Mary Gaitskill - Two Girls, Fat and Thin

“No.”

“God, Dorothy, I can’t believe you let this stranger into your house. Anybody could say they were writing free-lance for the Vision .”

“But why would anybody want to? She was obviously writing an article for somebody.”

“What makes you think that?”

“Because she knew Granite’s material so well. She asked a lot of well-thought-out questions.”

“That’s even scarier if you ask me,” said Sandra, jabbing at some tiny cookie crumbs with her moistened fingertip. “She’s probably a crackpot gathering information for some sick purpose of her own.” She licked her harvesting finger.

“No,” I said. “I’m the crackpot. She’s the normal person coming to expose me. She tried to make me out as some kind of masochist.”

They exchanged glances. “How did she do that?”

“She just said a lot of things implying that Granite’s novels are based on masochistic sex, which is totally unfair. Then she tried to appease me by talking about her sex life, about how some guy did stuff to her she couldn’t control or something.”

The girls gasped in unison and simultaneously picked up cookies which they pried apart, Sandra getting white Oreo goo in the point of a false fingernail. I felt sort of guilty betraying Justine in this way, but I also felt that she deserved it.

“She talked to you about her sex life? And you believe she was a reporter? Dorothy, come on!”

“She even told me about the time she was sexually molested as a child.”

“Oh my God, Dorothy. Sicko. Sicko.”

“God,” said Debby. “What if she wanted to meet you for a personal reason? What if she somehow found out who you are and became obsessed with you? What if she’s a lesbian!”

I refrained from suggesting that Debby, who was continually obsessed with virtual strangers, might be projecting. “How could she have found out who I was? I randomly answered an ad on a bulletin board, remember?”

“I don’t know, maybe she’s a lesbian obsessed by Anna Granite who fixated on you because you reminded her of somebody.”

“Yeah,” said Sandra. “You never know with these nut cases. You saw Fatal Attraction , right?”

“You really think she might be a lesbian?”

“Could be. Sounds like there was something pretty intense going on there.”

I hadn’t considered this at all. “She didn’t look like a lesbian.”

“Well, whether she is or not, if she calls again, I hope you hang up.”

“Really,” said Debby. She tipped her head back and ferociously expelled her cigarette smoke.

Four A.M. found me in the toilet still wondering about the conversation, undoubtedly the liveliest I’d ever had with my foolish coworkers. Debby’s theory that Justine was a dyke seemed ridiculous. and yet. What did that “Girlworld” on her T-shirt mean? Had it simply been my exhaustion that had given our interview its feverish dimension? I had told reporters about my father before (information which, strangely enough, I found easy to dispense to strangers but never revealed to those I saw everyday), but I had never received such a confidence in return, nor had I ever become so emotional with one of these people before. Justine had said stupid, irritating things, but so had all of them. Was it possible that I had been disturbed because I had been receiving sex signals from Justine? She had referred to her “awful” ex-lover as “he,” but perhaps he had been her last heterosexual affair before discovering her true sexuality, which would explain her odd coldness in describing what should have been rapture.

Two proofreaders came in and loudly banged around in the stalls, peeing and yakking about the supervisor’s ridiculous infatuation with an eighteen-year-old temp, and what a fool he was making of himself. I sat quietly until they’d finished at the sinks and then emerged to examine myself in the mirror. As usual, my heart sank. I was fat and pasty, with dark bags under my eyes and visible roots. Even if Justine was a lesbian, she couldn’t possibly be sending out sex signals to me.

On my way back home to Queens via company car service, I considered my limited experience with lesbians. I’d noticed that things like fat and skin tone didn’t seem to matter so much to them as they did to men. There were a handful of lesbians in the Dance of the Spirit and Healing Circle group I went to when I was even more desperate than usual for human contact. They weren’t fat or dumpy, but they didn’t seem like they’d reject you if you were. I found myself dreamily imagining Justine at a Dance of the Spirit meeting as I lolled groggily in the leathern gloom of the car, my eyes on the aqua-colored bottle of liquid air-sweetener the driver had attached to the center of his dashboard. The convoluted landscape of downtown Manhattan slid by in the emergent light.

Perhaps my attendance at a Dance of the Spirit group would strike some as a contradiction of my belief in Anna Granite, who was an atheist and would probably have scorned auras, healing crystals, and chakra meditation if she’d had the chance to. But one of the central beliefs of Definitism is in the right of the individual to seek out whatever serves and pleases him, as long as others are not trampled upon. Anyway, I enjoyed the meetings, and I thought Justine might too, although I’m not sure why I thought of her when I received my invitation to that month’s Dance of the Spirit, two weeks after our interview. But I did think of her, and my memory of her tense body made me feel she might be in need of the kind of gentleness I sought at these fests. Besides, I wanted to know how the article was coming.

I had better luck finding her on the other end of her ringing telephone this time. She sounded disoriented, especially when she realized who it was.

“I haven’t even started the article yet,” she said. “God knows when I will, there’s still so many people to interview.”

Her voice was expressionless save that it was sinisterly rimmed with the glowing wattage of raw nerves. It disturbed me; there was something desperate in it. Perhaps she was anxious about the article and my call had precipitated feelings of guilt.

“Oh well, take as much time as you need,” I chattered. “These things require a good deal of thought and meticulousness and care. Don’t let anyone rush you.”

Silence, underscored by the dull electrical pulse of the phone.

“Anyway, that’s not the real reason I called. There’s an event I wanted to invite you to that I thought might be of interest.”

“Yeah?” Her voice swelled with personality.

I described Dance of the Spirit as best I could, emphasizing the healings and niceness. “It’s almost all women,” I added at the end.

Another silence.

“Hello?” A little irritable, I admit.

“This is a Definitist meeting?” she asked.

“Oh no, no.” I gaily laughed. “Not at all. It’s something I felt that perhaps, on an intuitive level, you might enjoy.”

Another long throb of silence. “Well thanks but I don’t think so. To tell you the truth I’m surprised you’d go to something like that. It doesn’t sound very Definitist in spirit.”

“Well, maybe if you went you’d get a broader picture of Definitism,” I snapped. “But maybe you don’t want that.”

I felt her behind her silence, squirming. “Why don’t you give me the address,” she compromised. “Maybe I’ll drop in if I have the time.”

I placed the squares of information at her disposal and got off the phone. Debby and Sandra were right; she was obviously some kind of nut. I was sorry she’d been molested as a child, but ultimately one has to take responsibility for one’s self, including one’s phone manners.

Dance of the Spirit opened as usual; the Reverend Jane Terwilliger, a tall bright-eyed woman with long, sensitive fingers, stood beaming in the center of her loft before massive vases of roses and lilies, around which were heaped hunks of clear quartz, giant pink and purple crystals. She was further ringed by a half circle of white and blue candles and, beyond that, a circle of primary-colored folding chairs in which members of the group sat, their eyes happily shut, their open hands resting palms-up on their spread knees. Tonal music bloomed in stately bulbs of sound, and the healers moved among the seated celebrants, gesturing earnestly with their hands, pushing auras this way and that.