“Still all right in there?”
“Great,” I say, and I’m tugging so hard on the back zipper, my tongue is lolling out of my mouth like I’m dead in a cartoon. But I feel it going up. Higher than it ever has before. And it’s not a mirage, it fits. It’s on. It’s miraculous. And even though I’m panting, my hair in disarray from the struggle, I see we look immortal.
? ? ?
I’m just thinking how I’ll wear it out of the store. Picturing how I’ll pull back the curtain in the von Furstenberg, turn my zippered, von Furstenberged back to her and say, all casual, over my shoulder, Cut the tag, please? Maybe I’ll even ask for a bag for my old dress—would she mind terribly putting my old dress in a bag? Mm? And that’s when I see the jagged rip down the side seam. Maybe I couldn’t hear the ripping over the sound of my own grunts. That happened once before, with the flesh-colored Tara Jarmon. It was impossibly tight when I bought it and then I was out one day walking, insisting, and it suddenly wasn’t. It suddenly felt easy breezy, beautifully loose. I didn’t understand. Until I caught a glimpse of myself in the reflective glass of an office building and saw the slashes on either hip.
Knock knock.
“We sure we’re still doing okay in there?” Her voice says, A rat who insists on hitting its head again and again against the maze wall gets taken out of the maze. It gets escorted out, politely but firmly, by mall security.
“Yeah,” I say, my hands fiddling with the zipper in a panic. But they’re so slippery from all the exertion, I have to wipe them on the von Furstenberg just to get a grip. And the zipper still won’t go down. I Gazelle. Five miles every morning with a photo of me in a no-name shroud taped to the little window that counts you down. Five miles, only to be told by the von Furstenberg in no uncertain terms that it counts for nothing.
“Do you need another size?” she asks. By “another” she of course means larger, which we both know isn’t in stock.
I asked her once for a larger size and she said, Let me check. And then I loved her. Very briefly I loved her. Loved her hands clasped over her tweed-clad crotch. Loved the thin curl of her lips, a smirking red line. Loved all the bones in her ostrich throat, the arrowheads of her décolletage, her ash blond hair gathered in a glittery comb shaped like a praying mantis. Then, as she picked up the receiver, presumably to place the order, she said in a low voice, That will be five hundred dollars, please.
And I said, What?!
And she said, Well. Obviously you’ll have to pay for it in advance. Or you could order it online on our website?
And I said, But I don’t even know if it’ll f—
And that’s when I saw it, the smile on her face. The flicker of triumph. Like, Ha! You know and I know even the next size up wouldn’t fit you, fat girl.
“I’m fine,” I tell her now through my teeth, tugging with all my might.
? ? ?
I don’t know how long I’ve been sitting here, half in and half out of the von Furstenberg, the pull tab of the zipper in the damp cave of my fist. My old dress, the one I thought I’d never have to wear again, lies like a jilted lover in the corner. I hear her clicking not too far off, rearranging the perfectly arranged merchandise—sequined hair clips shaped like butterflies, purses shaped like swans, perfumes that smell like very specific desserts and rains. I could just put my old dress over it. Go to the cash register. Explain. Offer to pay for the von Furstenberg. But the truth, as she well knows, is that even if it did fit, I cannot afford the von Furstenberg.
? ? ?
I have this terrible image of her coming in here with the jaws of life tucked under her arm. Ash blond tendrils escaping from her chignon as she attempts to wrench me out of the von Furstenberg. How the give of my flesh will be abhorrent to her hands, but not half as abhorrent as her bone white hands will be to my flesh. Other customers will look on as they pass by the open door like I’m a car crash in the opposite lane.
Or.
Or maybe I could learn to live like this.
As I sit here, I can already feel myself oozing out of the von Furstenberg. Oozing from the V in front and the V in the back, the volume of my ass threatening to crack the little bows along the fault line. And I begin to think maybe this is it. Maybe this is the only way out. Maybe, if I wait long enough, if I’m patient, I’ll just ooze out. First the fat, then maybe we’ll find a way to coax out the organs. Some organs I won’t even need, like my appendix. Of course, even if we leave some things like my appendix behind, it’ll be a slow process. Slow in terms of biological time, but not if you think say, geologically, like, in ages.
I’m patient.
Caribbean Therapy