Chapter 18
NEW YORK CITY
SEPTEMBER 8, 2013
AGE: 27
IT WAS STILL DARK OUT WHEN THE ALARM WENT OFF. I FLIPPED ON THE lamp and fumbled for the magazine on the nightstand, an issue of The Manhattan Review dated August 2013. The address label confirmed that I was still on Barrow Street. I took an inventory of my surroundings. Past the foot of my bed, there was a brick fireplace. Unlike the cracked ceilings of my Pittsburgh sublet, the one over my head had ornate moldings.
I got out of bed and walked over to the dresser. The drawers were filled with clothing in size small, tags still attached to many of the garments. I threw on a shimmery workout ensemble and didn’t have to decide what to do with any extraneous rolls of flesh. My body was in fighting form.
The city was quiet except for the sounds of garbage being loaded into trucks when I walked over to the Uppercut Gym. I opened the building’s heavy iron door and clomped up to the fourth floor. The halls smelled like ripe sweat, and the studio door was painted with that familiar pyramid-shaped configuration of bones.
The silver-haired woman who opened the door defied all laws of aging with her slim physique and paper-smooth complexion. She wore a black, crocodile-textured bodysuit. “Come on in, Jenny,” she said in a hoarse voice.
The studio was stocked with punching bags, heavy-duty jump ropes, and kettlebells. The walls were covered in lush plants. Groups of boxers, all women, sparred with each other in this urban rainforest while Nicki Minaj’s voice pumped through the air.
“This is for you, Jenny.” The silver-haired woman handed me a waiver on a white clipboard. I figured it was the typical we-have-no-liabilities-if-you-die-while-gasping-for-breath type of thing that I’d filled out so many times before braving hot yoga classes. But no, this was different. I had to initial each item on a list of Core Values:
Today’s excellence is tomorrow’s mediocrity.
Intelligence without ambition is a bird without wings.
Success is a process, not an event.
If that’s what it took to have this banging body, far be it for me to question these mantras. I initialed everything as quickly as possible and handed the clipboard back to the gorgeous raspy-voiced woman of indeterminate age.
“Thank you, Jenny,” she said, bowing her head slightly.
She gestured to the back of the room, where Desiree awaited. My Svengali was wearing a gold track suit.
“We meet again,” I said.
“We’ll be working together this morning,” Desiree told me as she handed me a pair of silver boxing gloves and led me to a white mat at the back corner of the studio. Here she demonstrated the art of the jab, twisting her forearm as her fist made contact with the punching bag. I was reminded of the boutique Thai kickboxing studio Sophie once dragged me to. The following day, my quads were so sore I could barely move.
Desiree adjusted my stance. “Your turn.”
I gave it a try. It was harder than it looked. But I kept at it, stepping one foot solidly forward and throwing all my weight into the punch. I repeated this over and over until Desiree was satisfied with my speed, power, and accuracy.
“There you go,” she said, her green eyes twinkling with evident satisfaction. “Now I’m going to show you a cobra roundabout.”
This move involved crouching into a tight ball, then springing up into the air and hissing while landing a punch. The white-cushioned pillar in front of me now revealed its second function. Not only was it a punching bag, it doubled as a projection screen.
“You and your Consortium sure are into screen time,” I murmured.
“Let’s go, tiger.”
As I crouched, leaped, and punched, images of characters from my life flickered before my eyes.
First there was Hal. Punch. Then Alice Hustad. Punch. There was a series of guys who never called me after our first dates, guys whose names I barely remembered. Punch. Brie and her perky nose. Punch. But when I saw Geeta’s face projected on the bag, the violent impulse drained away.
“Come on, Jenny!” Desiree sounded frustrated. “Get her hard!”
“But why?” I wiped the sweat off my forehead.
“To prove that you are willing to do what’s necessary,” she said. “You’re not going to hurt her—it’s just an image.”
“Let go of your inhibitions,” the silver-haired woman said, coming over to join us. “Why are you so gentle with the one who convinced you not to get with the program in the first place?”
“Seriously, Jenny, how’s that been going for you?” Desiree egged me on. “She didn’t even invite you to her dinner party. And when you asked, she couldn’t be bothered to make an extra space at the table. Puhlease.”
Desiree really had my number. My eyes darted between my two coaches. I resented their complicity, but they had a point. Geeta was the reason I didn’t accept the Memo in the first place. I would have listened to anything she said. And she’d urged me to stay away from Desiree, to steer clear of a life that was better than the one I’d idiotically clung to for so many years.
I threw a punch but it didn’t land. My glove grazed the edge of the bag and I lost my balance, toppling to the floor. Before I could get a word out, the silver-haired woman crouched down and drove her fist into the middle of my face. The pain that followed was liquid and pulverizing. Everything went as white as snow.
Once I came to, Desiree was tending to me in the reception area, applying an ice pack to my nose. She had changed back into one of her boardroom outfits.
“You did great,” she said tenderly. “We didn’t want to tell you what was coming in advance.”
“You planned this?” I cried out. I grabbed the ice pack with my bloody hand and brought it to my face. I felt a new stab of pain.
“Although it might not feel that way now, this was a gift,” my silver-haired attacker said. “I’ll see you both later.” I looked up and watched her body transform to smoke. The silvery shapeshifter was gone.
“What the hell?” I asked.
“The body is just the vessel,” Desiree said, and escorted me out of the exercise studio and onto the street. The sun had risen high in the sky, and morning commuters were bustling to and fro. “Let’s take a walk.”
“To a hospital? I think I broke my nose.”
“You did. In two places, in fact.” Desiree’s tone was plucky. “So you’re going to get it fixed. Just keep the ice in place for now.”
“Are you serious?”
“You must learn how to cope with physical pain.”
My head throbbed as we walked westward. “Do you have any Tylenol at least?”
Desiree sat down on a bench facing the Hudson River and pulled me into the spot next to her. I was losing sensation in my fingers, so I switched the ice pack from my right hand to my left.
“You’re perfectly fine,” she told me. “You haven’t really lived until you’ve been punched in the face. Especially if you’re Jenny Green. This is all part of the plan. So what if your sense of smell is slightly compromised?”
“What? I thought I was supposed to become a culinary superstar,” I reminded her. “How can I do that if my sense of smell is compromised?”
“One woman’s ‘compromised’ is another’s ‘optimized.’ You’ll start blogging about baking your way back to taste, one smoked-feta crumpet and passion-fruit éclair at a time. This is exactly as we intended. Juliet has excellent aim.”
“Hold up,” I said. “That lady who beat me up and turned into smoke was Juliet—the Juliet Simcott?”
“The one and only.” Desiree stared straight ahead, a small smile playing out on her lips.
“And the Consortium purposely knocked out my sense of smell? But I need to smell. I can’t cook without it. It would be like painting blind.”
“Exactly. People are captivated by journeys of attractive women overcoming adversity and, quite frankly, you weren’t conventionally attractive enough. Which brings us to our two-in-one solution. Ninety-nine percent of the women you see on television have had rhinoplasty.” I thought about how Desiree had said she was going to fine-tune my career and something else. By something else, she’d meant my... face?
“This is about building a narrative,” she went on. “Your fan base will broaden far beyond the food world now that you have an interesting story to tell, the story of a scrappy fighter. And you’ll have a perfect profile to match,” she said with increasing enthusiasm. “Don’t you see? Your story is getting richer and more compelling. First you dropped out of college to follow your passion, then you came up against adversity and you persevered!”
I sniffled. “The adversity that you and that risen-from-the-dead lady engineered? People will believe that I got in a fight with... a ghost?”
“A little struggle will look very good on you. There’s no overestimating the importance of relatability in your line of work.”
“Relatability has never been my problem. And I don’t really follow how being taken out by a kickboxing instructor who appears to be made of vapor is a particularly relatable narrative.”
Desiree laughed. “We’re talking about aspirational relatability. Not snoring-boring relatability. In your blog, you will share with your followers that you were attacked by a disgusting man on your way to the gym. He ran off without a trace, leaving you to lick your wounds and double your therapy visits because of your lingering PTSD. But there will be an upside to your assault. Thanks to this incident, you have something to recount in chilling detail on multiple platforms. The only person who might get sick of it is you.” Desiree gave my back a gentle pat.
I felt something dislodge from my nostril and watched a clump of blood drop down on my shiny yoga pants. I began to wonder if perhaps this whole thing was not the best idea.