Sorenson gets into the pool and starts to clean herself, sponging the feces and vomit off her face. She’s like a child. She catches me looking at her and her weird gaze electrifies me and I turn away. I grab up her turds in kitchen roll, flushing them down the toilet, then mop the rest of the gross shit off the hardwood floors. Mom and Lieb would go fucking crazy if they knew they were getting so messed up. I’m doing a circular mopping motion, then screwing out the pukey shitwater into the grid on the bucket. The next thing I hear is a gasping sound, and I turn around to see Sorenson, on the mattress, doing a set of frenzied sit-ups and ab crunches.
I lean against the mop, like a tired sentry. — Don’t do those. All you’ll do is hurt your back, and the only muscles you’ll develop will be buried under layers of fat!
No response, Sorenson still puffing through the set. Then she rolls over and starts doing push-ups. I’m quietly impressed that she’s now taking her whole body off the floor, instead of that girlie from-the-knees shit.
— It’s the quads, Lena. The squats. I lower myself in crunch position in front of her to demonstrate, satisfyingly grappling my own steel-cable thighs. — They are your weapons. They burn 115 percent more cal than any other muscle group, I lie, making up a stat on the spot.
— Thirty-one, Sorenson puffs, — thirty-two . . .
— Do you think the skinny bitches in the magazines do push-ups and ab crunches? Leave it till you look like one of them, then we can start thinking about grating some cheese!
— THIRTY-FIVE, she roars, — THIRTY-SIX . . .
— Well, fuck you! Wreck your back and play the martyr, I swing the mop and go back to work on that floor, — that time-honored game of the Sorenson women—I start, quickly checking myself.
Lena catches my reaction, gapes up in horror, springing to her feet and lunging forward before being spun back by the chain. — What the fuck are you talking about? Have you . . . have you been looking at my emails? She rips again at the chain in frustration, using both hands. — MY SHIT WITH MY MOM?!
— You’ve been told, and I head back to the kitchen.
— WHAT DID YOU MEAN?! WHAT DID YOU MEAN WHEN YOU SAID THAT?!
I’m ignoring her fucking garbage. I note that in her trashing extravaganza, she put the portable TV in the corner, out of harm’s way. There’s calculation in that bitch’s soul; everything is contrived and fucking fake. I feel like taking it from the double-crossing rube, but I’m not going to descend to her level. I check the phone messages: yep, there’s another hysterical set of them from her mom. No wonder Sorenson’s the way she is with that nutty bitch busting her ass. At least that Kim asshole in Chicago knew when to back the fuck off.
— TELL ME! What did you mean? . . . Tell me . . . As I listen to Sorenson’s squeals dying down, I check my own emails on my iPhone. Dad has sent a pic from some town he’s in on his tour; an obscure dumbassed-looking cousin stands with him, getting a book signed. Mom has sent me one of her and Lieb, on the deck of the boat, in staged, classical, creepy love pose. She’s tucked into his side, looking up at him, as he stares off toward the horizon, the archetypal man-of-destiny look. I swear that pair produce more cheese than Wisconsin. Yet it always strikes me how synchronized they are, Mom and Dad, even after all those years; I get an email, or a call from one, and something similar invariably follows from the other. Long-term association must do something to your biorhythms that you can’t shake off. It’s just a pity for Sorenson and her mom that this connection seems solely to involve stuffing crud into their bodies.
I get the clothes out the machine and stick them in the dryer. As I watch them spin round, I hear more noises outside from Sorenson, and go to investigate. Astonishingly, she’s back on the mill running, sweating slowly toward sweet freedom. I give an approving nod, but she refuses to make eye contact, and just carries on pounding. Fuck that ungrateful bitch; I return to the kitchen and send some more emails.
The clothes are still a little dampish when I take them out, but it’s stifling outside so I put mine on and drop Sorenson’s beside her mattress. — I’m going now, Lena.
— Like I care? Get the fuck out of my face, she pants, not looking at me. — You waste my time.
— Fuck you! I give her the finger and exit. Who the fuck does that bitch think she’s talking to, me wasting her miserable time?! Wouldn’t have any fucking time left if it wasn’t for me!
When I get home I take another shower, and change into a short leather skirt and red tank top, tying my hair back in a ponytail and sticking a rose clip in it. That bastard Quist is on the TV again. At least he’s not talking about me, but defending a beleaguered former business associate, Miami real-estate developer Bill Philipson, accused of trying to bribe several local officials. — Without the Bill Philipsons of this world, this state, now a sun-drenched paradise and haven of opportunity for millions of hardworking Americans, would still be a mosquito-infested swamp!
Anger rattles my frame: some motherfucker is going to suffer. I change channels to Channel 8 and another feature on the twins, as I stuff my cock into my purse, opting not to pack plastic, which would be too visible in this short skirt. Let those butch-bitches think I’m a meat magnet before I whip my American Excess on their stiff, bossy flaps.
An older surgeon is on, a tetchy, arrogant-looking rummy, and he’s gunning for golden boy Troy Baxter, rubbishing claims that Amy’s chances of survival and leading a normal life are anything like as high as 40 percent. The bar at the bottom of the screen announces him as Professor Rex Convey of Northwestern University School of Medicine. — To play the numbers game is dangerous, but the most wildly optimistic estimates of 40 percent survival for Amy Wilks are arrant nonsense and, frankly, heartbreaking in their stupidity, he growls. — The overwhelming odds are that this girl is sacrificing her life in order that her sister can live a so-called normal one.
Yeah, it’s tough shit, but if both bitches have signed up to be sawn in two, it’s gotta be their fuckin call, Doctor Country Club.
I click off the TV and consider my options. Tonight I have enough for some empty alcohol calories. Red wine: high in antioxidants, 640 cal per bottle, or four large glasses at 180 each or six small at 116-ish apiece. I decide I’ll drink three small glasses, 350. They might be empty calories, but they keep me on track as I need to go 200 over the line today to keep this week in equilibrium.
The heels aren’t that high, but they’ll be more than sufficient to push my snake-swallows-football calves up into the world’s face. Sure enough, whistles from a passing car just as I’m outside on 9th in the warm air. An annoyance, yes, but one, when all is said and done, it would be totally shitty to live without, as silence would be the seal of unviability. Then it would be time to get the fuck out of South Beach and into some Central Florida walled-and-gated waiting room for God.
A coy but vampish nod to the doormen and I’m moving through the crowded bar in Club Uranus, eliciting a pointed moan from a simpering faggot I elbow past. — Excuse me!
I’m about to say something, when this coppery-haired chick sneers at the guy in those stretched Massachusetts vowels I know so well. — Man the fuck up, dude. The bar’s crowded!
The fag looks like he’s going to respond, but merely pouts and slithers impotently off into the crush.
— Fuckin asshole, the chick mutters.
— I know, right, I affirm with a smile, liking this bitch’s style, and rewarding her with a vodka soda. In the usual war of attrition, we push our asses onto two stools at the bar and start talking. Despite the buckshot of Paddy freckles peppered on her pale, luminous skin, I sense that the trailer-park garbage-mouthed shit is an affectation, and that this chick could quote Henry James at will. The collar-length hair gives it away, parted in the center and pinned on the side by some plastic butterfly clip. My mom’s more of a butch than this U-Haul-scented ingénue. This chick dressed like she knew she might be called back to a family function and they’d shit housebricks if she turned up with black dye in h
er hair, never mind some bulldyke crop.
Henrietta James, you are gonna feel my big plastic dick. So I suggest we get out, and she’s swift to join me shoving through the sweating bodies. It’s so tightly packed near the door area, that being expelled into the night air feels like a rebirth. We walk up Washington, our steps clicking in rhythm on the sidewalk. A bum, sitting outside Walgreens, looks up and shouts at me, — Any change?
— Let the bathroom scale be the judge of that, and I drop a card in his lap.
Henrietta looks at me in some surprise. — Wow, what was with the card?
— I’m a personal trainer.
— Surely a guy like that won’t give you much business!
— It’s not about business, I shake my head, — it’s about confrontation. Hopefully you might just sow a seed if he turns his life around. A human life is worth the price of one card.
— Wow . . . guess I never thought of it like that, Ms. James says, looking back at the bum.
We talk about hitting the Blenheim Hotel but I can’t face that stinking carpet or the stiff-assed, closet-case of a desk clerk, in the morning walk of shame downstairs. Henrietta has a place on Meridian, not too far from my own apartment, so we go back there. Despite the fact she’s obviously no dummy, Ms. James is a chick of few words, which I like, but as I’m looking at her film posters, Lang’s Metropolis, Hitchcock’s Rear Window, the bitch fucking jumps me! Her hand twists up my skirt and inside my panties, diving like a stricken sub for my snatch, her forefinger cattle-prod-zapping my fucking boatman! Before I can think about the plastic dick in my purse, my thighs have opened up like a bag of potato chips. Ms. James gets a rhythm going quickly, boxer-pulverizing my speedbag clitty. Her eyes are ablaze, and there’s a raspy insistence in her voice. — You packin heat?
— Yeah . . . I groan, — but it’s in my purse . . .
Either she’s a real novice, or crucial shit has been mislaid on the move from Boston, but one thing’s sure, she fucking well wants it. But now she isn’t the only one crying out for dick. I twist and grab my purse, careful to let her keep working on me, now in long, delicious power-frigs, and pull out my cock and tell her to strap it on. — Give it to me. Give me my own fucking cock right up my cunt, I command her.
Ms. James is more than happy to oblige, deftly attaching the device to her, sliding it round, her hand on its shaft, grinding the base of it onto her pubic bone like a pepper mill. — You really want this, don’tcha?
— Fill my fucking snatch right now, bitch, or I’ll take it from you and give you it right up your lilywhite Paddy ass!
She don’t need to be told again.
37
CONTACT 15
* * *
To:
[email protected] From:
[email protected] Subject: Please Talk To Me
I’m trying to talk with you, here, Lena. You won’t pick up the phone or respond to my texts or emails! I’m trying to speak with my own daughter about something that greatly affects us both, but you won’t answer anything!
* * *
To:
[email protected] From:
[email protected] Subject: This Has Gone Far Enough!
Lena,
I’ll have you know that you’ve not only upset Mommy, you’ve torn her heart out. I hope that makes you feel good, and is a source of amusement for you and your worldly artsy friends down in Miami. We tried to give you everything. Is this how you repay us?
We want you home. I don’t know what sort of crowd you’ve fallen in with down in that pseudo-Caribbean voodoo-infested hellhole, but it’s obvious to me that you’re on drugs. Those emails are hateful and vindictive. You were never brought up that way!
Talk to your mother!
Dad
38
THE PACKAGE
I STILL HAVEN’T told Sorenson about the package. I keep it in the walk-in closet, on the top shelf. It contains a letter, a small notebook, and thirty-six high-contrast black-and-white photographs.
The letter is from a woman called Melanie Clement.
Dear Lena,
Your ex-boyfriend—also, now, my ex-boyfriend—is a twisted, evil, manipulative psychopath: a serial menace to women who belongs in jail. He’s wasted, stolen, and extorted a good chunk of my money. He’s more (or less) than just an utterly worthless leech, or a talentless, self-obsessed delusional bore, he’s also a con artist and a thief. If you have any lingering doubts about that fact, the contents of this package should convince you otherwise.
Don’t take him back if you have any basic intelligence and/or a shred of self-respect. You and I both know he’ll try.
I’m sorry that he left you for me. Sorry for me, delighted for you.
Best,
Melanie Clement
PS The pictures and the negatives are for you—do what you want with them.
The photographs all show Sorenson, naked, in three different poses: front, back, and left-side profile. There are twelve sets of those three prints, all taken in the same spot, under an identical lighting set-up. What they show is her in different stages of transition, from a slim, petite woman to an obese bloater, in the space of a year. Underneath each print is the month, starting at March, and a number, the pounds Lena weighed, going from 129 to 226.
The most arresting and scary transition is not in Lena’s ballooning body, but in the expression on her face. In the first series of pictures, though she’s obviously been instructed to keep a neutral gaze, there’s a phantom grin, like some sort of collusive, sexy game is being played out with a partner. This expression dominates from months 1–3. Then, in month 4, an overwhelming look of embarrassment insinuates itself, followed by the onset of anger, then frustration and despair (months 5–8), before the light goes out in her eyes and she’s beaten (month 9 onward). Lena, thanks to this Melanie, now has all of this creep’s work on his “project.” Or, rather, I do.
I decide to read some entries from the notebook.
THE LENA SORENSON PROJECT
by Jerry C. Whittendean
I first met Lena at the Art Institute. She was just starting out in her freshman year, while I was about to graduate at the end of that year. It was the traditional “fuck a fresher” week, where the would-be studs scoured the parties and events for fresh prospects.
Lena wasn’t the type of girl I normally went for. Pretty enough, but chronically shy, with one eye occasionally peeking out from behind those long, black bangs. Those functioned as her shield, but then, when she did look at you, it could be with a steady, challenging ferocity.
We always think that we can change people, mold them. Sometimes I think she was always my project, even back then, as I walked toward her, while she stood trembling like a mouse at the edge of the kitchen. But maybe that’s a little too fanciful.
I knew who she was. I was attracted to her work; other students and professors talked about it, I had to check it out. I would go into her classrooms during breaks and contemplate it. For such a timid girl, she was so fucking ballsy in her art: huge canvases, radiant colors, and stark, apocalyptic landscapes. Then I was attracted to her, the mystery of her talent, her fearless, unquestioning, swaggering brio. Seducing her was a means to try and solve this puzzle. But nothing she said or did could answer the question that burned in me: why her? Why did this tiny, dark-haired girl from some Midwest, God-fearing hick shithole, have the talent and drive to gain such unprecedented recognition?
The conversations I had with Lena interested me at first. Then they grew samey, and I sensed we were getting into a rut. I quickly started to resent her, those silly, hayseed affectations, which had, at first, a certain novelty. Eventually, the plethora of “gotchas” and “allrightys” and the “whole heap” of “gosh,” “darned,” and “hey you’s” started to nauseate. She was an airhead, a square suburban housewife, without a bohemian bone in her body but blessed with the talent, drive, and belief of a Warhol.
br />
When you resent somebody you are in such close proximity to, they very soon start to reciprocate. Being Lena, hers was nice, understated resentment, shrouded in an all-too-apparent guilt. But she started to take over. I’ve learned in life that people flock to charisma in the short-term, but on a deeper level, they always love and admire talent. Friends began to whisper that I was holding her back. That cut me to fucking pieces. I believe in myself as an artist. Without self-belief any artist is nothing. Without me Lena would never have promoted herself, never got the most out of her talent.
Miami was my idea. Lena would have suffered the Midwest winters forever, with her stoical, nauseating, folksy Minnesotan cheer. But it wasn’t just me wanting light for my photography. I wanted Lena away from Chicago. She was doing too well. Every time I walked into a Logan Square or Pilsen bar, the cognoscenti would call as one: “Where’s Lena?” I grew to almost puke at that question. We hate it when our friends become successful, observed Wilde, Vidal, and Morrissey; but our lovers, by God, how we utterly loathe that!
Nobody knew how humiliating it was to be constantly in her shadow. Lena fucking shone, and I hated both her and myself for it. The only way I could get rid of that feeling was to get the upper hand. I’d render her fat, repulsive. I’d encourage her to overeat: Pizza Hut, McDonald’s, Taco Bell, and Gyros. “Let’s stop off at Starbucks for a latte and muffin. You worked hard in the gym. Burned off about 150 calories. You deserve a 600-calorie treat,” all that sort of shit. I was pushing at an open door: her mother had done her duty.
And so I photographed her. I had her weigh herself the first Friday morning of every week. She didn’t realize that she was a project: The Transformation of Lena Sorenson. Short of killing her and leaving a camera on her corpse, watching the maggots devour it (and I had considered this, before coming to the conclusion that murder is a loser’s pastime), this was the best thing I could do. I took pictures of her naked, from the front, back, and side, turning to the left. I did this once every month for a year, each one yielding three high-definition black-and-white exposures in identical lighting. A completed project of thirty-six prints: with the date and her weight written on attached cards.