”
A big, soft shadow stood in my doorway. “Me.”
It was too dark to see. She had a beautiful voice. “What do you want?”
“Same thing as you.” Her voice was deep, rich and smooth as melted butterscotch.
“You mean …”
“I have what you want.”
“You really have …”
“Yes.”
“Where did you get it?”
“Believe me, you don’t want to know. Let me in and I’ll show you.”
I was faint from excitement and shaking all over. Anticipation made me stupid. It’s been so long! I swallowed hard. “You will?”
“Didn’t I just say so?” She had a rich laugh too. “Now, are you going to let me in?”
“I can’t, it isn’t safe.”
“Relax,” she said, “This is Sylphania. Nothing’s safe.”
“And you’re taking this risk because …”
Her voice softened. “Because of you.”
My heart tilted. “Why me?”
“I know you from the shop,” she said. “You have a nice face.”
“Who are you?” There was always the possibility that this was a trap.
“You know,” she said. “The Hershey’s kiss?”
“The Hershey’s kiss.” I could still taste it. “You have red hair.”
“So now you know who I am.”
“I do.”
“Are you going to let me in?”
I thought about the situation: my exposed position in the trailer, the Reverend’s acolytes patrolling, the degrees of transgression. Trusties like Nigel on guard, collecting points so they can fly up the food chain and join the choir. “I don’t know.”
“Don’t you want it?”
“Of course I want it,” I said, so low that only she could hear. “But we can’t do this here.”
“Then, where?” Her voice flowed like cream in the darkness. I don’t know what had happened to the moon. “Hurry, love, I can’t wait much longer.”
She called me love! My heart tipped over and everything ran out. “Neither can I.”
“What are we going to do?”
“I know a place.” I came outside and quietly shut the door on my trailer and weeks of loneliness and heart-starved misery. She had rocked my trailer and shaken me to the foundations and now I was like a hermit crab turned out of its shell. We were two big shadows out here in the dark. My mouth flooded with anticipation. I swallowed hard. “Come with me.”
It was pretty much fated. We moved as one. The big redhead’s shadow joined mine like a partner in infidelity, which is what she was. She was carrying a cooler with the lid cracked; an intoxicating smell rose from the little bin; I almost died of it. I whispered, “This isn’t safe.”
“That’s part of it.”
Of course it is. I had to say, “We’re not supposed to …”
“I know,” she said. She said, “It will be wonderful.”
“I know.” Together, we crept across the midnight desert and into the abandoned sweat lodge, which was a fabled feature of Sylphania, the early years. When this thing got started the Reverend Earl was famous for his smoky, macho rants to overweight, sweating sardines, but he had to give them up after some convert overheated and died and the family sued and almost won. The sweat lodge is a relic now, too disgusting to have around but too sacred to tear down. The entrance was boarded up so we cut a slit in the creaking buffalo hides that covered the bentwood frame. The ghosts of a thousand sufferers whooshed out. My sweetheart’s breath came out in a little rush. I could feel it like perfume on my face. “Now?”
She was trembling with anticipation. I felt her dancing in place, the friction of coverall against coverall with intimations of the flesh beneath. I was on fire. I repeated, “This is the place, but it isn’t safe.”
“I don’t care.”
I considered. “Neither do I.”
We were both shaking. She murmured, “Now?”
“Not yet. Wait here.” I circled the sweat lodge, looking for hidden entrances, for alarms and pitfalls, anything that would betray our presence here because exposed like this, sneaking around in the night in the Reverend’s tightly organized kingdom, we were in imminent danger of discovery. I was scared of getting caught but even more afraid of being stopped. I would die if anything happened to interrupt what we were about to do. It had been too long for me and I could tell by my sweetheart’s irregular breathing that it had been a long time for her too.
I came back. “Deserted, for now.”
“I’m so glad.”
I turned her face up to the light. “Let me look at you.”
It was like looking at time-lapse transparencies of a girl. I saw her the way she looked on Induction Day, majestic posture in that brocade slipcover thing with shoulder-length earrings of beaten gold, head lifted: I am big and I am proud. She was splendid. And I saw her as she was now, weeks and dozens of pounds away from that first day. Her body was closing in on itself, She looked diminished. I whispered, “You’ve suffered.”
