Sarai Walker - Dietland

Tourism increased, with women from many countries anxious to see what was happening firsthand, but there were also unforeseen consequences. London was scheduled to host the G8 Summit, but world leaders complained. The French president commented on a British television advert that featured a man washing his hair with a new floral-scented shampoo; the man was so excited by the shampooing experience that he made orgasm sounds as he massaged his head. “I cannot be taken seriously in such an environment,” the French president said. Other world leaders echoed his comments, and so the G8 Summit was moved from London to Berlin.

The imam of an East End mosque was taken hostage soon after that. While he was being held in captivity, a video was released to the media in which he ordered all good Muslim men to wear blindfolds. “It’s not right that women should cover themselves from our gaze. Who has the problem here: women, who have committed the heinous crime of merely existing, or men, who choose to objectify women? If the sight of uncovered women offends you, stay at home or wear a blindfold. Better yet, pour acid into your eyes. Then you’ll never have to see anything that offends you again.”

Was New York next? That’s what everyone wanted to know.

VERENA AND I SAT ON A BENCH across the street from the Austen Tower, watching the workers set up concrete barricades. “That’s to prevent car bombs,” she said, biting into her sandwich. “They know something we don’t.”

The events in London had just started to unfold, and rumors were circulating that on this side of the Atlantic, Austen Media had also been threatened. I looked up at the glistening silver trunk. If Austen had been threatened, then it wasn’t a good idea to sit on a bench outside the building, but Verena wanted to see what was happening for herself and asked me to join her at lunchtime.

“Listen to this,” she said, and read to me from a copy of the New York Daily that had been left behind on the bench. “In an internal Austen Media memo leaked to several online sources, Stanley Austen instructs the editors of his nine women’s magazines to remove all references to blowjobs from upcoming issues, which he said is a ‘prudent cautionary measure in these volatile times.’ In response to this news, lingerie chain V— S— has threatened to withdraw their advertising from several Austen publications, including teen title Daisy Chain. ” Verena laughed and ripped the article out of the paper, putting it in her pocket.

She had finished her sandwich, but mine was still wrapped in the white paper: tuna with lettuce and tomato on rye bread. I was hungry, having eaten my bowl of oatmeal (105) and green apple (53) hours before, but I was worried about the sandwich. It felt like a brick in my hand. The tuna was loaded with mayonnaise and the whole thing could have easily been packed with five hundred, even six hundred, calories.

“I shouldn’t be laughing about any of this,” Verena said. “I abhor violence and destruction. My parents died in a fireball of metal and glass.”

An image in my mind: Eulayla Baptist’s fat jeans, consumed with flame.

She set down the newspaper and saw that I hadn’t unwrapped my sandwich. “You’re not going to eat that, are you?”

“It’s not on my plan.”

“Must I remind you that you’re on the New Baptist Plan now? Repeat after me: No calorie counting and no weighing.”

For $20,000 I’d say whatever she wanted. “No calorie counting and no weighing.”

“That’s right. On the New Baptist Plan, absolutely everything is on your plan.”

“You won’t stay in business for long with that strategy.”

“The weight-loss industry is the most profitable failed industry in history, did you know that?”

“I read it in your book.”

I watched as she got up and went to the newsstand on the corner to buy a candy bar. She wore a faded minidress over a pair of jeans, her hair in a straggly braid down her back. Crowds of Austen employees milled around on the sidewalks, having descended from their heights to graze for food at earth level. I didn’t like being in their vicinity and I certainly didn’t want to run into Kitty. As I inspected the crowds, searching for her, a woman sat down next to me on the bench. She was wearing a beige trench coat despite the weather: hot with no sign of clouds. Most of her face was covered by black sunglasses, and she held a silver phone to her ear.

“I’m talking to you but I’m not talking to you,” the woman said.

“Wh . . . ? Are you . . . talking to me?”

“Of course I’m talking to you.” The woman lifted up her sunglasses and it was Julia. She put the sunglasses back down and looked in the opposite direction, still holding the phone to her ear. “Do you have any gossip about Kitty?”

It was startling to see Julia in the light of day. “Why would I have gossip?”

“You’re a source now. I need gossip about Kitty. It’s for a good cause.”

I didn’t mention that Verena had told me about the exposé of Austen. I liked that I knew a secret about Julia—and that she didn’t know that I knew. “I have her list of article ideas for upcoming issues.”

“Aces,” said Julia. “Email that to me.”

It wasn’t a request so much as a command. “How’s Leeta?” I asked. I thought of Julia and Leeta as a pair, though I had never seen them together.

“She’s finally back at work. She’s a bit of a loose cannon, you know.” In a weird way, I missed Leeta. She had sprung up from nowhere, haunted my daily life, and then disappeared. I wanted to see her again, but not really.

Verena returned with her chocolate and put her arm around Julia, who wriggled away and stood up, still with the phone to her ear, looking blank and unexcitable. “I should not be seen talking to the two of you, especially not you,” she said, pointing at Verena with her foot. She pretended to talk on her phone, moving her lips and laughing, though no sound was coming out. Finally she said, “I have a conference call about lip liner with the West Coast now,” and drifted away into the crowd.

“Poor thing, her paranoia must be off the charts,” Verena said, motioning to the barricades. When I asked her about Julia, she said there were five Cole sisters, all of their names beginning with J: Julia, Josette, Jillian, Jacintha, and Jessamine. Their surname was Coleman, but they had deleted the man. The sisters all worked in the media or the fashion and beauty industry, and were all spying like Julia. “They’re like a cabal,” Verena said. “They live in a massive loft in Tribeca, the Weird Sisters.”

I felt a twinge of panic regarding the email addresses, but I tried to push the thoughts from my mind. It was better that I didn’t know why she wanted them. Then you’ll never have to lie.

“I shouldn’t tell you this,” Verena said, “but none of the Cole sisters have breasts. Their mother died of breast cancer when the youngest sister was only two. All of them have the gene, so when they turned twenty-one, one by one they had preventative double mastectomies.” I remembered looking down Julia’s shirt in the Beauty Closet and seeing the roses and thorns tattooed on her chest. She’d been wearing a bra, so I’d assumed there were breasts there too.

I peeled a mayonnaise-free strip of crust off my sandwich and put it in my mouth, then slid one of the tomatoes out from underneath the wedge of lettuce, careful to avoid the tuna. I ate tuna all the time at home, but with fat-free mayonnaise. Real mayonnaise was different. Once I had a taste of real food, I always wanted more. I spent my days tiptoeing around food, the way one might tiptoe into a baby’s room while it’s sleeping. One wrong move and the baby wakes up and screams. That’s how it was with hunger, too. Once it awakes, it screams and screams and there’s only one way to quiet it.