For Christmas, she’d given me a one-month subscription ($650) to Euphebe, a plant-based meal-delivery service, which seemed like an expensive way of telling me she’d noticed the weight I’d gained since we launched.
I made her a hooped cross-stitch of a bar graph showing our user growth over the past six months. While she’d been restricting, I’d been producing.
There was a peal of laughter. Devin had her back up against the door to the walk-in closet, playfully pushing Evan away. Evan didn’t always have the best instincts in terms of personal space. He was a close-talker, someone who made you feel like he was giving you all of his attention, whether you wanted it or not. Our younger staff lost their shit when he came by the office. Maybe it was his status as a minor TV personality, or maybe it was just the rarity of having a man around HQ. I once heard our receptionist describe Evan’s scruffily bearded and vaguely irresponsible attractiveness quotient as “retro Mark Ruffalo.”
We needed to get out of here.
“Thanks, Evan,” I said. “For everything. Your place is great. I love it.” My depression gave me the personality of a fembot, spewing phrases I’d been programmed with. But Evan didn’t seem to notice.
He pulled out a ring of at least twenty keys. “You won’t need all these,” he said, “but the yellow one’s the front door, the red one is the doorknob, this one is for the barn slash pool house, and I think these are for the guest suite above the garage. There are other outbuildings but those don’t matter. Mailbox key you won’t need.”
“Thanks, Evan. Seriously.”
“Come here,” he said, drawing me in for a side hug. Up close, I noticed a poppy seed in his teeth and the blackheads at the tip of his nose. “Get some rest, and then we’re back in the clouds, right? Ten thousand feet?” He held up a hand for a high five.
* * *
...
In the elevator, I said, “Hey, girl, I’ve been known to raise some capital, but I couldn’t figure out how to raise my TV until I met you.”
“Siri, what beverage. Can I offer. To this female,” Devin said into her phone.
I appreciated the emotional labor she put into making fun of Evan for me. Devin was at Barnard at the same time his younger brother was at Columbia and they were like family—a weirdly incestuous family. According to Evan, Devin was one of the few women he could be “real” with, because others saw him as a well-connected ATM. (I saw him as a well-connected ATM.)
Outside, John was waiting for us in the rental car. Devin was in charge of the playlist, and I sat in the backseat and held a gallon tub of rice and mung beans that she promised would “de-age” me. She couldn’t resist a before and after. John had never been Devin’s number-one fan, but I convinced him that he needed a relaxing weekend in the country, too.
First up: “Shape of You” by Ed Sheeran and Devin started to dance in the passenger seat, swimming backward with her fists, while John cursed under his breath, trying to get on the FDR.
“I don’t know how many cleanses you’ve done before,” she said, “but I can already tell this one is going to be really fun.”
John made it through the second chorus before he asked, “Do you have any real music, like John Denver?”
“Ell-oh-ell,” Devin said, turning to give me a look that was gently teasing, like How did you end up with this one? “Is John Denver even alive?”
“No more cis white men music on this road trip,” I said. “Play something motivational. Like if I was walking up to bat, what would be my song?”
Devin put on “Wait for It” from Hamilton, our favorite, and we sang along to “I am the one thing in life I can control.”
* * *
...
If you met Devin, you wouldn’t know she was sick. Her smile looked expensive. Her complexion advertised good genes. She seemed to genuinely enjoy the taste of edible flowers. If her body appeared beside a headline about how this woman gets it done, you’d click.
When I met her at an entrepreneur retreat, she had a six-figure business as an intuitive eating coach. This was during a period when I would photocopy proof of my income for any scholarship opportunity I could find—I just wanted a break from New York City, my $28,000 annual salary as executive director of a nonprofit organization that was going to end gender-based oppression through public sculpture, and the cage-free egg salad sandwiches that were often the most ethically nutritious food I could afford.
They paired me with Devin as my mentor.
“What’s your edge?” she asked. “What are you better at than anybody else?”
“Working,” I said. “Relaxing stresses me out.”
“You’re a total pitta,” she said.
“I’m a what?”
“Your dosha. Do you eat a lot of salted cheese?”
“If I say yes, are you going to tell me I have to stop?”
As executive director, my job was to eat salad with rich women from all over the great island of Manhattan, compliment their avant-garde jewelry and trend-driven philanthropic work, and then beg them to come on as sustaining donors for a series of anatomically accurate yet artistically rendered vaginal sculptures. Every lunch ended with me half-heartedly reaching for the check until they stopped my hand. It was the least they could do. No one ever wanted to come on as a sustaining donor at this time, but there was always someone else I should really talk to; they would make an e-intro and I had to thank them for their generosity before moving them to BCC. My future was an infinite horizon of fine dining in vain.
“I’ve built this organization that’s supposed to be changing the world, but I’m killing myself,” I told Devin. “I’m killing myself for other women.”
She placed a hand on my forehead like a blessing. Her palm was surprisingly warm and calming. “Your pain is sending you a message right now,” she said. “Your pain says it’s time to pivot.”
I knew a pitch was coming. I should hire Devin as my coach. She’d tell me how much cheese I was allowed to eat (none) and make me text her photos of my treadmill workouts. After her three-month program, not only would I feel incredible, but I’d look like her. The last time I was her size, I was about ten years old. The proof of her program was written on her body. I started to sweat, preparing how I would tell this person I couldn’t afford the program. Self-consciously, I put my face in one hand, to cover the patch of acne near the ear I always held my phone to.
“Forget the cheese,” I said. “The cheese is not the problem.”
“You know you don’t have to keep doing this, right?” Devin asked.