Interviewer: Thank you for agreeing to this. I know you give few interviews.
Author: Seldom asked to.
Interviewer: Let’s get right into it, then. Your work has been variously described as obscure and difficult, also superficial, amateurish, dilettantish, consoling, inspired, profound, provocative, humorless, and witty. How would you describe your work?
Author: Widely ignored.
Interviewer: That’s it? Two words?
Author: Yes. That’s one word.
Interviewer: I see this is going to be a challenge. Very well. Your work has been called both modern and post-modern. How do you classify what you write?
Author: Contemporary American literature.
Interviewer: Very amusing. So, what do you most enjoy writing on?
Author: An old door held up by a couple of filing cabinets.
Interviewer: I meant computer or ball point, lined paper or plain, pencil and legal pad.
Author: Fountain pen.
Interviewer: Really?
Author: My chief link with tradition.
Interviewer: Okay. This really is going to be difficult.… Your only novel won a prize. Why hasn’t there been a second?
Author: Maybe there is.
Interviewer: Oh? Unfinished or unpublished?
Author: Unwritten.
Interviewer: I was warned you’re difficult. Okay, let me check my notes.… It says here that you’ve also won a teaching prize? Yes? What would you say is the most important quality in a teacher?
Nathan stared at the half-eaten cake on the kitchen table. He was down four pounds from last month. But should he eat the whole cake? Despite his stomach hanging slightly over his shorts, Nathan thought he looked okay. That would change after the cake. I’ll go to the gym later. Burn it all off. Having settled on a plan, he ate more cake.
Nathan’s driveway was made of tiny pebbles. He heard a crunching sound as tires rolled over the stones. He froze. There was still icing left. He closed the cake box, stuck it in the fridge.
The front door flew open. In stepped his big sister, Beth. She set a white bucket filled with dirty water on the tile floor. By the tail, Beth pulled out a bigmouth bass. She said, “I’ve had it with this thing.”
“Pleased to meet you,” the bass said. “My name is Billy.”
Beth dropped the fish back in the water. “I’m casting in the pond earlier when Billy here surfaces, says we need to talk.”
Billy hung over the rim of the bucket. “A woman went in your sister’s house every night this week after she left for work.”
“That’s our lawyer. With what we’re paying, she should be making house calls.”
“I’ve lived in your neighborhood pond five years now. The only other time I’ve seen this was the Carltons.”
“Damon wouldn’t do that.”
Nathan asked, “Who’s your lawyer?”
Beth hesitated. “Gabbie York.”
Nathan said, “Come on.”
“So what if they have a past? That was college. Ancient history. The fish is lying. Damon said Gabbie was only over Monday night. I checked the cameras. Her car pulled in the driveway, and she was gone thirty minutes later.”
Billy said, “The lawyer parked down the street the rest of the week. She entered through the back, through the pool’s screen door.”
“Lies.”
“Why would Billy lie?” Nathan asked. “Be realistic.”
Beth balled her fists. Looking around the kitchen, she saw a plate of cookies on the counter. “You’re eating cookies for breakfast?”
Nathan felt his face turn red. “That’s not my normal breakfast. I was hungry is all.”
“Poor Nathan. Keep telling yourself that.” Then to Billy, Beth said, “My husband isn’t a cheater. You’re a liar. I’m turning you into a sandwich.”
Billy ignored the threat. He was concerned with Nathan. “I used to have an eating problem. There was this house, the Johnsons, and they fed the fish pizza. I was powerless. If there was pizza in the water, I was eating.”
Nathan was embarrassed by Billy’s concern. Problem? There’s no problem. Everybody eats. So what if I eat more than others?Food makes life better. He grabbed a cookie. Taking a bite, he said, “Speak for yourself. I’m fine.” Nathan took another bite, but this one tasted strange. He chewed slower, his mouth now dry.
Beth said, “I’ve heard enough. I’m frying Billy in peanut oil.” She picked up the bucket and made for the door.
Something didn’t feel right to Nathan. He followed Beth out into the morning light. “You can’t kill Billy. He’s just a stupid bass. Move him to another pond.”
Beth paused. She lifted the bucket into her truck bed. “Fine.”
“North Street pond is a good —”
“I know how to move a fish!”
“Okay. I’ll call you tomorrow.”
Beth looked exhausted. “Whatever.”
Nathan went back in the house. He sat at the kitchen table, eating cookies while going over what happened. He couldn’t get it out of his head. He went to the fridge and grabbed the cake box. His fork hovered over the icing. He finished the job. Looking in the mirror, Nathan felt shame. He drove to the gym.
…
Nathan cast his line to the center of the pond. He reeled slowly, the wind whipping his gym shorts. The idea that Billy wasn’t here filled him with dread. He needed to speak with the fish. It had been a month since he last ate a cookie or cake or anything with sugar. His body felt great, but mentally he was slipping. Between the holidays and his birthday, Nathan’s cravings were escalating. He hoped Billy could help.
A circle of houses surrounded the pond, and behind the pink one was a small dock. Nathan cast his line by the dock, jigging the bait slightly. He felt a large thump. His pole bent. He reeled. The fish jumped from the water — a giant bigmouth bass — and splashed back into the pond. He was amazed, first at the fish, then at his line. The tugging disappeared. Nathan reeled with no resistance, but as he reeled, a small wake made its way to shore.
“Buddy,” Billy said. “Get this hook out of my mouth.”
Nathan held Billy by the tail, the fish’s new weight straining his wrist. “Billy, is everything okay?” he asked, tossing the bass back in the pond.
Billy poked his head out of the water. “Things are better than okay. The people in the pink house, they throw out sourdough bread every afternoon. Have you tried sourdough? It’s making me blow up like a whale, but I don’t care.”
“Really?”
“Yeah, I’ve got it made. Besides having the best bread, this pond is stocked with the coolest fish. Have you ever met a trout? They’re hilarious. Why do you look upset? Did something happen?”
Nathan regretted visiting the pond. He worked so hard to create this new healthy lifestyle for himself, all to realize it was a house of cards. “I just came to check on you. I was worried.”
“Like I told your sister, I’m doing amazing.”
“You saw Beth?”
“She visited earlier this week to tell me about the divorce. Good for her. She also told me about your diet. You look great.”
“Thanks.”
“It seems like we’re all doing well.”
“Are we? Billy — do you know what happens to fish your size? They stuff them and hang them on walls.”
“What! Why?”
“As trophies.”
“Barbaric. Well, as scary as that sounds, don’t worry. My days in this pond are numbered. I met a lady fish. I know, I know. A player like me settling down. But it’s time. She’s from the pond across the highway, so we’re moving soon. I’ll lose all this weight once my sourdough supply is cut off.”
“The pond across the highway is behind a bakery. That’s where sourdough comes from.”
“Oh, really? I had no idea.”
“That pond is also a notorious fishing spot.”
Billy didn’t hear Nathan. Another fish popped its head out of the water. Billy said, “This sexy scaly thing is my girlfriend, Talia.”
Talia said, “It’s almost time, Big Daddy. We better not miss the sourdough.”
“We won’t. I’ll be by the dock in a minute. Get that sweet tail over there and hold our place next to the red buoy.”
“She’s the best. Don’t worry about me, alright? So I’m enjoying the most delicious bread of all time a little too much. It’s fine. I have everything under control.”
“If you say so.”
“Will you bring sourdough to our pond-warming party next week?”
“But you just said you were done after the move?”
“I meant after the party. After the party, no more big Billy.”
“Sure.” Nathan nodded. “I’ll see you then. Take care of yourself, Billy.”
Nathan grabbed his pole and tacklebox. Moving through the tall grass on the way back to his truck, he tried to shake an odd feeling. He knew Beth’s biggest catch was mounted on her office wall, and Billy was a little bigger than that.
He sat in his truck. He didn’t start the engine. He picked at dirt under his fingernails, thinking about his big sister’s divorce. She married a stranger. That was Beth’s reality. What was Nathan’s reality?
It was a bright day. Nathan looked through the windshield of his truck. There was a donut shop across the street. He thought about Beth. About Billy and the sourdough. Nathan wanted to feel good. He threw the truck in gear. He sped past the donut shop on his way to the gym.
Roman loves Angela and beer and chocolate cake.
His love for Angela is immoderate. Her name is a sonnet that echoes within him. He adores Angela day and night and, if there were stretches of time that lay somewhere between the day and the night, he would adore her then as well.
Roman’s love for beer and chocolate cake is also sincere and deeply felt. His definition of a perfect evening: six beers, dinner on the couch with Angela, a slab of chocolate cake, and a black-and-white movie, preferably from the 1930s, on television.
One sunny day in the middle of July, Angela breaks up with Roman. She tells him that he is a good man, but he has become too fat for her. It embarrasses her to be seen in his company. Sex with him now feels life-threatening.
Roman’s heart shatters like a light bulb struck by a crowbar. He exiles himself from the company of others. His appetite, including for beer and chocolate cake, disappears. He diminishes. Not one of the few people he still sees believes him when he maintains that his weight loss is not attributable to a pharmaceutical.
“You taking Ozempic?”
“No.”
“Wegovy?”
“Absolutely not.”
“Then it’s gotta be the Zepbound.”
“No, really, it’s not.”
“Liar.”
After several such exchanges, Roman finds that it’s easier on him and more rewarding for his inquisitor if he answers “yes” to the first question, whichever medication is mentioned.
Roman’s weight loss also creates a problem with his pants: He now has considerably more belt than waist and, therefore, extra belt.
He tries passing the extra belt through the belt loops of his pants for a second time, but the loops aren’t big enough. They will not accommodate a doubling up of belt. And because his belts are made of a light brown, stretchy material, the last thirteen inches hang limply down the front of his pants. Based upon comments that Roman receives from colleagues and passers-by, at first glance the hanging length of belt tends to resemble an unusually long and proudly displayed penis.
It occurs to Roman that he could simply cut the belts to a reasonable length. But he worries that would make him look like a Depression-era hobo using a length of rope to hold up his trousers.
The problem demands a solution. Unless his pants are held up, they will fall down around his ankles. (Suspenders might work, but Roman knows that suspenders make anyone look ludicrous unless they are an Alabama farmer or a New York lawyer. He is neither.)
He must buy a new belt.
Knowing that he is about to purchase a replacement belt, Roman cuts a foot off the end of one of his existing belts with a pair of kitchen scissors and heads to a nearby clothing store. The men’s department has no other customers.
A young saleswoman approaches him. Her nametag says “Angela.” When Roman sees the name, it occurs to him that he should probably purchase a belt online, like all the other belt customers who aren’t in the store.
“How can I help you?”
“I think I’ll be going.”
“Come on. Something besides the air conditioning brought you in here. Let me help.”
Roman hesitates. Angela is cute. A girl with comedy in her eyes.
“I need a new belt.”
“You sure do. The one you have on makes you look like a bum in a Frank Capra movie.”
It feels like the skin on Roman’s face cracks. His cheeks have grown unaccustomed to accommodating a smile.
“It’s because I cut the end off.”
“With your left hand while suffering from arthritis and wearing a blindfold, apparently. Take it off.”
“My pants will fall down.”
“That should brighten up a dull day.”
“Is this how you usually talk to your customers?”
“Only the good-looking ones.”
Something inside Roman shifts. He experiences, for just a moment before it drifts away, a faint but vaguely familiar feeling. Roman puzzles over it. Then recognizes it. Hunger.
“You’ve lost a bunch of weight.”
“I have.”
Roman waits for the inevitable questioning to begin.
“Good for you. You should be proud of yourself. But it means that you’re going to need a lot more than a new belt.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Take a good look at yourself.”
Roman faces the mirror. He sees a shrunken man. The man’s shirt billows around him. The waistband of his pants folds over on itself in half a dozen places. His socks sag over his shoes. Roman has been so focused on looking ridiculous because his belt was too long that he never noticed that he was looking ridiculous for other reasons as well.
“If you buy only a belt, you might as well go around wearing a barrel. You’re still going to look like a bum.”
The skin on Roman’s face cracks again.
He spends more than three thousand dollars and leaves the store with a new wardrobe and Angela’s telephone number.
At home that evening, Roman celebrates with a six-pack and two slices of chocolate cake, and watches It Happened One Night alone on the couch.
