Big Mikey’s eyes widened.
“What’s wrong?” I asked.
“You didn’t hear?” he said.
“Hear what?”
“It was in the papers.”
“The only paper I’ve been reading is the fuckin’ Racing Form.”
“Holy shit, you really don’t know.”
“Know what?”
“Couple weeks ago DiMarco came home from work and shot his wife a bunch of times, then shot himself. It was a fuckin’ bloodbath. Sucked too, because he was a big client of mine. He didn’t know shit about football, dropped five g’s a week like clockwork. And baseball, forget about it. You say you found dirt on his wife?”
I felt sick, knowing if I’d kept my word to Debbie DiMarco she’d probably still be alive.
“Yeah,” I said, “a little.”
“That’s fucked up, but it’s kinda funny too. I mean, when you think about it. You okay?”
“Yeah, fine,” I said. “I’m just getting the shit kicked out of me on the tables, that’s all.”
“Join the fuckin’ club,” he said. “I’m tellin’ you, gambling’s a lot more fun when you’re on the other side of the action.”
Big Mikey told me a story about this big hand he’d lost in seven-card stud at Bally’s, but I was barely listening. I really needed to bet, to clear my head, and I told him I’d catch him later.
I dropped another few hundred in slots, played a few more losing hands of BJ, got the shit kicked out of me in craps, then walked away in disgust. At least I wasn’t thinking about that other thing anymore.
On the way out of the casino, I passed a roulette wheel and put all the chips I had left-about four hundred bucks-on black.
Guess what came in?
The story of my fucking life.
Like Riding a Moped by Jordan Harper
…And now, the last bad thing about being so fat: my fingers can’t find the bullet holes. They’re there, because they brought me down and now there is sticky blood mixing with the sweat all over, but my clumsy hands can’t find what kind of holes just got poked into my body. Are they just little puckers in the flesh? Or is it worse than that? Are scoops of me missing?
Somebody will write about this on the Internet. I bet they call the article “Fatty and Clyde,” or something like that. Everyone will read it and chuckle. And everyone will look at me and see something else, which is what always happens. That’s how Benny got to me when I should have known better. He looked right at me.
Men sit next to me on the Metrolink and talk about women like I’m not even there. I’m just the thing taking up two seats when the train gets crowded. Everyone shifts their body away from me. Nobody looks and nobody points and laughs unless there’s a kid. Then the mom can try and shush the little kid and maybe smile an apology and then look away, tell the kid it’s not polite to stare. Honest, it’s okay when the kid stares. At least it stops me from feeling invisible.
The others, the adults, they look and they just see other things. They picture me sitting at home, a pizza box open in front of me and me eating with the lazy mania of a zombie in a horror movie. They see my chomping jaws and glazed eyes, dipping crusts in ranch dressing, how only one slice lives to make it to the safe haven of the freezer-me eating so much that for the next hour every burp will send a chunk of half-chewed dough back into my mouth, so I have to swallow it again.
Maybe they wonder about my shower, about how I have to lift the three folds of my belly and point the handheld nozzle to try to clean out the gunk that forms there. They wonder how I wash my back, if I own something like the rag on a stick in that Simpsons joke.
They imagine the underwear hidden beneath my clothes, both wispy and huge, a negligee knapsack. Maybe they think of the way the panties must smell when I peel them off at the end of the day, like a swamp or a beer left open.
All these things are true.
All these things are true, so when Benny puts his tray across from mine at the Galleria food court, I don’t believe him for a second. But he is so pretty, really, like Brad Pitt in Thelma & Louise. Later on I’ll learn that he’s from Springfield, down in the opposite corner of the state, same as Brad. And once he’ll even try to tell me that they’re cousins. Yeah, right, I’m sure Brad Pitt just has dozens of relatives who work for the St. Louis mob. What kind of cousin, I ask, like your mother’s brother or what? And he says, No, I mean cousin cousin, like that means something.
But all that comes later. When Benny sits across from me I’m sitting in a corner of the food court with my fried rice and egg rolls, thinking about the store. I want to be a salesgirl. Mr. Nesbitt laughed when I told him, and said he didn’t know what he’d do without me working the computers. The salesgirls-like Amanda, who sits in the middle of the food court eating a salad-don’t know half what I do about carats and cuts and clarity, but they look like the kind of woman you want to drape in diamonds. And now I’m replaying the conversation in my head, the way Mr. Nesbitt won’t look at me while he laughs at the idea. And then there’s Benny staring straight into my eyes and asking if this seat is taken.
So he sits across from me talking and smiling, and I’m trying not to stare at him. The napkin I put over my General Tso’s chicken is turning orange from the grease it’s drinking, and there’s still my crab Rangoon under that napkin. As soon as this gorgeous dip gets up and leaves I’m going to dip it in the General Tso sauce and suck out the cream cheese. But he doesn’t leave, and after one lame joke he tells he actually winks at me. I wonder if the girls at Nesbitt’s maybe hired this guy or something.
I mean, I’ve met chubby chasers, and this guy isn’t one. Guys like that like to say something about my size right away, to try and make me feel comfortable. Oh God, like how they like a woman with some meat on her bones. Great image, right, like maybe they’re planning on cooking me up later.
Most amazing, he’s not looking around the room while we talk. Most men, when they end up in a conversation with me in a bar or something, they’re always looking around. Maybe they’re looking for better options, but mostly, I think, it’s because they’re afraid someone might see them. A friend told me this joke once, I guess it’s a joke men tell to each other:
Why’s a fat girl like a moped?
They’re a lot of fun to ride, but you wouldn’t want your friends to see you on one.
Benny looks right in my eyes. His eyes are clear blue, and I don’t see myself reflected in them at all.
He asks if I want to go see a movie after work. I never told him that I worked at the mall. I could have been shopping. This is something I don’t think about until later. At the time I can hardly think at all. But later on, it will come back to me and make perfect sense.
Back at the store, Amanda corners me. Her skin is the color of Arizona dirt, and it’s stretched so tight you can see three sides of her collarbones. She asks me who I was talking to. Just some guy. Pretty cute, she says back, the way you’d say it to a niece who has not yet admitted to liking boys. Whatever, I say, just like your niece would.
After work, I stop at Lion’s Choice and pick up a few roast beef sandwiches and eat them while I drive, barely chewing at all. He’s taking me to dinner, and I’ll be damned if I’m going to the restaurant hungry. He’s not really going to show up, I tell myself as I drive and swallow. There’s no way. Maybe he’s just into fat chicks, I tell myself. But that doesn’t feel right. To a guy like that, a fat chick is like Renee Zellweger clocking in at 130 pounds for that stupid movie.