The Basic Eight by Daniel Handler

well-meaning smoke screen hasn’t foiled my unshakable logic, and I will extend it further. A less fat body makes a more beautiful person, so we need something that makes a less fat body, and of course we all know what makes a body less fat: less food. When I think of all the food I consumed just last night I am sick at my extravagance, and judging from my fat legs, my fat

    stomach, even my fat arms, this sort of extravagance goes on all the time. All that Thai food I ate last night for instance, that chicken dish and those greasy, greasy fried egg rolls, the grease of which luckily seems to have found its way to my hair instead of my body. The chocolate-covered mints at the movie. I will hereby dismiss, again, my justification that dieting is some tacky Middle American bourgeois pastime. It is very sensible, dieting. Simply eating less food and thus becoming more beautiful. To no other problem in life is there such an elegant solution. To start my diet I will not eat anything until the dinner party tonight, and then I will only eat sensibly, just salad perhaps. No longer will I allow myself to become as large as any of the obstacles that sep- arate Adam and me from each other. To keep my mind off food I will do some schoolwork, thus also taking care of my other Cardinal Sin besides Gluttony: (Academic) Sloth. I will read Anne Bradstreet, another disciplined woman.
    LATER
    If there were any seeds of doubt in my mind as to whether I really loved Adam or just some image of Adam, they were all killed by the frost that was tonight’s dinner party. No, wait, that sounds like it was some cold, deadly evening. I mean the opposite. I guess I mean that if the flower of my love for Adam was being stunted by any feelings of doubt, then tonight fully fertilized my seed and allowed it to grow. That works if you don’t think about the fact that fertilizer is made of shit. I guess it’s obvious I’ve had wine, but the evening was magical, magical, magical and I want to write it down before it evaporates into the night air like streams of sensual smoke.
    Gabriel gave me a ride to Kate’s, which meant we had to arrive early so Gabriel could start cooking. Gabriel is

    terribly, terribly fussy about his culinarities, and never lets us do anything, not even chop, so Kate and I sat at the kitchen table and speculated on possibilities concerning Jennifer Rose Milton’s love life while Gabriel marinated some snapper and chopped red peppers with such ferocity that the off-white tiles of Kate’s kitchen looked positively gory. Gabriel had a pure white apron over a very handsome coat and tie and kept smiling at me.
    Natasha arrived, bearing cleavage and brie, and immediately fell into a squabble with Gabriel over how to bake it properly. Kate and I sat basking in the pretentiousness of it all.
    “I have a full pound of celery to chop and it’s already a quarter to seven,” Gabriel said, wiping his hands on his apron. They left faint red handprints like the frantic last flailings of a victim. Who could have known?
    “I’m telling you, Gabe,” she said, incurring his least favorite of her nicknames for him; he preferred ‘Riel pronounced “real” or Gall pronounced “gall.” “A tablespoon of olive oil. It gives the whole thing some lubrication.”
    “To most areas where knowledge of lubrication is key, I yield to your expertise. But olive oil on brie ? This isn’t fucking moz- zarella, Natasha!”
    “Hey now!” I said. Gabriel seemed unusually tense, even for a new recipe. “Do I have to separate you two?” They continued to glare at each other and it struck me that maybe there was something going on that I didn’t know about.
    “For God’s sake,” Kate said, and flounced across the kitchen. She picked up the Palatial Palate Cookbook and thumbed through the index. The two litigants stood stock-still–Gabriel arms akimbo, Natasha clutching the brie like Hamlet holding the skull, waiting for Kate to render her decision.