“She’s really in trouble, it looks like, for a change,” said Judith into her phone.
“Hi Rick.”
6. 1990
/a/
“How are your steaks, tonight?”
“Our steaks, sir, are if I may say so quite simply superb. Only the choicest cuts of beef, carefully selected and even more carefully aged, cooked to perfection as perfection is defined by your instructions, served with your choice of potato and vegetable and richly delicious dessert.”
“Sounds scrumptious.”
“Yes.”
“I’ll have nine.”
“Pardon me?”
“Bring me nine steaks, please.”
“You want nine steak dinners?”
“Please.”
“And who, sir, may I ask is going to eat them?”
“You see anybody else sitting here? I’m going to eat them.”
“And how on earth are you going to do that, sir?”
“Well, gee, let’s see, I think I’ll use my right hand to cut, tonight. I’ll put pieces into my mouth, I’ll masticate, acidic elements in my saliva will begin breaking down the muscle fiber. I’ll swallow. Et cetera. Bring ‘em on!”
“Sir, nine steaks would make anyone sick.”
“Look at me. Look at this stomach. Do you think I’ll get sick? No way. Come here — no, really, come around and look at this stomach. Let me lift up my shirt… here. See how much I can grab with my hand? I can’t even sit close to the table. Have you ever seen anything so hugely disgusting in your whole life?”
“I’ve seen bigger stomachs.”
“You’re just being polite, you just want a tip. You’ll get your tip, after you’ve brought me nine steak dinners, with perfection being defined as medium-rare, which is to say pink yet firm. And don’t forget the rolls.”
“Sir, this is simply beyond my range of experience. I’ve never served any one individual nine simultaneous orders on my own authority. I could get in horrible trouble. What if, for example, you have an embolism, God forbid? You could rupture organs.”
“Didn’t I say to look at me? Can’t you tell what I am? Listen to me very carefully. I am an obese, grotesque, prodigal, greedy, gour mandizing, gluttonous pig. Is this not clear? I am more hog than human. There is room, physical room, for you in my stomach. Do you hear? You see before you a swine. An eating fiend of unlimited capacity. Bring me meat.”
“Have you not eaten in a very long time? Is that it?”
“Look, you’re beginning to bother me. I could bludgeon you with my belly. I am also, allow me to tell you, more than a little well-to-do. Do you see that Building over there, the one with the lit windows, in the shadow? I own that Building. I could buy this restaurant and have you terminated. I could and perhaps will buy this entire block, including that symbolically tiny Weight Watchers establishment across the street. See it? With the door and windows so positioned as to form a grinning, leering, hollow-cheeked face? It is within my financial power to buy that place, and to fill it with steaks, fill it with red steak, all of which I would and will eat. The door would under this scenario be jammed with a gnawed bone; not a single little smug psalm-singing baggy-skinned apostate from the cause of adiposity would be able to enter. They would pound on the door, pound. But the bone would hold. They’d lack the bulk to burst through. Their mouths and eyes would be wide as they pressed against the glass. I would demolish, physically crush the huge scale at the end of the brightly lit nave at the back of the place under a weight of food. The springs would jut out. Jut. What a delicious series of thoughts. May I see a wine list?”
“Weight Watchers?”
“Garçon, what you have before you is a dangerous thing, I warn you. Human beings act in their own interest. Huge, crazed swine do not. My wife informed me a certain time-interval ago that if I did not lose weight, she would leave me. I have not lost weight, as a matter of fact I have gained weight, and thus she is leaving. Q.E.D. And A-1, don’t forget the A-1.”
“But sir, surely with more time…”
“There is no more time. Time does not exist. I ate it. It’s in here, see? See the jiggle? That’s time, jiggling. Run, run away, fetch me my platter of fat, my nine cattle, or I’ll envelop you in a chin and fling you at the wall!”
“Shall I fetch the maître d‘, sir? To confer?”
“By all means, fetch him. But warn him against getting too close. He will be encompassed instantly, before he has time to squeak. Tonight I will eat. Hugely, and alone. For I am now hugely alone. I will eat, and juice might very well spurt into the air around me, and if anyone comes too near, I will snarl and jab at them with my fork — like this, see?”
“Sir, really!”
“Run for your very life. Fetch something to placate me. I’m going to grow and grow, and fill the absence that surrounds me with the horror of my own gelatinous presence. Yin and Yang. Ever growing, waiter. Run!”
“Right away, sir!”
“Some breadsticks might have been nice, too, do you hear? What kind of place is this, anyway?”
/b/
“I insist that you tell me.”
“Could you just possibly wait, for about nine tenths of a second, while I decide how to tell you?”
“What does deciding have to do with it? There’s a thing, and here am I, tell me the thing, voilà. Clearly there’s something bothering you.”
“Look, I’m obviously going to tell you, OK? Don’t have a spasm. It’s just that the thing I have to tell is, a, unbelievably weird, and I don’t even really understand it…”
“So let’s have both our powers of understanding leveled at the thing, together. Whose power of understanding and persuasion soothed a potentially disastrously pissed-off Walinda for you, after all?”
“… and b, is something I was told not to tell, so I have to figure out a way to tell you in a way that’s going to least compromise my promise not to tell, and least make anything bad happen to the person whom the thing concerns.”
“Clear as a bell. As clear as this water glass, Lenore.”
“Don’t flick your water glass. Look, you said this place had really great steaks, and you said you were starving, so why don’t you just concentrate on the impending arrival of your steak, which I sort of think is coming right now?”
“….”
“Looks super, thank you. Rick, would we care for wine?”
“Yes.”
“What kind?”
“… ”
“What kind?”
“…. ”
“We’ll maybe just have a bottle of your house red, if that’s OK…. You are a baby. You have the understanding and compassion of a very very small child, sometimes.”
“Lenore, it’s simply that I love you. You know that. Every fiber of your being is loved by every fiber of my being. The thought of things about you, concerning you, troubling you, that I don’t know about, makes blood run from my eyes, on the inside.”
“Interesting image. Look, try your steak. You said you were in a position to eat a horse.”
“…. ”
“Does that hit the spot?”
“My spot is reeling under the force of the blow. Now I insist that you tell me.”
“…. ”
“Does this have to do with your trying to call that Rummage person while I was busy keeping Walinda from forcing me to choose between her services and yours, even though she was hired by Frequent himself? Shall I simply get up and go call Rummage right now?”
“He’s not there. He’s not here.”