—19—
Kevin was beside himself. When he saw me the next day, his first reaction was to beat me to death on the spot. After the first blow, I struck back, and that cleared his head.
I had snuck out in the morning, and when I returned, he emerged from behind a weeping fig just as I came through the door. I was wearing Bottega Bagascia—a scrap of woven butterscotch-and-tobacco leather for a top, and pedal-pushers of chocolate calf that ended somewhere near my ankle. Other than length, everything fit perfectly on my now stick-figure frame.
I had some other things that needed hemming, and after our to-do, he took them wordlessly, returning them in an hour, overlocked in puce thread.
I invited him to sit on the chesterfield, while I took a chair. He began. First, he wanted all the clothes back, though they had been paid for—and he had been paid generously, too. He had, it turned out, been busy (behind my back) arranging a show in Paris (!) with me as the model (!), hoping through the example of me, to launch himself and a revolutionary (for the 21st century) look upon the world.
No, he had not asked. No, he had assumed. Yes, he knew he presumed. No, he didn't think that he had taken unbelievably arrogant liberties. After all, he
made
me. And I 'owed' it to him. And besides, he knew 'everyone' necessary to both promote me and to promote him. Wouldn't I have liked to display myself, 'the world's most rare butterfly, in the most beautiful plumage of our time'?
Butterfly's plumage notwithstanding, he was crazy.
My stomach begged to differ. It spoke to me, agreeing with him that I would live to regret what I had done. I had, until I wasted it, the perfect launch package, it said, along with the book. That collection of extreme-retro curves, not this post-modern minimalism—was as important to my success as my book, my stomach said. My book which
would have been
one of those books with the whole back cover taken up with a picture of me. My stomach spoke loudly, rudely. An untrustworthy advisor, it had been the source of embarrassment and shame to me on many occasions, not to mention having aided in the death of one person, someone I did think of occasionally.
Kevin was speaking. He asked me to stand.
I did, smiling at him to let him know that I would let bygones be bygones. I liked Kevin. He would need to take new measurements.
Then he asked me to undress. When I refused, he asked why.
I just didn't feel like it.
'You're sagacious,' he said. An odd observation, but I could not disagree. He didn't have to bootlick, but he did have insight. My right hand fingered the hollows of my collarbones—a new delight.
Kevin had taught me so much. I had taught him, too. Acknowledgement comes hard to us all, but graciousness is a mark of style. 'Sagacious about what, oh Style Master?' I asked, returning a compliment to a genius who was already reassessing my form—and rethinking, planning his newest creations.
'About you, luv,' he chuckled unmirthfully. 'You're a flapper now. You like it?'
His face—that ugly
expression
. He wasn't talking shimmy skirts and ragtime bands. And he didn't mean 'sagacious' ... the bastard!
He didn't need me to undress for him. He wanted me undressed, for me. He was a visionary—a cruel fanatic. He wanted me to cover myself with shame, or fat.
Sure, I now had folds where I used to have swells. I could pick my skin away from my flesh. But dieting does that to you. In a $2000 blouse that fits off the rack, what does what's underneath matter? At least I didn't have Sunday-roast skin. And so what if my buttocks sagged like Rupert Murdoch's cheeks, when they fit into Milanese leather?
'You look common,' he sneered.
'Bollocks, Kev.' His comment was spawned of jealousy. They had made it. He hadn't. Common? How many could afford so little for so much?
'Rich slut.'
'Pettyful. With a black eye.' I had punched him well.
He stormed out, but not without me hitting the back of his head with the clump of clothes he'd ruined, 'tailoring'. They hit the floor with a thud, and a heavy zip slithered.
~
Then it was time to order lunch. What to order?
I ran a bath instead, to think.
The water was dreamy, but feeling myself did not feel the same, and nothing buoyed. I sat on a haemorrhoid donut,. but that didn't solve the problem of my back, which felt as if I had crude wing amputations.
I got out and had a look at myself in the unsteamed, daylight-objective bedroom mirrors.
Then I ran naked into the lounge, where I picked up the mess of this morning's purchases and ran back with them to my bedroom. There, I spread them out on the bed. The hard geometry, stretch polyester, anthracite leather matched with nylon lace, mechanical rips, raked zips, and the hemlines pierced with little-girl flower cutouts (now murdered by Kevin). I splayed them all out—all of Bagascia's semi-couture (for those who are time-poor) spring-summer limited edition.
Then I walked to the wardrobe door and closed my eyes, taking at random, three things from hangers.
They were: A spring jacket in white, lilac-sprigged dimity, with a 'willy wagtail' peplum that fanned itself out behind, trailing green and pink and lilac ribbons. An evening gown of white watered satin trimmed with black karakul. It went with Mr Hazumi's elbow-length black gloves edged with the same black fur, and his little karakul mules.
I had thrown the jacket onto my chair, and threw the gown there, too, but it slid off and sat on the floor in a great pouf of skirts, leaning its frothy left shoulder against the deep chair seat.
The third thing I took off the hangers was just a little nightgown. A little moon-coloured slip of silk, with of course, a few small decorative touches.
~
Kevin was unavailable. No. He was really unavailable.
Justin now. Yes, Kevin was unavailable. No, Justin was afraid that Kevin was out, actually. Yes, it was unusual, and
my word,
yes,
completely
out of order, but Miss Lily,
considering
...
Justin's tone was just short of disrespectful, which, I learned that moment, is the most disrespectful tone of all.
I simply could not eat.
Lunch, I spent pacing, either my hunger feeding my energy, or my energy burning off my hunger.
Whatever Brett thought, he kept his thoughts to himself.
There was nothing to do. I cancelled my massage appointment with Ferdinand, the first I had scheduled since my retreat. I also cancelled: the manicurist, the pedicurist, Justin for anything for the rest of the day, and dinner for myself. I renewed my one instruction. Kevin was to report to me
immediately
upon his return.
There was nothing left to do but bother Brett.
~
Bloody hell! Even Brett was out.
—20—
I was just givingBrett up and wondering what to do with myself, when he tapped me on the shoulder. I won't say this frightened me. How would you feel? Some things you never get used to.
'How's your book going?' I asked. Yes, I was feeling like fighting someone—anyone.
Incredibly, he smiled. 'I thought you'd never ask. I've finished the first part.'
He disappeared and appeared a moment later. In his hands, a slim envelope. A slow writer, but beginnings are hard to do. He was offering me the scariest part, in trust.
His feet were shuffling, just as mine would be if someone read my first page. The commonality of writers!
I felt a rush of sympathy, and relief at the same time—I would never again be subjected to the torture of Waiting while Another Reads.
I opened the envelope and pulled from it the single folded sheet.
In his crabbed hand, was:
Princess Martha did not want to cook dinner tonight.
When I looked up, he had disappeared. No use yelling for him. He never came when called.
Two hours later, I was in my bedroom, suffering.
Nothing new had happened to make my day better. No one had appeared. My stomach had revolted violently. It wanted to throw things—heavy, unpleasant things—but didn't have much ammunition. It wanted to hurt, and it did.
Without a knock, he appeared, smelling like buttered toast instead of his oftentimes rankness. He radiated warmth. It is the only time I have ever seen anyone glowing with happiness.
He threw himself lengthways on my bed, crushing my toes.
'Well?' he said.
'Well...'
'Topping beginning, eh?' he said.
'Topping,' I agreed. 'But it could use some work.'
He sat up and peered at me—the pea in his tartare. 'Okay, I grant you that. But it's only the first draft.'
A groan leapt up my throat and I caught it by the tail, between my teeth, but not soon enough.
'What?' he queried, a wee bit testily.
'Not much,' I assured, cravenly. 'Not much ... but, like ... Martha.'
He launched himself off the bed. 'Like, as you say, what's wrong with Martha?' The disturbed air bore towards me a whiff of his odour emissions when things were not going toppingly—a smell threatening to choke me.
If only he would just crush my toes again. I had, however, no choice but to persevere.
'Nothing's wrong with Martha,' I said, dripping mellifluent, 'except that it isn't really a name for a princess.'
'Like, what is?' he spat back with a lot of bad breath, as if I had just told him what I really thought.
He was supposed to be writing the damn book. Not me!
'...I dunno,' I said. 'Something exotic...'
'Well?'
This was too much. Disaster yawned, unless I stood up for myself. 'You should know, Brett. You must know some princesses.'
And anyway ... 'What about all your research?'
And furthermore ... 'Why have you been surrounding yourself with books for, anyway? Can't you know what you want without the messiness of pages and dust and all that old stuff?'
He sat beside me, emanating a happy warmth.
'I like the physicality of books,' he said. 'Don't you?'
Not until he said it did I remember how comforted I felt once upon a time, having them around. But then I thought of princesses and Martha, and even that ghost of a feeling left me, quicker than mist on a summer morning.
'Princesses should have pretty and exotic names,' I told Brett. 'Gwendolyn, Xenobia, Aljazeera.'
'So "Princess Gwendolyn did not want to cook dinner tonight." Right?'
My stomach screamed out that there was not much more of this it was going to put up with. 'No. Not exactly.'
Again, he leapt from the bed, and this time he paced.
What could I say?
Then he spun suddenly and faced me, blazing a smile of victory. ''Princess Gwendolyn didn't want to cook dinner tonight." Your passion for contraction. Sorry.'
The smile withered at my unspoken response. He returned to pacing, now striking his heels so violently upon the sheepskins that the wardrobe replied with a ridiculously musical tinkle and rustle of beads and feathers, making me want to strangle my clothes to shut them up.
'Princesses don't cook,' I said.
He was opening his mouth to object when I snuck in a qualifier, very gently put. 'Not earthly princesses, anyway.'
'Oh.' He stopped pacing and bent down to loosen those infernal laces. 'You mean,' he said, as he straightened, 'my first sentence is no good?'
'Not exactly.' He was taking editing better than many, but ... 'We don't have to start there, as long as you have the rest of the story planned.'
He began to pace again, so I got up and put my hand on his arm, if only to slow him down. 'Tell me about the rest of the story.'
'That was it,' he said. 'I hadn't gotten any further.'
What have you been doing all this time?
I screamed. I called him every filthy name that I ever learned, and I knew many from the shearing shed. I slammed my right knuckles into his mouth and felt the satisfaction of breaking through a slew of teeth. My fists clenched hard as coconuts, I boxed his ears so hard that blood flew. In my imagination. Only in my imagination while I stood there with my hands clawing the back of my own wizened frame, for the frustrating comfort of giving more pain to myself.
'Ah,' I said. 'What do you have planned tomorrow?'
'Work,' he answered, grimly.
Good. Maybe.
'It is only your beginning,' I smiled, meaning that I stretched my lips across my teeth.
He answered with a mirror of my facial movements.
'I'm going to bed,' he said, and went to his room, allowing us both to groan and scream to our hearts' content, which we both did. I heard him, but did he hear me?
Nothing from Kevin.
About three in the morning I woke from an exhausted doze. The only sounds were the gentle gurgles of my fridge. There was nothing to do but be depressed. There was nothing to read at all. I tossed my head on my pillow till I realized,
at all
was an exaggeration.
Sanitized Hypo-allergenic
100% WHITE GOOSE DOWN 900+
CRUELTY-FREE HAND-HARVESTED IN HUNGARY
...
—21—
A pompously obsequious Kevin rang at 6:30 in the morning, and I was gratified to deflate him with, 'No, I've been up for hours. Please do come up.'
It didn't do, however, to continue in this vein. I needed him. So when he arrived, I ushered him past the broken crockery and splatted mess of egg in the lounge, to the sanctuary of my bedroom. I offered to call down for tea, but he declined, truculently.
Kevin, Kevin. I had to do this right. He was such a Romantic.
'Kevin, I'm sorry,' I said, leaning against my bed. He hadn't sat, so I couldn't.
He turned away from me. When he turned back, of course I had to respond.
'Okay, why?' I asked, in as much of a schoolgirl voice as I could muster, and my mustering capabilities were dissipating fast.
He had attached a clothes-peg to his nose, and was brandishing his face at me only an arm's length away.
'Oooh sding.'
I turned my back on him. 'Take it off, Kev,' I warned, 'or get out.'
A
snap
sounded, so I turned around, and besides two red places on the sides of his nose and a closed-door of a face, he looked like the old Kevin.
'Begin,' I invited.
'No. You.'
Best to ignore the insurrection. 'Kevin,' I honey-toned. 'You really are most wonderful ... No. Really!'
He sat in my chair and folded one leg over the other, so I perched on the side of my bed.
'I am sorry I was unable to maintain my weight in the press of creative pressure. But I will regain my figure again and we can have your fashion show, just as you planned.'
His lips were curving into a dangerous smirk.
'You naughty boy,' I slung in, hitting his expression smack in the middle of its superiority.
Much more of this and I would have no ammunition left. It wasn't as if I could use my proud posture to assert my position, because there was nothing left that stuck out except bones. Instead, I went to the wardrobe and opened its doors. A scream at my back tore a scream out of me. I whirled around, ready to run.
The sound was coming out of Kevin's mouth.
'Fuck, Kevin! Look what you've done.'
A golden shower I couldn't stop spangled the sheepskin and splashed my feet.
Perhaps that moved him. He marched around me and flung himself against the wardrobe door, like it was some Victorian virgin, and I ... 'Don't touch them!' he bellowed.
But they were mine.
Assert, assert.
Shouting 'I'll have none of this from you!' I shoved him aside.
He tripped me!
'You've chipped my pelvis, you have!'
'I hope!' he growled. 'Just look down and see.'
'Enough! or leave.'
He sat in my chair instead, so I sat on the bed.
'What is this about, Kevin,' I asked, as if we were feeling reasonable.
'Not counting inconsequentials...' and he flicked his hand at the soggy sheepskin, 'You smell, dear Desirée.'
Although he said 'dear', he didn't murder 'Desirée'. We were getting somewhere.
'Your diet has done what they usually do,' he said, no longer attaching emotional weights to his words. 'Your body odour is quite strong now, and it will taint my beauties. We cannot allow that to happen, can we?'
I bent inwards toward my manipura chakra, and sniffed. There was no need to plumb another chakra, nor to breathe deeply.
'Your suite...' Kevin said.
Smelt in that light, it was a wonder that room service served on command. Brett had his moments, but I couldn't blame this noxious emanation on Brett.
Someone deserved contrition. I got down on my knees. Kevin would like that.
He did. 'It's not unique,' he allowed. 'This age...'
'I promise to do what you say,' I promised.
We figuratively kissed and made up, and I have to admit that my BO problem bothered me. I hoped that my former smell, whatever it was, came back quickly, so that I was no longer a social embarrassment to myself.
Kevin told me that breakfast would be at ten that morning. When I asked what it was, he evinced a residue of huffiness. 'That's for you to find out.'
~
I sat with Brett through a silent eight-thirty breakfast for him, after which he promptly returned to his room.
At ten sharp, I answered the door personally, not to be met with room service and a tray of some lovely fattening breakfast, but by Kevin and a tall, thin man with big hairy ears carrying a salesman's case big enough to store a dismembered child. I invited them both in, though Kevin did not introduce him.
We sat in the lounge—me, the un-introduced man, and Kevin, all in a row on the chesterfield. Kevin, still angry, I suppose, left it to me.
I inclined my head toward the man with the carpeted ears. 'Good morning,' I said. 'Miss Lily...' extending my hand and trying at the same time not to emit rank auras, nor to have him continue to bore his eyes into my person as he began to, the moment our eyes touched—his eyes probing intimately past the only thing that fit me, the one-size-fits-all fluffy bath robe.
'Morris K. Fishbine,' he replied, extending the tips of four long, pale fingers, and then dropping his hand to his lap before I could figure out whether I was supposed to shake it, or kiss it.
Kevin leaned out. 'Doctor Fishbine has something for you. Go for it, Morrie.'
'Morrie' reached down and opened the case at his feet. With difficulty, he pulled out several large things and dumped them on the coffee table, from where two bounded to the floor. Massive deformed jellyfish? Whatever they were, they were revolting. What had I promised?
'Yuck, Kev! I couldn't eat one of those for dinner, let alone brekkie.'
His eyes glinted.
I got up, ready to run and lock myself into my room. 'No forcefeeding!'
'Sit,' he commanded, which was too dangerous. Instead, I settled for grabbing a rubber futon and holding it up as a shield between me and them.
'Doctor Fishbine will show you, Miss Lily. Doctor Fishbine?'
Doctor Fishbine had been amused, as his tolerant chuckle proved. 'Miss Lily, these are not for eating, though you could. At no harm to yourself, I might add.' And he chuckled again at the anecdote he was already filing in his memory bank for telling to whatever he called 'friends'.
Kevin coughed and pointed to the case.
The doctor pulled out a shiny red display book, so I had no choice but to put down my shield and sit beside him. He laid the book on my lap. Then, slowly and carefully, he went through every page of his thoroughly photographed procedure of slitting through skin and muscle and fat, folding it back, and inserting blobs of various sizes into various parts of the human anatomy. Only when the last page had been open on my lap for some time and he was satisfied with my reassurances that I didn't need to revisit any pages, did he return the book to his case.
'And these?' I picked up a blob—heavy, disgustingly alive, not as slippery as it looked, but wiggly nonetheless.
'Your right breast,' Doctor Fishbine replied.
'Yikes!'
It flopped to the sheepskin with a life of its own. The rest of the collection supined in a sorority of flounce and bounced-around attitudes, none less gross than another.
The doctor was offended. It was no use my saying 'no offence'. His knees cracked as he stood up from the chesterfield. He knelt and they cracked again as he crawled on the floor picking up the pieces, and stuffing them rather viciously away.
'Thank you, Doctor Fishbine,' Kevin said, at which point I stood and repeated Kevin's phrase. You never know.
Kevin left with him, returning five minutes later.
It seemed that those abhorrences were me, what I was—what I needed to gain back ... 'or what'.
The
what
was the worst. Fishbine had agreed to be party to Kevin drugging me and spiriting me off to the doctor's private clinic, where those long pale fingers would create and insert 'whatever it takes' to give me back the figure to fit the clothes Kevin had designed to fit me when my figure was at the peak of its form. Gain it again, or else.
I promised Kevin and myself that I would.
I would.
And where's breakfast?
~
Kevin's régime was strict, and followed strictly. He, it was, who ordered my meals, and structured my feedings and exercise so that I could gain the proper fat in the proper places. At first, it was difficult for me to keep anything down. My stomach had shrunk, but that was not the problem. The food was.
No more
Calamari Fragonzola au Carambola
(according to Serge, my most successful creation). No more frivolous cheesecake awaiting my fork. Not even a fridge in my room, to tempt me to disobey. Now everything was scientifically determined. Kevin didn't value food as food, but as feeding. Thus, his prescribed régime was chemicals with calories, and meat. Red meat.
The first meal, that breakfast, was the roughest. A steak the size of my hand, medium-burnt. The smell of cooked meat made me queasy. It had been so many years. Not in fact, since Bunwup. I could only down part of that first steak before I had to stop. Worse was the next course, a 'bodybuilding shake I formulated just for you,' he assured me, as if that excused it, 'packed with oestrogen, progesterone, prolactin, prostaglandins, phytoestrogen-derived kilojoules,
and
GF compounds ... human growth factor hormones'—in medium beige.
Kevin supervised that meal by watching me chew and swallow what I could of the meat, and going
chuck, chuck, chuck
with the shake. He seemed satisfied enough. I wasn't. I believed Kevin's threat, every last scalpel-slice of it.
Kevin assured me that if I complied, his régime would re-create for me the same body as before, since I was still young and since the weight loss had been so 'dramatically precipitous' (Kevin's new language, attempting, I think, to get beyond his body-builder vocabulary, possibly in an attempt to firmly re-establish his primacy).
I flashed an obedient smile—and hoped he was right. Time had flown, especially during my ensconcement. Here it was, already April. Kevin had planned my launch with his characteristic originality. July, when Paris is packed with visitors, but no competing shows.
Brett would be flicking his Bic by then, but he'd have to learn patience. As things stood, Kevin was a stroke of luck. Me in Paris, sashaying down the ramp (Brett should have thought of it) ... the finalé: my final twirl, and voilá—my book magically appears in my arms (Brett's contribution). Behind me, a giant screen lights up ...
Until then, I was between bodies.
~
Kevin, grimacing out to his fingertips, removed every scrap of my Italian designer collection for sacrifice with extreme violence. In their place, he supplied a few bathrobes in the style of my one-size-fits-all, thus both staking out his superiority and keeping me indoors.
As I didn't wish to be seen, I didn't object.
I didn't desire Justin to buy any more art, as I now knew enough and had stopped looking at what we had. As for comfort in the suite, as long as I had my water room, my bed, my chair and the chesterfield, what more could I want?
I followed Kevin's régime day after day. Really I did, though I couldn't see results.
The fear of Kevin was my greatest stimulation. Every day, I'd survey my armpit-aura and my breath, eat my steak and drink my shake-times-three, and I could tick that day off on a calendar. I couldn't do more than I did, to change my figure. I had to hope and trust, but Kevin was an expert.
I should have been lighthearted, yet I felt more and more weighted by a heavy ennui—a mixture of repletion and sleepiness and waiting-roomness—that feeling that some have made books of, exploring the tragedy—but I could only yawn, until, one day, I began to feel another sensation. A Need. The need to bother someone.
There was nothing to do.
Nothing
to do, that is, than again, to bother Brett. It was just after breakfast that I felt this bother need coming on, and it pounded its heels on the floor of my stomach.
Indulge me!
Day after day, Brett had been quietly working in his room, so I wavered.
There was nothing to do. Nothing to read. Nothing to think about.
I fought against the bother need for what must have been a full five minutes, and then, finally, triumphed against it.
For the more I pondered what Brett was doing, the more I realized that I had more to fear from him than from Kevin himself.
Now I felt a higher Need than the basic need to bother.
What
was
Brett doing?