Read Fat Chance for Free Online Page B

Taylor?”
    â€œMike Taylor.” I take an Internet picture of him out of my desk drawer. We both stare at it for a moment. “How could anyone not want to help that?”
    â€œLord have mercy. What are you going to do, Maggie?”
    â€œAfter I have my heart massaged? What do you think? I’m going to give him the name of a diet doctor I know out on the coast, and then go back to my column and forget the whole thing. Do you think I’d just take off because I get a call from a smart-ass in Hollywood? Yes he’s gorgeous, but out there they’re all gorgeous—”
    â€œWell, they’re not all THAT—”
    â€œThey’re plaster casts created in operating rooms. The plastic surgeons out there can carve George Clooney’s face out of Danny DeVito’s behind. Tight skin, nipped eyes, shaved noses, chins, cheekbones, six-pack abs. The only thing they don’t do yet is head transplants. That is one sick universe. So that’s your answer. That’s what I’m going to do.”
    â€œGood for you, Maggie.” She high-fives me. “You are your own person.” She walks toward the door, and then does a 180-degree pivot.
    â€œWant me to arrange transpo?”
    â€œDone.”
    â€œHuh?”
    â€œDreamWorks booked it. How’s that for a perfect name?”
    Tamara turns again, but I’m not done. “One more thing. Of course you have to swear on your life—”
    â€œWhat life?”
    â€œâ€”not to tell another living soul.”
    She shuts the door, then stands there, the other eyebrow raised.
    â€œWhen I got home last night, I stripped off all my clothes and took a long look in the mirror, and let me tell you there’s a reason my bathroom mirror is the size of a postage stamp.”
    â€œAmen.”
    â€œI stared at a body that I wanted to divorce, uncontested. I saw someone who didn’t look like the real me that wastrapped inside. So I declared war. The Maggie O’Leary who’s going to L.A. in eight weeks will be nothing like the one that this world knows and loves.”
    â€œYou lost me.”
    â€œI’m going to do something utterly heretical, and I need you to be my partner in crime.”
    â€œMaybe you better just tell me.”
    â€œYou have to swear, swear, not to tell a soul, otherwise I’m going to be burned at the stake, excommunicated from the National Association to Advance Fat Acceptance. They’ll haul me before them, like Martin Luther at the Diet of Worms—”
    â€œNever tried that diet, any good?”
    I drop my head in prayer. “The Maggie who’s going to L.A. is going to attempt something more far-reaching than ever before.”
    â€œLike?”
    â€œWith my motivation at an all-time high, I’m embarking on a stealth-bomber food plan and will emerge my thin twin.” I hold up my fist triumphantly. “Chiseled, whittled down, tight, taut, tantalizing, terrific and T-H-I-N!”
    â€œSay it,” Tamara says. “Say it.”
    â€œTHIN.”
    She smiles, then suddenly her eyes cloud over. “But how? You can’t diet, you don’t, you won’t. Diets are a sham, a lie, a trap to undermine the empowerment of liberated twenty-first-century women, enslave them mentally and hold them politically hostage. Your whole theory of who you are, self-love and acceptance and all that bologna that you’ve made your name by, not to say a career out of, is going out the window because some movie maharaja calls you up and asks for a little advice? Keep it together, Maggie—we’re talking just another M A N—so maybe you want to think this onethrough a little more. Maybe you’re bein’ just a trifle rash, you know what I’m sayin’?”
    â€œI’m doing it, Tamara—total body and fender work. This is just a short leave of absence from my public persona. And it will surely be my last attempt to