From: lucypattybrennan@hardass.com
Subject: I Don’t Get It
Hi Michelle,
Once again, I’m shamelessly hitting you up for professional advice. I have a client, an artsy chick, who seems to have everything, but she’s been eating herself to death. She makes sculptures and figurines out of animal bones, yet she sends me pictures of furry animals from hokey websites! Is this bitch a raving psychopath?
Her family live back up north in Minnesota. It’s a part of the world I’ve never taken to, probably because I had a bad experience with a guy from St. Paul once. Anyway, this chick has no boyfriend and seems to be friendless. Maybe she needs to get laid — don’t we all, right?!
Any advice on how to whip this particular self-indulgent lardass into shape?
Best,
Luce x
PS The world-domination project is suspended. I’ve been getting a lot of heat through all this pedophile stuff. Bizarre shit, right, but the cable company have totally pussied out. I’m smelling fake people, Michelle. I don’t do fake.
PPS Morning Pages. . I dunno if I can roll with that. Each to their own but I don’t think it’s pour moi.
To: lucypattybrennan@hardass.com
From: valeriemercando@mercandoprinc.com
Subject: Please, Calm Down!
Lucy,
Thelma called and said that you left a highly abusive and somewhat threatening message on her voicemail.
Please do not contact her or anyone else at the channel when you are in such an agitated state! You are undermining everything I’m trying to do on your behalf!
I know this is distressing, but there isn’t a whole lot more that I can say to you, except that it is absolutely imperative that you don’t speak to the media. Leave the communication with the TV people with me — it’s what I’m paid to do!
Best,
Valerie
Another fake ass!
11. DEMON
PARADISE HAS A smell, and it’s sewage. A little rain, the drains go down, and there are very few Paddy dive bars in Southie whose shithouse smells as bad as SoBe after a tropical storm. Unless you wanna paddle through stagnant water you can’t even walk across Alton to Taste Bakery to get a healthy breakfast. I’m not down with that, not in sneakers. The sun is pumping out and it will soon evaporate this lake of shit, but it’ll take two or three hours.
A text comes in from Grace Carillo, asking me if we’re still on for our sparring session later. This arrangement slipped my mind but that’s exactly what I need. I go back home and fix myself a protein shake (450 cal), and Miles calls. — Lucy. . how’s things going with you, babe?
— I’m good, I say cagily.
— I’m calling to apologize for how I was the other day.
— Accepted. I was a little short too.
— Cool. I hear him clear his throat. — Listen, there’s another thing. .
Here it comes. — Riiight. .
—. . and there’s no way of saying this without sounding a total asshole.
I’m instantly thinking: in your case, there’s no way of saying anything without sounding like that, but I’m biting that caustic tongue. It was a mistake to leave trash talk on Thelma’s voicemail. You confront a bitch direct. Now bitch got witnesses. Bitch got evidence. I suck down some air.
— Lucy? You still there?
— Yes. . it’s a very bad connection though, I lie.
— I need you to spot me five hundred bucks. For my rent. I’ve been put on a leave of absence pending this inval-idity insurance investigation, and I’m maxed out on my Visa and MasterCard.
— I can’t hear you for all this static. . I tell him, scraping my nail against the cell’s mouthgrid. — What a terrible reception. .
— I said I need you to spot me—
— You’re breaking up, Miles. . I’m driving. . let me get back to you. .
I click off my phone, lowering it to the table, and finish my shake. Then I’m heading over to Bodysculpt and a session with Sorenson. After our shit last night she comes in with a slightly candy-assed stare, but there’s determination in her stride. I don’t trust the shitty loser scale in her bathroom. I know through experience the tendency of a fat bitch to simply fuck with a scale until it produces the numbers she craves.
So I give her the kettlebell routine, and in between I’m hammering her with starbursts, squats, lunges, burpees, and squat thrusts, and a rake of floor ab exercises — straight crunches, vertical leg crunches, bicycles, Russian twist (with medicine ball) — until she’s gasping and glowing. Then she’s gloved up and even though I show her how to throw a jab, right cross, left hook, right hook, uppercut, she’s hitting the bag like a pussy till I shout at her to step it the fuck up. Then I have her back on the other exercises and she’s gasping, groaning, and reddening, and I can see Lester’s raised eyebrows, so I cool it, and stick her on the elliptical, making her pump those pedals and levers at high speed. Sorenson cannot speak when she steps off the machine, like Neil Armstrong onto the lunar surface; I’m watching her burn like a motherfucker, while gently urging, — Breathe in through your nose, exhale through your mouth!
She’s feeling pleased with herself through the pain, and I am too, but when I haul her ass onto a real scale, she’s still over 200 lbs at the weigh-in, 200.75 to be fucking precise! — That’s so disappointing, she says, then smiles, all back in ass-licking Scandi-Minnesota mode, — but I’m moving in the right direction!
I fucking say when a bitch move! I fucking say when she breathe! — You’re not going anywhere, I bark. — Do you really think that two fucking pounds at this stage, with what you’ve been doing, means jackshit? I lower my voice, as I see Mona’s ears prick up. Hovering bitch has an anorexic Condé Nast twig on a mat nearby, doing pussy stretches, purely for eavesdropping purposes. But it’s unprofessional to curse out a client, and it won’t have gotten past that scheming creepette. That hoe manipulates and undermines. Like Sorenson here. Where did she go for breakfast? Jerry’s Deli? Pork chops and fat shit stuffed into her own fucking porky chops? She gotta be told. — I’m less than impressed, Lena. It’s all about numbers. I wanted a substantially bigger drop.
— Well, I did too. .
Bitch still cramming for the big-booty examinations. — Are you following the diet sheet?
A guilty pout; caught with her fucking doughy fist in the cookie jar! — I, I’m trying, I—
— We don’t try, we do! You need to do, I tell her, as I catch Mona’s devious, glacial features light up an amp or three. Fuck you, Frisbee flaps! I turn back to Sorenson. — Right, I gotta go, and I pick up my bag. As I head out I can feel her abandoned-child eyes tracking me out the door. The sun is bright, and I squint, realizing I’ve forgotten my Ray-Bans, but I’m not going back in there. I try to stay in the shade all the way down Washington, to the Miami Mixed Martial Arts club on 5th.
The air conditioning blasts you when you walk into the MMMA but it can’t displace those satisfying real gym aromas of sweat, liniment, and adrenaline. Thank God for this place, all heavy bags, pull-up bars, and solid weights and cardio equipment, two full-sized boxing rings, and an octagon. Emilio (5’10", 145 lbs) emerges from behind the desk to greet me with a big hug. — Hey, you!
— Hey!
He breaks off and jumps back like a kangaroo in reverse gear. — Lookin good, Lucy B!
— You too, honey, I crack a bleachtray-whitened smile, which I hope mirrors his more professional and costly job. Emilio had a solid boxing record as a pro (24-2-8, 11 KOs). He was a ranked IBF number 8 contender and WBC number 10 at one time. Of his eight losses, three came in his last trio of fights, with two of them by stoppage. The writing was on the wall; he’d gone from being a hot prospect to a decent scalp for rising, hungry young guns, and (uniquely in the lemminglike world of dude boxing) he had the good sense to read it as such. His nose has been broken a couple of times but it’s set well, and his pretty, boyish face is almost unmarked. He always was a boxer rather than a slugger. Now he runs this place and keeps to his fighting welterweight poundage. — Great to have a proper workout today though, I tell him, and he gives me an affirmative nod; Emilio has his own roster of lardasses at some fake joint, in order to pay the bills.