150 Pounds Part 2

"Hey, little sis."

"Hi, Mark."

"You're not too old for a noogie, right? Say the magic words and I'll let you go."

She giggled, punching him lightly in the stomach as he let go of his grip around her head and put his arm around her shoulders instead.

"Goonies say, never die!" They both loved The Goonies. Sloth was Mark's favorite character.

She felt something knotted within her simply ... relax. He had that effect on her, as he did on everyone else, too. "You know I love you, don't you?" he said quietly into her ear, so as not to allow people walking by to witness any of their private exchange.

Her eyes welled up, but she looked away toward a nearby green locker that had the initials KG + JG scratched on it. She didn't know them. "Yes," she'd whispered back.

And that had been the end of that.

But now she was late for the gym. Her phone emitted a sharp bleet, as Alexis quickly downed the gla.s.s of milk like a shot. She had another app that reminded her when she was running behind for her workout. Out of the corner of her eye she saw a blur of motion as sailor boy reached out and helped himself to a slice of her banana.

Alexis sucked in air and let out a small scream.

Sailor boy's arm dropped to his side, the banana still mashed into his cheek, making him look like a chipmunk.

Billy came rus.h.i.+ng out of his bedroom. "What is it? What's the matter?" He glanced at the clock on the stove. "It's five-oh-four. Why aren't you at the gym?" Billy was Korean, had black spiky hair and smooth, caramel-colored skin. His eyes were large and black, framed by beautifully long lashes that were his best feature (which he'd tell everyone who would listen). He was the same height as Alexis, five-foot-two.

Two eyes peered out of the darkness from Billy's room at Alexis. She realized it was the other sailor from last night. Tom, or Tim. Or maybe it was Tony? She couldn't remember.

"Sailor boy over here thought it might be okay to take one of my banana slices," Alexis said.

Polka-dot Boxers Sailor let out an embarra.s.sed chuckle. Alexis realized he sounded embarra.s.sed for her. The nerve.

"What's with your roommate?" he asked Billy. "She got a stick up her a.s.s or something? I ate a slice of banana, and she screamed like I was stabbing her in the eye."

Billy strode slowly but meaningfully over to him. He came up to the sailor's nipple.

Pause.

He reached up and slapped him across the face.

The sailor stood there, his hand on his cheek, wearing a shocked expression. Alexis heard Billy's other boy toy scurry back into the shadows, quickly slamming the door. The sound of the lock being turned echoed across the tiles in the kitchenette.

"What the f.u.c.k was that for?" Polka-dot Boxers Sailor asked.

"I'm going to explain something to you, so open up your big dumb waterlogged ears," Billy said, hands on his narrow hips. "Do you have any idea who you just took a slice of banana from? Whose breakfast you so cavalierly interrupted? Motherf.u.c.ker, this is Alexis Allbright. Editor in chief of Skinny Chick. Queen of Chelsea. b.i.t.c.h of all b.i.t.c.hes."

"The blog?" the sailor asked, lifting his thick eyebrows at this news.

"The blog," Billy replied.

"Oh, my G.o.d," he said, putting a hand up to his reddening cheek. "I read your blog, like, every single day. I f.u.c.king wors.h.i.+p you. I used to be a fat kid when I was younger." He pointed to his washboard abs. "Really."

Alexis smiled the wafer-thin smile she reserved for people she didn't like.

"That interview you did with Anna Wintour I read like five hundred times on my laptop when we were stationed off the coast of Mexico. It got me through the lonely nights."

"Glad I can do my part for my country," Alexis said. She was starting to calm down.

"Now do you understand why taking her banana slice was so disrespectful?" Billy asked, his tone that of a preschool teacher speaking to a very small child. "Girlfriend isn't going to eat anything for another five hours, as you know from her blog. And when she does eat, it will be a meal consisting of fewer calories than you have brain cells. And she has to now go work out. While the rest of the world sleeps in their lazy little beds."

The sailor was tripping over himself to apologize. Alexis let him off the hook with a wave of her French-manicured hand. She never got anything other than a "Frenchie," as she called them. Her mother had always said color on fingernails looked vulgar.

"Don't worry about it, honey," she told him. "If you can say Skinny Chick's motto to me, all is forgiven."

The sailor grinned. Now he was on familiar ground. "A few calories a day keep the spandex away," he sang.

"Good boy," Billy said, patting him on the b.u.t.t like a dog. The sailor went skipping off to the bathroom, glowing as if he'd just met Angelina Jolie.

Suddenly a second door opened and a dark mane of hair appeared. Alexis and Billy both sucked in their breath at the same time. "All right out 'ere?" a voice called spookily in an indeterminate accent. It seemed to warble, or echo somehow, like a ghost wailing inside a haunted house.

"Er ... everything's fine. Sorry we woke you," Billy whispered.

Their third roommate was the only person on the entire planet who truly scared the s.h.i.+t out of both of them. Not having any friends, they'd had to rent out the third bedroom in their apartment when Alexis quit law school to start her blog. Billy was between bartending jobs at the time, and they needed the money. G.o.d knows, she'd rather take in Hannibal Lecter before going to her father for money, after he'd told her she was "dead to me" when she dropped out.

So when Vanya answered their Craigslist ad, and had the deposit ready, they'd accepted her on the spot.

Her profession was unknown, and they'd never really gotten an actual look at her face after several years of cohabitation. Only brief flashes of light green eyes, nearly yellow like a cat's. Her hair was down to her waist and Wonder-Woman black, with a blue sheen. Her skin was a translucent white and she spent most of her days in her room (like a vampire!) playing the kind of weird music with bells sounding and cymbals pinging one heard in a spa. Billy had a theory she was a dominatrix, as she seemed to work only at night, and often wore thigh-high patent-leather boots. She'd once left a book out on the living room table, and Billy and Alexis had pounced on it. The t.i.tle? Wicca Today: 15 Curses for the Modern Witch. Billy had emitted a little scream and dropped it on the floor like a hot pan. Later, Alexis saw him carefully place it back on the table, precisely as it had been left. His hand had been shaking.

This morning was only the second or third time they'd heard her speak. Billy shrank closer to Alexis. Vanya had a mix of accents; one couldn't be sure if she was Irish, Scottish, or Transylvanian.

"Just a little disagreement," Alexis said. "Sorry we woke you up."

Billy made a small choking sound. Alexis never apologized. "Being hot and skinny means never having to say you're sorry," she often said.

Vanya retreated back into her room (Alexis could swear she saw her feet not actually touch the floor), its walls painted such a dark purple it was cavelike, the reflection of a mirror on the ceiling casting a silver light onto the crack under her door. Only, her door didn't shut, not really. It seemed to suck closed, like a force field swirled around her s.p.a.ce and it was retreating back into itself.

Billy wiped his forehead with the gold sleeve of his Louis Vuitton pajamas. "She scares me," he said. Then, as he turned to Alexis, they both started giggling uncontrollably, holding their sides and then each other. Billy was the only man Alexis felt comfortable with touching her regularly. She occasionally slept with men (some married, some not) in five-star hotel rooms, but if they called her or tried to contact her afterward she always told them to lose her number.

She and Billy were so close it was as though they were married. Dating someone seriously would feel like an intrusion on their friends.h.i.+p; whoever it was would be an outsider. He wouldn't get their seven-year buildup of jokes and familiarity. They'd both dated but never seriously. Most people who found out about how close they were usually recognized their friends.h.i.+p for what it was: needy and strange. They vacationed together, applied self-tanner to each other's bodies, and even took baths in their humongous claw-foot bathtub the rich old lady who owned the apartment before them left when she died, their feet hanging over the tub's lip on either end.

Billy handled the recruitment of advertisers for Skinny Chick, serving drinks to people in the entertainment industry who wanted to promote their new movie or alb.u.m on the blog. "I'll go and get my gay," Alexis would say, when advertisers called wanting to speak to someone about the site. Billy worked three jobs: he helped run Skinny Chick, bartended, and worked as a fas.h.i.+on consultant for Vogue. He styled the models for photo shoots, lugging items from his own collection (he had a twenty-seven-inch waist, and sometimes the models wore his clothes unawares), or he'd borrow a credit card from Vogue and go shopping for the shoot, with specific outfits in mind. Billy was a genius when it came to dressing women, and even though freelance budgets at many magazines were dwindling, they always found the dough to hire him. Before she met Billy, Alexis dressed provocatively, wearing very short dresses and thigh-high boots. She cringed now, remembering. Her mother had never really helped steer her in any direction with fas.h.i.+on; Bunny wore tennis skirts and tops around the house, which was ironic because she hadn't picked up a racquet since she peered down the neck of a bottle of vodka years ago and never looked back up. Billy helped give Alexis a more streamlined, polished, adult look. She still was allowed the occasional short dress, but the label had to be Stella McCartney, not Bebe.

Though Alexis founded Skinny Chick, Billy came across as much more warm in business meetings and over the phone. Clients were scared of Alexis. Men and women alike. She weighed one hundred pounds soaking wet. She wore five-inch heels, everywhere she went, even to the supermarket. Her blond hair was dyed so heavily it was nearly white, and pulled into such a short bob it gave her young face a severe look. Once, when she looked into the carriage of a neighbor's new infant, the baby had instantly scrunched up its soft face and burst into tears, the mother embarra.s.sed and shus.h.i.+ng it.

But now Billy was ready to go back to sleep. Or at least to bed. "I was having the strangest dream," he told Alexis.

Alexis glared at him.

"I know, I know, you have to go work out," he said, rolling his dark, beautiful eyes. "Just listen. So I'm nestled there between my two sailors, and I'm dreaming that I go on Craigslist, because you know how I have that obsession where I look at c.r.a.p people are selling in our neighborhood?"

"Of course."

"So I go on there, and lo and behold, there is my signed poster of Liza Minnelli from Flora the Red Menace, you know, the one I waited for three hours in January outside the auction in Midtown and caught a deadly strain of pneumonia to get?"

He'd caught a cold, and it had been a mild one.

"On sale for fifty dollars. My Liza poster!"

"You are such a gay stereotype," Alexis said drolly.

"I know, shut up. So! I keep scrolling down, and ooo, there's a lovely TAG watch for a hundred bucks, and I look closer, notice the scuffing on the band..."

"Let me guess, it's your watch," Alexis said, rolling her eyes.

"Yes! Yes! All my s.h.i.+t is being sold online. It was like some crazy Groundhog Day situation."

"Only you weren't living the same day over and over again."

"Maybe not exactly the same. But isn't that weird? I'm totally calling Jasmine."

Jasmine was Billy's psychic, who charged seventy-five dollars an hour.

"I put a lock on your cell so it won't dial her."

"I'll call from the house phone."

"I shut it off. It cost too much, anyway."

"d.a.m.n you, Alexis! You skinny, heartless b.i.t.c.h. Don't I feed you diet pills when you go up a pound every Thanksgiving? And put grapes in the freezer and call it dessert? And pretend to be your husband when married guys you banged call the house? And for what? So you can come between me and the only woman I've ever loved?"

Alexis sighed and threw on her pink cashmere cardigan that hung on the back of the door. She tossed her keys in her purse and put her hand on her hip. "I'm the only woman you've ever loved."

"Other than Nana Kay." Nana Kay was Billy's mother's mother, who came over from Korea ten years ago. As both his parents disowned him because of his s.e.xual orientation, Alexis and Billy both adored Nana Kay. Billy once lived with her for several years. She was four-foot-ten and had an apartment in an a.s.sisted living facility in the Bronx, where they visited her from time to time. Alexis loved her overstuffed apartment, the shelves in her living room crammed with books, which reminded her of Penny Oliver, a girl from grade school whose adult teeth grew in before her baby teeth fell out. Shameless, she'd open her mouth and grin widely for anyone who asked, looking like Jaws with double sets of teeth.

Nana Kay cooked traditional Korean food and they'd drink her homemade wine until deep into the night, playing old records and dancing. She still applied wh.o.r.e-red lipstick every morning, and at eighty-two, she was Alexis's hero. Well, second hero. The other was MeMe Roth, of course.

"Right. Other than Nana Kay. And don't you forget it. Now make me proud and go enjoy your man meat."

Billy pretended to pant like a dog, which made them both laugh. She tried to stop laughing when she got to the elevator. Once, when she was five, her mother said it caused wrinkles, and she'd never forgotten the tip. Alexis thought about her parents and sighed. She'd never felt particularly close to either of them, and the last three years that had gone by with no communication hadn't helped. Mark's death had caused a rip in their family that could never be repaired. Bunny, who'd had a small drinking problem when he was alive, was now a certified drunk. Dad dealt with his grief by burying himself in work at his bustling, successful Greenwich law firm where he was a partner.

Dad had met Billy only once while briefly in New York for work. Alexis had called him, initiating the get-together. "The only time I have is if you come with me to a Giants game with clients," he'd said. So she did, dragging Billy along for support. She sat there, while her father made cracks about her blog and asked when she was going to "get some d.a.m.n sense and go back to the law."

Billy, sensing her unease, had pointed to the field in front of them. Halftime was ending, and the team was trotting back onto the field in a blur of blue and white. "All those tight pants! It's like we're at the ballet," he'd whispered, making her giggle.

Now, standing in her hallway, Alexis pressed the elevator b.u.t.ton with one perfectly manicured finger and listened to the sounds of its cables rising up to meet her, like the building's innards slowly waking the same time as the city. At the end of the hallway a large window showed the sun peeking over a few jagged buildings, which caused her to squint, so she dug in her purse and put on her Chanel sungla.s.ses Billy had stolen from the time he'd dressed all the actresses on As the World Turns. They were white and very wide and slimmed her face, which was a perfect circle, and therefore always gave her grief. She'd inherited her father's looks along with his stubbornness; Mark took after their mother, with their heart-shaped faces and easy dispositions. Having a circle for a face is cute when you're a baby. But when the rest of you is slim and streamlined, it adds five pounds in photographs. At least it did in Alexis's mind.

"I have a Christina Ricci face," she would complain to Billy.

"I know, darling," he'd say. "But your a.s.s is so skinny, I don't think you can lose another pound. I'd have to put you on ano watch."

Her phone beeped again. She stepped onto the elevator and pressed a b.u.t.ton to silence it. It was 5:10 in the morning. "I know, I know," she muttered out loud in the silence of the hall. "I'm late. I should be at the gym by now." She worked out at the very elite Soho Gym, which was co-owned by several celebrities. It cost $500 a month and she barely was able to pay her rent because of it, but her members.h.i.+p was absolutely essential. Her weight hardly ever altered more than a pound or two other than that scary week last year when she'd found herself weighing 110 and had to go on a quick liquid diet that had left her with terrible diarrhea (Billy joked they'd need to air out the apartment with large fans), but lately her personal trainer Sarah was helping sculpt her arms and give her already-flat stomach definition.

Walking along Sixth Avenue, Alexis kept up a constant stream of thoughts in her head. As a writer, she was a natural people-watcher. Unsurprisingly, she picked apart mainly women.

She's fifteen pounds overweight, she shouldn't be wearing horizontal stripes with those wide hips, she could use a good lip wax, what was that woman thinking wearing leggings with that a.s.s, if you're not pregnant don't wear an Empire-waist dress, if I ever get that overweight please take me into the pasture and kindly put a bullet in my brain. It was a habit she had, like some people don't step on cracks or always turn right when lost. When women pa.s.sed her on the street she instantly judged them. Height, weight, whether they were prettier than her, highlights real or fake, how many times they'd gone under the knife ... It never failed to leave her with an anxious feeling, and she knew she'd feel better if she could only stop comparing herself to every New York woman, but it was a hard habit to break. It was just who she was.

Entering the gym, she waved to Carlos, who worked the front desk of her gym. He doubled as a yoga teacher, and he was always inviting her to his cla.s.s, but Alexis knew yoga was for lazy people who didn't want a real workout.

"Namaste," he teased her as she swiped her card.

"Whatever," she replied.

Alexis pa.s.sed the room where she sometimes took spin cla.s.s, then walked by the personal training room, currently occupied by the resident kickboxing expert, Leona. She was Hispanic and had long, curly black hair she put in two buns on the top of her head and a killer bod. Some gyms touted a mix of people trying to get into shape and those already in it; what Alexis liked about Soho Gym was that everyone was already gorgeous, like Leona. She didn't have to do crunches on the mat next to any fat, sweaty slobs wearing T-s.h.i.+rts with the sleeves cut off, advertising mechanic shops. Soho Gym was a place where people wore makeup on the elliptical machines.

Alexis, who had worked out with Leona last winter when Sarah went on her honeymoon in Alaska, waved. In turn, she looked up from demonstrating jabs to a short, pale, fleshy banker-type guy on the punching bag and winked.

Alexis strode into the women's locker room and stripped off her cardigan. Inside her specially-a.s.signed locker was a brush. She ran it quickly through her hair, then slipped on a slim black workout headband. She went over to the scale and stripped off her clothing, then climbed on. It was chilly in the room, and she s.h.i.+vered. She congratulated herself inwardly: the needle wavered between ninety-nine and one hundred. She'd lost a pound, perhaps from all the stress of going on Oprah last month. She hadn't been nervous onstage because she knew she was in the right with her message of health, that awful fat girl Shoshana was completely in the wrong, but she had been on edge in the weeks leading up to the show.

To prepare for Oprah, Billy bought her books on speaking in public. He decided she needed a voice coach, designated himself, and made her walk around the living room with books on her head for posture. "This feels like something out of the fifties," she'd complained. "Like etiquette cla.s.s." Billy told her to shut her trap and pay attention, and she had to admit that doing ridiculous voice exercises with him like gargling with salt water to relax the throat had somehow ended up relaxing her, in the end. She'd clearly been the victor in the Oprah debate.

If Billy was her only friend, her personal trainer, Sarah, was someone she admired greatly and respected. She would consider Sarah a friend, as they'd been working out together several years now, but since she paid her extravagant amounts of money she wasn't sure if that const.i.tuted an actual friends.h.i.+p.

Sarah was forty but looked not a day over twenty-five. She was tall, svelte, Puerto Rican, and rumored to have once picked Carlos up over her head and bench-pressed him. (Carlos weighed in at 190, all muscle.) She had coffee-colored skin, and huge green eyes with long black lashes. She worked out three hours a day and had one of the tightest bodies Alexis had ever seen. She was married to an oncologist at NYU Medical Center. Alexis wors.h.i.+pped Sarah and they'd had many discussions about the epidemic of obesity in America. Sarah was very concerned with fast-food chains in New York City, and she led a large protest with Skinny Chick readers when a McDonald's opened next door to the gym. They'd made the six o'clock news. Since then, Sarah wrote a monthly column with exercise tips for Alexis, which always received a lot of attention and hits.

Alexis would come across Sarah in the gym doing crunches hanging upside down from a bar like a bat, or spotting women in the weight room. Today she was sitting on a spin bike and reading a magazine when Alexis found her. She peeked at the cover and saw Parents written across it. Weird, Alexis thought. All of the cooler magazines like Vogue and Nylon must be taken already.

"I'm ready to be tortured!" Alexis joked, admiring Sarah's very toned brown biceps. Sarah had a unique program in which she worked out alongside Alexis, pus.h.i.+ng both of them to achieve the optimal workout. People in the gym were used to seeing both women balanced on large b.a.l.l.s, their stomach muscles clenched, as they slowly did bicep curls.

"Hey, it's Skinny Chick!" Sarah said, grinning. "Carlos and I were just rehas.h.i.+ng how great you were on Oprah. We laughed our a.s.ses off when that other blogger tried defending eating junk food. I seriously think she had some warped ideas about nutrition."

"I know!" Alexis said, plopping down on an exercise bike next to Sarah. Maybe this was her new program, to slowly warm up on a bike before the punis.h.i.+ng and grueling workout that most days she jumped right into. "I kept thinking about people dying from heart disease, who have to get their legs chopped off from diabetes, and here this girl is saying it's okay to indulge. I just felt I had to carry the right message, even if it's not what people want to hear." She felt valiant and brave talking about her mission with Skinny Chick. It always gave her that rush, which studying the law had lacked. She didn't see how taking people for every cent they had when going through the worst time in their lives (her father's firm dealt with high-profile divorce cases) was helping humanity in any way.

"Well, you're not doing this to be popular," Sarah said. "Don't worry, people will eventually come around to our way of thinking, once they start having relatives and loved ones whose weight problem impacts their daily way of life."

"Right!" Alexis chirped, pedaling her feet around and around. Her sneakers looked bright against the purple of the sky's sunrise. The gym had floor-to-ceiling windows all around, and she could see some people rus.h.i.+ng off to work, coffees clutched in their hands, talking on their cell phones, wrapping scarves around their necks as they hit New York's pavement.

Sarah smiled. "Ready for torture hour?"

"Always. Are we going to warm up here on the bikes?"

Sarah's face changed, and Alexis's heart dropped. Something was different. Alexis didn't do different. "What is it?"

Sarah gave a little nervous laugh and that scared Alexis even further. This woman pulled truck tires across the room with a single rope and could do five hundred sit-ups without getting out of breath.

"You're not going to another gym, are you?" Alexis asked. She put her arm on Sarah's, only to realize it was the first time the two women had touched, other than when Sarah spotted her in the weight room. "Because seriously, I love this place, but if you leave I would totally follow you to your new place of employment."

"Oh, no, I'm not leaving, honey," Sarah said. "Don't worry!" She put her magazine down on the floor between them, then placed her hands on either side of the bike and pedaled faster, her knees high as she pumped her feet. "I seem to have gotten knocked up, is all. Can you believe it? In my old age?" She smiled ruefully but Alexis could tell she was somehow ... happy.

What the h.e.l.l?

"But I thought you hated kids," Alexis stammered, remembering a conversation they'd had years ago about not walking past the gym's day-care center for fear of germs. She jabbed at the bike's control screen, not making eye contact.