The Cinderella Pact (16 page)

The meeting is already under way when I sit next to an old lady in purple. Exactly as I expected. Housewives, senior citizens, and . . . is that a nun? Why would a nun have to go to Weight Watchers? I mean, nuns are married to God. What does He care if you're packing on the pounds?

I feel a nudge from the woman in purple. The leader in black pantyhose is pointing to me.

“It's new member intro,” the purple lady says.

I want to explain that I am about as new as the yellowed linoleum under our feet when the leader says, “Please stand, uh, Nola, and tell us your story.”

I really don't want to do this, but the leader is beckoning me and now the old lady is pushing me out of my seat. “Come on,” she's urging. “It's part of the program.”

I stand and smooth down my pants. If I make it quick, maybe I can get through this without blubbering, like I usually do.

“My name is Nola and this is my probably fifth”—try sixteenth—“pass at Weight Watchers. But this time I'm going to stick with it. I know that this is not a diet, but a lifestyle change.”

“Good for you!” my seatmate says, as everyone claps tepidly.

“Thank you,” I say, and start to sit.

“Wait,” says the leader. “You haven't told us your goals.”

“Oh, my goals. Um, my goal is to lose weight. Thank you.” And I start to sit again.

The leader is laughing and taking my hand. “Don't be so shy. We're all here to lose weight. You're among friends, Nola.” She gives me a squeeze. I'm now in the front of the room flanked by a blackboard on which is written the word RESOLVE. “Tell us about your journey.”

Again with the journey.

“In other words, what brought you here.”

“What brought me here was . . .” I can't say my sister called me an unmarriageable cow. “What brought me here were my two friends. We've made a pact to lose weight. We call it”—I pause, wondering if this is going to sound goofy—“the Cinderella Pact.”

No applause. Just stares.

“I won't let my daughters read or watch
Cinderella
,” one mother in the front row says to her partner. “I spent three years on the couch because of that sexist fairy tale.”

“Are your friends going through Weight Watchers?” the leader asks gently.

“No. One has a personal trainer and nutritionist. She's rich. The other is going through”—I instinctively drop my voice—“gastric bypass surgery.”

There is an audible hiss.

“Now, now,” says the leader. “Every person is unique. Many of us have friends and loved ones who've chosen the gastric bypass route for their own health.”

“It's nuts,” barks an old woman in row three.

“Actually, it's not,” I find myself saying. “It's a tool, and my friend Deb has been through everything to lose weight. She just can't do it without surgery.”

“Did Deb do her Zero Point Soup?”

This elicits a round of applause.

“Yeah,” says another old lady in the back. “How about some good old-fashioned discipline for once. How about pushing the plate away?”

“This is a hot-button issue,” the leader whispers in my ear. “It might be a generational thing.”

Or an asshole thing.

“Please.” The nun rises and everyone shuts up. She's not in full nun regalia, just a simple black-and-white headdress, or whatever it is they call it. Wimple, I think. The rest of her is normal. “I come to Weight Watchers for the support and fellowship. Because of all of you, I have lost eighty-two pounds.”

Automatic clapping.

“We need to embrace our fellow journeymen and -women. Positive thoughts, hugs, and prayers are so much more helpful than blind judgmental criticism.”

Have I mentioned that I love this woman? We all applaud heartily and I'm allowed to go back to my seat, though I'm not paying one whit of attention to the testimony of my fellow journeyers. That is because I am having a revelation.

I should become a nun. Meeting this nun at Weight Watchers, it's a sign!

Actually I have thought of being a nun before. In fourth grade, but only because I'd just seen
The Sound of Music
and found the idea of wearing a long white dress and throwing myself in front of the altar as a novitiate somehow alluring. My mother used to say I'd grow up to be the nun in the family. And didn't large Irish families always designate one daughter to be a nun and one son to be a priest? Yes!

OK, our family's not large, but we are Irish Catholic. At least half. And in being a nun I could do so much good. Why, I could travel to India and model my life after Mother Teresa by caring for castaways with leprosy and children with AIDS. I could eschew the physical and submit to the supernatural. Let's face it, I never had much use for the physical anyway.

No one would care if I was fat or so-called unmarriageable. I would be married to God, and God loves
all
women no matter what our size. He really does. He thinks we're great. He loves us no matter our skin color or double chins or cellulite or love handles. We're His creatures. God doesn't care if I'm putting on a few pounds or getting a bit wide in the caboose. God doesn't hint that I should get my breasts done or my ass lifted. That's what makes God the perfect husband; He loves me for who I am.

It's settled then, I think, as I drift out of the meeting on a cloud. I will become a nun.

Although now that I'm becoming a nun I'll have to swear off men entirely. Too bad, as I just met Chip and he's the first man in a long time, maybe ever, to have potential.

Still, sacrifices must be made in the name of a higher calling. Therefore, I will call over to Technical Assistance as soon as I get to
Sass!
and cancel tonight's date—if you can call it a date. I'm sure he'll understand when I explain that I've decided to take a vow of chastity.

I arrive at work with a calm and benevolent countenance that, for once, has nothing to do with the tall, French roast double café latte in my hand. Joel, in his usual cheery Monday uniform of brown shirt, brown pants, and brown shoes, grunts as I put down my coffee and newspaper.

“What're you so happy about?” he asks, shaking out the sports section of the
Star-Ledger.

“I've found my calling.”

“What is it this week?”

“I'm going to be a nun.”

“Fucking Steinbrenner,” he says, shaking his head. “Someone ought to buy out
his
contract.”

I wouldn't expect more than this kind of response from Joel. Honestly, I don't think he listens to me half the time.

Chapter Sixteen

Eager to leave work early and meet Deb in recovery from her surgery, I zoom through the morning's assignments, calling up Belinda's column that I wrote over the weekend, writing headlines, and laying out three pages. Then I move on to “Beauty Tips Only Models Know,” which requires me to suffer through another hyperbole-filled rave about the new mascaras that “incorporate exciting new technology that makes even the puniest lashes fuller, thicker, sexier.”

I'm too lazy to do the necessary research, but I swear I've been hearing that exact same line since I started reading
Seventeen
magazine twenty years ago.

At eleven I make two calls. The first is to Chip in Technical Assistance. The computerized message on his machine apologizes for being “on the other line,” so I leave a message that I cannot make dinner on account of me entering a holy order.

Then I call Lori and ask if I can leave at noon to visit a friend recovering from surgery, noting that I have all my pages done plus some. Lori doesn't say yes or no. Instead, she commands me to step into her office, immediately.

“And I mean hustle, Devlin. You are capable of hustling, aren't you?”

Lori has on her mad face when I find her behind her glass desk. Things must not be going well with Old Mr. Stanton, as there is no evidence of red thongs or push-up bras today. Instead, she is in a rather masculine taupe business suit. Perhaps the Anna Nicole Smith road to riches is not Lori's destiny after all. Or maybe Monday morning is an Anna Nicole Smith day off.

“Mr. Stanton forwarded this to me. Take a look.” She tosses me a white printout.

I pretend to study it, though of course I don't need to as I wrote it. It is Belinda's response to Mr. Stanton's questions about what to do concerning the employee who seems to have falsified her records. Interestingly, the e-mail does not include Mr. Stanton's question—simply my response.

“Isn't that incredible?” Lori asks.

“Uh, yeah.”

“I mean, the nerve. It's as if she's challenging us to investigate her. Plus, I called up the
New York Intelligentsia
reporter who did that story on our elusive Ms. Apple. As far as he can tell, there was no truth to Belinda's claim that she had been abused by her father and went on the run. And now this . . . Rosie O'Grady? Please.”

There was something wrong with Rosie O'Grady?

“I mean, she might as well have put down that she was the daughter of Scarlett O'Hara and Rhett Butler, sister to Lorna Doone.”

“I
know,
” I say, clucking my tongue reprovingly, still completely clueless. What was wrong with Rosie O'Grady?

“I want to be apprised of any more responses like these. Remember. You're the one who recommended Belinda as our new women's ethicist. It's your fault if she turns out to be a reporter for
People
or
Parade
or one of our other competitors.”

“I'm sure she won't.”

“OK,” she says, turning back to her paperwork. “You can go.”

“But . . .”

“But what?” Lori flips her hair and taps her pencil on her glass desk.

“What about me leaving early to visit my friend who's coming out of surgery?”

“Was it a car accident?”

I really, really don't want to tell her, but I have no choice. “Gastric bypass.”

“Oh.” Lori presses her lips tightly together in disapproval. “It's that kind of thing, is it?”

“I guess.”

“How many personal hours do you have left?”

I try to calculate the latest figures. “I believe two hundred forty.”

“Impossible! No one has thirty personal days.”

“I do. And over a thousand hours of vacation time.”

“Don't you ever go anywhere?”

You don't let me,
I want to say. “No place to go.”

“Hmm. I certainly can't stop you if you have two hundred forty hours of personal leave. Just make sure the piece on which lipsticks to wear for fall is on my desk.”

“Will do.” Even though the freelancer doing the piece turned it in with all sorts of errors and wrong prices. It will take me hours just to fact-check it.

My holy beneficence has taken a definite hit after my encounter with Lori, and I am in a much grumpier mood when I return and find my phone ringing off the hook.

“Devlin,” I grunt into the receiver.

“Is this a bad time, luv?”

Holy shit. It's Nigel. “Uh, no,” I say, quickly shifting gears. “To whom am I speaking?”

“Why, Nigel.”

“Nigel?” I ask doubtfully.

“Nigel Barnes. You know . . . the rock critic.”

“Yes,” I say vaguely. “You were talking to me in the hall the other day.”

“Or, rather, we were talking to each other.”

“Hmm.” I make a big production out of shuffling papers. Joel raises an eyebrow.

“You sound busy.”

“I'm swamped.” I start tapping nonsense on the keyboard.

“Well, I just called to see if you were available this week. I really did enjoy our brief chat several weeks ago. I've been thinking quite a lot about you ever since. I think we should continue our conversation, especially that part about Belinda at Balmoral.”

He fell for it. I can't believe he fell for it. This guy is so desperate to get his mitts on Camilla's roast venison that he called me asking for a date, despite his acknowledged loathing of “big-boned women.”

Oh, the glory of e-mail and deception.

“That sounds wonderful,” I say. “You know, I was just talking to Belinda about you.”

“Were you?” His tone brightens.

“Yes. She said something about you being a ‘near miss.' Now what do you suppose that means?”

Nigel begins sputtering some sort of awkward answer when Lisa peers over my cubicle, her face red and her hair a mess. “Get off,” she mouths.

“Sorry, Nigel,” I say. “There seems to be some sort of emergency. Call me and I'll see if I can pencil you in.” Then I hang up, gloating. A sin, I know.

“Were you talking to Nigel Barnes?” she says.

“How many other Nigels are there?”

“I had no idea you were hanging out with celebrities these days. What did he want?”

“I have no idea. You made me get off!”

“Geesh. No need to yell. Are you feeling OK?”

I have no idea what she's talking about. Unfortunately, right at that moment the phone on my desk rings. Probably Nigel calling back to scold me for hanging up.

I give Lisa the “wait a minute” finger and pick up.

“Hi, uh, Nola? This is Chip.”

He says this loudly enough that Lisa can hear and now she is jumping up and down like a hyperactive kid coming off a bowl of Lucky Charms. “Get off, get off!” she's mouthing.

“Can you hold for a moment, Chip?” I press the hold button.