Monica O'Rourke: Suffer the Flesh

Ican help you.

Those had been the words that started it all, words that changed Zoey’s life.

She turned the corner of Fourteenth Street at Union Square, bumped into a vendor hawking honey-roasted nuts, watched a skinny Jimmy Walker lookalike sell fake Rolexes out of a leather briefcase worth more than the items he was trying to unload. Mobs of downtown Manhattan commuters rushed past her into oblivion. She ducked into a bookstore on Seventeenth Street.

“I can help you.”

Clutching a book to her chest, she glanced at the woman standing beside her. Zoey knelt before the endless volumes of dieting self help on the Barnes and Noble shelves. “Excuse me?”

The woman knelt beside Zoey and flipped her long blonde hair over one shoulder. “I can help.”

Zoey blinked. “I think you’ve confused me with someone else. I didn’t ask for help.”

“But you want it, don’t you?”

“What?” Zoey stood, her knees popping. She scratched an itch on her eyebrow and shifted the books from one hand to the other.

The woman followed her up from the crouch. “Hey, look, it’s no biggie. It’s just… well, I’ve been there. I know what it’s like. I know how to fix it.”

Zoey didn’t know what the odd woman was talking about, only knew that it wasn’t the most uncommon thing to have a few unstable people approach you when you lived in New York City. Even in Barnes and Noble. Even crazies enjoyed a good read.

She shrugged and laughed nervously and moved slowly away from Powter and Atkins and sidled toward New Age.

“My name’s Mel. As in Melody. Would you stop moving away for just a minute?”

Zoey stopped. She trailed a finger along the shelf as if inspecting for dust. Then she saw it coming. The expression on Mel’s face, the way she cocked her head and pursed her lips and squinted her eyes. That look of judgment. Zoey knew what was next—the commentary.

The advice. A few hundred clichés. Zoey often had retorts for them, but mostly not. Most of the time it wasn’t worth it, and retorts rarely had the desired impact.

Zoey sighed, crossed her arms over her chest. “What is it?”

“I used to be your size.”

Knew it . “What are you selling? Weight Watchers? Jennie Craig? NutriSystem?”

“No.”

Zoey waited for Mel to continue. Felt her cheeks flush with embarrassment, and anger toward her own reaction. Why was it that she felt the need to accept other people’s views of her?

“It’s not a diet.”

“Pills then. Supplements?” She’d heard it all. Metabolism boosts, speed, all-protein diets, all liquids, all fruit, count calories, count fat grams, exercise till you drop. There was nothing new out there.

“Will you let me finish?”

Again, her cheeks flushed, reduced to this by a total stranger.

“I didn’t mean to embarrass you. But you’d never guess, because it’s not a diet or pills, nothing like that. It’s… well, it’s more of a regimen.”

“What, a fat camp?” Zoey laughed. “If you’re trying to sell me something, you’re not very good at it.”

Mel smiled sadly. “It’s just… see, this isn’t . . .” She pulled at her lip, twisted the corner. “I shouldn’t even be telling you this. There are recruitment requirements.”

“Recruitment? What is it, boot camp? Is this for the military?”

Mel shook her head.

Now Zoey was intrigued. She noticed how attractive Mel was, how thin, and she felt a twinge of jealousy as she often did when seeing a thin, beautiful woman. She had no idea how beautiful she was herself.

“Are you interested?” Mel asked.

In what? She didn’t know any more now than a few minutes ago. “What’s the cost?”

“No cost. Are you married?”

“Married? No—why?” Zoey tilted her head.

“What’s your name, anyway?”

“Zoey.”

“Kids, Zoey? Pets? Serious relationship?”

“No to all of the above. But—”

“You’re a perfect candidate. No commitments.”

“For what?” She swallowed, not sure why she suddenly felt apprehensive. A no-cost plan that didn’t include dieting. But now she was getting the third degree from Mel, this unusual woman she’d met only minutes before. What was there not to be wary of?

It reminded her of a sales pitch she’d received a year earlier, a company trying to convince her they were the wave of the future in telecommunications and that she should invest huge sums of money and become a seller. The truth was, everything had a catch.

A price. “So this is free? And I’ll lose weight?”

“Absolutely. I used to be a size twenty, and now I’m a six.”

“What’s the catch?”

“Look—I’m not supposed to say anything else. They already know you’re interested—”

“They?”

“So my part of this is over. Good luck, Zoey.” Mel turned away and headed toward the escalator. Glanced back over her shoulder as she descended. “Please don’t hate me…”

Mel’s parting words sat like a rock in the pit of Zoey’s stomach.

Reading and book buying were suddenly of no interest. This was too bizarre. She needed chocolate. Zoey headed uptown, found a Baskin and Robbins and ordered a rocky road sundae. Her attempts at death by chocolate were never fatal. Wiped the corner of her mouth with the back of her hand because she’d forgotten the napkins. Mel’s words ran through her head, and little of it made sense; she’d been so cryptic.

Who were they ? And when were they going to contact her? How could they?

She headed west toward the subway, toward the N train that would bring her home to Queens.

Several blocks from her destination she was approached by an aggressive homeless man, asking for spare change. She tried to ignore him, to maneuver around him, but he kept blocking her. She moved toward the curb but he was faster, seemed to anticipate her moves. He smelled like urine and sweat, his hands crusted with grime.

She looked around, searched for help, a waste of time in a city that wasn’t known as the City of Brotherly Love. Passersby inspected the sidewalk as they rushed past, giving wide berth to the lunatic confronting her.

“C’mon, girlie, cost ya’a quawta ta pass.” He grinned, surprisingly white teeth somehow more startling. There was something disturbing in his smile, something she couldn’t determine in those fleeting moments.

“You got too much food in ya, girlie.”

In spite of her fear, in spite of the dread, embarrassment spread on her cheeks like a disease. To reference her weight was the secret weapon. Zoey was ready to wave the white flag, to empty the contents of her wallet into his filthy, diseased hands just to shut him up. To detract attention away from her, from her size. He was a dirty fighter and she was defenseless against him.

“What’s going on here?” Police officer. Zoey’s heart sank. Had he heard the lunatic’s last remarks? “You okay, miss? He hurt you?”

The homeless man was being cuffed and led into an unmarked police car. She hadn’t even noticed them approach.