Spooning (35 page)

S
till in the kitchen, I was alone, tired, apparently being stalked and yet, I was still hungry. Points, schmoints. Sage was turning into a real pain in the you know what over the whole Weight Watchers situation. What began as personal goodwill gesture toward our bodies had now turned into a one woman war against our physical well-being. Something needed to be done about Ms. Sage, aka Sage the Starver. She had turned into a nasty food dictator, and it was time for us to rise up and revolt against her suppressive eating regime. As my annoyance meter began to rise, my stomach began to cramp from being empty (or maybe from having ingested a chemical substitute for ice cream). How had it come to this? I felt sure that J. Lo
wasn't somewhere counting points. Nor did she allow her friends to critique the size of her signature hips. The food madness had to stop. It was time for an emergency Cooking Club meeting and I needed to gather the troops, stat!

It didn't take much to convince the rest of the girls to join me over the weekend in my anti-point campaign. They were all pretty much starving as well and had wanted to throw in the towel a long time ago. But none of us had had the courage to take on you know who. So we joined forces, and without Sage's knowledge, agreed to make whatever the hell we wanted for tomorrow night's April meeting. No limits, no restrictions. We could even order in! Screw the points. Sage could try and curb our diets, but she couldn't curb our ferocious appetites.

T
he following night, Lieutenant Sergeant Sydney started things off with a formidable ground attack. She decided to use the “shock and awe” approach and her initial assault consisted of a one-two punch. First she cooked up some tater tots (the shock part of the operation). Then she boiled a double, not single, packet of Top Ramen (the awe). Some might say that hers wasn't a strong first strike, but those carbo-laced noodles coupled with a few fried tater tots added up to some serious saturated fat. Syd—mission accomplished.

It was now General Wade's turn to lead her troops into battle. As a teacher, Wade had nerves of steel; she understood that keeping a firm resolve was half the battle. So after a few quick deep breaths on the couch, Wade got up and reached for the cordless phone on the wall. In the matter of ten seconds, she had locked, loaded, and fired on China Palace. There was
absolutely no way that the point system would survive a large order of extra fried General Tso's Chicken. Oh yeah, extra fried. Kaboom! Mission accomplished.

As for Major Macie, she decided to go all-American on our asses. Oh yeah, red, white, and blue, baby! Her attack was clean and quick, just like Macie herself. Her method: the triple threat. A McDonald's Big Mac Value Meal: Coke, fries, and burger. Oh, and she super-sized the whole damn thing. Atta girl! Her order was guaranteed to contain over a million devastating points. The special sauce, two beef patties, and three buns alone had the potential to wipe out an entire block of point followers. Mission accomplished.

Next up, it was Lance Corporal Tara's turn to take on the axis of evil. She didn't waste any time pulling out her secret weapon. It was nothing new, but it was oh-so-vicious. She implemented her infamous hangover signature move. While sitting on the counter in front of us, looking innocent and sweet, she whipped out her cell and dialed her food accomplice: Taco Mamma. It was a risky move on her part, but pretty darn brilliant. This mom and pop joint not only had the potential to ensure devastating blows to the conscious calorie counter, but it could also really do a number on your arteries. Now Tara could have compromised the entire mission by going the grilled chicken and dry corn tortillas route, but we were confident that our girl would not sell us down the healthy river. As the words came out of her mouth, we all threw out the V sign with our fingers, signaling victory. She ordered the mind-blowing, bomb-dropping More Cheese Please Enchilada Platter. It contained five gooey cheeses, fried tortillas, and a pint of double refried beans topped with sour cream. Mission accomplished.

Thirty minutes later, all our food had safely been delivered to our front door. Seated in a tight circle on the living room floor, it took us no time to fill our plates and begin devouring our sinful, fat-infested meals. Not one of us was remorseful about what we had done. We were just happy to have some real food in our systems. Plus, up until now we'd done our best with the Cooking Club rules, but sometimes rules need to be broken. Just as we were licking our fingers and finishing up our greasy grub, the buzzer for the front door went off.

“I'll get it,” Macie jumped up to buzz in whoever it was.

“Who is it?” I asked.

“Oops. I didn't ask. It's probably Sage. My bad.” She plopped back down onto the floor.

“Whaaaaaatttt? Are you crazy? It could be L!” I jumped up off the floor and began to panic.

“Who the hell is L?” she asked with a perplexed look on her face.

That's when I remembered that I hadn't given the rest of the girls the full scoop on my stalker situation. We'd been so wrapped up in our food crusade for the past twenty-four hours that I'd completely forgotten to tell them about my would-be assailant.

“What the hell are you talking about, Charlie?” Syd asked.

“Ladies, I have a stalker! That's what I'm talking about,” I announced, springing to my feet and frantically looking around for possible escape routes. I pointed Macie toward the pile of mail on the counter. She reached over to pluck out the threatening hate mail.

“Is this it?” Macie asked holding a brightly colored postcard in the air.

“No,” I said. “Wait. What is that one?”

“It's for you,” she continued. “Oh, ‘Wish You Were Here,’” she read from the front. The script letters ran atop a picture of a large sailboat passing some white sand shores.

“For me? Who's it from? Read it,” I commanded, momentarily distracted from the intruder coming up the stairs.

“C. In Club Med soaking up the sun. Gotta get a tan to rival yours. You should see these sunsets. Cheers, J. P.” Macie raised her eyebrows.

“He sent me a postcard?” I cried, grabbing the card from her hand. He sent me a postcard? A) That meant that he had planned ahead and taken my address with him on vacation. B) That meant that he was thinking of me. Was he missing me? Did he really wish I was there, or was the postcard just the first one he grabbed? Maybe Club Med only had “Wish You Were Here” postcards as a sort of advertising. He had signed off “Cheers.” Was he wishing me well or was he toasting that Club Med was all-inclusive? Did the all-inclusivity include hot vacationing girls to hook up with?

“Huh,” Macie concluded, still digging through the mail.

“Yeah,” I said in shallow breaths. “Huh.”

“Oh, you mean this one,” Macie exclaimed as she pulled out the plain yet threatening postcard from beneath a Kmart flier. Terror immediately wiped a tanned J. P. from my mind. If I were dead, I couldn't daydream and contemplate his future intentions.

“Okay Charlie, is this like the burglar slash Con Ed man incident?” Syd questioned from the living room.

Bam
. I pointed to the door like a little kid.
Bam, Bam
. The knock was much louder this time. Hopefully, the tyrannical knocking would convince them of the severity of the situation.

“Shit!” I started to panic. “Call 911. Hurry up, let's hide in my room.” We were stuck. There was no place to go. The killer was going to get five for the price of one. I could just see the front page of the
New York Post
:

“Everybody remain calm. I'll go assess the situation.” Tara got up, fixed her hair in the mirror, and headed straight for the door. She didn't appear nervous as she headed down the hallway. I had no idea what she was going to do. She didn't take a weapon with her.

“Whooooo isssss itttttt?” She asked in a very peculiar English accent as she peered through the peephole.

And without missing a beat, the nameless, faceless person responded in a matching fake English accent: “Ittt'ssssssss mmeeeee.” Our attacker obviously had a sense of humor, but this was not a joking matter. If I was going to die, it was going to be on my terms.

“Okay, stop fucking around you asshole!” I screamed from my room. I was totally freaked out at this point. Who did this person think he/she was? “We've got some pretty big ass men in here who are ready to kick your butt!” Enough was enough. I sprang from my room and as I ran down the corridor I grabbed an umbrella for a weapon. But before I was all the way there, Tara decided to open the door. What the hell was she thinking? I hadn't even had a chance to get into my attack position. Shit! And just as I was about to swing away and beat the you-know-what out of this dirtbag, a very familiar voice yelped from behind the pizza box she was holding.

“It's me! It's me, Sage. Don't hit me!” Sage slowly poked her head out to the side. She was visibly shaken by what had just gone down.

“Jesus Christ!” I heaved. “I almost took your head off with the Gust Buster. You scared the crap out of us!”

“I'm sorry. I just wanted to surprise you guys. I came bearing pizza as a points' peace offering. See? I even made this darling white flag out of a paper napkin. Cute, huh?” she said waving it back and forth in the air.

“Why? Are you actually giving up the points fight?” I asked as we walked back to the living room.

“Well, I'm not giving them up totally. I just wanted to put them on the back burner for a couple of days.”

“Um, as you can see, we put them off too!” I gestured to the floor, and she gasped at the empty plates and boxes full of delivery.

“Yeah, I can see you guys were hungry. I guess that means more pizza for me.” She took a seat on the floor, flipped open the box and immediately delved into a slice of pie.

“Good God,” she mumbled, her mouth full of sauce and cheese. “New York has the best pies. This is delicious!” Sage could actually make pizza comparisons? I didn't think she had ever tried the deep-dish delight in her life.

“So fill me in,” she continued. “What was with all the dramatics at the door?”

“Hey guys, stop it,” I cried as Tara and Syd giggled. “This is serious.” I went back to the coffee table to get the incriminating evidence. As I spun around, Sage was talking to Macie through a mouthful of pizza.

“Yeah, she's so sweet. So that's the real reason why I decided the heck with the points,” she said.

“Who's sweet?” I asked.

“Oh, Laurie sent me a nice apology note,” Sage continued. “She wrote that she was proud of my health consciousness …” Great. All Sage needed was someone encouraging and applauding her weight obsession.

“Who's Laurie?”

“You know, Laurie. She's the girl who led the Weight Watchers meeting I went to. You know, the one who basically kicked me out. It was nice of her to slip me the book though.” Sage spoke of the points book as if it were the Bible.

“Laurie, her name is Laurie?”

“Yep, not sure of her last name. She was nice though. A bit thick around the upper arms however.”

“Laurie is the Weight Watcher's chick?” I asked again.

Good God! It couldn't be? Could it? I grabbed the death note and carefully reread the loopy writing for the thousandth time:

It was. L-a-u-r-i-e was the first word and the second word was “W-W.” It was a postcard from Laurie at Weight Watchers. The girls broke out in laughter. I, on the other hand, collapsed on the floor in a points-heavy pile. The postcard was an automatic mailing in response to my paperwork from the Weight Watchers center down the street. Relieved, but severely embarrassed, I crawled back to my room, still clutching the card, and slipped into bed. Lying there in a self-induced Cooking
Club food delivery coma, I passed out due to all the excitement and too much General Tso's. As I drifted in and out of consciousness, I realized that although I might not be super- skinny, I sure as hell was going live a little bit longer! Point well taken.