In the morning I woke up with a microwave pizza in bed next to me, half-eaten. I was acidic, burping sour. I shoved down a handful of Frosted Flakes from a box on my nightstand.
On my way home from hot dogs with Jace, I’d stopped at 7-Eleven and bought a bunch of junk. I was only going to give myself until midnight to eat everything. I didn’t want the food to permeate another day. But at 12:02 a.m., I was still chewing, so I’d decided to give myself another full 24 hours of limitless consumption. Maybe if I ate for 24 hours straight it would cure me of my bingeing problem.
I had 18 hours and 34 minutes left. Anything I wanted for breakfast could be mine. I decided I would stop and get a dozen donuts on my way to work, keep them hidden in my car. Throughout the day, I could sneak out to the garage and gradually eat the whole dozen. I would also buy an extra box for the office. Everyone would love that.
At Dunkin’ Donuts, I selected two Boston cream, two chocolate glazed, two chocolate crème-filled, a cruller, a blueberry, two chocolate frosted, a plain cake donut, and a cinnamon for my box. For the office dozen, I told them just to pick out a variety, what normal office people ate. I only managed to gag down two and a half of my donuts on the drive in: the blueberry, the cruller, and the pudding from the Boston cream, which I dug out with my hand and licked in traffic. The rest of my box I shoved under the seat.
Everyone was excited to see the donuts. As with all office food, they went quickly. Only a pink iced donut and a coffee cake thingy remained. Around 11:30, I made my way into the kitchen to snatch up the pink. When Ana came in, I felt like I’d been caught masturbating.
“The receptionist just left,” she said. “Her kid ate a fun-size Snickers. Peanut allergy. Now I’m answering the phones alone all day.”
I was glad her focus was on a deadly Snickers and not my donut.
“At least it wasn’t king-size,” I said. “She’d be out the whole week.”
“These allergies seem a little too trendy,” she said. “Before 9/11, I don’t remember a peanut ever hurting anybody.”
“Jace Evans came to my show last night,” I said.
I hadn’t planned on telling her. But now that it was out, I wanted her to be impressed.
“To see you perform?”
“No. He just happened to be there. But he said he liked my set.”
“Really?”
“Yeah. Then he asked me to go get dinner with him after. I didn’t go.”
“Good,” said Ana, washing her hands in the sink. “You’ll be the only woman this side of the 405 he doesn’t sleep with.”
I figured that she meant this as a compliment. She was saying I was strong, sharp, not easily fooled. But it didn’t feel like a compliment, not entirely. It was a reminder that I wasn’t special. She was saying he flirted with everybody. I should not consider myself a prize just because he’d paid attention to me.
I wanted more acknowledgment from her. I wanted her to say, Of course he was into you. Of course he was, my beautiful daughter. My thin and beautiful daughter. My funny, thin, beautiful, smart, and talented daughter.
“I don’t think he would have tried anything with me,” I said. “He probably knows I’d get in trouble if I hooked up with a client.”
Now I was trying to change the tone of the story—from braggy to skeptical—as if to say, I knew all along he didn’t want me.
“I don’t see what the big deal is about him,” I went on. “He’s not even that good-looking.”
“Oh, he’s good-looking,” said Ana, turning off the sink. “At least until he starts talking.”