“Maybe you should go on the Pill,” I suggested.
“Yeah, right!” She cackled, tightening the lid on her cup of pee. “Me—on the Pill. I’d be pregnant and I’d have the clap.”
“The clap? Are you kidding me? Do you really think Billy would sleep around? He doesn’t seem like the type. I mean, you know him better, but I just thought he was really into you and only you, you know?”
She raised her eyebrows and looked at me like I should know better.
“Oh,” I said, the light dawning. “Who?”
“Peter.”
“Morgan, not again,” I groaned. Peter is Morgan’s boss. He’s an absolute jerk—gorgeous, married, rich and heartless. Morgan adores him, or rather, adores being thrown down onto his big glass desk and ravaged every once in a while after everyone’s gone home.
She shrugged her shoulders unapologetically. “After a few months, the sexual tension just builds to the point where we have to release it or it’ll become obvious to everyone.”
“Couldn’t you ask for a transfer or something?”
“Why would I want to do that?” she said, throwing her long red hair back over one shoulder. “I like Mergers and Acquisitions. Besides, I didn’t spend all those years busting my ass in business school just to let a prick like Peter get in the way of what I want.”
“Well, excuse the hell out of me, Madam Maneater,” I said.
“Gimme a break, Evie. I’ve been working my way up there for three years and it’s one of the top investment banks in the city. I’m not about to throw it all away!” She slammed her bottle of pee down on the desk in front of a frightened receptionist, and plopped down on a chair between two very unhappy women who appeared to be about ten months pregnant. What a piece of work.
I pictured poor Billy, sitting at home alone poking holes in condoms by candlelight, an uneaten dinner for two laid out on the table. Innocently believing Morgan was working late, as she often does. She probably just forgot to call, he assures himself.
I suppose love really is blind. Actually, in Billy’s case, love is deaf, dumb and blind.
I wonder if Bruce would do something devious like that. The condom, I mean, not the cheating. Probably not, on both counts. The idea of having kids thrills him, I know that. Plus, the thought of condoms brings out his softer side, if you get my drift. In any case, birth control sabotage isn’t his style. The only thing Bruce might consider poking a hole in would be the theory of relativity or something lame like that. Besides, he probably charts my cycle to know exactly when I’m ovulating, anyway.
I reached into the back of the closet and pulled out the black Anne Klein II Fat Suit (Allure, December: “Five Work Essentials To Suit Every Figure”). In a state of emergency such as this, I would never get on the scale. But judging from the snugness of never-fail Fat Suit—and the lines my underwear were leaving on my hips—things had gone from bad to worse. Better skip breakfast and break out the big guns. After work today, I’ll stop by the drugstore. Annie told me that Nicole dropped ten pounds in four weeks on a combination of ginseng ampoules and chromium supplements. I haven’t seen her, and I’m sure she still looks frumpy, but ten pounds, for her, that’s something. I bet she probably took laxatives, too. There must be something at Walgreen’s that’ll work for me.
At work, I studied the calendar. Let’s see…today was Monday, November 27. That gives me about nine and a half months to go until the wedding. Or 265 days. Thank God it’s a leap year—that’s an extra day which might come in handy.
I lost five pounds in a single day once, on the cabbage soup diet. But if I wanted to buy my dress soon, there was definitely no time to mess around. Besides, my metabolism ain’t what it used to be. When I was twenty, I lost (and then gained) ten pounds six times in a single year. It was so easy—all I had to do was cut out French fries and chocolate. But I’d been doing that for two whole months, and I’d gained God knows how much. Maybe there was something wrong with me, like some sort of fat-creating disease or something. It was a hopeful thought.
Pruscilla wouldn’t be back till Monday, so all week long, I devoted myself to researching that very question on the Internet. While Thelma flitted about nervously, preparing neat piles of color-coordinated folders on Pruscilla’s desk, I diligently studied the facts. Unfortunately, the facts were as follows:
Fact #1: An underactive thyroid may be to blame. Symptoms may include weight gain, irregular periods, flaky skin, depression, weakness, constipation and a puffy face. Eureka! Maybe this was the miracle I’d been praying for all these years.
Fact #2: I do not have an underactive thyroid. Or type-two diabetes. Or undiagnosed edema of any kind. No systemic medical condition is to blame. An emergency lunchtime visit to my doctor on Wednesday confirmed these findings. Not at all worth the $120 fee to rush the results of the blood test.
Fact #3: Pregnancy causes weight gain.
Fact #4: I am not pregnant. That is, unless there has been an immaculate conception.
Fact #5: In 1991, doctors at Stanford University Medical Center removed a 303-pound tumor from the right ovary of an otherwise healthy thirty-four-year-old woman. She made a full recovery.
Fact #6: There is no such tumor in either of my ovaries, also confirmed by my doctor. I do not even have a small tumor.
Fact #7: Obsessing over one’s weight can be a sign of anorexia. Might I be teetering on the brink of losing half my body weight?
Fact #8: After completing 14 self-diagnosis questionnaires, it appears the only eating disorder I might be afflicted with is something called binge-eating disorder. Symptoms include eating until feeling painfully full, eating alone due to embarrassment, eating when not hungry, and feeling disgusted and depressed after overeating. The prognosis? Weight gain and, eventually, obesity.
By Thursday afternoon, I had reluctantly drifted away from the hopeful expectations of the medical Web sites to the more familiar depression-inducing body mass index calculators of the diet sites. There, I was forced to concede that my symptoms, although severe, were not altogether uncommon. In fact, they were quite mundane. What I did learn is that my body has betrayed me in a way as cruel as any organic disease, as ferocious as any pathological malignancy. It seems the years of yo-yo dieting have taken their toll. The culprit? A wonky metabolism. The cure? None to speak of, although one thing has been known to help other sufferers—exercise. The time of desperation was nearly upon me; the only option, painfully clear.
I would have to join a gym.
What else could I do? If I’d learned anything from my research—aside from the fact that there were also downsides to thyroid problems and massive abdominal tumors—it was that I was verging on an unhealthy attitude regarding weight loss. I would have to accept that, despite all promises to the contrary, there is no quick fix, no magical ampoule full of ginseng that would make my ass fat morph into muscle. Only hard work and a healthy outlook could prevail.
As I stared at the daunting pile of color-coded folders Thelma had gradually been depositing in my In Box, I realized that I’d done nothing all week but pray for various horrible illnesses, research the best liposuction clinics in the five boroughs, and neglect my professional responsibilities. Pathetic. How could I expect to be promoted if I can’t even bother returning an e-mail or two? Bruce was right—I was in danger of losing it. Well, not anymore.
On Friday afternoon I left early since I figured it would be my last chance for a while, with Pruscilla’s return just one short weekend away. While I’d been embroiled in online research, Thelma had spent the better part of the week pulling her hair out in Pruscilla’s office, which was by now a complete mess. The tension in the air was almost palpable, and it floated out of the office