Who’s That Girl?

by Celia Hayes

  “To be honest, Sam, I can’t think of anything that doesn’t include orcs and dragons. And that’s not going to work.”

  “I’m seriously thinking of unfriending you on Facebook.”

  “Oh, what the hell,” her tone turns serious. “You’ve spent the last few years dreaming of organising his underwear drawer by colour and texture and now you finally have a good excuse to spend some time with him. Why the heck would you run away?”

  “Because it will only make me dream about him even more,” I reply, leaning back in my chair, suddenly exhausted.

  “Or you might get to know him better and understand that he’s just a human being like all of us. You might even realise that he has some defects… Hey, maybe he even picks his nose when he’s alone!”

  “Yuk.”

  “I met a guy who used to do it while he was driving. He could get almost his whole index finger up his nostril. Although…” she ponders, “Dave has bigger hands than that guy, so maybe it would be harder for him. Unless he really went for it, I mean…”

  “Will you cut it out?” I scold her in disgust.

  “Why? What did I say?” she sniggers, pretending not to understand. “Come on, maybe a mental image like that will finally kill your crush on him.”

  “Nothing is going to kill it.”

  “Right,” she sighs.

  “And he does not pick his nose!”

  “Absolutely not, he would never do that, how could I even think such a thing?” she replies sarcastically, before going back to the main subject of our conversation, which is Dave’s proposal. “Why don’t you simply take it for what it is?”

  “You mean suicide?”

  “No, a way to spend some time together and get a better idea of what he’s actually like.”

  “I don’t know, Terry. I had just decided to put an end to all this. Do you think it’s fair that he just shows up and asks me to help him the day after I had decided to steer clear of him?”

  “Well, whatever it is, it’s not the end of the world. Think of it as a job opportunity – a chance to boost your career,” she says, trying to make me think straight. “It’s only a week, and you’ll have the chance to prove your talents to him.”

  “Or to make a fool of myself.”

  “A week to show him what you’re capable of,” she counters.

  “A week to watch him be surrounded by models from all over the world.”

  “Sam, if he had half a brain he’d have no use at all for a bunch of dumb celebrity hunters, and if we give him the benefit of the doubt and admit that he might have a whole one – and we must take this possibility into account – this might be a chance for you to show him what a wonderful, awesome girl you are. Who knows what might happen? He might dump that stick insect of a woman he’s dating for you!”

  “Haven’t you always told me that I should stop having ridiculous dreams about him? What’s changed now?” I say, maybe slightly too loudly.

  “Don’t misunderstand me, please,” she corrects me. “I’ve never for a moment thought that you weren’t good enough for Dave. I just thought he was always too busy with… other stuff,” she says, choosing her words carefully, “to notice a girl like you. But that doesn’t mean that things can’t change.”

  “Oh yeah, sure, of course,” I mutter sceptically, while I play with the phone cable.

  “And anyway, what have you got to lose?”

  “My dignity, for example?” While we speak, I google ‘Madeleine Hunt’ on my computer, hoping that yesterday I was too drunk to notice how similar we are. Millions of pictures of her most recent public appearances and modelling shoots immediately appear, all of which make it very clear just how unalike we actually are. We’re from two completely different realities – two planets in two distant galaxies.

  “God, quit being such a loser! If I haven’t managed to convince you, fine, forget everything I said, but be sure to go to that damn appointment!”

  “Why, huh? Why? I’m asking you to give me one good reason I should go!”

  “I can give you three good reasons: Murphy. And. Son,” she shouts, almost piercing my eardrum. “If you stay at that desk for too long, that’s what’s waiting for you. You know that, right? Today it’s the latest exhibition of developments in permanent make-up for corpses…”

  “Okay, I hear you…”

  “… tomorrow you’ll be assigned to report on the biggest donut in Minnesota…”

  “Okay, I said, I hear you!”

  “And in a year’s time, you’ll get your big scoop: the man who can swallow the most eggs in three minutes. Shells included!”

  “Terry, I get it, I get it. I hear what you’re saying and I’ll go to that damn…”

  “What? What’s the matter?” she asks when she hears me fall completely silent.

  “Margaret in the area,” I explain, while monitoring the corridor. I spot her at Nicholas’ desk – she’s checking something on her smartphone and straightening her hair with her hands. “I have to go – I’ll talk to you later.”

  “Okay, but you are going to that appointment!”

  “Yes, I’m going, don’t worry!” I say to try and get rid of her before I get busted.

  “Okay, see you tonight. I’ll bring some wine, so please make something edible.” My surrender seems to have convinced her, and she says goodbye.

  “See you later,” I say, before anxiously hanging up. There’s a question that’s bugging me, one that I really can’t come up with an answer to that makes sense. The question is: why the hell did I even call her? Terry is incapable of indulging my victim complex. If the only purpose of my call was to get some sympathy in the hope that it would make my sadness magically go away, she wasn’t the right person.

  “Hey, Sam,” says Jane, appearing at my desk while keeping an eye on the corridor. “Do you happen to have a couple of spare minutes to help me find the number of that cosy Fisherman’s Wharf restaurant?” she whispers, trying not to let anyone overhear her. “You know, it’s Jake’s birthday…”

  “Ok, I’ll try,” I promise her, but for some strange reason I can’t take my eyes off Madeleine.

  “Oh, look at her…” I murmur, half hypnotised and half contemplating suicide by overdosing on M&Ms. “And Terry says Dave might want someone like me when he has her. Right…” I instinctively look up at the ceiling. “Please, God, if you’re planning to eventually change my life, can you please do it in the next three weeks?” I beg and wait, but, as usual, I get no answer. “Well that was predictable,” I mumble, feeling discouraged, and then go back to staring at the monitor, hoping that somewhere in those pictures lies the solution to my problems. Madeleine looks back at me from a Caribbean beach, wearing only sand and tanning oil. Her face is sullen and her gaze is immobile, distant and almost empty. She looks like she has no emotions at all, and I ask myself for the zillionth time what it could be that this woman has that I don’t. I mean, apart from money, clothes, a promising career and a lovely mole next to her lip. She doesn’t look like she’d be much fun, and from these pictures it doesn’t look like she’d be particularly interesting company either.

  What she does have is that she’s thin. That’s all. She’s just thinner than me. I wonder what would happen if for once Terry was right. What if this really is the chance of a lifetime? What if it’s some sort of… destiny, something that has to happen, one way or another? And let’s be serious: when will I get another opportunity like this? Never. Now I have a whole week to convince Dave that I, Sam Preston, Sam ‘girl with a thousand stories to tell’ Preston, am the woman of his dreams. All I have to do is make sure he notices me.

  How much thinner than me can Madeleine Hunt be? A stone? Three stone?

  Okay, how much time do I have?

  Today’s the sixteenth, and Fashion Week opens on the first weekend of next month. I have twenty days to turn this around, I think, and to turn myself into that. Or into something close enough to that. It’s always better to set realistic goal
s. And as Terry would say: what the hell have I got to lose?

  And that’s how I make my second solemn decision in eight hours: I’m going to make Dave fall madly in love with me.

  Creepy, right? Yeah, I know…

  Chapter 8

  Codename: Wedding

  “Pull it towards you. No, wait, I can’t hold it…” I stretch my arms as far as I can. “A little higher…” and I stand on my tiptoes and try and stick the corner of the poster to the wallpaper of my bedroom.

  “Is it straight?”

  “No, hang on – lift it up just a little bit more,” answers Terry, who’s holding up the other side of the poster and has pieces of tape coming out of her mouth. “Keep still,” she mumbles while she pulls one off and sticks the poster to the wall with it. She sticks a couple more on her side and then comes to fix mine.

  When we’re done, I walk away from the wall to assess the final result. “I guess that should do it.”

  Okay, it’s no Rembrandt, but believe me, it makes an effect. I’ve created a sort of calendar for the next three weeks, and for each week I’ve set specific goals: how much weight I should lose and when I should fix my hair and exercise to tone my muscles up. My main objective is obvious: I am planning to turn myself into something as similar as possible to a real woman. In fact, the last box in my calendar is a colourful picture of Madeleine Hunt wearing a swimsuit. Next to it, I’ve glued a picture of Dave wearing a tuxedo that I cut out of a gossip magazine. In the first box I’ve stuck a picture of me and marked it with today’s date. I don’t have many pictures of me, to be honest. I don’t like having concrete images of my own disappointments lying around, nor do I want to leave tangible proof of how useless hi-def technology is: if I ever do have any heirs, I’m guessing they’d rather I leave them government bonds or shares in some Fortune 50 company. I do have a few photographs of me, though, and for this project I deliberately chose the worst of them all in the hope that it will help motivate me properly. It’s a horrible picture taken last year at the office New Year’s Eve party. I call it ‘Godzilla in sequins’.

  It’s a cool idea, right? But there’s something missing… Oh, right, the name! Choosing the right name is of the utmost importance, if you don’t want to fall in the ‘I’ll start tomorrow’ trap. There’s no way you won’t stick to the plan when it has a name, though, and for that reason – and because there was a huge empty space right at the centre of the poster – I decide to write in big red capital letters THREE WEEKS TO MAKE HIM FALL IN LOVE WITH ME. It’s too long, I know, but I couldn’t come up with anything more punchy. Anyway, the important thing is that it sounds serious.

  “Is all this going to take much longer?” asks Terry as she lets herself collapse onto my bed. My bedside cabinet is an awful mess – there are even the remains of two tacos and a bottle of red wine. Without taking her eyes from me, she somehow manages to extract a glass from the jumble of cables and wires and pour herself some.

  “No, I still need to sort out the stuff in the boxes,” I answer distractedly.

  Well, a couple of photos and a poster wouldn’t have been enough, would it? This isn’t a school assignment, this is serious, and that’s why on the way back home from work I stopped at the mall to pick up a few things. I even got paid today. The problem is that now my bedroom looks more like a refugee camp… It’s overflowing with boxes, bags, wrapping paper, pre-cooked food, weights… I’ll admit that there’s a chance I might have gone over the top, but I need to indulge myself because I’m pursuing a higher goal: preserving the human race from extinction. Well, more precisely, preserving myself from extinction.

  “I can’t believe I’m actually helping you.”

  “Quit complaining!” I snap. I am so sick of her miserable attitude at the moment. She doesn’t reply, so I go over to the couch and start digging through the piles of magazines in search of one particular bag. “Wasn’t it you who told me that I should take advantage of this opportunity to prove to him how much I’m worth?” I remind her as I root through pictures of ridiculously buff bodies and disgusting diuretic drinks.

  “Yes, I did,” she admits, “but I had a slightly more traditional approach in mind. You know, like maybe talk to the guy, add him on WhatsApp, maybe message him the odd risqué picture…”

  “And that’s exactly what I’m planning to do,” I respond. “Except for the whole risqué pictures thing, of course.”

  “Yeah, sure,” she murmurs, looking around her in confusion. “I would have bet on that.”

  “Look, what’s so wrong with me trying to present myself at my best?” I stop rummaging about in my shopping for a moment to defend myself, but then remember just how grouchy Terry is and decide it’s useless to even try to explain my reasons to her and so I go back to my desperate search. “Where the hell did it go?” I cry, as I look on my desk, behind the bookshelf, in the space between my cabinet and the drawers. But I can’t find it anywhere.

  “Which of the piles of useless junk you’ve bought but are never going to use are you looking for?”

  “Oh, here it is,” I exult, grabbing a huge bag. “Et voilà!” I say, while showing her what I think is the ace up my sleeve.

  “Let me see,” murmurs Terry, leaning towards me to try and work out what I’m holding as I walk past her. “Slim & Fast,” she reads, “what is it?”

  “This, my dear, is the latest nutritional revolution,” I start explaining excitedly, opening the bag and taking a tin can out of it. “Check this out,” I say before throwing it at her.

  “High protein cookies?”

  “With no carbohydrates.”

  “Fifteen dollars?” she shouts after reading the price stamped on that package of gastronomic insanity.

  “I’ll admit that they are not exactly the cheapest food you can buy,” I reply laconically.

  “This is robbery! What the hell did you buy them for?”

  “Because by my reckoning, if I eliminate all carbs from my diet, my body will have to finally burn some fat to produce energy, but, at the same time, I won’t lose muscle tone. Assuming I actually have any muscle tone. I presume I must have.”

  “Okay. Are you seriously telling me that you blew half of your salary to buy some food which has been chemically modified to eliminate all its sugar?”

  “Exactly,” I nod while pulling a brochure out of the bag. “See? It says it’s ‘Infallible. Test it yourself’,” I say, reading out what it says. “‘Provides you with a balanced diet that you can follow throughout the week without damaging your kidneys’,” I continue reading.

  Terry is still very suspicious, but she decides to open the can to inspect a cookie. She looks at it from various angles and sniffs at it gingerly, but she doesn’t seem particularly enthusiastic. “Are you sure that these are edible?”

  “Quite sure. And there’s even a list of all the food I have to avoid eating.”

  “Like what?” she asks, while biting into the cookie.

  “Let’s see… No rice, no pasta, no mushrooms, no chocolate,” I say, running through the list like a robot. “Oh, I’m not supposed to have any tacos either. But we already had tacos for dinner today,” I say, giving her a guilty look.

  “Well you’re starting tomorrow anyway,” she reminds me, while taking another cookie. “You know? They’re actually not bad.”

  “… no flour, no cinnamon, no pepper, no yogurt…”

  “Is there anything you can actually eat?”

  “Did you know that cured jellyfish doesn’t contain sugar?” I ask, while turning to look at her, hoping that I wasn’t the only person around who didn’t know.

  “Come again?”

  “I can also eat antelope meat. Ah – but it has to be raw,” I say, disgusted. “Why would I eat raw meat?”

  “Maybe they mean like a carpaccio.”

  “And where the hell am I going to find an antelope in Mission?”

  “I really don’t know. Maybe in Chinatown, you can find all sorts of food down there.
”

  “Do you think they sell them already dead?” I say, images of poor animals being butchered filling my head.

  “Why don’t you go to see a nutritionist?”

  “I… no, no…” I reply.

  “Why don’t you even think about it? They’re professionals,” she says, attempting to convince me, but I am not even listening to her.

  “How on earth do they think I’m going to manage this? This is nuts!”

  “What?”

  “Did you know that three quarters of alcoholic drinks contain sugar?” I ask her in shock, pointing to the list in the pamphlet.

  “Are you kidding me?”

  “No, I’m not! According to this, I can’t even have a glass of wine!”

  “How about white wine?”

  “How am I supposed to be able to eat an antelope carpaccio without getting drunk first?” I ask, on the verge of bursting into tears.

  “Not to mention the cured jellyfish,” she says, helping herself to another cookie to avoid laughing at me. “So what’s left to eat? There must be something you can have… How about cough medicine? Did you know that you’ll fail a breathalyser test after two glasses of the stuff?”

  “The list says that gin and whiskey contain an unbelievable quantity of sugar.”

  “Well, you can still have vodka.”

  “Straight, without fruit.”

  “You’d better have some antacids ready then,” she suggests, while picking at the crumbs in the can. “Why don’t you choose a less drastic diet?” she continues, trying to use some common sense, “or just go see a damn nutritionist!”

  “It’s too late to go to a nutritionist now! The dinner is in less than three weeks and by then I want to be half the weight I am now! Plus, I want to get myself a hairdo like Scarlett Johansson.”

  “Sam, come back to down Earth, please. I love you, but you’re completely out of your mind. You are never going to be able to lose that much weight in so little time.”

  “Of course I will!” I reply, absolutely sure. “All I need to do is make a few small sacrifices.”