Thinner Than Thou

by Kit Reed

  “Your pass.”

  “What pass?”

  “You need a pass to be here.”

  This is nothing like what she expected. There are no signs of the Dedicated Sisters here, no craggy Gothic heaps, no staggering monoliths like their Chicago headquarters. Still, her sources have sent her here. What is this place? She isn’t sure. It’s nothing like the Dedicateds’ other convents. It looks like the last outpost on the remote fringes of something she can’t even guess at. If this isn’t a Dedicated site, what’s behind the razor wire, just over the ridge that obscures the approach? Retirement community? Desert spa? Convicts’ camp where people in orange coveralls break rocks? “What is this place?”

  “I’m sorry, Ma’am, I can’t answer that. I can’t answer that and you can’t be here.”

  Then why did the tremulous girl who showed her out of the Oklahoma Ded convent send her here? The young Dedicated couldn’t have been more than eighteen; she wore the calipers uneasily, like a child putting on a makeshift nun’s habit for a school play back in the days before the Reverend Earl. Where the others strode around confidently in their brown tunics, Marg’s young contact was new to the discipline. “heir desert place,” she’d whispered, slipping a crude map into Marg’s hand as she opened the door. “If there’s any trouble, tell them I sent you.”

  The guard takes a step forward. “Now, if you don’t mind …”

  Marg holds her ground. Be confident and act entitled and they’ll have to take you in. Smiling, she advances. “You don’t understand. I’m Marg Abercrombie, Annie Abercrombie’s mother? Sister Dolores Farina told me you were expecting me. Perhaps you have my authorization in the booth.”

  “There’s nothing in the booth, Ma’am.”

  It isn’t much of a booth. “I’m sure my name’s on the list,” she says.

  “There isn’t any list.”

  “Look again, you’ll probably find my pass there.”

  “No, Ma’am, there aren’t any passes there.”

  “That’s OK, just step aside. I’ll explain to your superiors.”

  He shows her the palm of his hand like a cop on a poster: STOP.

  Marg says in her nicest tones, “Oh, please. I’ve come all the way from—”

  “It doesn’t matter where you come from.”

  “I’ve been on the road for days!”

  “And your pass is …”

  “I don’t have a pass.”

  “I know.”

  “I don’t want to stay or anything,” she says, “I’m just looking for my children. They’re my children, after all.”

  “Sorry, Ma’am.” He is a nice enough guy, she supposes, but a little too thin, and the set of his head on his neck gives him a starved, vulpine glare. The snaps on his coverall flash in the sunlight, dazzling her. “We don’t take children here.”

  “But she said I’d find—”

  “It won’t matter what she said you’d find. You won’t find any children.”

  “Not children, really. Why, they’re practically all grown up.” This makes her smile. “Twins,” she adds. “Fifteen. A boy and a girl. They’re exactly the same age, well, Betz is ten minutes older, blue eyes and curly brown hair—”

  “Nobody under twenty-one admitted. It’s procedural.”

  “And their big sister, the one I told you about? Her name is Roxanna, but we call her Annie.” Marg has come a long way over a long time to get this far; she has crosshatched the south and the southwest, sawing back and forth across the map, tracking down false leads. Dedicated convents here, twins matching the description seen there, Dedicated Sisters’ installations on this hilltop and in that hamlet; all of them looked promising right up until she reached the front door. The Deds have passed her on like a hot potato from zone to zone. She did have one real lead on the twins, how many days ago? An eating competition in some small town. “Kid turned out to be a ringer,” the locals said, “come in here and tried to fleece us. He looked honest but he had us sized up the minute he walked in the door and sat down in front of them pies, and by God by the end, he had plumb cleaned us out and skipped off with the prize money.”

  “No Ma’am. Not here.”

  She has to pretend she doesn’t hear. “Abercrombie, but they may have changed their names.”

  “Haven’t seen ’em.”

  The desert in these parts is wide and featureless; the mountains look so far away that she’ll never make it. There may or may not be a Dedicated community here in the desert just beyond that rise but if the guard won’t step aside, she’ll never reach it. She won’t even know. Desperate, she repeats, “I’ve come all this way.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Maybe this will help,” she says. “I can give you the particulars.”

  “I don’t need to know the particulars.”

  “I know Annie is in a Dedicated convent.” She sighs helplessly. “I just don’t know which one.”

  He is waiting for her to go away.

  “To be perfectly frank with you, I don’t really know why. All I know is, Ralph signed the convent papers and they took her away and so she’s in it, and right now that’s all I know.”

  After a time he says, “This is a twin?”

  “their big sister.” Thank God he just asked a question. Maybe she can pull the teacher’s trick that she thinks of as fair exchange. Marg will keep telling him things and if that old classroom tactic works in a place like this, eventually he’ll slip and tell her something back. “The Deds were awful to me in Chicago. they barely gave me the time of day. In Little Rock they told me to try Oklahoma City and in Oklahoma …”

  In Oklahoma City they wouldn’t even talk to her. They dispatched Dolores, the little novice, to show her out.

  “Oh, please. I’ve looked in Oklahoma and in Texas, I’ve even been to Dallas, and—”

  “Ma’am.”

  “And everywhere I go, they send me somewhere else but this time I have a map and I thought, this time I really thought—”

  “Ma’am.” The man in the orange coverall isn’t listening. He’s waiting for her to go.

  “Coming in here, I really thought this was it. I did, and now …”

  “It isn’t.”

  At loose ends, Marg is reaching desperately for words to wrap this up and convince him, but they elude her. If only she could manage not to sigh, if she could just not quaver when she talks. “Looks kind of like it isn’t.”

  “Sure isn’t, Ma’am.” The man in the orange coverall adds politely, “OK, time’s up.”

  “But I just got here!”

  “Visitors are only allowed five minutes.”

  “I’m not a visitor.”

  “You came, we talked, I told you what you need to know.”

  “The Dedicated Sisters. We have a contract. I’m a customer!”

  “Not here.”

  “That’s all you know!” The man in the orange coverall stands tall, but pushed to the limit, Marg stands taller. She is, after all, a mother. “I need to know where my children are!”

  “Well, good luck to you, Ma’am.”

  “I need to come in.”

  “You can’t come in.”

  “I have to find them!”

  “Believe me, Ma’am, there are no children here.”

  “If there are no children here, prove it. Let me see for myself.”

  “Can’t. No pass.”

  “But I don’t need a pass. I—”

  “No pass, no entry.”

  All these days on the road have made Marg a stronger person. More aggressive. She is Marg O’Neill Abercrombie and she doesn’t roar very loud just yet, but by God she is capable of roaring. “I have my rights!”

  “I’m going to have to ask you to leave.”

  “And I’m going to have to ask you—what are you hiding?”

  That does it. He grips her upper arms so tightly that the flesh shrieks. He gives her a little shake. “And if you won’t leave—”

  “I’m going.
”

  “I’ll have to help you go.”

  “I said, I’m going!” As he releases her she catches a detail that changes everything. The orange coverall is fastened by chrome snaps the size of quarters and on the head of every snap there is a logo. “Oh!” With a rush of what feels like homesickness, she says, “The Reverend Earl …”

  With firm hands, the guardian turns her bodily and marches her to her car. “I’m sorry, Ma’am. There’s nothing for you here.”

  18

  Journal Entry, Sylphania, AZ

  For the first time since I got here, I feel good.

  In his pitch the Reverend Earl lays out his three-step progression of guilt and repentance and conversion, he whips us into a frenzy and here and in the safety of their houses, the converts fall down and they believe, and the contributions come rolling in.

  In the realm of three-step programs I’ve tried all three and frankly, I’m voting for guilt.

  Right now I’m guilty as hell, and it feels great. After all this starving and marching and bench-pressing, I am transgressing, and it doesn’t get any better than this. Forty days in my rusty trailer far from the Reverend’s precious, glossy inner circle, forty days of doing this and not eating that in a tight-assed effort to Do the Right Thing so I can make it all the way up the ladder to salvation in the Afterfat, forty tedious days I did everything right and now I’ve done wrong and I am here to tell you, it is wonderful.

  Nights I lie down happy, me and my secret. I am doing wrong and getting away with it and nobody knows. Forget your designer drugs and your X-rated diversion, this is where the real thrills are. Flagrant deception. Secretly doing wrong and getting away with it. In my bed at night I flash on the amazing things my amazing new woman brings to me, the thick fudge cakes and hot berry pies and shredded pork roasts we’ve shared while Sylphania slept, the delicious guilt that came with, and the anticipation of more.

  My love courted me with roast duck and steamed Christmas puddings, we coalesced in debauchery and now we are bonded; we fall down together and gorge and get up and live for the next night when we fall down all over again, but when you are happy, especially when you are this happy, you must always remember. Nothing is forever. It never is.

  Last Sunday night we fell down together in the sweat lodge and it was stupendous: chocolate mousse cake, she brought, and Russian white-chocolate, macadamia-nut ice cream, smoked salmon and pâté, it didn’t matter which we ate first; I am traveling on remembered aromas and the proximity of our warm bodies, glowing brighter as we ate. I touched her smeared cheek: “You never told me your name.” .

  “Zoe,” she said. “I thought you knew.”

  “I didn’t want to know, because.” It was hard to explain without scaring her. I blurted, “It was for your protection.”

  “We’re beyond that now.”

  “You mean …”

  Her voice was like fudge sauce or velvet. “Now that we are so close.”

  “Jeremy Devlin,” I said. “Mine’s Jeremy Mayhew Devlin, I’m originally from Framingham, Mass. Men’s compound.”

  “I know.”

  This surprised me. I completed the bio. “Salvation rating: third tier and slipping fast.”

  She flowed into my arms, smelling of hot cinnamon buns. “I know.”

  “Zoe.” I loved the sound of her name.

  I guess she liked mine too, she made it sound as smooth as hot butterscotch. “Jeremy.”

  I shuddered with a sweet premonition. “We can’t go on meeting like this.”

  “Because it’s too wonderful?”

  “Because it’s dangerous.”

  Without discussing it, we had arrived at a conclusion that we didn’t know we’d reached. Everything in her pressed against me and she murmured, “I know.”

  “What are we going to do?”

  “This,” Zoe said, slipping a chocolate truffle into my mouth. She sealed it with her fingers. “Just this.”

  “Oooh, yes.”

  Monday I flunked the weigh-in.

  Nigel Peters, who is a senior trusty now—one foot in the clubhouse—checked the readout with a supercilious grin. He raked me with that cold, superior glare. We weren’t exactly friends when we checked in here, but at least we were equals. Me fat, I could swear he was fatter. I don’t know how he took it off so fast. Now that Nigel’s lost the weight and gained the Reverend’s favor, he comes on like an avenging angel-in-training, fixing to fly up. Monday he tapped his finger on his platinum incisor and said, “Three pounds, Devlin. You’ve picked up three pounds. You have been transgressing, so you might as well confess.”

  “Water. I drank a gallon before the weigh-in.”

  “Bullshit. Come clean.”

  “Replacing fluids. No shit.” I was lying and I liked it. I flipped him a falsified grin. “We’re supposed to replace fluids after workouts. The Reverend Earl says.”

  “As if. I see flab.”

  “What makes you holier-than-thou?” OK, I do not like the man.

  “Not holier-than-thou. THINNER THAN THOU.” He mauled my flank. “Flab! I haven’t pinched more than an inch in weeks. Three pounds, Devlin. Look at the density readout and despair.”

  I looked. I despaired. “That’s nothing. Water weight.”

  Another week with the Universal Gym and the Abdomenizer and Nigel will join the heavenly choir. Thong bikini with his name on it, water bed in the clubhouse with satin sheets and a plush bedspread, steak and lobster for breakfast, lunch and Christmas. “That’s bullshit. Confess.”

  “Edema. I swear.”

  He sneered. “You’ve got a week.”

  “I’ll take it off,” I said, because Nigel had put the fear into me. No more getting caught. The minute we finished here I was going off to the bathroom to practice putting my finger down my throat.

  But capitulation wasn’t enough for Nigel. He slitted his eyes with that judgmental, skinny-guy scorn. “Devlin, are you seeing somebody?”

  “Who, me?” The sensation was wonderful. I was excited. Scared. Deception is a powerful drug. So is food. “Hell no.”

  “You know what we do to converts who mingle. Now, one more time, are you seeing somebody?”

  “When did you get to be we?”

  He was in my face—closer than people got when my belly still protected me. See, in spite of Nigel’s snotty attitude, I’ve lost a ton. The words came out of him on a wave of toxic vapor: ketosis. Nigel’s body is burning itself up. He snarled, “Are you?”

  I blinked. “Absolutely not. No way. No.” Lying. What a rush!

  “You know what happens when you get caught, right? First we strip you naked for the public shaming.” His yellow eyes glittered. He was so relishing this. “Then there is the public confession piped everywhere on closed-circuit TV followed by you running the gauntlet bare-assed while you tell what you did and name all the names, which videotape will be made available to the network nightly news and all our affiliates worldwide.”

  “Our affiliates?”

  He gave me a slick, superior grin.

  It was true. Nigel had flown up to the Afterfat. This stupid, arrogant fuck had been anointed, or whatever the Reverend Earl does to his special precious chosen ones. He had outshone me. I could see it in his patronizing smile. “Then there is the showing of that tape in the mess hall at every meal for the next six weeks.”

  My back went up. “When did you get to be our?”

  “We will show it in the women’s dormitory day and night, so this babe you’re sneaking around with will see it too, and be disgusted, just like me.” Nigel’s breath smelled like a sanitized toilet. “Unless, of course, you come clean here.”

  I backed away. “Nothing to tell.”

  But Nigel was on a roll. “You will, when caught, make restitution. To say nothing of lining up for the purging and starvation, because for what you’re paying to be here in Sylphania, results are guaranteed. If nothing else works there is the forced march to the haunted mesa, the thirty days
of bread and water and I ask you, is it worth it?”

  Give a man a little bit of power and he turns into a monster. Nigel was coming on like some third world dictator, one of those jackbooted fascists straight out of movies I had seen. “What did you used to do for a living, Nigel?”

  I caught him by surprise. “I was a football coach.”

  “High school?”

  He wouldn’t answer. “The alums put up the money for Sylphania. Me being fat made them look bad.”

  “It figures,” I said.

  He advanced on me with that smug grin. “And I lost the weight! But I asked you a question, Devlin. Are you seeing someone?”

  “Don’t bother me.” A coach, I was thinking, and I am a successful financier and fucking Nigel is flying up instead of me.

  “Just as I thought. A little indulgence against a world of shame. I ask you, IS IT WORTH IT?”

  You bet it is. I said the magic word, just to make him go away. I even cowered a little, to make it stick. “No.”

  “Check.” He put a tick by my name on his clipboard. Then he reached behind him for the plastic cup. “You’re cleared to take your formula.”

  “You don’t trust me to take it for myself?” Hey, I should be grateful, he got me thinking.

  “Weight gain mandates supervision.” This came automatically, like something he’d learned from a book.

  “Nigel, did the Reverend Earl hit you with his bible?”

  “The formula. Now.” There was something about the way he held out the paper cup.

  “You don’t have to watch me, I’ll take it. Shit, man. It’s what I’m paying for!”

  “Three pounds, Devlin. Double dose for the next three weeks.”

  “OK, OK.” I took the cup and turned away.

  “Supervised.”

  I turned and drank it while he watched. It smelled vile. Things that are supposed to be good for you generally do. I drank it down, bubbling through the liquid, “Fuck you very much.”

  “What did you say?”

  “I said, thank you very much.” I meant it. Thanks to Nigel, I am no longer content to be a cipher here. I have a plan.

  Journal Entry—Later