Verena called. I listened to her while staring into the void that was American HipHop. She wanted to know about the second task. I decided not to lie and told her about the woman in the café and how I had responded to her: What are you staring at? I thought this would be enough of a confrontation—for Plum this was progress—but Verena wasn’t satisfied. “It’s a good start,” she said, “but I want you to consider doing more than that.” In response I moaned into the phone, experiencing a burst of shocks in my head. “You’re not well at all,” Verena said, as if she’d had nothing to do with it.
Although the first two tasks were ongoing, Verena wanted to discuss what was next. I demanded to know how many tasks were left in the New Baptist Plan. I was on the verge of quitting, but she said there were only three tasks left. I was nearly halfway to the $20,000.
“Now what do you want me to do?”
“For the next two tasks, I want you to live as Alicia.”
“That’s impossible.”
“I know that Alicia is thin and Plum is fat, but I just want you to pretend to be Alicia. It’s an exercise.”
Verena explained that the third task was a makeover. “You’ve already started buying clothes and accessories, but let’s go further. I have a friend who is an expert at this sort of thing. She’ll take you out for a few days and make you over from head to toe.”
“What’s the point? I don’t look like Alicia. I can’t even fit into the clothes I’ve bought.”
“Trust in the process. Besides, it might be fun for Plum as well. You’ve imagined yourself as Alicia for so long that you don’t give Plum a chance to be everything she can be.”
“I’ve been Plum my whole life. She’s had plenty of chances.” I thought about the makeover. Shopping for cosmetics and new shoes, I supposed that’s what she had in mind. I could handle that. “And the fourth task?”
“A week of blind dates.”
An invisible hand punched me in the gut. “Verena—”
“My dentist, Gina, always tries to fix me up with men, which is annoying and offensive for a variety of reasons. She knows plenty of single men—they’re in and out of her office all day long. So yesterday I called her and asked her to arrange a string of dates for a young friend of mine. She practically cackled with joy.” I pictured Gina with a wart on her chin, clasping a broomstick.
“What did you tell her about me?”
“That you work for Kitty, that you’re smart and pretty, that you live in Brooklyn.”
“The men won’t be expecting someone like me.”
“These are blind dates. They won’t know what to expect.”
“Verena,” I said in a tone that let her know I was tired of this game, “you know what I mean. I’m not a generic female. I cannot be set up on dates.”
“Trust in the process, Plum. That’s all I ask.”
“I’ll be humiliated,” I said. “You know that. That’s what you want to happen, isn’t it?”
“You make me sound like a monster.”
“I can’t understand why you’re doing this. I thought you wanted to change my mind about the surgery? So far you’re not doing a very good job.”
“I just want you to experience being Alicia. She wants to meet men. She wants to fall in love, get married, have babies, the whole predictable triumvirate. That’s what you said you wanted.”
“But I’m not Alicia yet.”
“We’re just going to pretend that you’re Alicia. I want to move the present and the future closer together. It’s an experiment.”
“Okay, send the men over, I don’t care. I hope they do humiliate me. It’ll confirm what I already know but what you can’t accept: Plum shouldn’t exist.” Plum was moving into the past, like someone on the platform as the train pulled away, slipping from view. I wouldn’t even bother to wave goodbye.
I didn’t bother to ask about the fifth task. Verena said the makeover would begin the next morning. I was supposed to meet her friend Marlowe Buchanan at Café Rose in Union Square. The name Marlowe Buchanan was instantly familiar, but I couldn’t recall why. I turned it over in my mind several times, and then it came to me. “Marlowe Buchanan . . . the actress?”
“Yes, I guess she was an actress. I don’t think of her that way. She’s just Marlowe to me.”
I should have known it wouldn’t be a normal kind of friend.
“Is there a problem?” Verena asked innocently.
The New Baptist Plan was becoming stranger by the day.
? ? ?
The New Baptist Plan, Task Three:
Makeover
When I was a girl living on Harper Lane, I watched Marlowe Buchanan in the sitcom Ellie every Thursday night. She played the title character, Ellie Waters, a young woman who had moved from Ohio to New York City to become a TV weathergirl. It was a fish-out-of-Midwest story, with beautiful small-town Ellie trying to make it in the big city.