Sarai Walker - Dietland

Leaving the kitchenette, I continued my tour, turning a corner and heading down another dark corridor, lined with cabinets. I opened one of them and glimpsed stacks of white towels and sheets, plus cakes of white soap. I was about to snoop in another cabinet when I heard a noise, something in the distance. I had assumed I was alone. Closing the cabinet lightly, I strained to listen. What I heard was moaning, muted cries, wounded-animal sounds.

In a tiptoe, I moved to the end of the hall and poked my head around the corner, afraid of what I might see. I was faced with another dark corridor, this one entirely black except for the light emanating from the end of it. The light was shifting and crinkling, like an electrical storm viewed from afar. I walked through the darkness toward the light. The sound grew louder, the light grew brighter—I held up my hands to shield my eyes as I stepped through an archway.

The room was circular, larger than my bedroom and the other bedrooms combined. The walls were banks of screens, all of them synchronized with the same scenes. I rotated in the middle of the room, disoriented, the space dark except for the light from the screens. There were two folding chairs in the center and I sat in one of them.

On the screens were a naked woman and three naked men on a bed. The men’s penises were inserted into the woman’s vagina and anus and mouth. After a minute, the men removed their penises and reinserted them in different places. There were always three penises inside the woman. The men twisted themselves and contorted the woman so that what they were doing was visible to the camera. As the scene went on, the woman became haggard, her black eye makeup smeared with semen and sweat. She was the underside of a piece of Lego, her bodily orifices nothing more than slots for the men’s penises.

I stood up from my chair and backed away. In my haste to escape the room, I tripped over the second chair and fell to the floor, wincing as I landed on my right arm. Squeezing it in pain, I rolled over onto my back and looked up at the ceiling. There were screens there too. In the basement I couldn’t see the sun or the moon or the stars, but these screens were there in abundance, showering me with moving light. The Lego woman was looking down at me, as if imprisoned behind the glass, as if she could see me. She wasn’t beautiful, but I supposed she had the necessary parts. Brass-colored clumps of hair fell to her bony shoulders; on the top of her head was a ring of thick black roots, like a dark halo. I tried to picture her getting off the bed and drying herself, putting on her clothes and leaving the windowless bedroom, but I couldn’t. She didn’t exist outside that room, not without the men’s penises filling up her empty spaces.

Rushing down the hallway, I wound my way back toward my bedroom, my eyes still blotchy from the screens. In only a short time, I had become accustomed to darkness.

I didn’t know why that room existed or whether I’d been meant to see what was playing on those screens. What did that room have to do with the last task of the New Baptist Plan? I had thought the worst of the plan was behind me, but now I wasn’t sure.

Passing my bedroom, I proceeded to the front door, the entrance to the underground apartment. Perhaps it would be easier to leave than to find out what Verena had in mind. The door was heavy steel, gray and mottled. I didn’t know whether it was locked, but I reached for the handle and felt the shock of cold metal.

I paused, then let go of the handle and backed away. I knew what was on the other side of that door. If I went outside and walked up the steep flight of stairs, it would be like emerging from a cellar after a storm. I would be forced to survey the wreckage of the life I didn’t recognize anymore, not in the wake of the New Baptist Plan. Above ground, I no longer had a job. I was confused about the surgery. I was upset about the treatment I’d received in recent weeks—the humiliation, even violence. On top of it all, I no longer had the protection of Y——.

My life was like a handbag that had tipped over, the coins and keys and tubes of lipstick scattering on the floor. I couldn’t bring myself to bend over and pick up the pieces, not yet. Despite the darkness of the apartment and the room with the screens, it was easier to stay underground than to face it.

The front door hinges shrieked, announcing an arrival.

“How are you feeling?” Verena stood in the doorway of my bedroom. I was sitting on my bed, doodling on the notepad. She handed me an iced coffee in a tall plastic cup. The green straw was a shoot of plastic grass, a reminder of the summer that was playing out above my head.

“I’ve been resting,” I said, setting the cup on my belly, using it as a shelf. Verena sat at the desk, the chair turned toward me, and crossed her legs. Her skirt looked like an old petticoat, the white linen yellowing, the eyelet at the bottom frayed.

“Glad to hear it. That’s what the last task of the New Baptist Plan is about. Disconnecting and reflecting.”

I sucked up a mouthful of coffee through the straw. “I found that creepy room. What’s that about?”

From her bag Verena pulled out her notepad and opened it in her lap, taking one of the pens from the cup on the desk. “Let’s not talk about that today,” she said. “For now I don’t want you think about that room. I want you to spend a bit of time in there and feel it.”

At this point I knew Verena let things unfold in her own time no matter how hard I pushed, so I moved on to the more important topic. “Can we talk about Leeta? I keep hoping I hallucinated her face on the screen in Times Square,” I said, recalling my drug-induced haze.

“Yes, I noticed you stole my bottle of Dabsitaf. I hope you’re not planning to take that? It’s unsafe.”

My dream of being devoured came back to me and I shook my head. “I did take it, but it gave me nightmares.”

“If nightmares is all it gives you, consider yourself lucky.”

Verena confirmed that my vision of Leeta wasn’t a hallucination. Leeta’s roommate had contacted the police and told them Leeta had confessed that she knew the identity of “Jennifer” without providing specifics. The roommate said Leeta claimed she was “haunted” by something “bad” she’d done, but she wouldn’t say what it was. The next day, Leeta had vanished and the roommate was worried. The police were anxious to speak with Leeta, but no one had been able to find her, so they made a public appeal.

“I’m hoping this is all a misunderstanding. Try not to let it upset you. I know it’s a terrible shock,” Verena said.

“How could it be a misunderstanding?”

“Julia came by the house yesterday. She said Leeta had a habit of disappearing, so there’s nothing unusual about that. Julia thinks Leeta was joking around about knowing Jennifer. She said Leeta is, um, what was the word Julia used?” Verena looked up at the ceiling. “ Kooky. Julia said Leeta just needs to return home and clear this up.”

I knew from my own experience that Leeta was “kooky,” but this behavior seemed beyond that. “If she’s innocent, why hasn’t she come home?”

Verena didn’t have an answer. “Maybe she’s scared? I don’t know, but Julia said the idea that Leeta is involved in criminal activity is ludicrous.”

I knew very little about Leeta, but what I did know for certain was that Julia wasn’t a reliable source.

“I don’t think Julia is lying about Leeta,” Verena said, noticing my skepticism. Then she added, more quietly: “At least I hope not.”

The last time I’d seen Julia, she hadn’t explained why Leeta stopped working for her so abruptly; she had simply refused to discuss Leeta at all. In any interaction with Julia, what she didn’t say was more important than what she did say. I asked Verena if she would bring me copies of the news stories so I could read them myself. It was still too difficult to believe that Leeta had been dragged into this, even by accident.