Chapter 13

Our second day on the road, my teeth feel dull and yellow. My muscles feel less toned. I can’t live my life as a brunette. I need some time, just a minute, just thirty seconds, under a spotlight. No matter how much I try and hide this, bit by bit, I start to fall apart. We’re in Dallas, Texas, considering half a Wilmington Villa with faux tile countertops and a bidet in the master bath. It has no master bedroom, but it has a laundry room with washer/dryer hookups. Of course, it has no water or power or phone. It has almond-colored appliances in the kitchen. There isn’t a fireplace, but the dining room has floor-length drapes.

This is after we look at more houses than I can remember. Houses with gas fireplaces. Houses with French Provincial furniture, vast glass-topped coffee tables, and track lighting. This is with the sunset red and gold on the flat Texas horizon, in a truck stop parking lot outside Dallas proper. I wanted to go with a house that had separate bedrooms for each of us, but no kitchen. Adam wanted the house that had only two bedrooms, a kitchen, but no bathroom. Our time was almost up. The sun was almost down and the drivers were about to start their all-night drives. My skin felt cold and rolling with sweat. All of me, even the blond roots of my hair, ached. Right there in the gravel, I just started doing push-ups in the middle of the parking lot. I rolled onto my back and started doing stomach crunches with the intensity of convulsions. The subcutaneous fat was already building up. My abdominal muscles were disappearing. My pecs were starting to sag. I needed bronzer. I needed to log some time in a sun bed. Just five minutes, I beg Adam and Fertility. Before we hit the road again, just give me ten minutes in a Wolff tanning bed. “No can do, little brother,” Adam says. “The FBI will be watching every gym and every tanning salon and health food store in the Midwest.” After just two days, I was sick of the crap deep-fried food they serve at truck stops. I wanted celery. I wanted mung beans. I wanted fiber and oat bran and brown rice and diuretics. “What I told you about,” Fertility says, looking at Adam, “it’s starting. We need to get him locked up someplace, stat. He’s going into Attention Withdrawal Syndrome.” The two of them hustled me into a Maison d’Elegance just as the driver was putting his truck in gear. They pushed me into a back bedroom with just a bare mattress and a giant Mediterranean dresser with a big mirror above it. Outside the bedroom door, I could hear them piling Mediterranean furniture, sofa groups and end tables, lamps made to look like old wine bottles, entertainment centers and bar stools against the outside of the bedroom door. Texas is speeding past the bedroom window outside. In the twilight, a sign goes by the window saying, Oklahoma City 250 Miles. The whole room shakes. The walls are papered with tiny yellow flowers vibrating so fast they make me travel-sick. Anywhere I go in this bedroom, I can still see myself in the mirror. My skin is going regular white without the ultraviolet light I need. Maybe it’s just my imagination, but one of my caps feels loose. I try not to panic. I tear off my shirt and study myself for damage. I stand sideways and suck in my stomach. I could really use a preloaded syringe of Durateston right about now. Or Anavar. Or Deca-Durabolin. My new hair color makes me look washed-out. My last eyelid surgery didn’t take, and already my eye bags show. My hair plugs feel loose. I turn to study myself in the mirror for any hair growing on my back. A sign goes by the window saying, Soft Shoulders. The last of my bronzer is caked in the corners of my eyes and the wrinkles around my mouth and across my forehead. I try and nap. I pick apart the mattress ticking with my fingernails. A sign goes by the window saying, Slower Traffic Keep Right. There’s a knock at the door. “I have a cheeseburger if you want it,” Fertility says through the door and all the piled-up furniture. I don’t want a greasy damn fatty damn cheeseburger, I yell back. “You need to eat sugar and fat and salt until you get back to normal,” Fertility says. “This is for your own good.” I need a full body wax, I yell. I need hair mousse. I’m pounding on the door. I need two hours in a good weight room. I need to go three hundred stories on a stair climbing machine. Fertility says, “You just need an intervention. You’re going to be fine.” She’s killing me. “We’re saving your life.” I’m retaining water. I’m losing definition in my shoulders. My eye bags need concealer. My teeth are shifting. I need my wires tightened. I need my dietitian. Call my orthodontist. My calves are wasting away. I’ll give you anything you want. I’ll give you money. Fertility says, “You don’t have money.” I’m famous. ‘You’re wanted for mass murder.” Her and Adam have to get me some diuretics. “Next time we stop,” Fertility says, “I’ll get you a skinny double americano.” That’s not enough. “It’s more than you’d get in prison.” Let’s rethink this, I say. In prison, I’d have weight equipment. I’d have time in the sun. They must have sit-up boards in prison. I could maybe get black-market Winstrol. I say, Just let me out. Just unblock this door. “Not until you’re making sense.” I WANT TO GO TO PRISON! “In prison, they have the electric chair.” I’ll take that risk. “But they might kill you.” Good enough. I just need to be the center of a lot of attention. Just one more time. “Oh, you go to prison, and you’ll be the center of attention.” I need moisturizer. I need to be photographed. I’m not like regular people, to survive I need to be constantly interviewed. I need to be in my natural habitat, on television. I need to run free, signing books. “I’m leaving you alone for a while,” Fertility says through the door. “You need a time out.” I hate being mortal. “Think of this as My Fair Lady or Pygmalion, only backward.”