Dietland

by Sarai Walker

  “Plum?” Kitty said again, but I was walking back to the Austen Tower and into the lobby. I went through the metal detectors and asked the guard to call Julia Cole in the Beauty Closet, but he said there was no answer. I could have used my employee ID to go past the guard and find Julia myself, but Kitty was behind me. “I’ve had enough,” she said. “You’re fired.” Her words echoed around the marble lobby. Fired, fired. People turned to look.

  “I allowed you to write in my voice. I trusted you to pretend to be me,” she said, “and you threw my girls in the trash. Thousands of them.”

  There were things I could have said to Kitty, but without the hair she had lost her power. I pushed past her, heading out into the street to find a taxi.

  “Did you hear me?” Kitty shouted, but I had already left her behind.

  When I arrived at Calliope House, I was in a state of near panic. I opened the door without knocking and was enveloped by the comforting red walls. Verena came from the back of the house, her pale hair and skin a light moving toward me through the long, dark hallway.

  “I’ve been trying to get in touch with you,” she said.

  “Leeta.” That’s all I could say.

  “You’ve seen the news.”

  “This can’t be happening. Is this real? I don’t know what’s real anymore.” I went into the ruby red living room and sank into a chair, wetting the fabric.

  “No one knows what’s happening,” Verena said, with Marlowe at her side. “Leeta’s wanted for questioning, but she’s disappeared. The police are looking for her. I’m sure she hasn’t done anything wrong.”

  “Then why are the police looking for her?”

  “It must be some sort of mix-up,” Marlowe said.

  I was vaguely aware of the news playing on television or radio, a monotone recitation of events. “My life is unraveling and now this, now Leeta. It’s too much.”

  Verena knelt down next to my chair and pushed the strands of wet hair from my eyes. “I think you’re ready for the last task of the New Baptist Plan.”

  “I’ve had enough of your stupid plan. Before I met you I had some semblance of a life. I had a job and now that’s gone. I had plans for surgery and now I’m confused about that. Everything is slipping away from me.”

  “I never said the New Baptist Plan would be easy.”

  “No calorie counting and no weighing, right? If I don’t become thin, what’s going to happen to me?” I saw a calendar reaching years into the future and every page was blank.

  “Let’s finish the New Baptist Plan,” Verena said. “You can do it right here at Calliope House. We’ll take care of you.” Being taken care of is what I needed.

  Marlowe said, “Please stay here with us, Plum.”

  And I did.

  I followed Verena and Marlowe outside into the rain, down the front steps of Calliope House. To the right of the steps, unseen by passersby, there was another series of steps leading down to a red door, its frame overgrown with ivy. This was the door to the basement.

  I followed them down the steps. Down we went, down to the very bottom.

  UNDERGROUND

  • • •

  • • •

  The New Baptist Plan, Task Five:

  Disconnecting and Reflecting

  The underground apartment was nestled into the earth beneath Calliope House, deep in the place where roots grow. The walls vibrated faintly whenever a subway train passed by. This dark, cool space was where I landed after weeks of falling. It was Leeta’s appearance in the café more than two months ago that had caused me to lose my balance. I tripped into a hole, where strange things happened and even stranger women dwelled. Spinning and falling, trying desperately to steady myself, I kept reaching for something to cling to on my way down.

  In the underground apartment, darkness wrapped itself around me. I didn’t resist. I’d taken my last half-tablet of Y—— and a handful of Dabsitaf the night before I went underground. I slept deeply, but I was also restless at times, rolling around in the twin-size bed, sweating into the sheets. My body was screaming for Y—— in those moments, but it wasn’t going to get it. I was finished with drugs.

  When I finally opened my eyes after many hours, I swung out of bed and placed my feet on the floor. There was a lamp on the nightstand and I switched it on, surveying the bedroom, only vaguely remembering my arrival hours—days?—earlier. I was dressed in a baggy beige shift and black leggings, which Verena and Marlowe had given me after I’d followed them down the stairs. The clothes were my size, so they’d prepared for my arrival. Verena had given me her phone and told me to call anyone who would notice I was missing. I called my mother and Carmen. There was no one else. I made up a story about going on a retreat with Kitty and her staff. I explained that it was a last-minute trip because Kitty had forgotten to invite me, which is something that could have been true.

  Then Verena and Marlowe left me alone. In the bed, on the edge of sleep, I recalled Leeta’s face on the screens in Times Square and hoped I’d been hallucinating.

  My bedroom in the underground apartment contained only the starkest, most minimalist furnishings. The furniture and walls were white, the linens were white, everything was white—I was living inside an aspirin. In the dresser, more beige shifts and black leggings, plus pajamas and underthings. I didn’t know what had happened to the backpack I’d brought to Calliope House. My laptop and wallet and everything else must have been aboveground, in that world I’d left behind.

  On top of the desk was a stack of books, including Adventures in Dietland and Fuckabilty Theory, a cup full of pens in different colors, and a notepad with a message on top:

  Plum, I’ll see you tomorrow afternoon.

  Rest until then.

  Love, V.

  Tomorrow afternoon meant nothing to me. I had no idea what time it was or even what day it was. There were no windows or clocks in my bedroom. I opened the door and peeked into the hallway, then stepped out in my bare feet. It was quiet and the overhead lights were dimmed. The underground apartment was a maze of underlit hallways. I ran my hands along the walls as I walked, feeling my way.

  There were three other bedrooms along the narrow corridor outside my room, all of them unoccupied. At the end of the corridor was a bathroom, with the usual toilet, sink, and tub, but there was no mirror on the wall. Around the corner, down another narrow passage, there was a cramped kitchenette, with a refrigerator and microwave, a sink and cupboards, a table and chairs. Like the rest of the apartment, it was pill-white, but in the semidarkness looked dullish gray. In the cupboards I spotted boxes of cereal and crackers; in the refrigerator a jar of pink yogurt and a sandwich on a plate, wheat bread with a ruffle of green lettuce sticking out. I assumed the sandwich was for me, but I still didn’t feel like eating. Before going underground, I’d been weaning off Y—— for more than a month and experienced loss of appetite; before that I’d been following Waist Watchers obsessively. For as long as I could remember, I’d been coasting on a near-empty belly. I guessed I had lost at least thirty pounds, maybe more.

  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 bedr
ooms 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.

  “All right, I’ll bring them next time,” she said, “but I’ve told you the whole story, which is nothing much. Leeta is important to you, isn’t she?”

  It seemed silly to say yes, since I didn’t really know Leeta. She knew me better than I knew her. Leeta was as mysterious to me as she was to the people seeing her face in the news, and yet as I reclined on the bed in the underground apartment, I knew that she had led me to this place. I explained this to Verena.

  “I had planned to talk about the surgery today and whether you’d made any decisions about it,” Verena said. The surgery. It seemed as if my plans for it existed in the distant past, in a lifetime belonging to another woman. “But rather than us talking about that today, I think you should read this.” Verena picked up her bag from the floor and dug through it. She pulled out a red spiral-bound notebook. At first I didn’t recognize it. She handed it to me and I opened it to the first page and began to read:

  may 18th: louise b. at café, typing on laptop. i think she’s doing her work for the kitty-cat. she’s been here for hours—so boring. two teen boys say something to her (what?) & laugh but she ignores them. i wish i could punch them in the face.

  (she seems friendly with the owner
of the café)

  question: louise b. went to church this morning. why??

  “Louise B.?” I asked Verena, confused.

  “That was the name Leeta gave you in her notebook. Your black bob reminded her of Louise Brooks.”

  Charmed by the nickname, I ran my hand over the notebook as if it were a priceless object. “Where did you get this?”

  “When Julia came over yesterday, she gave it to me. She didn’t want any trace of Leeta in her office, just in case.”

  “In case of what?”

  “You know how paranoid Julia is. She thinks the police suspect her of having secret information about Leeta. She already thinks everyone at Austen is after her, and now this.” Whatever the reason, I was glad Julia had given Verena the notebook.

  Verena left me alone to read, saying she’d return again soon for another session. Only about ten pages of the notebook contained writing, a loopy scrawl in blue ballpoint. I had often seen Leeta holding the blue pen. Now I’d get to find out what she’d written with it.

  may 21st: success!! today i figured out why louise b. and so many women visit that church during the week. they’re not religious fanatics—even worse, they’re waist watchers. (!!) the church rents out the meeting room in the basement. now we know louise b. is dieting (not surprising)

  (jules, are you actually reading this?)

  may 22nd: wondering how louise b. can afford to live in a brownstone in this section of brooklyn. (??) lots of really asshole-ish and pretentious people around here. louise b. would be better off elsewhere (in my opinion). but how does she afford it?? austen media pays shit. i don’t think she has a roommate (her name is the only one on the mailbox). she’s too square to be a drug dealer. family money? hmmm, doesn’t seem like it.