consumption sean law She had to be a woman. “I’m going to undress,” she said. And that time, he left the room to let her. Later, though, he stayed. And when she had come over with a suitcase full of clothes and a blue bathroom bag, deciding to stay more than an evening or one night, he accustomed himself to loosening the buttons on her blouse. And he got used to her long fingers on his jeans zipper. She used to light taper candles for dinner. Long and thin. With long and thin flames. She’d bend over the coffee table they used for dining and he’d watch her ass. Slender and muscled. She ran every morning, pulling on her worn running shorts and the sport bra with some of the elastic showing. And she’d go out, hair in a ponytail, to beat her wide feet against the gray morning pavement. Running made her ass. He would watch from under the comforter, too hot in the apartment, but comfortable, and feel almost ashamed for his naturally trim build. His flat stomach and lean chest. She would decline a cracker, and he would eat doughnuts without effect. Her parents visited and told stories about her being a fat child. They pulled out a picture. Plump cheeks, white bare feet and a yellow swimsuit. It was a birthday party and she stood in an inflatable wading pool with a crumbling piece of cake and a bucktooth smile. He said she looked like she’d been happy. Her parents said she was teased about that day, and later about the picture. As she put the picture back in her purse, her mother said: “Do you remember that day, dear?” And then said that both parents loved their little girl, fat or not. She ran marathons. New York. Los Angeles. Boston. She peeled the skin off her chicken. She called a salad a meal. Her breasts were tight and small. He could almost put one in his mouth. She would run her fingernails down his belly and tell him: “I hate you. You don’t know what it was like. Growing up fat. Now I’m afraid of food.” He told her she wasn’t fat, that she wasn’t ever fat. And not in the picture, certainly. And what did it matter, anyway? “You don’t know anything.” She put him up inside her and rode him for an hour. “It’s your penis and your metabolism that protects you.” She came home one night and threw her clothes across the room. Standing naked in the middle of the room, she cried that she’d been raped. Having dinner with a woman she worked with and the bitch convinced her to eat pizza. He told her it wasn’t rape and she could certainly enjoy a pizza now and then. She was still pulling on her sport bra, tucking a loose breast in, as she left the apartment. It was late at night and he lay awake worrying. She came home, undressed and showered, and crawled on top of him in bed. “I was being stupid. I’m sorry.” “How far did you run?” “Twelve.” “You ran this morning, too.” Smiling sweetly. “Darling, dear, it was pizza.” “How much?” “More than that.” “Don’t do that again.” “What?” “Run. Away like that.” “If you want me, you get my body, too. And it comes like this. Handle it.” She rolled out of bed. He saw her sit on the sofa and watch midnight on the TV. Naked. She indulged in a rice cake. In the morning, he found half of it by the blanket. Down one morning when he was drinking tea and reading the paper, an old woman sat next to him. “I can look at people and they don’t even know. I can stare at that boy behind the counter, the one with his Adam’s apple sticking out, and I can look right at where his chest comes out of his shirt, and the bend of his nose, and he doesn’t know. I’ve reached that age, see? It helps when you get older,” she said. “When you get older, you still want to look at men and woman the way you did when you’re young – like you are – only now they don’t see me. They don’t expect me. They think I’m looking at something over their shoulder. “The reason is because I’m old. The reason also is that I don’t wear the right stuff to be noticed. Clothes. Makeup, perfume.” She whispered then: “Without those things, I’m not real. Or, at least, I can’t be looked at.” “But,” he said back to her, looking carefully into her marbled eyes, “I am looking at you. I can see you. If you looked at my chest, I’d know.” She held up a long finger. “But that’s because I came over here. And I started talking to you. Before that. Why, you didn’t know I was sitting right over there admiring your calves as they jumped out of your shorts. At the nail on your big toe. Because those things about you are fine indeed, and worth noticing. It wasn’t until I came over and told you I was here that you noticed me. Even now, without looking, you couldn’t tell me what I’m wearing.” She was right. He couldn’t. “You only know the sound of my voice and that I’m old. Because that’s where you put me. But I bet you don’t know that I might go home and masturbate about your calves.” “And my toenail?” He raised an eyebrow. “This seems like harassment.” “How could it be?” She smiled and stood. “I’m just a sweet old lady.” “I think you might be right. “ She’d collapsed on the sofa in her shorts, her sport bra dangling from one hand. Her breasts making him salivate. “I think I have a problem. But, I’m going to solve it.” She pointed to the window. A glass jar, recycled from holding spaghetti sauce, now held a gerbil. Nervous. Twitching nose about its new environment. “I named it Anorexia.” “Oh God.” He went to look over it. “It doesn’t have water.” “No, it doesn’t. I was hoping you’d go buy its home. I don’t know to take care of anything. See?” “That’s a cruel name.” “The gerbil is my problem.” “That doesn’t work. If we take care of it, it will hang around and grow. You don’t want your problem to do that.” She sucked in her lips. She whispered, “That makes sense.” She looked at Anorexia, her chin quivering. “Poor gerbil. I brought it home to die.” “That’s ridiculous,” he said, getting angry. “We’ll just take care of it. It won’t be your problem. It’ll be… you. Taking care of it – her, will take care of you, too.” “Oh! You’re so sweet!” It wasn’t completely true. He hated gerbils, but he was good at metaphors. And a gerbil named Anorexia rubbed everything the wrong way. But even though the metaphor changed, she came home and said, “Hello!” to him and “Hello Anorexia!” to the gerbil. She said she couldn’t let go of the idea that she’d captured her disease in a cage. “I love that it doesn’t bother me. And that it’s cute and furry.” She took him out for pizza. He was cautious and only ordered broccoli and pineapple on it. She thought he was funny. “Ha ha! You think I still care. But I know I can eat all I want. It’ll be that little rat who gets fat, not me. Fat rat, not me.” Giggles then. And two-thirds of the pizza. They had a lot of sex that night and she fell asleep kissing him on the cheek and saying, “I’ve been so hungry.” The next morning there was pineapple scattered in the gerbil shit. Pancakes in the afternoon and he said: “You have no idea what you’re doing.” “I’m eating pancakes. Because my mom used to make them for me when I got home from school and I’d eat them and watch cartoons on TV and get Aunt Jemima on the carpet.” A frieze of Aunt Jemima, her wide birthing-hips swaying back and forth under him in some childhood living room. “You’re not watching cartoons.” “No.” She pointed to Anorexia’s cage. She’d lined it with the Sunday comics. “Same difference.” “What do you think the gerbil is doing, exactly?” “Anorexia? She exorcising me.” “Like some kind of voodoo gerbil?” Her eyes lit up. “Right! Voodoo. Oh, you’re brilliant.” She looked around the room, a hewn slice of pancake dangling off her fork. “Don’t you just love what’s happening? “It’s the strangest thing I’ve ever seen,” he said to someone sitting by him on the bus. “Probably the strangest thing you’ve ever seen.” “Oh, I doubt that.” The young man had chopped brown hair and a silver lip ring that gave him the look of a lisp. “Sometimes, I watch other guys. You know, really skinny guys. They’re there wearing tank tops and too far-gone blond hair, and I just think: damn man, eat a pizza. “But, one day I was there and I was looking at one, and he was looking at this magazine. At first I thought it was a trick of the light, but then I realized it was real. He was staring down at the adverts, man, and his skin was changing color. Seriously. At one point, he was this really bright purple. But more like plum, you know? It was wild.” “How is that story stranger than Anorexia osmotically eating my girlfriend’s pizza?” “‘Cuz, man. I wasn’t finished. See, this same dude starting moving his jaw, like he was chewing gum or something. And then his skin stopped changing color, but his skinny belly started to, like, bloat. And I’ll be damned if he didn’t get bigger and bigger…” “This is my stop.” “He exploded, man.” “Gruesome.” “And then this model walked by. I know because his picture was on the shopping bag he was carrying.” Going to Boston was approaching. The gerbil getting fat, and his girlfriend staying small and happy. Eating everything she wanted. He came home and found her with a chocolate malt, sipping and watching TV. She hadn’t gone for a run. And she kissed him when he arrived. “I have you to thank. Without your idea, Anorexia would have died of starvation and I’d be the same ol’ icky me. But I bet you love me now. I’m a lot of fun. Do you want to go dancing?” “What about Boston?” “I’m buying Anorexia a wheel. She can train for me. She’ll lose weight and I’ll get exercise.” “That’s insane.” “Yeah? Tell our fat little squirrel that.” He visited Anorexia over by the sofa. There were drops of chocolate malt on her whiskers. “It can’t really be happening, you know.” He looked at her. She shrugged. “We all get breaks,” she said. “Gerbils don’t live forever,” he said. “Asshole.” She grinned. Anorexia attacked the glass wall by his elbow. “This isn’t really how you take care of yourself, you know,” he reminded her. “You don’t see movie stars or athletes using gerbils as surrogates.” “No. But maybe they should.” She put her lip out. “Can’t you just be a little delighted for me? I’m having fun now, and not getting fat.” “But you’re ruining this poor gerbil’s life!” He waved his arms in the air. “Stop it. Anorexia is fine. I’ll get her a wheel. And, Jesus, you should be happy for me. I’ve found a way to make my body my own. By making it hers.” She smooched on him, up close. “Fuck me and let’s go dancing.” He did, and they did. And the next day he came home to the rattle of Anorexia spinning on her wheel. “What if she’s up to something?” He was on the phone to his brother. “What do you mean?” “The gerbil. Spinning and spinning. What if she burns off all her fat. What happens then?” “You always get yourself into situations like this. You’re absurd. And can you babysit on Sunday?” “I do not. And this is different anyway. And no. The Boston Marathon is this weekend.” His brother laughed. “Spin that wheel! Spin, baby, spin!” He got up at midnight and tried to get Anorexia to stop running. The animal was heedless. Going back to bed, he noticed his girlfriend’s body under the sheets. Sweating. He pulled back the sheet. The muscles of her legs were hard. Her feet hot and swollen. He sighed. He massaged her feet, pushing his bony thumbs deep into her heels, arches, and the ball of each foot. Soon, Anorexia fell asleep. Waiting in line at the grocery, a smoke-smelling man asked him about the price of cigarettes. He said he didn’t know. The man shrugged and pointed at the chicken he was buying. “Buying a chicken, huh?” “It’s not unusual. Although some of the digestion promises to be.” “I ate a chicken once.” He thought: This city is coming apart. The smoke-smelling man continued: “She was sexy. The sexiest chicken I ever knew. I baked her up and I put her on the platter and she opened her legs up. She whispered and moaned. I could tell she wanted to be eaten. And I wanted to eat her. I arranged her all right. Put some of that garnish stuff around her, you know? She wanted it that way. Like setting up the silk sheets just so. Like putting a pillow under her back. You know. I know you know. You look like you got a hot, hot girlfriend. One you’re cooking chicken for. And that chicken. She said “Slice me.” I sliced into her and she screamed in pleasure. She said “Taste me.” She came all over the platter. I put her in my mouth and I came in my shorts. An orgasm meal, for the eater and the eaten.” One smokey shoulder nudged him. “Sometimes all it takes is knowing where to put the body, you know? Ha. I know you know.” A checkout line never moved so slowly. The morning they left for Boston, he came back with bread and coffee to find her squatting by the gerbil’s habitat. “I’m all about you, Anorexia. There in your cage. All alone and getting fatter and fatter. I thank you for being such a brave and generous gerbil. My voodoo gerbil. My body. I’m in love with me, now, because I’m in love with you. You saved me. And when I run tomorrow, I’ll run for you. For both of us. Because we’re winners.” When she took a sip of coffee, Anorexia squeaked. A hiccup of delight. She beat her best time in Boston. She celebrated by eating half a chocolate cake at a bakery across from the finish line. When they got home, Anorexia had exploded and chocolate frosting lined the cage. Blood and chocolate dripped off the rungs of the exercise wheel. She asked him to buy her a new one. He packed his bags and left. He didn’t hear from her after that. He wondered if she got fat, or if she found a new voodoo rodent. He wondered if she kept running marathons. He wondered if she went back to not eating and trying to be a perfectly roasted chicken. And one day, at the bottom of a stack of magazines, the ad. Running hard against an urban backdrop, she and her wide feet and small breasts. It wasn’t a photograph, it was her. And he knew he could eat her if he wanted. Perfect. Glossy. Uninhabited.