“I’ve found religion. Tamara, you have to try these.” No answer. “Tamara?” The phone rings again. Is Godiva publicly held? I lick my fingers and lift the receiver. Does that count as exercise?
“Maggie O’Leary? I have Robert Redford on the line from Sundance…”
I bite into another—“Mmm mmm mmm”—then swallow. “I know Bob, and I’m on deadline, mon cher, bad timing.” I slam down the phone. It rings again, but this time I lift it up and then drop it into the garbage pail.
“Do you know how low you are Barsky? You’re in the bottom of the garbage pail, you swine.” I hear his signature nasal laugh as I fish the receiver out of the garbage.
The morning a pail of bulls’ balls was delivered from a Ninth Avenue bodega, just after I got the column, I filled Tamara in. “He’s been at the paper forever, and pulling this stuff keeps him awake between stories.”
“You could ignore him.”
“But then he’d stop.”
I consider returning fire using a foreign identity. German? Dietrich? No, I can do better. Later. Now I have to apply ass to seat and get to work.
“SHIT.” The phone’s ringing again. “Tamara! Tamara! Tell Barsky to cool it.” I wait, but my phantom assistant is gone. I snatch up the phone.
“Enough, asshole. I have work to do. This is a newspaper, remember?”
There is silence on the line.
“Alan! Don’t ignore me and don’t start that sick breathing thing again. You don’t sound sexy, you sound like you’re having an asthma attack.”
There’s a silence, and just as I’m about to hang up I hear the voice.
“Maggie? I’m sorry, I hope this isn’t a bad time…. I’m, this is Mike Taylor, I’m an actor in Los Angeles. I don’t know if someone from the studio ever reached you or not, but I’m about to start working on a new movie here, and that’s why I’m calling. I need your help.”
My eyes open wide, then wider. An alarm goes off deep inside my head. Not Alan Barsky. Not Alan Barsky. He wasn’t that good. It was… My skin starts to prickle. It did sound like him. Oh God, I am such a complete moron.
“Sorry…SO-ORRY…just fooling around here….” I clear my throat. “I…I know who you are…” I say, trying to conceal a certain shakiness that’s starting to spread over me like a violent onset of the flu. Who could ever forget his rippled abs on that Calvin Klein underwear billboard in Times Square!
“Oh, okay, well, I thought I’d try you myself because…anyway…I’m going to be starring in a new movie about a diet doctor, and I’m so out of my element with this. I wondered if there was any way that you could help me out.”
The Mother Teresa of journalism to the rescue…. Oh…whatEVER you need. But I say nothing, half out of fear of saying the wrong thing, the other half because I’m afraid that if I hear my own voice, I’ll wake up and the dream will be over.
“Maggie? You there?”
“Yes…I… Sorry, I’m in…I got distracted for a minute—”
“Oh, well, anyway, I wondered if there was any way you might be able to come out to L.A. for a couple of weeks?”
“Weeks? A couple of weeks?” What the hell is happening to me, echolalia?
“I know you’re working, but we could get you a suite at the Beverly Hills Hotel. There are amazing restaurants here—you could take lots of time for yourself and—”
“I don’t think I could just—”
“Well, we could make some other arrangement if you don’t like it there… L’Hermitage or… I mean, you could even stay here if you’d be more comfortable. I have a pretty big place—you could have your own wing—there’s an office…and I have a great kitchen. You could make my place home base, and just give me some coaching—you know, background stuff—on the way overweight women think, and how they’d react to me. I usually spend a couple of months preparing for a role, and it would be a tremendous favor if—”
“I…I don’t know—”
“I realize that it’s not easy to just get up and leave—”
“No, but—”
“Don’t answer now, just think about it.”
“Well—”
“We would pay all your expenses, and a consulting fee. The studio is usually pretty generous, I’m sure we could work something out so that at least financially it would be worth your while. Just consider it, okay?”
“Maybe, maybe, Mike,” I say, coiling a strand of hair around my finger like a tourniquet. “Can I get back to you?”
“Sure, sure, Maggie. This is great. I’m thrilled that you’ll even think of helping me.” Then his rich voice turns softer, intime. Caressing. And by God, it’s working wonders.
“Honestly, people out here really look up to you, you know? This is a crazy town, everybody’s into some diet routine or other, nobody’s happy with themselves the way they are. That’s why it would be so helpful if I could hear your take on it all.”
There are other experts—I can rattle off a dozen names off the top of my head. Bloated, academic types, but they knew the stuff, they could fill him in. Or he could read my clips. The column was easy to call up, why did he need the flesh-and-blood me? On the other hand, SHUT UP. Did it matter WHY he called me? He called me. ME. He wanted ME. Needed ME. Maggie O’Leary.
We say goodbye, but I’m still holding the phone. Finally I place it in the cradle, gently. Mike Taylor. Mike Taylor.
I lean back in my chair, pressing my fingers over my eyes, seeing shapes and colors collide like shooting stars. How often does someone get offered her fantasy on a silver platter, there for the taking? Lotto Jackpot. And the winner is… I’m nervous now, uneasy. Is my breath getting short? My panic circuitry is supercharged, as though my insides are a pinball machine and Mike Taylor the little steel ball that has been spring-loaded into my body and is ricocheting around, slamming the buttons and bumpers, setting off ringers and bells and arcades of pulsating lights.
I tear open the suffocating top button of my blouse, grab for my fan and open the bottom desk drawer where I stash the omnipresent reserve sack of Rainbow Chips Ahoy. I reach in and pull out a handful of cookies, admiring the gems of green, red and yellow chocolate that stud their rough surface. I lift one toward my lips. I can already taste it. My mouth knows cookies the way the fingertips of the blind know braille. Each pillow of chocolate…its dense, creamy center oozing satisfaction out along my tongue…washed down with a tall glass of chilled milk…comfort, fulfillment. I bite down and chew it slowly, as if mesmerized. Then another. But as quickly as I raise the third cookie to my lips, I pull it away.
Suddenly it becomes a grenade and I’m considering suicide. I hold it, just hold it, and wait. A moment later I put it on the edge of the desk, and, like a kid shooting bottle caps, use my thumb and pointer finger to flick it into the garbage where it lands with a resounding ping on the empty metal base. I shoot another and another until I’m out of cookies and the bag is empty. Bingo. I smooth out the bag and pin it to the bulletin board. It’s flat now, thin, and it weighs next to nothing.
Breaking the Mold
“Don’t change your body, change the rules.” Those aren’t my words, they’re Jennifer Portnick’s.