Technicians in crisp white uniforms strapped electrodes to Janey’s bare chest to monitor her heart rate from a very professional-looking control room.
Ivy assured her that cryo had been popular in Europe for a couple of decades, operating in standalone clinics and a few high-end hotels. One two-minute session might burn as much as 600 calories. It was like being in the Arctic, without the polar bears or Al Gore. When your temperature dropped below freezing your body went into fight or flight—it literally thought it was dying. If it sounds like torture, it is. The upside of assuming you’re about to freeze to death? You produce body heat faster and burn more calories than the best cardio workouts, even indoor rowing.
Janey tried to make small talk while Heidi crouched down in a mannish squat to get a closer look at Janey’s naked stomach and thighs. “You have such a lovely accent,” Janey complimented her, hoping the praise would cause her to go easy with that marker. “Are you from Berlin? I absolutely love it there. I run a wedding dress company and a couple of years ago we opened a shop in Berlin. I told my partner that it was the one city besides New York that I could see myself living in permanently.” The felt tip tickled Janey’s hips where Heidi looped large ovals around the back part of her waist.
Heidi made a circle around Janey’s belly button and two more right underneath her butt cheeks. “You have nice calves,” the woman informed her.
“Thank you.” Janey assumed that was the proper response. “What makes you want to freeze people for a living?”
Heidi considered the question in a way that made Janey think no one had ever asked it before. “It pays better than working in a bar and I watched a lot of Star Trek as a child.”
Once Janey’s naked skin was properly marked, Heidi smacked her on the ass and into the cryo tank. The walls were made of perfectly clean and clear Plexiglas so that the pixie could see in and Janey could see out, watching Heidi as she wrote on her little clipboard and then barked into a microphone.
“Run. Now you run.”
No one told Janey she would have to run in this meat locker.
“Get your knees higher. Up high.” The German demonstrated with a high march that made her near-translucent pigtails swing in opposite directions.
Each individual muscle in Janey’s body began cramping from the cold. The pain crept first into her big toe and then along her calves and up into her thighs. She could hardly lift a foot, much less jog in place. The corners of her mouth even refused to turn upward.
“I can’t,” Janey yelled back, the words floating from her lips as white condensation. She could feel tears involuntarily form at her eyes, catching on and then freezing her eyelashes.
She began to panic and the panic led her to scream: “LET ME OUT!”
Heidi held up two fingers to indicate that Janey needed to stay in the booth for two more minutes. She’d certainly die before then if she didn’t try to escape this brutal contraption. She had no choice but to begin pounding on the Plexiglas, begging to be set free. It did her no good. The door was locked until a perfectly calibrated timer counted down all 120 of the seconds left to force her cellular function into distress. Heidi merely turned her head so that she could no longer see Janey suffer. Two minutes later she swiveled back around, her bright red lips pulled over her gums in an overly enthusiastic grin.
“Ist es nicht wunderbar? Doesn’t it feel amazing?” The pixie clapped her hands as Janey, weak and exhausted, finally escaped the pod, her teeth chattering, cheeks slick with frost, hair hardened into a helmet of ice. She opened her mouth to speak but her vocal cords were still chilled. She merely shook her head, took the proffered cashmere bathrobe from one of Heidi’s assistants, and curled it around her like a blanket. Heidi pulled Janey in for a hug.
“Sie sind besonder,” Heidi said. “That means ‘I think you are very special.’?” With that compliment, Heidi turned on the toes of her gleaming white sneakers and went off to refrigerate her next client.
· · ·
Janey was still shivering when she met CJ at the Horse Feather for brunch later that morning. She wrapped her oversized black scarf around her shoulders and tried to keep her teeth from chattering.
“Ethical question for you?” CJ proposed over her meal of one egg white, three tablespoons of plain Greek yogurt, and a glass of skim milk.
“Yes. It’s wrong to eat food that’s just one color,” Janey said, raising an eyebrow. “What happened to clay?”
“It was giving me indigestion,” CJ said defensively. “I’m on the white diet. You can only eat foods that are white. It makes sense if you think about it. But that’s not what I was about to ask you.” The restaurant was more crowded than usual today after it had been mentioned on a blog ranking the top organic/locavore/artisanal dining establishments south of Fourteenth Street. The Horse Feather came in number one in this incredibly narrow and yet apparently quite competitive category. Looking over CJ’s shoulder, Janey watched the harried hostess trying to arrange the overflow into an orderly line out the front door.
“Shoot.” Janey was pleased with herself for ordering a quinoa breakfast scramble and even more pleased with herself for pronouncing it properly as “keen-wa” and not “quin-oh-ah,” as she had the handful of times she’d said it out loud in the past. “But before you do let me state my opinion that food should have color and smell and taste wonderful.” As if on command, a waiter slid by their table with six plates of identical avocado toast in a bold emerald color balancing precariously on his tray.
CJ ignored Janey’s last statement. “Is it wrong to Facetune my kids before I put them on Instagram?”
Janey almost choked on her latte.
“Why would you need to Facetune the twins?”
“You don’t think Tate is getting a little chubby?”
“No. Your son is adorable.”
“Just a little paunchy,” CJ insisted.
“I think photoshopping your sons will give them a lifelong complex that will turn them into sociopaths like Beau. So yes. I think it is wrong to Facetune your kids or otherwise do anything to tell them there is anything wrong with their little bodies.” CJ’s eyes fluttered. She was clearly hurt and convinced she’d revealed herself to be a subpar mother, so Janey added, “But the upside is that you’ll look even thinner in pictures next to your paunchy son. Now that’s a win!” She held her hand up for a high five.