Slide - Kyle Beachy [69]
crazier, he insisted, than jaw wiring or stomach stapling. My father chewed his sandwich.
“We introduce a tapeworm into the client that will feed on whatever the client feeds on, like any good parasite will. Then, after a predetermined time—based on how much weight this client wants to lose—the tapeworm, which has been genetically engineered to live for precisely as long as the client wants, dies. Expires. We introduce it to the market as a quick-fix kind of treatment, optimal if you've got, say, the Oscars coming up. What got me here was realizing you can't get fat if there's something inside you intercepting the food before it reaches your intestine.”
I watched my father's face for a clue as to whether this was a ridiculous idea or a sort of good idea. His eyebrows appeared to climb slightly. Meanwhile, my mother and Marianne left the kitchen for a tour of the house. Richard took another bite and Stuart poured himself a glass of water from the pitcher in question. My father set the plate on the counter and slid it toward the sink. He wiped the mustard from the corner of his mouth, then wiped his hands in the napkin.
“How do you plan on introducing the parasite into the client's system?”
“Thinking a soluble gel-cap enclosure. I've got the ear of a guy at Monsanto.”
“What did I hear about your father the other day. Is there a new account, something big? A national firm, a New York coup of sorts.”
I heard the women moving through the house and caught up with them in the living room. I wasn't certain why, but I didn't like the thought of Marianne and Carla alone together. Then the house's phones came alive, the staggered multipitched ringing, and my mother excused herself, leaving me standing with Marianne, the simple country girl. She stood at the fireplace, looking at a picture on the mantel.
“I told your mom that she did a great job decorating this place. Except I think that made her sad for whatever reason.”
I saw her shoulders from behind and felt something warm and lurid rising through my chest. No, no, I didn't care for this Marianne girl one bit. I wanted her out of my living room immediately. She moved to a window and brushed aside the curtain, looking outside.
“They're thinking about moving into something smaller,” I said. “Once I get my own place.”
She turned from the window and approached slowly. I saw her forehead coming at me and was grateful to have a full head's height on her. She stopped once she was very close.
“Let me ask you something,” I said.
“Go right ahead.”
“This thing of yours about meeting all of Stuart's friends. He's mentioned it several times.”
“And you're concerned that maybe something ungood is going on.”
“I have to wonder how you decided everything you needed to decide about me within those first few minutes.”
“We're talking about that first day, when you were staring at my tits.”
“No, see, I defended your tits.”
“That right? To who?”
“To me. I convinced myself to excuse your arrogant nakedness.”
“How about we make this deal. You tell me about Stuart's finger and I'll describe what I saw.”
“Can't. It's a long-held secret source of Stuart's power. I think only three people know the story outside of his immediate family.”
“Plus one,” she said. “He told me the first night I met him, over our uncooked cake.”
She walked past me and down the steps. I heard them saying goodbyes and weighed the options, which right now felt like the only two options in the entire world, ever. I descended the stairs and yelled goodbye to parents who, by now, were surely in different rooms.
To ride in the ad was to participate in a complex and devious system of promotion. I sat in the backseat and watched Marianne's hand outside the passenger window cut a rising and falling curve through the wind. Occasionally we met eyes in the rearview mirror, though I couldn't say who was catching whom.
Stuart lit them two cigarettes.
“I thought you weren't supposed to smoke in the ad,