— Yes, Sorenson says, and starts talking about Potters Prairie, before going back to the fucking causeway incident, which seems to have scarred that fat bitch more than it has me. — I can’t believe how strong you were on the Julia Tuttle. I need some of that strength and determination.
— Yes, but you aren’t a vampire and I’m not a blood bank, I snap. I’ve long recognized I can ride out an occasional contemptuous outburst, as my clients, in common with most of the fat, possess a considerable ability to edit out the uncomfortable. — Inner strength and focus is in all of us. My job is to help bring it out and develop it. To enable you find that explosive part of yourself that you are, for some reason, keeping buried, I tell her, and glance at the clock on the wall, suddenly anxious to get away from this social leech. — Right, I should go.
Sorenson rocks on the balls of her feet, evidently wanting me to hang around. — Oh, yes . . . right. You, um, didn’t tell me where you were from?
No dice, fat girl; some of us have lives. — Boston originally. Now if you’ll excuse me, I must go, I tell her, throwing my stuff into my bag, — and you really should shower now before you start to cool down too much under the air conditioning, and I head toward the exit, only whiplashing back to chide the crestfallen chubster, — Remember, watch what you eat!
Outside, there’s a sweet, cooling ocean breeze, and I go at a brisk trot across Flamingo Park, wanting to put as much distance between myself and that social predator as possible. Then, at the top end of Lenox, I see a grubby fuck with a camera dangling from his neck, hanging around outside my apartment block. What the fuck is this prick doing here? The show is long over! There’s always some lone loser trying to work an angle, some fucking intrusive psycho . . .
Slowing down, I walk up quietly behind him. I tap his shoulder. The greasy prick turns around. — Lucy, he shouts, reaching for his camera.
I tear it out of the cocksucker’s hand, the band slipping over his head, and hurl it into the road. On impact, a small black piece snaps off it. — FUCK YOU, ASSHOLE!
— My fucking cam— He looks at me in horror, then runs to retrieve the battered device.
As he cradles it in the street, as if it were the child victim of a hit-and-run, I take the opportunity to get in through the front door, a barrage of insults shrieking behind me.
In the apartment, I head straight for the shower. I touched that paparazzi creep’s shoulder and could feel the grubbiness from his filthy cum-splattered and nicotine-caked paw on that fucking camera. I’m just drying off when I get a call. — Lucy, it’s Lena Sorenson.
Fuck. Like, already, dude? It was evidently a mistake to give this creepy little porker my number. — Yes? I sharply intone.
— I think you should switch on the TV . . . Channel 6.
I comply with the Porky Princess of Potters Prairie (seriously, who the fuck comes from a place called that?) and spark the TV into action. The depressed set finally kicks in. I have a better-quality small-screen portable in my bedroom, but the picture is way too tiny. An anchor, whose face is almost as stiff as her lacquered hair and shoulder pads, is recounting the story of Sean McCandless, the wimpy gunman I disarmed. Between the images on the screen and Sorenson’s breathless commentary in my ear, the disturbing picture coalesces. My blood increasingly chills as the nippy air blasts from the vents above onto my wet skin. It emerges that McCandless was abused by a pedophile ring when he was a kid in foster homes. Those guys he was pursuing were both sex offenders who lived in a homeless colony under the Tuttle Causeway. I shiver, then start to convulse, holding the towel tight to me. I saved one, possibly two monsters, and sent down this poor kid who was only out for revenge after some sick-fuck priest ripped his baby-boy ass apart.
It gets worse. As Sorenson’s warbling commentary fades out, two talking heads appear onscreen, both of them candidates for the forthcoming congressional elections. Ben Thorpe and Joel Quist are the archetypal worst-case Democrat and Republican. Thorpe is a well-meaning but ineffectual, flatulent-mouthed, carpetbagging Ivy League asshole, while Quist is a rabid, fascist, sanctimonious, Bible-bashing prick, schooled in spewing out populist soundbites. It’s hard to work out which one I hate the most. They are debating gun control and Thorpe’s defending my bravery, while Quist, agreeing, then says, — Though I’d like to ask that young lady, if she knew then what she knows now, would she do the same?
— Oh my God . . . I hear myself say out loud. What the fuck . . . I didn’t know they were pedophiles . . . the guy was shooting a fucking gun!
— Well, that’s an interesting thought, simpers Ms. Botox, so firmly embedded in Quist’s corner that he has to be fucking her, — what would Lucy Brennan, the so-called Julia Tuttle Causeway heroine, think right now?
About what?What difference . . . fuck . . .
And I realize that Lena Sorenson’s soft voice is still droning on in my ear, though I can’t make out what she’s saying. I’m just so fucking livid at being dragged into all this bullshit. I’m responding with automatic “mmm’s” and “yeah’s.” I can’t talk to this maneuvering bitch. I need to think, so I put the phone down. I sit watching the other features, these Siamese twins again, and then I rise, drying myself properly and putting on a tee and some shorts.
A few moments later the intercom goes and I’m ready to bawl out this next stalking creep, probably that photographer asshole, but it’s Sorenson! Her voice is rendered metallic and scratchy by the device. — I jumped in the car and got here as soon as I could!
I don’t even recall agreeing to her coming here, but there’s nothing to do but buzz her in.
I open the front door to hear her slowly climbing the stairs. Sorenson, even smaller than I remember, swings into the corridor and waddles toward me. I move into the apartment, leaving the door ajar. She raps the door with her knuckles as she enters, looking around my tiny space in a slightly disparaging way. Then she says, — You’re gonna be under siege for a spell. Come over to my house, have some dinner. I feel so responsible, giving them that phone video . . .
She’s right, that creep whose camera I busted wasn’t a straggler, he was the fucking vanguard. I need to get out of here and I’m fucked if I can think of any reason not to accept. I pull on some gym shoes and we get downstairs. Stepping outside, all I hear are insect clicks exploding around me like gunfire, and shouts. — LUCY! LUCY!
They’re all back! And the van for the TV news, fuck knows what channel, is already here! Sorenson did bring serious heat, and those politician assholes have turned it right back up! I want to double back to the apartment, but some bastards have sneaked round and positioned themselves between us and the front door. — Just wait a darn minute . . . Sorenson protests feebly, sounding all schoolmarm under stress, as I see the rancid fuck whose camera I trashed, firing off a Kalashnikov round on a substitute device, with a zoom lens attached. At least there’s one asshole who knows not to get too close. — Ignore them, Lucy, Sorenson says, wide-eyed with fear, grabbing my hand, pushing through toward her car. The rest aren’t so shy; a buffed, tanned faggot of a reporter sticks his mike in my face and asks me, now that I know the story of McCandless and Ryan Balbosa and Timothy Winter, the two pedophiles, would I do the same thing again?
I know I should shut my fucking mouth and follow the scared, furtive Sorenson to her car. Instead, in my rage at this violation by the preppy asshole, I stand my ground and shoot my mouth off. — Of course I would. Whatever the circumstances, nobody has the right to start shooting people!
— But you did martial arts at a high competitive level, and taught self-defense classes for women, this sincere fag lisps. — Are you saying that women have the right to self-defense, but male victims of sexual violence, like Mr. McCandless, do not?
A crumpling of silent thunder in my ears. I’m stunned. I can’t manage a retort. As I hear Lena Sorenson’s urgent voice in the background, I can only look fearfully and penitently, my face racked with weakness and doubt, as it’s beamed into all those American hom
es.
Then I feel Lena Sorenson’s grip on my arm tighten, as she leads me to her car. — Please leave us alone, she says, softly but quite forcefully. I climb inside, but the squalid asshole is still pointing his camera at me, shooting in through the passenger window, glee etched on his fat chops. I turn away. — Goddamnit!
Sorenson starts the engine and pulls off, dispersing the photographers who flutter away, pigeonlike for a few feet, then resume their feeding frenzy. She turns on to Alton, then floors it and we tear north. — It’s okay, Lucy, she gurgles, — this story surely can’t have much more legs. Her tone falls ruefully. — If only I hadn’t given them that stupid video clip!
A text comes in on my phone. Valerie.
I saw the news. Lie low. There will be heat.
No fucking shit, tinker tailor soldier!
I feel my teeth rattling together as we shoot past the green hand of the Holocaust Museum, and I look back to see if we’re being pursued. It’s hard to tell; a lot of traffic is ripping by both ways. I get control of myself by venting my anger. — You put yourself on the line and save some motherfucker’s ass and you get treated like a fucking criminal! What kind of a fucking country is this? Is this America? Is this what we’ve become? It’s a fucking freak show!
Sorenson lets me get it off my chest, gently touching my shoulder as she keeps driving.
— I’m sorry, I say, feeling better, — Just had to get that out.
— I know. Don’t worry about it. It must be so stressful.
We drive up to Lena Sorenson’s place on 46th. I try to get Valerie but it goes straight to the ol’ girl’s voicemail. I text her.
You weren’t wrong. Give me a call.
Chez Sorenson is a nice, big detached Spanish colonial house with a pool, which is too small for serious swimming, not that I could conceive of the Sorenson cruise ship docking in that particular berth. Terracotta tiles snake through the home, all the walls whitewashed in gallery emulsion. This shows off numerous paintings and sleek but functional furniture.
She has a rack of CDs and most of them are okay, but there are two Tracy Chapman albums in the collection. A bitch got one Chapman album, that fucker with “Fast Car” on it, you gotta see it as a red flag. She got two Chapman albums, that one plus another, then run for the fucking hills! Too late for that now: I slump back into a leather chair and feel myself being lowered into its guts as I look around the room. My first thought is: no wonder Sorenson spends so much time in Starbucks; decoratively speaking, it’s a home away from home. The best feature, apart from the kickass 70-inch flatscreen TV, is the huge stone fireplace, with two metal buckets, one full of coal, the other logs, and a group of fire irons, including an ax, presumably to pretend-chop the already splintered logs. Fake-assed bitch. She makes some coffee (which I never drink) and tells me that she has an outbuilding which functions as her sort-of-an-artist’s studio. Despite my expressing interest to the point of fascination, she doesn’t offer to show me inside.
The kitchen, however, is a state-of-the-art chamber of self-abuse; the cupboards and big Sub-Zero full of what I call antifood: cookies, candy bars, TV dinners, ice cream, chips, and more soda than you have ever seen. Lena has been cooking up a feast of sugar, salt, fat, and carbs. But nobody, bar her, is eating. — Bakery goods. They are my one weakness, she says, cramming a strawberry-filled donut (450 cal easy) into her face.
I decline her offer to reciporocate, going through to her living room and switching on the large flatscreen. Bitch got every cable station known to man; bitch got full Direct TV package. I channel-hop the news programs and my feature is appearing already. I look weak and stupid, my hair severely scraped back and tied up. My heart drops six inches in my chest cavity as it cuts to Quist’s smug, mocking face. — The cat seems to have got that young lady’s tongue on the issue of the right to self-defense. Guess she’s maybe finding out that it ain’t as easy as it all seems, and that ordinary Americans might just indeed have the right to seek recourse against those who would do the work of the devil.
— Fucking asshole! I shout at the crinkled, leather-faced old scrotum on the screen.
Sorenson takes the hint and zaps the TV into black death. — It’ll blow over, she says in a voice that is meant to be soothing but which bugs the fuck out of me.
I spring up, startling her, and walk around, looking at the art hanging on the walls. Then I move quickly back into the kitchen. Sorenson follows, watching as I pick up a donut from the countertop. — Hmmm . . . I examine it.
— Yes, these are my mother’s, Sorenson explains, — and they’re so good! She sends me down a box religiously on the first week of every month. I knew you’d want—
I turn and drop the crud into the trash. Sorenson’s face burns like I took my hand across the bitch’s fat chops.
— You can’t—
— It’s imperative that you control your calorie intake. Diet is crucial. You’re only going to stand still at best if you eat the same amount and type of the so-called food that got you into this mess, I explain, picking up the box and chucking the whole lot into the bin. Sorenson’s squirming, standing back and gripping the kitchen countertop, like she’s about to faint.
— Right! Lifestyle inventory! I bark, making a stunned, shaky Sorenson go through the cupboards, systematically throwing out all the crap! Her face is on fire. — This is shit. This is how you are killing yourself! Do you read those labels?
— Yes . . . she says in a high mewl followed by a half-hearted moan, — . . . I do read them. Sometimes. Most of the time.
I can feel my thin, plucked eyebrows slanting severely at the pathetic lummox.
— I mean, come on, it’s just a treat. We all need treats sometimes, she protests.
— Treats? Treats! What does this one say? I drum my finger on the packet of macaroons then thrust it into her face.
— Two hundred and twenty calories . . .
— Two hundred and twenty calories per fucking serving. How many servings are there in this container?
I can see the air being squeezed out of her lungs as surely as if I’d just buried a left hook into her liver. — These things are so small, there’s nothing in them . . .
— How many servings?
— Four . . .
— How much of this container do you have in one sitting?
Sorenson can’t speak. It’s like her voice has just left her.
— The whole fucking thing, I’ll bet. That is nearly nine hundred fucking calories, Lena, two-thirds of what a woman your size should be eating per fucking day!
Sure enough, more feeble protest. — But . . . but . . . if you only ate a quarter of that, the serving size would be nothing!
— Exactly! So what is that telling you?
— I . . . I don’t know . . .
— Oh, stop it, I snap, fixing my most merciless stare on her. — I’ve seen that uncomprehending loser look so many times. I shake my head, and let my voice go high, in sarcastic imitation. — It can’t be! It isn’t fair. I feel my face altering clownishly. — That big question hanging on every leaden bottom lip in America: How did I become a big bovine juggernaut just through sitting on a couch and eating tons of crap? How did that happen?
She’s staring at me, absolutely seething with rage. She’s thinking, “Who is this person? This is my home! I’m not paying her to be insulted and abused!” I’m convinced the chunkoid is about to tell me to get out, so I adopt a more gentle tone. — It’s telling you that this so-called food is nothing more than a pile of fucking shit. And that’s before I even start on the fine detail of the ingredients; — the corn syrup, additives, preservatives, emulsifiers, sugars, and fucking salts. Trust me, Lena, and I drop it in the trash can with the rest, as Sorenson looks like it’s her newborn, which I’ve just torn out her snatch, — this is the enemy. This is the shit that makes you hate the mirror, the clothes store and the bathroom scale. This is the shit that’s wrecking your life and is gonna fucking kill you!
; I’ve shanked that fat whore through her blubber, struck right at her very core with my words. I can see her psychic wounds bleed in front of me. And the worst thing about it from her point of view is that she knows I’m one hundred percent correct; that I’m only saying this for her own good. — I know, she feebly begins, — I know what you’re saying is right—
I raise my hand. The fat need to find their voice. But not the quitter-victim voice. They cannot be permitted to speak, unless they speak like adults. — Don’t give me the big fucking “but,” I shake my head in scorn. — They always give the big fucking “but,” that caveat that makes it all okay, that renders everything acceptable. Let me tell you, sister: the only big fucking butt is the one you’re sitting on.
— You can’t talk to me like that—
— Yes I can, and I will, I tell her, my hands on my hips, my jaw thrust out. Then I drop my voice. — Because I want to help you get better. I know you don’t want to hear what I’m going to say, Lena, I cup my ear, — because that not wanting to hear, it’s just all part of the disease. You feel your ears physically shutting. There’s a tune, a trivial mantra playing in your head, to drown out my words, which are punching into your chest like arrowheads. Am I correct?
— I . . . I . . .
— Well, sister; welcome to the real world. You are going to hear my words. You are going to take cognisance of those words. Perhaps not today, perhaps not even tomorrow, but I will break down your defenses and you will listen to what I’m saying. Cause I’m gonna get you the fuck outta your comfort zone!
Sorenson’s physically shaking, quailing away from me, barely able to look me in the eye. I put my hand on her shoulder. Then she suddenly turns her head and stares at me, pushing her hair out of her eyes. I give her a big, open, affectionate smile. — Now show me around!
We walk outside into the backyard. I’m still interested in her studio, which sits in front of the small pool. — That’s where I work, she explains, adding, — I haven’t done much in a while.
— Can we take a look inside?