Part V: Snakes – Snake #6 (Chapter 94)

I take my last pill today; when I stepped onto the scale this morning, I weighed 110 pounds, so I don’t have to worry any more about cutting my appetite.

It’s been a month since Mother called Monique about the pills and a week after visiting Auntie and meeting the elusive Paulie.

Both women have been monitoring my progress, making sure I don’t eat any starch, fat, or sugar. My diet has consisted of two poached eggs (breakfast), carrot sticks and an ounce of cheese (lunch), and two ounces of broiled lean meat or fish and a plain lettuce and tomato salad (dinner).

“You’re so lucky, Sam, you live in California,” Mother has reminded me every morning. “You can get fresh lettuce and tomatoes year-round.”

But I’m tired of this food.

Still, 20 pounds in four weeks isn’t too bad. For the first time in my life, I feel thin – gaunt even – and I’m ready to face the world, to show off my new stuff.

I like the way my hip bones jut out and my new sculpted body.

I like my smaller breasts.

It’s been tough, though – Monique’s pills are potent, much stronger than the ones from my childhood.

I have hardly slept at all. Fortunately, I don’t have to get up for school anymore – and Mother doesn’t seem to care I haven’t got a job yet – so we sit up, she drinking beer, smoking, and working crosswords, I drinking Tab and reading trashy romance novels.

I no longer have time to worry about the problems of the world or Bobby Kennedy’s death. Besides, the incident with the house painter has given me plenty to think about.

And Paulie, oh that luscious Paulie, gone forever. I never got his address or phone number, which seems to be unlisted.

Did he give me a fake name?

I can’t remember the name of his gallery – is he really an artist?

For now, my diet and Monique are on my mind.

I don’t like Monique, but Mother obviously adores her, though I can’t figure out why.

Is it because of the 50 million dollars Monique has inherited from her late grandfather, a black marketeer during the Second World War?

I decide that can’t be it. Auntie has money, too, and she and Mother are not speaking. Besides, Monique does not act like someone who has a lot of money; she’s not elegant like Auntie, and she doesn’t seem to lavish Mother and the kids, certainly not me, with expensive gifts. She does live in an expensive mansion, but I suspect she inherited that along with the money.

I can’t figure Monique out; she’s one of those women who’s been around and doesn’t hesitate to talk about her sexual exploits in the crudest of terms; she claims to have balled over 500 men, although I doubt that there would be 500 men out there who would want to touch the woman, let alone – well, it’s enough to make me sick.

There’s something unpleasant about Monique – she smells like rancid baby oil, which she rubs all over her leathery skin – and she looks at least 50, although she’s only two years older than Mother. Her hair, a dead straw, hangs from a thin ponytail, and her voice cracks, probably from the cigarette that never leaves her lips.

“Gawd,” she would cackle in her loudest voice – which carried anyway, with or without volume – as she pointed out a stranger in Zayres, “get a load of them balls on that dude.”

Mother would blush, but still crack up, as the target scurried away from these gross women who presumed too much. Sometimes Monique would grab Mother by the arm, and they would follow the hapless fellow around the store. I never went along on these expeditions – I hid out in the junior section – so I don’t know if these guys gave them the dodge or if Mother and Monique just got bored with the game and gave up.

Not too long ago, a victim called Monique’s bluff: “Ya think so, lady? How’s about givin’ ‘em a workout?” And then he gave me the leering once over. “‘Course, I’d prefer this little one here.”

A chill ran down my spine.

Mother grabbed my arm and hustled me out of the store, leaving behind Monique and the stranger. “Get in the fucking car,” she said.

We sped off without Monique. “That bitch!” She grasped the steering wheel and floored the gas pedal. “Who the hell does she think she is?”

Later, after Mother cooled down and everyone friends again, Monique told a ribald story about spending the day in this guy’s apartment, engaging in all kinds of sexual acrobatics, positions I have never heard of before and wouldn’t want to talk about now.

Besides, I don’t believe one word of it.