I know I should shut my fucking mouth and follow the scared, furtive Sorenson to her car. Instead, in my rage at this violation by the preppy asshole, I stand my ground and shoot my mouth off. — Of course I would. Whatever the circumstances, nobody has the right to start shooting people!
— But you did martial arts at a high competitive level, and taught self-defense classes for women, this sincere fag lisps. — Are you saying that women have the right to self-defense, but male victims of sexual violence, like Mr. McCandless, do not?
A crumpling of silent thunder in my ears. I’m stunned. I can’t manage a retort. As I hear Lena Sorenson’s urgent voice in the background, I can only look fearfully and penitently, my face racked with weakness and doubt, as it’s beamed into all those American homes.
Then I feel Lena Sorenson’s grip on my arm tighten, as she leads me to her car. — Please leave us alone, she says, softly but quite forcefully. I climb inside, but the squalid asshole is still pointing his camera at me, shooting in through the passenger window, glee etched on his fat chops. I turn away. — Goddamnit!
Sorenson starts the engine and pulls off, dispersing the photographers who flutter away, pigeonlike for a few feet, then resume their feeding frenzy. She turns on to Alton, then floors it and we tear north. — It’s okay, Lucy, she gurgles, — this story surely can’t have much more legs. Her tone falls ruefully. — If only I hadn’t given them that stupid video clip!
A text comes in on my phone. Valerie.
I saw the news. Lie low. There will be heat.
No fucking shit, tinker tailor soldier!
I feel my teeth rattling together as we shoot past the green hand of the Holocaust Museum, and I look back to see if we’re being pursued. It’s hard to tell; a lot of traffic is ripping by both ways. I get control of myself by venting my anger. — You put yourself on the line and save some motherfucker’s ass and you get treated like a fucking criminal! What kind of a fucking country is this? Is this America? Is this what we’ve become? It’s a fucking freak show!
Sorenson lets me get it off my chest, gently touching my shoulder as she keeps driving.
— I’m sorry, I say, feeling better, — Just had to get that out.
— I know. Don’t worry about it. It must be so stressful.
We drive up to Lena Sorenson’s place on 46th. I try to get Valerie but it goes straight to the ol’ girl’s voicemail. I text her.
You weren’t wrong. Give me a call.
Chez Sorenson is a nice, big detached Spanish colonial house with a pool, which is too small for serious swimming, not that I could conceive of the Sorenson cruise ship docking in that particular berth. Terracotta tiles snake through the home, all the walls whitewashed in gallery emulsion. This shows off numerous paintings and sleek but functional furniture.
She has a rack of CDs and most of them are okay, but there are two Tracy Chapman albums in the collection. A bitch got one Chapman album, that fucker with “Fast Car” on it, you gotta see it as a red flag. She got two Chapman albums, that one plus another, then run for the fucking hills! Too late for that now: I slump back into a leather chair and feel myself being lowered into its guts as I look around the room. My first thought is: no wonder Sorenson spends so much time in Starbucks; decoratively speaking, it’s a home away from home. The best feature, apart from the kickass 70-inch flatscreen TV, is the huge stone fireplace, with two metal buckets, one full of coal, the other logs, and a group of fire irons, including an ax, presumably to pretend-chop the already splintered logs. Fake-assed bitch. She makes some coffee (which I never drink) and tells me that she has an outbuilding which functions as her sort-of-an-artist’s studio. Despite my expressing interest to the point of fascination, she doesn’t offer to show me inside.
The kitchen, however, is a state-of-the-art chamber of self-abuse; the cupboards and big Sub-Zero full of what I call antifood: cookies, candy bars, TV dinners, ice cream, chips, and more soda than you have ever seen. Lena has been cooking up a feast of sugar, salt, fat, and carbs. But nobody, bar her, is eating. — Bakery goods. They are my one weakness, she says, cramming a strawberry-filled donut (450 cal easy) into her face.
I decline her offer to reciporocate, going through to her living room and switching on the large flatscreen. Bitch got every cable station known to man; bitch got full Direct TV package. I channel-hop the news programs and my feature is appearing already. I look weak and stupid, my hair severely scraped back and tied up. My heart drops six inches in my chest cavity as it cuts to Quist’s smug, mocking face. — The cat seems to have got that young lady’s tongue on the issue of the right to self-defense. Guess she’s maybe finding out that it ain’t as easy as it all seems, and that ordinary Americans might just indeed have the right to seek recourse against those who would do the work of the devil.
— Fucking asshole! I shout at the crinkled, leather-faced old scrotum on the screen.
Sorenson takes the hint and zaps the TV into black death. — It’ll blow over, she says in a voice that is meant to be soothing but which bugs the fuck out of me.
I spring up, startling her, and walk around, looking at the art hanging on the walls. Then I move quickly back into the kitchen. Sorenson follows, watching as I pick up a donut from the countertop. — Hmmm. . I examine it.
— Yes, these are my mother’s, Sorenson explains, — and they’re so good! She sends me down a box religiously on the first week of every month. I knew you’d want—
I turn and drop the crud into the trash. Sorenson’s face burns like I took my hand across the bitch’s fat chops.
— You can’t—
— It’s imperative that you control your calorie intake. Diet is crucial. You’re only going to stand still at best if you eat the same amount and type of the so-called food that got you into this mess, I explain, picking up the box and chucking the whole lot into the bin. Sorenson’s squirming, standing back and gripping the kitchen countertop, like she’s about to faint.
— Right! Lifestyle inventory! I bark, making a stunned, shaky Sorenson go through the cupboards, systematically throwing out all the crap! Her face is on fire. — This is shit. This is how you are killing yourself! Do you read those labels?
— Yes. . she says in a high mewl followed by a half-hearted moan, — . . I do read them. Sometimes. Most of the time.
I can feel my thin, plucked eyebrows slanting severely at the pathetic lummox.
— I mean, come on, it’s just a treat. We all need treats sometimes, she protests.
— Treats? Treats! What does this one say? I drum my finger on the packet of macaroons then thrust it into her face.
— Two hundred and twenty calories. .
— Two hundred and twenty calories per fucking serving. How many servings are there in this container?
I can see the air being squeezed out of her lungs as surely as if I’d just buried a left hook into her liver. — These things are so small, there’s nothing in them. .
— How many servings?
— Four. .
— How much of this container do you have in one sitting?
Sorenson can’t speak. It’s like her voice has just left her.
— The whole fucking thing, I’ll bet. That is nearly nine hundred fucking calories, Lena, two-thirds of what a woman your size should be eating per fucking day!