The Gnome Stories, page 13
It was, but the contract had another number. The Method required, as Sherilyn explained and had explained before, the Full Weight Loss. It’s guaranteed. We can do it the hard way or the hard way, she said.
She asked him: Why is it so hard for you to see this one thing through? (She wanted to ask him instead: Which one of us is the wreck you’re diving in?)
He said: Why is it for you?
It was, wasn’t it, Sherilyn thought, at least a little bit.
Why didn’t he choose a different body part, she wondered, but couldn’t ask because of the answer she feared he’d give. The air between them got weird.
Things the Starvationist doesn’t know about Sherilyn, in spite of the rigorous examination she was subjected to in the job application process: she was once a large girl—at twelve, Sherilyn weighed 166, and her mother thought she might never stop expanding, since the kid was voracious, would eat almost anything. Her parents were vegetarians, but Sherilyn had discovered meat—bacon in particular—on sleepovers and visits to restaurants. They thought maybe Sherilyn’s increase in mass was a genetic anomaly or some kind of hormonal imbalance: she sure was a hungry girl, didn’t seem to be depressed or bulimic, acting out or wearing goth clothes or ostentatious thongs. Everything in the family was done by consensus, through logically argued points. Sherilyn took responsibility for her own upbringing, and she too agreed that she was getting further away from thin, from their family ideal. She assisted in the presentation about her deviation from the norm. Her parents were slim, worked out constantly, watched what they ate. It was oppressive; it was reassuring. It made her hungry.
Also: she was a lonely girl. This was less important to the future job, and was perhaps related to her weight, the swelling of her hands, the rapidly decreasing likelihood of anyone wanting to hold them tenderly at horror movies or out by the lake. But how do you measure loneliness? Can you index it? Does it show up on tests? The answer was not really, not that it should matter anyway.
Suddenly, like a storm, her weight peaked, began to wane and melt away, for no good reason. No behavior change; no moral lesson. She ate the same, but her metabolism sped up, and by fifteen she was well beneath the state’s cutoff line for obesity, which was admittedly pretty high. She was part of the solution, not part of the problem, and she would remember this. As she lost the weight, she felt more like she was becoming someone else, another self, a more attractive twin. And she was no less lonely, even as she started to acquire her first few variously criminal boyfriends whom she could then assist in their endeavors, who could take her from the life she led to another, more interesting one.
She had always wished, though, that she could have done it by herself, through self-control, through force of will, because this made her lazy, she always thought, or it introduced an uncomfortably irreducible mystery at the heart of the self. Maybe that’s why she couldn’t let it go. When she took on a new behavior, she couldn’t change it easily. Couldn’t change her mind. The obsessive rubbing at her skin, the self-administered burns, the occasional cutting, these were things she couldn’t do anything about except to keep them covered up, to keep them secret, to keep them safe, her own. If the Subjects or the Starvationist saw this evidence, she wouldn’t be kept on, she knew, and Paul knew these secrets, good as he was at letting her reveal herself. Appearance is important for the Method, for the Methodist church she used to attend before giving it up after her confirmation that confirmed church as a choice, a choice she now made to sleep in Sunday mornings and watch taped reruns of forensic television shows in which mysteries seemed to be solved, not deepened.
Two days closer to the deadline, things had not improved with Paul. He hadn’t lost one more pound since last check-in, couldn’t quite make it past plateau. The three of them sat down and consulted the photographs, the documentary evidence, the binding pledge, the signatures on all the paperwork. He presented some serious-looking language from his lawyer that the Starvationist just brushed away. It was all in order, simple, fixed: he would do it or he would not. He had less than a week now to lose those last ten pounds or they’d have to do their trimming thing. This happened in maybe five percent of the cases they took on. They would have to draw the weight into the appendage with the Apparatus and take it off. The success rate was important, inevitable. Ax that: it was essential.
The Starvationist’s face—the part you could later see through the mask at the lopping ceremony—was beautiful and stern when she delivered the Ultimatum. She had this ability to completely drain herself of the human, to be assured, to be simple. It was more than an act—it was a talent. It was impressive. It made her like a machine, impenetrable like a battlement. Sherilyn admired her, or it might even have been love, she sensed, at times like these.
When the Starvationist was out of the room, she hissed at him: Just lose the fucking pounds. You’re embarrassing. She will do it: she’ll cut it off, take it away. This isn’t a joke, she said. You need to do this for me, she said, and for yourself.
He moaned and mooned a bit, a trait Sherilyn always hated in retrospect, this way he could make himself seem guileless and faultless—she told herself it had always been like this, that she hadn’t loved it for a while. It was clear he didn’t believe that the two of them would do it, would amputate. He said, It’s my party. I’ll cry; I want to. He asked: And what if I ran? Would you come with me?
Paul, it doesn’t fucking matter, she hissed. You will achieve your goals! And as if to demonstrate this, she fitted two straps around him and locked them down. This is to remind you of the pressure, she told him. It is what we do.
It’s what she does, he said. You’re just the assistant.
He was already forgiving her.
She put on another strap and jerked it tight. He could barely walk like this. This will release tonight, she said, automatically. You have three days, she said, and left him in his apartment with all the Star Wars posters on the wall. At least he finally got them framed. That was a kind of progress.
Later that night she could hear his moaning in her dream.
He wouldn’t make the weight. He missed it by a pound.
It was only one pound, almost within the range of scale error! she was telling the Starvationist, her exclamation point nearly a plea (and she never pled on anyone’s behalf, so what must she have thought of this?), but midsentence Sherilyn looked at Paul and in his eyes she saw, again, forgiveness, and so she hardened, too, and ceased her plea. Let that which Paul deserveth come to Paul, she thought.
The machine was spinning up. She could hear it hiss and spit.
The subject was on the table now, strapped in for the procedure. The chamber was rising, and with it they would bring the last pound out. The three of them would watch his penis swell, like in those ads you’d see in adult magazines, in the days before internet porn, for penis pumps, buff guys with ripped abs, their dicks in pumps getting jacked up like Christmas inflatables. Sherilyn had never understood that either: Did it feel good to see your dick that big? How long did it last before it shrunk? Paul was moaning now in anticipation, or maybe it was capitulation. Only he could know right now how it felt: Was it like freedom or something else? His eyes were closed, his mouth an O and then a line. The surgical tools gleamed on the disinfected felt.
The Starvationist and her Assistant locked eyes and hands. She placed her hands in Sherilyn’s. What they had to do was done in a minute, pressure applied and bleeding stopped, the sentence ending not with a bang but with a mute hiss, the vacuum’s release, an ellipsis attenuating itself finally to a period and then a blank. They had to wait for two minutes while the machine spun down. When Sherilyn had released the Starvationist’s hands, she could feel something had changed. But what? She blinked up at the recessed lights. Now he would sleep for a day and he would wake under different lights, a new man, as they had agreed.
The light left streaks along her vision when she closed her eyes that would follow her for an hour, maybe longer. It was done. The weight was gone. The story would go out and be repeated, comma after comma after comma: anything about someone’s dick seemed to go viral fast. And this one had all the elements people liked: a love gone bad, a redemption chance, a second act, an amputation scene, a metaphor. It would be something to be believed, or at least propagated. She didn’t care whether it would be repeated. She wouldn’t tell, herself. Was it even true? No matter. The Starvationist’s Assistant would never leave, be able to doubt her job again, after this.
Everyone Looks Better When They’re under Arrest
Once again, as we always do on weekdays now, after the nearly successful kitchen makeover soon to be featured on a television station near you through all the lines and waves propagated by satellites and repeaters somewhere (I can’t tell you which station it will be on just yet—there are clauses in the contract that prohibit us from revealing this information, clauses that bind us to one action or to another, clauses that guide our responses to this thing we have chosen to submit ourselves to—I hold these clauses to me like I do paper money when it is warm and freshly pressed and I get lucky with it at the bank), we find ourselves waiting for the stove.
The stove never comes on weekends—or so we thought initially. The waiting is a saga that we repeat. We wake just after six because the contract stipulates that if the stove is to arrive that day, we will receive a call between seven and nine—this is before my wife’s traditional time to wake, since she works late into the night and likes to sleep until ten if she can, which is not often anymore. If we are not there to receive the call, they will not attempt to deliver the stove, and the whole thing will repeat.
I imagine it as beautiful, no less an object of desire than the new BMWs both of my philandering brothers yearly covet. I think of them—brothers and cars and my future stove—on TV, in light, rotating on pedestals forever. I think of them as permanently under glass, on display. Wherever the stove is now, it is beautiful, I know, and it will satisfy us totally when it finally is installed.
Other things stipulated in the contract: that we will not reveal any details beforehand (thus that I am telling you at all may violate this clause—though this missive is only to be released upon our untimely deaths, or after the stove has arrived and the show has finally aired); that we cannot interfere in the actual filming of the episode; and that we will not benefit otherwise from the work. Otherwise means we cannot sell our story to the tabloids, or go on talk shows, or sue anyone in any way for any reason ever in this matter. If the show is killed for whatever reason—scheduling change, sweeps month, sudden cancellation, finding damning photographs of me, a surplus of photogenic pets, if the networks find a more entertaining and American couple—then at that point we are released from the contract, and as such are free to talk about the thing again. We will be unbound, like molecules of gas.
Our cat had to be kept off the new tiled kitchen floor, they said. It—persisting in referring to our cat as it, not she—was far too fat for television. (Have you watched daytime TV, I asked?) If it wanders into the scene, we’ll have to scrap the shot, they said. What if she lost a lot of weight? we asked. They smirked and said nothing after that.
The contract specifies that the stove should have been in the warehouse and thus delivered to our house more than a month ago, barring unforeseen actions and consequences of cross-country shipping and publicity considerations from our sponsors, of which there are many and they are glorious, boasting warehouses full of gleaming surpluses and fat television budgets. It has not yet arrived, and the kitchen is bare—a desert, wide and luminous—without it. We have blinding white everything—new side-by-side fridge with deluxe ice maker (settings for cubed, crushed, chopped, and an unofficial setting for dented, nearly crushed, and spat out with great force so as to nearly crack our glasses); excellent new dishwasher; range hood above the space where the stove will be, lit by a superpowerful ultrafluorescent bulb in the shape of a halo; exhaust fan leading out through twenty feet of ductwork into the cold world outdoors; garbage disposal powerful enough to crush a jar of quartz (I’ve looked underneath the sink at the thing—it’s as big as the propane tank); and a trash compactor designed to keep possible babies’ hands out of it while it compresses. This kitchen of ours is a vision of potential heaven, if heaven was a domestic diorama.
Can we have sex in it? we asked, feeling that we needed their permission, or that we would enjoy the asking. We like anywhere that’s new. Which might have been the wrong thing to say. The producer looked confused and left.
Another one will come along eventually.
All that technology waiting here for us, for you, and yet there is no stove. Instead, there is a gas line poking up like a crocus from the glistening new tile.
Things that Jennifer, who is my wife (have I told you her name before? if not, this is an oversight, and I apologize; she chides me sometimes for forgetting to introduce her), thinks the lonely gas line looks like: a road winding up a mountain; a falling streamer swirling to the floor, caught midfall on camera; something from last year’s Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade (one of the floats, I think); a twist of bent-up DNA; abstract art; a toy for a giant metal animal; a hand thrusting up from the grave like the beginning of a zombie movie; the Statue of Liberty at the end of Planet of the Apes; a wick; an ashy firework worm; a snake.
One of our neighbors is a killer in the making, we are almost sure—if not the woman, then the man (either one will do). They are all broken glass and fist and fire. If all it takes is the right frame of mind and the right events—both motive and opportunity—the two of them are running for it, some front-page splash, some new great moment meant eventually for reruns of CSI: Detroit. Will we be upstaged by them gone combustible?
Jennifer is keeping tabs on this developing situation, as they refer to these kinds of things on the TV news. She says: I will keep you posted as the situation develops.
Their fate is, I think, closely tied to ours. This by virtue of proximity, by virtue of voyeuristic thrill and responsibility.
In the meantime we are stoveless, waiting, forced to get fast food, to go to Wendy’s to get our meals biggie-sized. This is not product placement: we do like to go to Wendy’s even after the demise of the Freshtastic food bar, so popular fifteen years ago, gone for health reasons, we presume. We love to be anonymous among the crowd, pending our new fame when it finally comes and the joy of not being able to leave the house for fear of paparazzi. Or: we ask our friends to have us over, over and over. Or: we microwave. I have a book, Kids Cook Microwave, from when I was young. This explains how to make many simple things, like eggs. Helpful tip: make sure you pierce the yolk to keep it from exploding.
The kitchen is made up to look like a fifties diner. We have been looking desperately through stores that sell actual memorabilia or sometimes even reproduction memorabilia (like the kind you see at Applebee’s) for an old chrome toaster. And some other things that I just do not remember—I am the idea man; Jennifer handles the specifics. Hence whereas the diner theme is me, the exact reproduction tile is Jennifer (not Jen, not Jenn, not Jenny or whatever, she will tell you: this is the first rule of dating, courting, or later being married to a girl named Jennifer—know which variation she prefers; in the Midwest there are so many of them, but my wife is Jennifer, not some terse and shortened version).
The kitchen stylists worked with us extensively to find just the right pieces to make the whole thing come together. To make it pop, they said. Their sponsors would provide us with the finest, newest appliances we could ask for: prototype models, one-of-a-kind advances in freezing technology seen only in demonstrations or glossy productions at trade shows then later reproduced in magazine spreads. Our freezer, it is true, can freeze almost anything about twice as quickly as any other consumer freezing appliance. We are assured of this. How about a food dehydrator, like I used to see on TV? I asked. They said sure, as long as it’s approved by Jennifer in writing. I popped the question on her late at night just after sex, and she said yes—this came out in a rush—and this is good because I have loved them since when I was young. You remember the commercials—dehydrate your beef down into jerky! Any meat can be preserved without chemicals for years! Call the 800 number on your screen to try one for yourself. I did—though I was too young for credit cards, and thus legitimacy, I asked them a lot of questions about the thing, like, for instance, could it dehydrate flesh, as in human skin? The salesgirl had me talk to the manager, who, after thinking about it, said it would, in theory. They took my name and number. Nothing ever came of that. Jennifer says I am probably on some list of creeps somewhere.
I don’t tell the producers that I dream sometimes of blood smeared across our new counters. I dream sometimes of stain, then static, and then other things. I think of women and a hundred inches of forgiving snow.
Why were we picked for this? we wonder. We entered no contests. Our kitchen was previously unremarkable (and thus a good candidate), but we lacked the emotional draw of most of those you see on TV—we are not orphans, ragamuffins who have just lost their parents to two simultaneous car crashes in different states the same year that their father was elected to the governorship of our fine midwestern state. We went to college. We have an okay life. One car. We’re mostly white. Religious enough to pass. Middle-of-the-road. Old house with a cracking Michigan basement (this is the technical term for it, a sort of basement like a huge and sloping grave nearly impervious to erosion and water seepage, or so I theorize). Perhaps we represent a big segment of the viewing audience (meaning you, who are in most important ways like me; that is, at least as most people are like one another; that is, as I believe in my better moments). I have my theories about surveillance and our kitchen. Tiny cameras. Voyeurism and webcasts. Teens on camera waiting just for you: no credit card required. Someone somewhere is watching what we cook, what we eat. Technically this could be you. We could be on TV even after the camera crews have rolled their machinery back into the trucks and left their ruts all around our lawn (they also put in new sod so our old lawn would be again like new, and then of course they parked all over it once they’d got the outside shots they needed). We could be the next unwitting reality TV sensation—one giant psych-out at our expense.
