I haven't made so much as a snack for myself since I quit. Friday night I stopped at McDonald's while circling, which was my way of giving the figurative finger to the entire culinary industry. I wasn't even hungry; I ate it out of spite. Saturday morning was Ernie's. Saturday dinner was Taco Bell, my way of bare-ass mooning the entire culinary industry. But my driver's side window's jammed on the way home, so that was the end of drive-thru food for a while, since I can't afford to fix it. Nor can I afford to keep dropping $10 a day on fast food. I don't have health insurance anymore, either, so I can't afford to increase my risk of a heart attack. Fuck, I can't do anything, can I?

Food and I have an interesting relationship. I guess it has something to do with having hedonistic appetites. I've never seen food as just fuel, just nutrition. Food is art. It's science. It's every sense in the human body. Saying that food is just fuel is like saying sex is just for procreation. Since it's illegal to have sex for a living, so I cooked for a living. That spiteful Quarter Pounder on Friday was the equivalent of happily giving a stranger a blowjob shortly after dumping a long-time lover who treated me like shit. Yeah, it was bad for me. Yeah, it was poor judgement. Yeah, I regretted swallowing, but damn, it felt good! Breakfast at Ernie's was like a slow early-morning roll with someone who's so comfortable he's evolved from lover to friend, and you don't have to expect anything because you know that, just by being there, it's going to be perfect. Perfection doesn't involve fireworks or rose-cut radishes. Perfection just happens from tradition.

Cooking for myself is perfectly masturbatory. No one knows how to please me like me. I know how much garlic I want. I know to leave the mushrooms out. Some of the best meals I've ever had were made for myself and eaten alone. But there are times when loneliness is so eminent, so foreboding, that even thinking about making a meal for myself scares me so badly that I want to cry, and I just can't do it. I need someone who'll let me sit back, who'll keep my coffee cup full without me saying a word.

Honestly, the thought of cooking makes me feel guilty. If I'm going to spend time cooking, then maybe I shouldn't have quit my job, where they paid me to cook. There's a fair amount of fear involved, too. Right now, I still feel like I made the right decision in leaving my job. But, if I get in the kitchen, and it feels as good as it used to feel, then the magnitude of my decision might hit me. I'd have to admit that I love cooking and maybe I was being stupid and impetuous in leaving Jan's. Maybe the passion I feel in the kitchen could have been enough to override Jan's bullshit. And I just don't want to think about that. It's enough to think about how I'm going to keep myself fed without a job. I've got to deal with my concrete financial dilemma before I start getting into my own existential train wreck.

Not that there's much chance of starvation anywhere in my near future. I'm five feet, eight inches tall, 250 pounds. I've certainly got enough body fat to maintain me for a while. James has always said that, no matter how broke he gets, he'll always be able to find cigarette money. If you want something badly enough, you find a way to get it.

I think it was Dolly Parton who once said that she couldn't be anorexic because hogs don't get anorexia. Maybe being broke will force me to be a bit less hoggy, only eating when I have to, instead of doing it for recreation.

If Anna, my childhood best friend, and I had been able to combine our eating habits, we could have had the best eating habits of anyone two people who ever existed. Instead, she routinely starved herself down to eighty pounds, while I would eat peanut butter straight from the jar with my fingers when no one was looking.

I look back at our photos from when we were fourteen, when we were just starting our nasty habits, before they took their toll on our bodies. We were both the same height, Anna as fair and blond as I was smoldery dark. Our bodies were young and healthy. Anna had a natural gauntness which had followed her from childhood. She was all sharp angles and pointy joints, her chin and nose narrow, bird-like. I was solid, muscular from a childhood spent fielding line drives and running bases.

Our attitudes defied our shapes. Anna's boyishly flat body didn't seem to fit the pale pinks and ruffles she wore, or her quietly demure good girl behavior. Anna never spoke out of turn, nor did she speak loudly. My body was matronly, even when I was that young. The other big girls our age were almost indistinguishable from their mothers, quietly and plainly going about their business. Not me. I was loud and pushy, strutting enough bravado to con people into thinking I was comfortable in that big body. James knew me back then, and he's said that I was anything but matronly and mousy. I think I was just defensively swaggering to keep people from either teasing me or forgetting about me, the two Fates of the Fat Girl.

Eating lunch with Anna in the cafeteria every day in high school was pure torture. She'd force a few bites down, just to keep from being questioned about not eating, and I'd force myself to throw away most of my food, just to keep from being questioned about being a hog. I personally attribute the African famines of the 1980s to Anna and me wasting at least one full meal a day, apiece.

During the last half of the lunch shift, Anna would sneak off to the bathroom, letting the handful of laxatives she had for breakfast every morning do their job. I would sneak off to the alley behind the cafeteria, washing down four Reese's Peanut Butter Cups with two cans of Coke. We never questioned each other's habits.

In the photos from our eighth grade graduation, Anna and I looked normal, healthy, and comfortable. In out high school graduation photos, we're a study in contrasts: dark and light, gaunt and fat. The only sign that we're of the same species is the shared hollowness in our eyes, which kept us from seeing what we really looked like.

Seven years later, I'm doing better. Physically, I'm the same, a little heavier, but that hollowness is mostly gone from my eyes. They now can see how I am - a naturally big woman who loves food, sometimes uses it as a crutch, and usually doesn't think less of herself because of her girth. Anna, however, still struggles. I've seen her once a year since she moved to Florida after high school. I never know what to expect when she gets off the plane: frail, bloated, or somewhere in between. Eating together is still unnerving, but I've learned to listen to my body while ignoring Anna's. Obviously, Anna's body doesn't have good sense.

Anna's getting married the weekend before Kara and Max's wedding. I'm the maid of honor. She's making me wear this skinny pink sheath thing with a bow on the ass. Women with asses don't need them adorned, as far as I'm concerned. This dress is proof that Anna's misconstrued body image isn't limited to her own body; she obviously can't see what anyone really looks like. But I'll wear it, and I'll pretend to love it for her sake. I've had years of practice in making myself believe that really ugly shit is actually beautiful.

I force myself into the grocery store. I don't want to be around food, don't want to think about what I'm going to do with the ingredients. Buying nothing but frozen burritos and cans of soup seems like a good idea. If I can't bear to make something real, at least I won't starve. How long will my body fat last? Longer than most people's, but not that long. The panic starts rolling up from my belly through my esophagus. I shake my head quickly as I grab a cart, pulling myself into the here-and-now, which is hard to do in a grocery store. Everything's fake here. Fake fluorescent lights; fake piped-in music, fake thunderstorms in the produce department, even a fake cardboard cop perched on top of the freezer case to deter shoplifters.

"If you steal the cop," Max has teased, "I'll buy you all the beer you can drink, and I'll drive you anywhere in the state you want to go."

I had visions of me, sitting, in the back of Max's little red Toyota truck, a keg on my left, the cop on my right. I just have to figure out a way to get on top of that freezer case.

I count my breaths, synchronizing them with my footsteps, to keep myself grounded. First I hit the soup and burritos, then I start on dinner. Fusilli pasta, sun-dried tomatoes, a bag of fresh spinach, bulbs of garlic, a tub of shredded Asiago cheese. The most difficult part of the meal will be waiting thirty minutes for the tomatoes to re-hydrate. No need to kill myself with difficulty. This is going to be tough enough without going gourmet.

I calculate in my head how much I am spending as I wait in line. Not much, really. The tomatoes were relatively expensive, but I don't think they need to be justified. I try to block the rumble of babbling shoppers, the beeps of the cash registers, and the drone of the Muzak when, over the loudspeaker I hear, "We've got a cardboard cop down in aisle twelve, stapled twice in the back! We need backup and Scotch tape, stat!" I look up in time to see a clerk hang up the microphone before storming out the automatic doors, stripping off her beige smock. "Crazy fool. What's gotten into her?" the old man in front of me mutters. I smirk and slightly raise my shoulders, feeling a burn behind my eyes.

It takes eight hours for me to find the nerve to fix dinner. In the meantime, I stall productively. I nap, since I know panic insomnia's going to hit soon enough. I hung up on my mom's answering machine seven times, not sure how I'm going to tell her the news. The only time either of my parents quit a job was when my mom went on maternity leave for six years. They would probably have a bigger panic attack than I had. I dusted my living room, took three showers, and did a load of laundry. I didn't think I'd actually get hungry, but my stomach started growling at 8:00.

I opened all the windows in the apartment, even though it was downright cold. The smell of cold, impending rain rippled through the new darkness. I boiled water for the pasta and tomatoes while I shredded five ounces of spinach leaves that felt like wet velvet in my fingers. After every few leaves I'd put a piece on my tongue, tasting its spice, feeling its heavy smoothness. As usual I couldn't stay out of the cheese after I measured what I needed. Thin little straws of hard cheese, which very nearly snap when bitten, the mellowest sharp taste. I tossed crushed garlic, olive oil, salt, pepper, and the slimy-sweet tomatoes in a bowl, abandoning the spoon, swirling it gently with my fingertips before adding the ringlets of hot pasta. I tossed them together; my hands immersed in noodles and oil that happily slurped and squished. I scattered the spinach leaves and cheese, tossing lightly so I wouldn't bruise the leaves. It was a simple meal, prettier than throwing a blob of jarred sauce on a plate of spaghetti. The noodles were flecked red from the tomatoes, and they shined lightly with the sheen of the oil. Curls of spinach looped around the pasta, the tiny shards of Asiago dotting pale yellow against the plush green. I poured a glass of white zin, put on a copy of "Rigoletto", lit the candles on the coffee table, turned off the lights, and sat cross-legged on the living room floor where the cool breeze would pass over my back, the blowing curtains lapping just past my head. Exquisite. The sweetness of the tomatoes made the spinach spicier. Every ingredient made its presence known, the garlic's pungency dancing with the pasta's blandness, the salt caressing the sweetness, the spinach boosting the bite of the oil.

I climbed onto the couch with my glass of wine after I'd cleaned my plate. Kneeling in front of the window, I watched the rain that finally fell. Pulling my shoulders back, I realized that this was the first time in weeks I hadn't felt any tension in them, and I purred a contented moan before resting my arms on the back of the couch. There was a slight tightness in my stomach, not unpleasant, but there, akin to the pre-panic tightness. Instead of moving up to my throat or pushing against my ribs, it trickled down, settling in my groin, surprising me with its suddenness. I giggled, rubbing my hand over my bare arm, feeling the nerves just under my skin ripple to attention. I pulled my T-shirt over my head as I lay down, shed my jeans, and let the breeze and my fingertips touch my skin as I giggled and moaned with the thunder.

****

The phone jangled me out of my doze. It was 12:07 AM, and I'd been sleeping, belly full and satisfied, for well over three hours. I never answer the phone without checking my caller I.D. box, but if someone's calling me this late, it's got to be important.

"Thalia!" Anna squealed on the other end. She always sounds like she's surprised to hear me, even when she's the one who placed the call. "How's it going?"

"You called me after midnight to see how it's going?"

"Sure. I figured you'd be awake," Anna said, innocently enough. In all the years I'd known her, Anna had only stayed up past 11:00 when I'd made her do so. "I guess I can talk to you later, if it's a bad time."

"No, no … it's not a bad time. I'm just a little groggy. How are you doing?"

"Oh, I'm just fine. Just thought I'd call to see how you are. It seems like all we've talked about lately is the wedding."

I chuckled. "True enough." As much as I love Anna, I don't think she's ever asked about me more than five times in almost twenty years. It's just something I've learned to live with - Anna likes to focus on Anna. If she takes an interest in someone else, it's usually because she's looking to be entertained, which has always made me feel needed. Sure, we've occasionally fought about her selfishness, but mostly we've made it work.

For the next hour, she wants the details of my life. I can hear her nodding her head as I tell her about quitting my job. She asks about Kara's wedding, and the weather. When the conversation dwindles to a discussion about what I had for breakfast, I ask her why she really called.

"Well, it's the wedding…"

I probably could have told you that.

Anna and Ben have been together for five years, but they'd met a year earlier. Anna, in the only instance of sloppy drunkenness she'd ever known, had approached him in a bar, told him she was psychic, and told him his fortune. They were together for two years before Ben realized she'd been the fortuneteller. Anna didn't remember it at all. Ben was fond of saying that she'd told him that he would spend his life with a beautiful, quiet blonde. Then again, Ben was also fond of saying, "I've got The Job. I've got The Car. I've got The Girl. I'm set!" I'd met Ben once, and I can't say that the thought of spending the wedding weekend around him thrills me.

"What about the wedding?"

"I don't know, Thalia. I've been noticing other men a lot."

"You're still allowed to look."

"But I don't want to just look!"

"Oh."

Now, this is out of character. If people wanted to simplify Anna and me, and most people do want to simplify the way they view others; they pegged Anna as The Good One and me as The Bad One. Anna's book smart, which requires work and diligence, but she doesn't have the sense to look before she crosses the street. I've got the common sense to know that I'm going to have to grab the back of her shirt to keep her from getting hit by a truck. Either you've got that kind of sense, or you don't. It's lazy. She never drank, smoked, fucked, or showed any gluttony in any of her appetites, while I've always reveled in mine. Trying to fight my appetites just gave them more control on my life, so I learned to compromise my vices. Anna just doesn't have them in the first place. If you simply don't drink, smoke, fuck, or eat, you don't have to make deals with your vices.

"I don't feel like I can help it, Thalia. Ben's the only man I've ever been with…"

"What about that guy you fucked in the shower your freshman year?"

"He doesn't count. Anyway, I'm afraid of getting married when there's so much I haven't experienced."

I stayed quiet, as I have a policy against giving advice. If I allowed myself to give advice, I'd tell people to never get married. Live together, if you must, but leave the law and the church out of it, especially if you're making promises you only have a fifty- percent chance of keeping.

"Are you still there?"

"Yeah … just thinking." I carried the phone to the kitchen, pouring a glass of Merlot. "You know I hate to offer advice." I sipped the wine, sitting naked on the kitchen linoleum, examining the folds of the flesh on my belly.

"I know I've got to decide what to do for myself."

I rested the glass on my belly, but it wouldn't balance. I caught it before it tipped. "Anna, what do you want?"

She was silent, breathing softly. "I don't want to get married."

"Are you sure?"

Silence again. "Yes … I think."

"Either you is, or you ain't. You'd better be really sure before you end anything."

"I'm sure that I need to have a life, that I need to have some fun for once, before I get tied down."

"Viewing your marriage as tying you down isn't a good sign, Anna."

"I know. I have to do this. Ben's going to be crushed."

"But isn't it better to get crushed quickly, than to be slowly suffocated?"

"True. I knew you'd know what to do."

"Now wait - I don't know what you should do. You have to know what you should do."

"But you always know how to make me think about these things. Thank you so much."

After we hung up, I tried to make my elation simmer down. Anna needs someone with more depth than Ben can provide. And she does need to have a life before getting married. She's never even lived away from her family. This is the perfect opportunity for Anna to find out who she is and what she wants. I've never been so excited for her as I am now.

Now, I need to decide if I'm going to ceremoniously disassemble that damn pink dress, or just burn it and be done.