Leith, William Read Online Free PDF Page B

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    I let the T-shirt fall to the ground. I pick up a racquet and play tennis across the pool, and sometimes look at Anna, sitting on a lounger in a skimpy sundress and I think no underwear. She is taking no notice of us, talking to a girl called Suzanne who wants to write a novel. Anna herself wants to write a novel, probably about a girl who wears skimpy dresses and no underwear, and has men running around after her.
    After a while I dive into the pool and swim up and down, obsessed with the calories I'm burning, feeling high from the exercise, swimming twenty, thirty, forty, fifty lengths, not wanting to stop. I could go on for hours. From my low vantage point I am even more sure that Anna is not wearing any underwear.
    She gets up and walks towards the house without saying anything to me. I hoist myself out of the pool and follow her. She walks through the French window and into her bedroom our bedroom.
    `Is this our bedroom?'
    `I've been staying here, yes.'
    We hug. Or rather, I hug her. She stands still, and does not actively resist being hugged.
    For a while, perhaps ten seconds, perhaps an aeon, nothing much happens. Then Anna turns away from me. She slips out of her dress, freeing the straps, stepping with exaggerated delicacy out of the ring of cotton on the wooden floor. I walk towards her and place my hands on her shoulders.
    `Maybe later,' she says.
    She had humiliated me when I was fat. Now I'm slim. With her back to me, she steps into her underpants. Then she puts on another dress and a pair of sandals with pointy little heels.
    Later that evening, at a restaurant near the villa, I pack away a lot of food a fried starter, a steak with runny sauce, a couple of helpings of fried potatoes, some vegetables, a tart. The food is great.
    I look across the table at Anna. She is tanned. She is not saying much to me. The waiter is grinning, bringing another bottle of wine because I'm drinking so much.
    `Cheers,' I say, and hold out my glass, wanting more.
    That's what it felt like. I wanted more. A snapshot from the slim world. I'm 32 years old. Waist size: 31. 191 lbs.

Breakfast
    I wake up on the day after the fattest day of my life, and I'm hungry, and I think: 'I'll do Atkins,' and I think: 'I won't do Atkins,' and I think: 'I'll do Atkins.'
    I step into the elevator and plummet to the ground, at the expense of no calories, and get outside and walk around, looking for somewhere to not eat carbs. Almost immediately I walk past two mobile carb stalls offering pastries, croissants, rolls, bagels. I am disturbingly hungry. I want carbs. I don't want carbs. I enter a diner on Lower Broadway. There is a big tray full of fried potatoes. Loaves are stacked on the counter. Bagels are stacked. Doughnuts, muffins, pastries are stacked. When I bulk into my seat, the table jolts and makes a scraping noise on the wooden floor. People look up. Fat guy bumping into table.
    I look at the menu. It frightens me. Menus always frighten me. Jesus I can have granola, oatmeal, griddle cakes, bagels, muffins, many types of toast. Maybe I'm not ready for Atkins. Maybe I'm not ready.
    `Ready to order, sir?'
    `Will you give me a couple of minutes?'
    Four minutes tick by.
    `Ready to order, sir?'
    30
    I go for an egg-white omelette. The waiter pushes me into having toast. He says, 'What sort of toast do you want?' `What sort do you have?'
    `White, granary, wholemeal, sourdough, ciabatta, French stick, rye.'
    `Uh, wholemeal.'
    Seconds pass. Minutes pass. I pick up my knife and fork. I look at these objects first the knife, then the fork. My fingers bend around the knife and fork in a way that is familiar, reassuring. They might almost be parts of my own body.
    I stare at my knife and fork. I am edgy. My fork has four tines. My knife has a rounded end. It is sharp along the lower edge and blunt along the upper. I can see my double chin reflected in its glinting surface.
    My grandmother, my father's mother (b. 1894), used to tell me that I should