Mr. Peanut Read Free

voice recorded. Or catching sight of yourself in the background of a photograph. Or passing yourself on a television screen in an electronics storefront—a peep of a view as your image walks toward you. For you are always a secret to yourself, Hastroll thought. But there are glimpses and hints and clues.
    Sheppard entered the interrogation room and sat directly across from Pepin.
    “Don’t even ask me,” Pepin cried. “I didn’t kill my wife!”

 
    A dmittedly, Alice’s diet was different this time.
    In the past they required various kinds of equipment, ranging from the usual to the late-night television commercial—Visa, Amex, MasterCard accepted. The nonsense approach, David called it. There were pills and special sponges, protein shakes and magic reducing belts: the usual hokum, which he purchased for her willingly. “I feel good about this one, David,” she said. “I think this will do the trick.” Then she handed him the 800-number and left the room to avoid his expression. A package arrived in seven to ten business days.
    With the machines, assembly was often required. And ultimately, David was called into the living room to Alice’s rescue, where she’d be sitting in the middle of a pile of locking screws, bolts, boards, wheels, and wrapped pieces of metal, the parts numbered and lettered (5Q, F9) spread in a circle around her as if she were ground zero, all of which David spent the next few hours collecting and recombining.
    From this chaos there emerged a contraption, a Frankensteinian engine, oddly insectlike, exoskeletal, that always included a seat of some kind and to which Alice attached her hands, hips, or bound her feet; hung upside down from or spun around in; the machine, as she pumped, pressed, or pedaled, threatening to evolve from exercise station to transportation and inevitably shaking itself apart, the whole process reminding David of old films of crazy planes and whirlybirds—the ones before the Wright brothers—that fell from cliffs, ramps, or towers, or simply exploded with the effort to fly.
    The cardiovascular eliminated, Alice paid meticulous attention to her diet. She cut out snacks, carbs, and empty calories and was generally miserable, but she lost weight quickly. Because of her size, she shed her first ten pounds within two weeks. She became preoccupied, obsessed, and gave David regular reports. She knew the time, to the minute, of her bowel movements. Assessing their curly and oblong heft, she could guess their approximate weight. At work, she walked the stairs instead of riding the elevator, took soy milk instead of cream in her coffee. She ate the apples, after checking them for razors, that her delinquent and schizophrenic students left on her desk. Her sex drive disappeared; she refused to be touched,and when she asked David what he thought of her progress—two months in, twenty-three pounds lost—he answered her encouragingly, because the change in her body was before-and-after dramatic. With glee, she pulled her pants away from her waist and punched extra holes in her belts. She felt thin, she said. But David was secretly pessimistic; in fact, he was certain she would fail. In one of their closets were boxes of her winter clothes, and around the same time every fall she had David bring them down from the top shelves.
    “All of them?” he asked from the stepladder.
    “Of course all of them,” she answered from below. The dresses were from thinner days, outdated—Alice’s fashions were cyclical—and in the mornings, she modeled for him while he ate his breakfast, doing quick little turns on the tile.
    “Isn’t this dress funny?” she said, pinching the cloth in her fingers, pulling the skirt out wide and triangular, spreading the fabric like a pair of wings. David couldn’t help but laugh, a chuckle Alice thought was of joy, and she came over to him, took his head in her hands, clutching his hair and pressing his face into her chest. “This is it,” she