150 Pounds Part 3

Sarah laughed. "I do! I can't stand them. They cry and whine and p.o.o.p their pants. My body is going to get so big, and it will take twice as long at my age to get it back to where it was. Trust me, this was not planned. I've been training for the Ironman for the past six months!"

"Is Aldo excited?" Alexis asked slowly. She was so surprised, her voice was almost a whisper. In the years she'd been working out with Sarah, this was something she'd never considered. That she would be left high and dry by her trainer, whom she paid exorbitant amounts of money to, money she barely had.

Sarah turned to her, taking one of her hands in her own, which surprised Alexis yet again. Neither woman was very touchy-feely. "He is so f.u.c.king thrilled it's not even funny." Her face broke out into a smile. She had dimples on both cheeks. "He keeps running around the apartment shouting that he can't believe he knocked me up at forty. You know Latin men. So proud of their d.i.c.ks."

Alexis swallowed. "Well, if you're happy, then I'm happy for you, Sarah." She mustered up a small smile. "Congratulations!"

"Thank you, Alexis. And don't worry. I'm not going to work out alongside you as much, but we can continue our appointments. I'll be more like a traditional trainer; a coach. I'm only three months along, and I plan on working up until I deliver, you know me."

"Yeah, you're tough," Alexis told her lightly, but inside she felt utter panic. Her life was going to change. Sarah was her mentor-she didn't want to work out with anyone else. She wasn't a particularly social person, and couldn't see meeting with another trainer, male or female. Oh, why did people have to grow up and get married and have f.u.c.king babies? All this did was ruin things. Babies were financial burdens, they caused friction between husband and wife, and they were bottomless money pits.

Alexis thrived on routine. From the time her alarm sounded while the sky was still dark to when she closed her laptop at five o'clock in the evening, every day was exactly the same. That's how she liked it. She was disciplined and a hard worker. She had no patience for anyone who didn't have the same values. How could Sarah, who had worked so hard for so many years to build her business, gathering a clientele and reputation as a kick-a.s.s trainer, give it all up for a baby? How could someone so much like herself be looking at Alexis now with starry eyes, a red flush of excitement across her cheeks? How could she have gotten herself pregnant? Surely by forty a woman had control over her reproduction! A baby would ruin everything.

After their two-hour workout ended, Alexis again congratulated Sarah, and confirmed their Wednesday appointment.

"I have a doctor's appointment that morning, but I could do ten?" Sarah asked casually.

Alexis's hand flew to her cheek. She felt like the sailor Billy had smacked. She'd seen Sarah three times a week for three years straight, always Monday, Wednesday, Friday, always at five-thirty in the morning. Neither woman had missed a day, and now this thing, this parasite, was s.c.r.e.w.i.n.g up her entire world. Once, Alexis had all four wisdom teeth pulled on a Tuesday afternoon, and was working out the following morning, high as a kite on Percocet.

Seeing her client clearly distressed, Sarah quickly said, "You can write the blog later in the day, right?"

"No, not really," Alexis said. She stopped pedaling. "I write from nine to three every day, Monday through Friday. It's not as easy for me to change my schedule as you might think." Just thinking about Skinny Chick made her want to rush home to see what the reaction in the blogosphere was to her wedding-day post. If only her readers knew how far away from getting a ring on her finger (or wanting one) Alexis was. It amused her-who was she to dole out wedding advice?

Sarah sighed. "Well, I guess I could change my appointment to another day, but this doctor is really famous and hard to get a time slot with..."

"Great!" Alexis said brightly. "So I'll see you Wednesday as usual."

She ignored the widening of Sarah's eyes and walked to the locker room. Alexis knew she was being awful but was unable to stop herself. This happened all the time, the overwhelming need to get what she wanted, the thrill of prevailing, and then the crash-and-burn feeling of recognizing there was a reason she had only one friend in the whole world, no boyfriend, no family she was close to: she was unbearable.

And yet, that line that most people wouldn't cross, Alexis always did. She'd played softball in high school, a fact that amused Billy. (He'd once tried on her old uniform, prancing around their apartment. It had fit him better than it had her.) She'd been skilled as pitcher, one of the best in her town, and her mojo was f.u.c.king with the head of each batter. Alexis got a reputation for changing up her speed more times than any other pitcher in the league. She enjoyed watching her opponents squirm. She loved winning. That feeling never dissipated.

She knew Sarah was loyal to her and the closest thing to a female friend she had, and yet ... she still wanted her to provide the same service, which was to be her trainer three times a week, at the scheduled time. Why should her routine have to get screwed up just because Sarah couldn't remember to take her birth control pill?

As she flung her workout bra and shorts on the organic bamboo bench beside the shower and stepped under the water, she suddenly heard loud, heaving noises and looked around for their source, only to realize they were coming from her, that she, Alexis Allbright, was crying, for f.u.c.k's sake. Because her personal trainer was pregnant. She laughed as she lathered her hair with the Aveda shampoo provided by the gym. She scrubbed so hard her scalp would be bright red the next day. How ridiculous! This was a happy time for Sarah, she'd been her loyal trainer for years, never canceled a single appointment, had kept Alexis in fabulous shape ... but Alexis knew that if Sarah was trying to change her regular appointment today, it wouldn't be the last time. For the next six months things would change a lot, and Alexis didn't like change. She was successful exactly because of her strict adherence to her schedule.

Her readers logged on to Skinny Chick as soon as they got into work, and she didn't get up to three million clicks a day without being uber-disciplined. She stood under the scalding water until her shoulders were fire-engine red, turned off the faucet, and dried off.

On her way to the exit, she saw a bright yellow laminated sign perched on the front check-in desk. She walked over to have a closer look. "Looking good, baby, looking good," Carlos called out to her.

"Thanks, Carlos!" She picked up the poster. "What's this event?"

"Oh, that's actually going to be pretty dope. Sarah and I are both going. A chef, Noah Cohen, is going to give a simple, healthy cooking lesson. He worked at a few New York establishments, n.o.bu, Gramercy Tavern. In his bio it says he's from Colorado and makes a mean chili."

Alexis fingered the poster, looking at the photo of Noah. He was tall, with coffee-colored skin, and the picture highlighted his soft bed of dark brown curls with sunny blond tips. His sleeves were rolled up and thick, sculpted muscle peeked through, a vein bulging in his arm like the David statue. His eyes were his best feature, a brown like melting chocolate, and mischievous, like he would be the first guy at a party to do a keg stand. His ears stuck out slightly from the sides of his head and this tiny imperfection made him seem even more personable. He had a shadow of a beard across his square chin and mouth, a hint of goatee. He had a dimple in his right cheek. He reminded Alexis of the skater guys from high school who would annoy her by performing noisy, messy tricks outside the window while she was studying in the library.

Alexis found herself hoping his blond highlights were natural, as she didn't find men who dyed their hair very masculine, and then wondered why she cared what this particular man did with his hair. In the picture, he was wearing a traditional white chef's attire, open at the throat and showing a gold Jewish star peeking through. He had large hands and a huge grin that stretched across his whole face, like Mick Jagger's. She wondered how he could be both black and Jewish (he must be, with the last name Cohen?), then remembered Sammy Davis, Jr., was black. And Jewish. And why on earth was she standing here trying to figure out this man's heritage when she had a column to write?

Carlos took the flyer out of Alexis's hands slowly. "Ha! You've got the hots for him already! This guy is a lady-killer. Like, thirty women have already signed up for this cla.s.s. It's the most we've ever gotten for one of our special cooking series. I think he looks like one of those Calvin Klein models that have that billboard on Ca.n.a.l, you know, the ones in their underpants that everyone gets all worked up about?"

She rolled her eyes. "I do not have the hots for him, I don't even know him," Alexis said, putting on her coat. "If he has good ideas about nutrition I could use him on the blog, that's all." Really! Carlos was so immature sometimes.

"Sure, sure. Well, it will be good to see you there," Carlos said. "It's next month, so you might want to sign up now because there's only two spots left."

"No problem. I'll just pay now," Alexis said. "How much is it?"

"Fifty bucks," Carlos said.

Alexis swallowed. She only had a hundred dollars left in her bank account. She was due checks from advertisers on Skinny Chick, but so far they were behind on payment. Since the recession, checks were arriving in the mail slower and slower. She made a note on her iPhone to call around to her various advertisers when she got home, and signed up for the course. Since it was related to her blog, she could probably write it off come tax season.

"Can you take a check?" she asked Carlos, who was greeting people as they hustled in, carrying gym bags and flas.h.i.+ng IDs at him.

"For you, doll? Anything."

Alexis reached into her Chanel bag she had on loan for five more days from the Web site Beg, Borrow, Steal. She carefully wrote out the check, dating it for a week from now, when she'd hopefully have more dough, hoping Carlos wouldn't notice. He didn't.

"See you in cla.s.s," he sang after her, as she pushed through the revolving front door of the gym.

"Namaste," she called back jokingly, her head spinning with Sarah's news and the fact that she'd just signed up for her first cooking cla.s.s ever, and one she really couldn't afford. But really, all she could think about was Noah's deep, warm brown eyes. She suddenly had to meet him. She was filled with excitement about a total stranger. What did that say about her?

The day was definitely not going as scheduled.

Fat and Fabulous.

PEDICURE BEFORE FOOD.

Okay, so I know my job is to talk about food, and how important it is to eat it. And believe me, I eat frickin' plenty. But if someone threatened me with an imminent Indian burn on my arm unless I chose between pedicures and food, I'd starve. May we discuss? Oh, how do I describe the warm flow of love that moves up from my toes to my heart while my feet are being scrubbed, washed, lavished with lotion, and pampered? We all like to pretend to be queen for a day (at least I do) and sitting there on that pedicure chair, well, one might just mistake me for royalty atop my golden plastic throne.

For those thirty minutes of heaven, it doesn't matter that I wear a size sixteen. Sure, I'm in public, but it's a different kind of public in the nail salon. It's all women, and believe me, no one is looking at how wide my a.s.s is or how big my b.o.o.bs are (and you all know from reading this column that they're gigantic!) when there's free issues of Us Weekly to pore over and important decisions to make such as how hot one likes their water temperature or choosing between Bikini Strap pink or Meet Me at Sunset red. I pick crazy colors: purples, hot pinks, blues, and greens. Because when you're fat with a capital F you stand out anyway, so who cares if you have wild toes?

I used to not like myself very much, and you all have heard about my struggles with depression. For so long in my teens and early twenties I denied myself the pleasures of getting a pedi because I thought, Shoshana, you are so fat you don't deserve this. That's for other girls, skinnier girls. Well, today I'm taking a stand. Or a seat, if you will. What you weigh does not determine your quality of life. If you want to have happy feet, you get happy feet!

This theory works for bigger pleasures as well. Can't fit into Theory jeans? So what? You still can take that vacation, drink that fine wine, buy that second home. Hedonism rules! So what if you're Fat? It's the good F-word. Say it loud and say it proud. Now close that laptop and go out there and get a pedicure!

XO,.

Shosh.

Shoshana's alarm clock went off early Thursday afternoon. In response, she chucked a pink ballet flat at it that had mysteriously ended up on the pillow next to her head. One of a set she'd bought just last week at Target, it was part of her attempt to look more grown-up, because she had to meet with advertisers in the city later in the week, and because of her look, which she liked to describe as "Stevie Nicks meets a fairy in the woods." The shoe bounced off the alarm, hitting the b.u.t.ton for the radio, and the sounds of Adele came streaming out.

"I love you, Adele, but shut up!" Shoshana yelled. "It's the break of dawn!"

"It's noon," Andrea said, laughter in her voice, as she came into Shoshana's room and plunked her pet.i.te body down on the bed. "You are so not a morning person, Shosh; it's hilarious."

"In another part of the world it's much earlier," Shoshana moaned.

"I brought you a cup of coffee," Andrea said. The mug read DON'T ANNOY THE WRITER. SHE MAY PUT YOU IN A BOOK AND KILL YOU. It was a present from Shoshana's father, who had salvaged it at a yard sale. (Her parents were suckers for a good yard sale. They'd been tickled with delight when they learned such an event held in Hoboken was called a "gate sale," given the lack of yards in the city.) "Okay, now I'm suspicious," Shoshana said. She sat up in bed and took a sip. She licked her lips. "Suspicious, but now in ecstasy."

"Can't I just be a good friend and bring you a cup of joe to be nice?" Andrea asked, fluttering her eyelashes.

"No, you cannot. Give it up."

Andrea was one of four women Shoshana lived with on Bloomfield Street, on the second floor of a five-story walk-up, above Empire Coffee. Luckily, they all equally prayed to the caffeine G.o.ds in the morning, so their four-bedroom apartment (Andrea and another roommate, Karen, shared) was in the perfect location. Shoshana woke daily to the faint vibrations of beans being ground.

Andrea had jet-black curls, and large, almond-colored eyes. She was Puerto Rican and Dominican, and she'd been Shoshana's roommate during their freshman year at Princeton. She'd strolled in and said, "Hi, I'm Andrea. I'm here so Princeton can fulfill its affirmative action quota." They'd been friends ever since, along with the three other girls, all Princeton grads now trying to push and shove their way into success in New York during bad economic times. Andrea really wanted to be an actress, and took the PATH into Manhattan and went on auditions some mornings, other times on Sat.u.r.days. She'd been in a deodorant commercial three months ago where she had to apply the deodorant fifty-seven times, and she'd been eaten alive by mosquitoes later that evening at a cookout, finally giving her a real excuse for calling out of work.

"Do you remember when I told you that someday, and that day may never come, I'll have to call on you to do a favor for me?" Andrea was asking. She moved closer to Shoshana, snuggling into her back.

"Are you seriously quoting The G.o.dfather to me?"

On the wall near her bed was a framed photograph of Lane Bryant, the dress manufacturer. It had gotten knocked askew. (They'd had a few friends over the night before and there'd been an impromptu dance-off in her room.) Shoshana reached out and straightened the picture with her toe. Bryant was the first person to make plus-size clothing on a national scale, with the idea that larger women came in three body types: all-over stout, flat-busted stout, and full-busted stout. Shoshana was definitely in the full-busted stout category.

"Okay, you caught me. I do need to ask you for a favor. Frankie says it's okay, don't you, Frankie?"

Frank Sinatra, the one-eyed, long-haired mini-dachshund-slash-Chihuahua-slash-unknown mix Shoshana had adopted three years ago, right after her father died, was sprawled out on the pillow next to Andrea's head. He wore a doggie T-s.h.i.+rt with a tiny picture of Janis Joplin stretched across its front. Hearing his name, he let out what might have been a groan of pleasure as she stroked his lumpy-shaped head. He was very famous in the Church Square Park dog run, and around town, as Hobokenites loved that he was named for one of their own. (He also had a wardrobe to rival The Real Housewives of New Jersey.) The real Frank Sinatra (or shall we say the furless one) had once lived on Monroe Street, just a few blocks away. Shoshana named him after Old Blue Eyes because of an incident on the day she took him home from the animal shelter in Jersey City. After stepping off the light rail, she took him for his first walk about town. The dog was not content to pee anywhere near her apartment, so a frustrated Shoshana walked toward the back of Hoboken, away from the water, to Monroe, and wandered around. Well, wouldn't you know that as she rounded the corner of Fourth, her tiny little ugly dog wagged his hairless tail and quivered all over like one of those metal detectors on the beach coming into contact with gold. She heard the sound of his tiny toenails sc.r.a.ping against the ground, and when he finally lifted his leg and let out a stream of yellow pee, she looked down and gasped: he was peeing directly on a giant gold star, marking the plot where Sinatra was born! And thus, a tiny runt of a dog was given the macho name.

"G.o.d, this dog is ugly," Andrea said in a singsong voice. Sinatra licked her nose, not upset over the insult. "But he sure is a sweetie pie."

"You're not ugly, are you, son?" Shoshana asked Sinatra, who promptly licked her across her mouth.

"Gross!" Andrea exclaimed. "You shouldn't let him lick you like that. Dogs carry different germs than us."

"They do not," Shoshana said. She laughed. "There aren't special dog species germs."

He was the ugliest dog Shoshana had ever seen when she visited the shelter, but she fell in love with him immediately. She knew all about being judged on appearance. He weighed four pounds (on a good day) and had a long, mostly furless skinny body with black and white spots, like a cow. Where he did have fur was around his face and ears, like an old man. He had an unexplainable missing left eye, which was grown over with luminescent, pale pink skin like the inside of a sh.e.l.l, and a tongue that didn't set right in his jaw and therefore stuck absurdly out the side through his teeth. Shoshana suspected he'd been abused at one point, given his injuries.

"Why's his eye like that?" a child in the park with chocolate on his face once asked her, as she was out walking.

"He's a pirate," Shoshana answered, smiling when the kid's jaw dropped open.

Sinatra was the love of her life and she didn't go anywhere without him in one of her large, unfas.h.i.+onable bags made from recycled material, his face sticking out, his crooked tongue flapping against his cheek as the wind swept his face and whipped his fur back, making him look like a bat.

"I'm actually glad you woke me up," Shoshana said. She took off the pink eye cover that she wore to sleep and placed it on her white Shabby Chic for Target bedside table.

She'd been having the strangest dream, that Victoria Beckham, Lindsay Lohan, and Paris Hilton were all holding hands and dancing in the moonlight on her mother's back deck in Summit, and it seemed only natural that their little bit of skin left would slip right off and their skeletons would gleam, their jawbones creaking into eerie, see-through grins, as they joined hands and danced, bones clacking, wind whistling through their rib cages.

Andrea had started bouncing on the bed.

"I really do hope I throw up on you," Shoshana said, throwing a pink, lace-trimmed pillow at her friend, which bounced off her head. She had a pillow problem. Something about them just filled her with happiness. Her favorites were crocheted ones with silly sayings, like STRESSED SPELLED BACKWARDS IS DESSERTS, or CONSERVE WATER, DRINK MARGARITAS.

"I wish you would, girl," Andrea said. "It would make my case for calling in sick a little more believable." She worked as a c.o.c.ktail waitress at the W Hotel in Hoboken down by the water and hated it.

"You're not seriously calling in sick again, are you? Andrea, you are going to totally get fired and you need this job! We've got the rent bill coming up in six days." Shoshana had always been the most responsible of her group of girlfriends; maybe it had something to do with being the firstborn. She was the mama bear. Friends flocked to her for advice, to borrow five bucks, or to help them learn how to knit. She was never judgmental in any way.

Andrea stopped jumping and threw her arms around Shoshana. "I know, I know!" she said, sighing. "But I seriously can't go to work tonight. For one, it's snowing. And two, I have a date." Sinatra had a momentary freak-out, barking like crazy and jumping in little leaps around Andrea, who still hadn't forgiven him for taking a p.o.o.p inside her favorite fake Chanel purse last month.

"Yo, your dog is a spaz," Andrea said, watching him warily.

Shoshana sat up. She was wearing a gray Yankees T-s.h.i.+rt, size extra-large. Her b.r.e.a.s.t.s felt heavy on her chest. Her long auburn hair stuck out in all directions from her face. "I'm not going to do you any favors if you insult my furry son." She walked over to the window, raised her pink shade with a frilly white ta.s.sel, and blinked. "It's snowing?"

"Yup! Since early this morning, lazy bones." They stood shoulder to shoulder and surveyed the street. The snow covered everything: telephone poles, cars, sidewalk.

"Okay, forget I asked. I'm going to need my sungla.s.ses just to get out of this bed." She groaned. Then, noticing the big grin on Andrea's face, she asked, "So you have, like, a date date? With whom?"

"Shosh, you are the only person I know who says 'whom' correctly in a sentence."

"Grammar is rad, what can I say?"

They both sat back down into the bed.

Andrea excitedly got into a cross-legged position. Shoshana did the same, and their knees touched, making a figure eight on the bed. "All I can think about is this guy! It's nuts. I think I might be falling in love. Seriously." Andrea said she was falling in love with someone new approximately once a month.

"Tell me all about him." Shoshana put on a fake deep fatherly voice. "I'd like to meet the young man, find out what his intentions are."

Andrea giggled. "He's actually kind of, um ... young for me. I met him at work. He's parking cars while he finishes school."

"Oh, my G.o.d, is he in high school?"

"No! You pervert." Both girls giggled hysterically. Shoshana was used to this; she started most mornings with one of her roommates ensconced in her bed, giving her the latest gossip, filling her in on their lives. It was only natural in a house with five women. "He's a junior at Stevens, he's majoring in, like, bioengineering or something. I don't know what it means, but it sounds really smart. He's twenty. I think he wants to design weapons, like Robert Downey, Jr., in Iron Man."

"Well, that only makes you six years older. That's not bad. And besides, men date younger women all the time! The only downside is he'll have to wait around outside when we go to the bar. We can tie him up to a lamppost next to Sinatra."

They both giggled.

"Yipes, I didn't think of that." Andrea shrugged. "I'll wait it out. He's only got six more months until his birthday."

Shoshana giggled. "Right on, sister. Rob that cradle!"

"Besides, he has a six-pack! How many guys our age have six-packs?"

"How did you see his stomach? I thought he parks cars at work. Wouldn't he be wearing a uniform?"

"Um, well, we kind of did it already in the coat-check room. So this is sort of our first official date."

"Ah, I see. Well, sometimes you have to find out if he's good in the sack before you do the whole calling-in-sick-to-work bit for a guy. What's his name?"

Andrea turned red. "Marty. I know, I know. It's a really dorky name, but it was his father's and he's kind of stuck with it."

"I think it's a perfectly nice name," Shoshana said. "Besides, he's got to be better than your last boyfriend, who had a hole in his car near the pedals so he could throw his weed out in case he got pulled over. What was his name? Jeff?"

"I think so. Oh, my G.o.d, remember? I used to think how crazy it was that I could see the road rus.h.i.+ng by while he drove. It felt like I'd roll right through and end up flattened on 287." Andrea shook her head.

Shoshana petted Sinatra, who was sprawled on her lap on his back, his tiny paws in the air, his spotted baby belly puffed out.

"Soooooo ... are you going to call a.s.shole Boss Man or not?"