by Kit Reed
“That’s monstrous!”
“That’s the way he is.”
“But all those promises! What about all the After pictures?”
“Oh, those,” she said. “The men, he doesn’t care about. The women who get thinner are the ones he can’t save.”
Zoe’s voice flickered like a fading candle. “Save?”
Nodding, Betty touched her belly in the pink nightgown. I saw her hand go in and in. “For this.”
I blurted, “What happened to the others?”
She shot me a look. “Dead, I think. When you get too big you have to watch how you sleep. If you roll on your back your belly can pile up on your chest and suffocate you.”
“The bastard!”
She shushed me with a wave. “But I didn’t figure out what he was up to until the first weigh-ins. He was so tickled when I kept putting it on. Then he started with the special dinners, platters of this, baskets of that. Petits fours by the dozen. Steamed Christmas puddings swimming in brandy. Macaroons. Then he moved me in here. By that time he was coming down to check on me every night, he would feed me and bring presents and insult me and tell me he loved me and sob and apologize; some nights he would pound on my belly and then he’d curl up and go to sleep like a child …” The gust that came out of her was half-sigh, half-sob. “He said he loved me but I should have known. So. The truth about this white-haired god that we all followed and believed in and trusted with our lives?”
Zoe said, “Betty, if it hurts, you don’t have to tell us.”
“Hell yes I do. The truth? The bottom truth about the man • we all loved and trusted and gave all our money to? Our holy diet god who promised to keep us all beautiful and make us all thin?”
“Really, Betty. It’s OK.” My truth? I didn’t want to know. If she was right then we were all stupid. Terminally stupid and helpless and used.
“No it isn’t.”
I put up my hand: no more.
She wasn’t about to stop. “He wants us all fat and hungry and suffering, OK? He likes us that way.”
“No!”
“Thin people do. Who else do they have to make fun of? Themselves? Hell no.” She had Zoe by this time and she knew it. She was playing to me. “Jerry. Jeremy Devlin, pay attention. Can I tell you the bottom line?”
“Do you have to?”
“Yes!”
She didn’t need to finish. I knew.
“The worst thing about him?”
“Please, no more!” Sharpnack, you slimy, smarmy, sadistic, sanctimonious, preening, egotistical, selfish bastard, I already knew. I know where you’re coming from, I know what you’ve done to us and now I know beyond knowing what I have to do to you. OK, it may mark the end of my life as a real person free in the world but when push comes to shove, cheap at the price. I hate you for everything you’ve done to us. I’ve made up my mind and I will do it, I will destroy you, no matter what it takes.
“The worst thing about the man I thought I loved?” Betty said anyway.
Oh yes Earl Sharpnack, I will move fast if I can and believe me it will not be quick and merciful. If I have to I will wait you out, I am strong and I am patient. Once you start moving believe me, I will follow you. I will follow you to the rim of the world if that’s where you’re going, and if you jump off the edge I will follow you over and murder you in midair. I will follow you and eventually I will catch you and when I do I will bring you down. Then I’ll plant my knees in your chest and hold you still. I will ream you out and hang you up to dry and when I’m done I’ll drag your boiling guts out of your flat belly and tie them in knots while you beg to die and then …
This is how Betty finished it. “He gets off on it.”
31
When the SUV carrying the Abercrombie twins and Dave Berman and their aging mentors is stopped by a Cyclone fence that bisects the desert practically forever, Betz assumes they have a problem, but she’s wrong. There is no power greater than a slow-moving mob with a single objective. Clearly, the car’s stopped cold, but the five inside the Ne Plus Ultra and the army of big people who rose up out of the sand to follow Gloria and her boyfriend Ahmed are not. At their size and in these numbers, they are unstoppable. The front ranks of powerful, deliberate walkers divide and the monumental marchers surge past the SUV on either side, joining and walking on as though they’re on a stroll across the desert with no obstacles in sight. When they reach the sturdy Cyclone fence there is muttering about the razor wire coiled along the top, but they don’t bother to consult. It is understood that they will keep moving. They do what they have to, to bring it down. Quietly, with patience learned over a lifetime of being different and a touch of the faith that moves mountains, the big people put their shoulders to the fence and lean.
In its own way, what happens is magnificent. For a long minute the bulky figures with bowed heads press against the fence like oxen pushing against the, yoke. At first nothing happens. Then the next rank moves in behind the first at a steady, careful pace, adding its substantial power, and in seconds all the fence posts bend at once like so much boiled linguine and the fence is down.
Somebody cheers. At a signal, the front ranks throw their sleeping bags over the razor wire and swarm across, flattening it in the dirt under their feet.
Gloria turns to Ahmed. “How did you know it wasn’t electrified?”
“I took care of that. We have somebody inside.”
“And the guards?”
“I took care of that too.” The mullah laughs. “From inside.”
The SUV rolls over the downed fence and Ahmed sounds his horn. The mob parts magically, like dry snow in front of a plow, making a path for them. Betz asks, “Inside what?”
Gloria turns to look at her. “Sylphania.”
“Sylphania!”
Wired and buzzing with excitement, Danny shouts, “Say what?”
“We’re inside Sylphania now.” Gloria puts a kind hand on his arm. “Didn’t you know?”
Dave leans forward. “What the hell are we doing at …”
“Sylphania? It’s OK,” Betz says. She already knows. “Remember the stoned guy in Aspen, the one who was all about the logos? That flaky guy Bo?”
“About how it’s all one big business?” Her brother may look like the handsome, superficial twin who only thinks about girls and cars and the big eating event, but Betz knows better; Danny is thinking all the time. As he often does, he completes his sister’s thought. “Well, he was right.”
“Ooooh,” Dave says. “Oh maaaaan.”
“So. This is the center of everything,” Gloria tells them as the car approaches a small rise.
“Sylphania.”
“Sylphania. It didn’t start here, but the Reverend Earl got in early—making money from people’s needs. All this suffering.”
Betz says to Gloria, “You sound so sad.”
“He owns so many businesses! The ones that make you gain weight and the ones that help you get thin and the others that charge to make you fit and get beautiful,” she says, “all this crap we work so hard to pay for because we hate the way we look. We pay through the nose to look better and none of it really works … And every lousy bit of it originated here. It’s also. Agh. Ah.” The woman is grieving. She can hardly get out the words. When she does they come up like a little fusillade of hair balls. “Ack. The endgame phase of Solutions is here.”
“Solutions.” Dave swivels. “You never told us what it was.”
“Believe me, you don’t want to know.”
“Here in Sylphania,” Betz says, bemused. “And we’re supposed to—do what?”
Ahmed says, “Whatever we can.”
“They’ve come a long way, Ahmed.” Gloria touches her lover’s arm. “Might as well fill them in on the plan.”
“Objective?” The mullah turns with a proud, fierce grin. “We’re here to destroy.”
“Like, kill the Reverend Earl?” Betz looks at Danny, who will ask the next question.
Ahmed
coughs. “It’s a start.”
“What good is that going to do?”
“You have to start somewhere,” the mullah says.
Dave looks at the sky. Hints of predawn color are creeping across the ridge. “It’s getting late. Or early. Look, the Reverend’s guys are going to pick us off the minute it gets light.”
“Do not worry, David. I’ve taken care of that. I have people …”
Satisfied, he nods. “Inside.”
“Yes, inside. We’ll be there before the sun comes up.” Ahmed has stopped the car because the marchers are failing behind. Many are on the verge of exhaustion and others have quite simply stopped and let the rest of the group lumber past.
Dave says, “Some of these people don’t look like they’re gonna make it.”
“Trust me. They will. I have prepared.” Turning, Ahmed indicates cartons stacked in the luggage well of the SUV. “If you three will be kind enough to get down and hand those to our troops …”
“Troops!” Betz thinks that if this is an army, it’s the biggest, slowest army she’s ever seen.
“A little something to keep them going. Power Bars.”
It’s still cold outside. Shivering, Betz skims the sky, wondering how soon it will get light. Dave opens the hatch of the SUV and Danny scrambles over the bench seat to hand down cartons—cases and cases of Power Bars. Betz rips the cartons open and Dave passes them along to the monumental figures in their sweatpants and down vests, working until the back of the van is empty. Like balls in a water polo match, the cartons bob from hand to hand to hand over people’s heads, with the stream of Mylar-wrapped packets slithering out and following each carton like a sparkling wake, fanning out until even the stragglers at the remote fringes are ripping at the wrappers with knives and fingernails and everybody begins to eat. It is a solemn moment, in which each of the marchers keeps one Power Bar and one only, and passes on the rest because they are all in this together and the enterprise depends on it.
This is done quickly. There is a long silence while the army eats. Then they wait.
Ahmed looks at his watch. “Time.” Agile as a gymnast, he slips out of the driver’s seat and onto the roof of the SUV. He raises his arm and with a wild cry, waves them on. The crowd shouts. There is a stir and as one, the marchers fall in behind the car.
A third-grade teacher Betz had once said you should never underestimate the power of positive thinking, and it’s this that keeps the procession moving even though the individual marchers are spent. Led by the SUV, the big people move forward slowly, as smooth and unstoppable as waves in a sheltered bay. Breathing heavily and mortally tired, some of them, because some are fit but others aren’t used to physical exertion, still hungry but too proud to say so, the marchers flow out of deepest night and into changing air that hints at gathering dawn.
Betz says, “And all these people are in this because of this one rotten guy?”
“He’s part of it but not all of it,” Ahmed says. “Now. Look on his works.”
They have stopped at the crest of the last rise. Behind them, the crowd stops. For the last time Ahmed gets out of the car and the assembled marchers let out a single tremendous sigh. Gloria hurries to stand beside him and Dave and the twins scramble out to join them. They are poised like explorers at the borders of a new land. Wherever they thought they were headed, they have arrived. Below, acres of picket fence protect their objective, a complex of lighted buildings planted in the the desert below, and from here Betz can see—what? The enclave. What lies beyond.
Several miles off to the right an oddly flattened artificial shape—nothing the wind or weather made—sits in the greenish glow its vapors create. It could be almost anything—foundation for a tall bunding—low-slung factory—landing strip——what? The structure is outlined by whorls of steam made visible by refracted light from within.
Danny swivels to study it. “What’s that thing?”
“Underground installation called Wellmont.” Ahmed points to the mass of cement. “Your sister would have been there.”
“Would have!”
“May still be,” he says. “We don’t know.”
“OK!” Dave seizes the mullah’s arm. “Give me the keys. I have to find her.”
“First this,” Ahmed says. “Then that.”
“But, Annie. It’s why we’re here!”
“How can you be sure why you’re here?”
Dave is a little crazy with it. “Annie’s in that place, we have to find her. Let’s go!” .
“You don’t understand how these things work, do you?” Ahmed’s tone is so loaded with scorn that Dave falters.
“I …” Troubled, he finishes, “Don’t know.”
It is then that the friendly mullah from the trailer in the desert becomes something more. He draws himself up with an air of authority that commands silence. When he has their full attention he says, “Understand, this enclave is our first objective.” Then, in a tone that cuts through doubts like a scimitar through a musk melon he adds, “To destroy a cobra, first you must attack the head.”
There is no response Dave can make. There is nothing any of them can say. They are on the verge here. Young as they are, overexcited, maybe, frightened certainly, the three who are so far from home are ready now. Poised to take on whatever waits.
With a fierce shout, Ahmed Shah raises his arm and at the signal, the massed marchers shout as one. There will be no more questions. Ahmed takes the lead with Gloria and the Abercrombie twins and Dave Berman following. The huge, determined army falls in behind. They are done talking now and they are done waiting. They are moving out.
32
Conventional wisdom has it that an army marches on its stomach. When it comes to the endgame, you can forget it. This one is fueled by rage.
See them broaching the downed Cyclone fence and entering the Reverend Earl’s exclusive precincts; see them advancing acre by acre, marching toward the center of the enclave that houses everything they thought they wanted, which turns out to be the center of everything they hate. Intolerance. Compounded misery and flawed judgments. The aesthetic that drives the engine here, spelled out on the Sylphania banner flying over the clubhouse even at night. Running underneath the ubiquitous Sylphania logo is the mantra: THINNER THAN THOU.
Down they come, into the cultivated portions of Sylphania where the fields and work sheds are deserted now because it is still night. On they march, flattening row upon row of the Reverend Earl’s herbs as they advance. The big people are aching and exhausted but still they come, refreshed by the automatic sprinklers, emerging like glistening, amorphous temple gods from the misty spray. The marchers are of a single mind now, closing on their objective and, fed by anger, thinking as one.
We are tired of it. We are just plain sick and tired of it. Why should we slave and suffer and waste our lives trying to please you? We are done smiling and pretending that we eat like birds just because you say normal people do. We are fed up with dieting and suffering in gyms because you think we should look like you. We are fed up to here with you and your impossible standards. Who put you in charge of standards anyway?
We’ve had enough! No more of your fat-free and low-carb and grapefruit /papaya/generic fad diets, no more hypnosis and stomach stapling, no more herbal combinations that skinnies say will kill your appetite but only make you fart, we are sick of them! And you want to know what? More than anything we’re sick of always feeling guilty, guilty and embarrassed and soiled.
What exactly have we done that you’ve made us so ashamed of? What is it that you want us to give up?
Being who we are.
Look at you in your skimpy muscle shirts and your stonewashed Levi’s, 29-32, where 32 is the length of the legs. Go ahead, flaunt those numerals on your mingy narrow ass. Look into your vanity and your intense stupidity. Do you get it yet? You see us smiling and this is how you deceive yourselves, “Oh, but fat people are easygoing, they’re all so sweet and good-natured.”
&
nbsp; Well, you are wrong.
We are done begging for your approval. We are through smiling and we have quit dissembling, so beware.
The tide has turned.
Flowing down the little hill and into the Reverend Earl’s complex at Sylphania, boiling with the power of accumulated lifetimes of insult and smoldering outrage, the massed avengers hesitate outside the neat picket fence that circles the core of Sylphania. What are they waiting or? A signal? Some outward and physical manifestation of the Reverend Earl? Not clear. The procession stops cold.
Whose idea was it anyway, that all good people are shaped the same? Who ordained that, male and female, everybody has to be combed and fluffed and groomed and turned out in outfits you approve? Who decreed that everybody has to be thin and only the thin are fit to pass judgment on anybody who doesn’t fit, everybody some homogenized variation on super-model wonderful? That is, everybody except us? We’ve seen the way you look at us. We’ve seen you staring in supermarkets and ice cream parlors and fast-food places, we’ve seen your sanctimonious disgust and we have heard your snickers as we pass. We know what you’re thinking as we place our orders: You’re going to eat THAT? Like it makes any difference to you, with your bony shanks and your thin, judgmental mouths. If you don’t want to see us whooping it up at Sixty-Nine Flavors or at the county fair with our fried Onion Blossom and our mouths powdery from fried dough, that’s your problem, but not for long.
You think we can’t hear what you’re saying but we do. We hear it and we remember and believe us, we are pissed, because in a different world that would be you getting red in the face and all sweaty with anxiety because you don’t meet our demands. That would be you smiling and begging for approval. That would be you dancing the unhappy dance while at your backs we poked each other and laughed.
Well, get this.
We were born this way, most of us, and if you don’t like it then it’s damn well time for us to ask, not, what are we doing wrong, but what’s the matter with you?
Who exactly decided that wonderful was shaped like you instead of us? Forget what you see in the ads and on the holos that come into your living rooms, never mind the narrow-ass-ted models parading on your giant plasma screens, that isn’t real, and if you think everybody has to look like that, then neither are you. Listen. We didn’t get the way we are on purpose, to offend you, we are the way we are and we can’t fucking help it so watch out.
