Slob by Ellen Potter

Author:Ellen Potter
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub, pdf
ISBN: 9781101050811
Publisher: Penguin USA, Inc.
Published: 2012-02-14T20:00:31+00:00

The next day, Jeremy called me from Arthur’s house.

The answer was no.

To be exact, it was, “You must be kidding! He couldn’t pay me enough to borrow my collection!”

“She won’t budge either,” Jeremy said. “I’ve tried.”

I had been expecting this.

“Let me talk to her,” I said.

“It’s not going to help,” Jeremy said. In a whisper, she added, “Actual spit flew out of her mouth when she said ‘pay.’ ”

“Just let me try.”

There was a pause during which I could hear the muffled arguments between the two of them. Finally, there was a scraping noise and Arthur’s sullen voice came on.

“Yeah?” she said.

“Arthur, I think we can make a deal,” I said.

“No.”

“Just listen. In the back of my closet I have a bag that is stuffed full of clothes. Boys’ clothes.”

There was a hesitation. “Your clothes, you mean?” she asked.

“From two years ago.”

Again a pause. “Look, I don’t want to be mean or anything, but I really don’t think I would fit into your clothes.”

“I wasn’t fat two years ago,” I said. “I was like you. Not fat, not thin. If you don’t believe me, ask Jeremy.”

She did. She clanked the phone down immediately. There was some discussion. Mostly I could hear Jeremy’s ardent voice. She was probably listing all the choice boy clothes in the bag. I know she went through the bag herself when she first joined GWAB, but she’s such a small, skinny kid that she was swimming in my old stuff. Arthur, on the other hand, would fit into them perfectly.

“She says okay.” It was Jeremy on the line now.

“Great.”

“But there are rules. She’ll lend the collection to you for two weeks, that’s it. You have to keep them in order, and you have to wear gloves when you handle them.”

I heard Arthur’s voice in the background, and Jeremy added, “She says she will know if you haven’t worn the gloves.”

I briefly had an image of her dusting the Retro TV Magazines for fingerprints.

“Not a problem,” I said.

“All right. You can bring the clothes to Arthur’s house now and we’ll make the switch.”

It was all very dramatic, as you can see. I didn’t mind, though, because it felt dramatic to me too.

This might be it, I kept thinking. A hundred years from now, people would still be talking about the Birnbaum Retro TV Magazine Theory, the way they talk about Newton’s apple.

I went into my closet and dug through all the crap that had accumulated over the past two years—salvaged items that I knew I’d never use and old school notebooks. Way in the back was a black Hefty bag. I dragged it out, tearing the bag in the process. If I hadn’t had to transfer all the clothes to an old duffel bag, I probably wouldn’t have looked at them. I held them up, one by one. Had my body once fit into these things? It was almost unimaginable. I felt like I must have been a totally different person. Like I had died and been reborn as someone else.

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