Size 12 Is Not Fat

3

Fortunately I’m spared from having to make any sort of reply to Mrs. Allington’s remark about my weight by the fact that my boss, Rachel Walcott, comes hurrying up to us just then, her patent leather slides clacking on the marble floor of the lobby.

“Heather,” Rachel says, when she sees me. “Thank you so much for coming.” She actually does look sort of relieved that I’m there, which makes me feel good. You know, that I really am needed, if only $23,500-a-year worth.

“Sure,” I say. “I’m so sorry. Was it—I mean, is it—someone we know?”

But Rachel just gives me a warning look—like “Don’t talk about family business in front of strangers,” the strangers being Mrs. Allington and Magda, cafeteria workers not being considered residence hall staff, and wives of presidents of the college DEFINITELY not being considered that way—and turns toward Mrs. Allington.

“Good morning, Mrs. Allington,” Rachel all but shouts, as if to an elderly person, though Mrs. Allington can’t be much more than sixty. “I’m so sorry about all this. Are you all right?”

Mrs. Allington is far from all right, but—even as upset as I am about the fat remark—I don’t want to blurt this out. She’s still, after all, the president’s wife.

Instead all I say is “Mrs. Allington isn’t feeling too well.”

I accompany the statement with a significant glance toward the planter Mrs. A. just heaved into, hoping Rachel will get the message. We haven’t worked together for all that long, Rachel and I. She was hired just a week or two before I was, to replace the director who’d quit right after Justine had been fired—but not out of solidarity with Justine, or anything. The director had quit because her husband had gotten a job as a forest ranger in Oregon.

I know. Forest ranger husband. Hmmm. I’d have quit to follow him, too.

But while Rachel is new to the live-in position of director of Fischer Hall, she’s not new to the field of higher education (which is what they call it when you’re involved in the counseling, but not the teaching, part of college life, or at least so I read in one of Justine’s files). The last dorm—I mean, residence hall—Rachel, a Yale grad, ran had been at Earlcrest College in Richmond, Indiana.

Rachel told me that it had been a bit of a culture shock, coming to New York City from a place like Richmond, where people don’t even have to lock their doors at night. But as far as I can tell, Rachel hasn’t exactly suffered any long-term hardships from her stint in the Hoosier heartland. She has a wardrobe any New York career gal would be happy to call her own, heavy on the Armani and the Manolos, which—considering her salary (not much more than mine, since directors get a free apartment in the building thrown in as part of their pay package)—is quite an accomplishment. Faithful weekly attendance of designer sample sales helps keep Rachel on the cutting edge of fashion. And her strict adherence to the Zone and two-hour daily workouts ensure that she stays a size 2, enabling her to fit into all those models’ castoffs.

Rachel says that if I stop eating so many carbs and spend a half hour on the StairMaster every day, I could easily get back down to a real size 8. And that this shouldn’t be a hardship for me, because you get free membership at the college’s gym as part of your benefits package.

Except that I’ve been to the college gym, and it’s scary. There are all these really skinny girls there, flinging their stick-like arms around in aerobics classes and yoga and stuff. Seriously, one of these days, one of them is going to put someone’s eye out.

Anyway, if I lose enough weight, Rachel says, I’ll definitely get a hot boyfriend, the way she’s planning to, just as soon as she finds a guy in the Village who isn’t gay, has a full set of hair, and makes at least a hundred thousand a year.

But how on earth could anyone ever give up cold sesame noodles? Even for a guy who makes a hundred thousand dollars a year?

Plus, um, as I frequently remind Rachel, size 12 is not fat. It is the size of the average American woman. Hello. And there are plenty of us (size 12s) who have boyfriends, thank you very much.

Not me, necessarily. But plenty of other girls my size, and even larger.

But though Rachel and I have different priorities—she wants a boyfriend; I’d just take a BA, at this point—and can’t seem to agree on what constitutes a meal—her, lettuce, no dressing; me, falafel, extra tahini, with a pita ’n’ hummus starter and maybe an ice cream sandwich for dessert—we get along okay, I guess. I mean, Rachel seems to understand the look I shoot her about Mrs. Allington, anyway.

“Mrs. Allington,” she says. “Let’s get you home, shall we? I’ll take you upstairs. Would that be all right, Mrs. Allington?”

Mrs. Allington nods weakly, her interest in my career change forgotten. Rachel takes the president’s wife by the arm as Pete, who has been hovering nearby, holds back a wave of firemen to make room for her and Mrs. A. on the elevator they’ve turned back on especially for her. I can’t help glancing nervously at the elevator’s interior as the doors open. What if there’s blood? I know they said they’d found her at the bottom of the shaft, but what if part of her was still on the elevator?

But there’s no blood that I can see. The elevator looks the same as ever, imitation mahogany paneling with brass trim, into which hundreds of undergraduates have scratched their initials or various swear words with the edges of their room keys.

As the elevator doors close, I hear Mrs. Allington say, very softly, “The birds.”

“God,” Magda says, as we watch the numbers above the elevator doors light up as the car moves toward the penthouse. “I hope she doesn’t throw up again in there.”

“Seriously,” I agree. That would make the ride up twenty flights pretty much suck.

Magda shakes herself, as though she’s thought of some thing unpleasant—most likely Mrs. A.’s vomit—and looks around. “It’s so quiet,” she says, hugging herself. “It hasn’t been this quiet around here since before all my little movie stars checked in.”

She’s right. For a building that houses so many young people—seven hundred, most still in their teens—the lobby is strangely still just then. No one is grumbling about the length of time it takes the student workers to sort the mail (approximately seven hours. I’d heard that Justine could get them to do it in under two. Sometimes I wonder if maybe Justine had some sort of secret pact with Satan); no one is complaining about the broken change machines down in the game room; no one is Rollerblading on the marble floors; no one is arguing with Pete over the guest sign-in policy.

Not that there isn’t anybody around. The lobby is jumping. Cops, firemen, college officials, campus security guards in their baby blue uniforms, and a smattering of students—all resident assistants—are milling around the mahogany and marble lobby, grim-faced…

… but silent. Absolutely silent.

“Pete,” I say, going up to the guard at the security desk. “Do you know who it was?”

The security guards know everything that goes on in the buildings they work in. They can’t help it. It’s all there, on the monitors in front of them, from the students who smoke in the stairwells, to the deans who pick their noses in the elevators, to the librarians who have sex in the study carrels…

Dishy stuff.

“Of course.” Pete, as usual, is keeping one eye on the lobby and the other on the many television monitors on his desk, each showing a different part of the dorm (I mean, residence hall), from the entranceway to the Allingtons’ penthouse apartment, to the laundry room in the basement.

“Well?” Magda looks anxious. “Who was it?”

Pete, with a cautious glance at the reception desk across the way to make sure the student workers aren’t eavesdropping, says, “Kellogg. Elizabeth. Freshman.”

I feel a spurt of relief. I have never heard of her.

Then I berate myself for feeling that way. She’s still a dead eighteen-year-old, whether she was one of my student workers, or not!

“How did it happen?” I ask.

Pete gives me a sarcastic look. “How do you think?”

“But,” I say. I can’t help it. Something is really confusing me. “Girls don’t do that. Elevator surf, I mean.”

“This one did.” Pete shrugs.

“Why would she do something like that?” Magda wants to know. “Something so stupid? Was she on drugs?”

“How should I know?” Pete seems annoyed by our barrage of questions, but I know it is only because he is as freaked as we are. Which is weird, because you’d think he’s seen it all: He’s been working at the college for twenty years. Like me, he’d taken the job for the benefits: A widower, he has four children who are assured of a great—and free—college education, which is the main reason he’d gone to work for an academic institution after a knee injury got him assigned to permanent desk duty in the NYPD. His oldest, Nancy, wants to be a pediatrician.

But that doesn’t keep Pete’s face from turning beet red every time one of the students, bitter over not being allowed into the building with their state-of-the-art halogen lamps (fire hazard), refers to him as a “rent-a-cop.” Which isn’t fair, because Pete is really, really good at his job. The only time pizza delivery guys ever make it inside Fischer Hall to stick menus under everyone’s door is when Pete’s not on duty.

Not that he doesn’t have the biggest heart in the world. When kids come down from their rooms, disgustedly holding glue traps on which live mice are trapped, Pete has been known to take the traps out to the park and pour oil onto them to free their little paws and let them go. He can’t stand the idea of anyone—or anything—dying on his watch.

“Coroner’ll run tests for alcohol and drugs, I’m sure,” he says, trying to sound casual, and failing. “If he ever gets here, that is.”

I’m horrified.

“You mean she… she’s still here? I mean, it—the body?”

Pete nods. “Downstairs. Bottom of the elevator shaft. That’s where they found her.”

“That’s where who found her?” I ask.

“The fire department,” Pete says. “When someone reported seeing her.”

“Seeing her fall?”

“No. Seeing her lying there. Someone looked down the crack—you know, between the floor and the elevator car—and saw her.”

I feel shaken. “You mean nobody reported it when it happened? The people who were with her?”

“What people?” Pete wants to know.

“The people she was elevator surfing with,” I say. “She had to be with someone. Nobody plays that stupid game alone. They didn’t come down to report it?”

“Nobody said nothing to me,” Pete says, “until this morning when a kid saw her through the crack.”

I am appalled.

“You mean she could have been lying down there for hours?” I ask, my voice cracking a little.

“Not alive,” Pete says, getting my drift right away. “She landed headfirst.”

“Santa Maria,” Magda says, and crosses herself.

I am only slightly less appalled. “So… then how’d they know who it was?”

“Had her school ID in her pocket,” Pete explains.

“Well, at least she was thinking ahead,” Magda says.

“Magda!” I’m shocked, but Magda just shrugs.

“It’s true. If you are going to play such a stupid game, at least keep ID on you, so they can identify your body later, right?”

Before either Pete or I can reply, Gerald, the dining director, comes popping out of the cafeteria, looking for his wayward cashier.

“Magda,” he says, when he finally spots her. “Whadduyadoing? Cops said they’re gonna let us open up again any minute and I got no one on the register.”

“Oh, I’ll be right there, honey,” Magda calls to him. Then, as soon as he’s stomped out of earshot, she adds, “Dickhead.” Then, with an apologetic waggle of her nails at Pete and me, Magda goes back to her seat behind the cash register in the student cafeteria around the corner from the guard’s desk.

“Heather?”

I look around, and see one of the student workers at the reception desk gesturing to me desperately. The reception desk is the hub of the building, where the residents’ mail is sorted, where visitors can call up to their friends’ rooms, and where all building emergencies are supposed to be reported. One of my first duties after being hired had been to type up a long list of phone numbers that the reception desk employees were to refer to in the event of an emergency of any kind (apparently, Justine had been too busy using college funds to buy ceramic heaters for all of her friends ever to get around to this).

Fire? The number for the fire station was listed.

Rape? The number for the campus’s rape hotline was listed.

Theft? The number for the Sixth Precinct.

People falling off the top of one of the elevators? There’s no number for that.

“Heather.” The student worker, Tina, sounds as whiny today as she did the first day I met her, when I told her she couldn’t put people on hold while she finished the round of Tetris she was playing on her Game Boy (Justine had never had a problem with this, I was told). “When’re they gonna get rid of that girl’s body? I’m losing it, knowing she’s, like, still DOWN there.”

“We saw her roommate.” Brad—the guy with the misfortune to be the resident assistant on duty this weekend, meaning he has to stay in the building at all times, in case he’s needed… like in the event of a student death—drops his voice conspiratorially as he leans across the desk toward me. “She said she didn’t even know Beth—that’s the dead girl—she said she didn’t even know Bethknew about surfing. She said she had no idea Beth hung out with that crowd. She said Beth was kindapreppie.”

“Well,” I say, lamely. I can tell the kids are looking for some kind of words of comfort from me. But what do I know about helping kids cope with the death of a classmate? I’m as freaked as either one of them. “I guess it just goes to show you never really quite know someone as well as you think you do, doesn’t it?”

“Yeah, but going for a joyride on top of an elevator?” Tina shakes her head. “She musta been crazy.”

“Prozac candidate,” Brad somberly agrees, exhibiting some of that sensitivity training the housing department has drilled so hard into their RAs’ heads.

“Heather?”

I turn to see Rachel’s graduate assistant, Sarah, coming toward me, a thick file in her hands. Garbed as always in the height of New York College graduate student chic—overalls and Uggs—she grabs my arm and squeezes.

“Ohmigod,” Sarah says, making no attempt whatsoever to lower her voice so that it isn’t audible to everyone on the entire first floor. “Can you believe it? The phones are ringing off the hook back in the office. All these parents are calling to make sure it wasn’t their kid. But Rachel says we can’t confirm the deceased’s identity until the coroner arrives. Even though we know who it is. I mean, Rachel had me get her file and told me to give it to Dr. Flynn. And would you look at this file?”

Sarah waves the thickly packed manila file. Elizabeth Kellogg had a record in the hall director’s office, which means that she’d either gotten in trouble for something or been ill at some point during the school year…

… which is odd, because Elizabeth was a freshman, and the fall semester had only just begun.

“Getta loada this.” Sarah is eager to share all she knows with me, Brad, and Tina. The latter two are listening to her with wide eyes. Pete, over at the guard’s desk, is acting like he’s busy watching his monitors. But I know he’s listening, too. “Her mother called Rachel, all bent out of shape because we allow residents to have any guests they want, and she didn’t want Elizabeth to be able to sign in boys. Apparently Mom expected her daughter to remain a virgin until marriage. She wanted Rachel to make it so that Elizabeth was only to be allowed to sign in girls. Obviously there are issues at home, but whatever—”

It’s the job of the GA—or graduate assistant—to assist the director in the day-to-day operations of the residence hall. In return, GAs receive free room and board and practical experience in higher education, which is generally their chosen field.

Sarah’s getting a lot more practical experience in the field here in Fischer Hall than she’d bargained on, what with a dead girl and all.

“Clearly there was some major mother-daughter rivalry going on there,” Sarah informs us. “I mean, you could tell Mrs. Kellogg was jealous because her looks are fading while her daughter’s—”

Sarah’s undergrad degree is in sociology. Sarah thinks that I suffer from low esteem. She told me this the day she met me, at check-in two weeks earlier, when she went to shake my hand, then cried, “Oh my God, you’re that Heather Wells?”

When I admitted that I was, then told her—when she asked what on earth I was doing working in a college residence hall (unlike me, Sarah never messes up and calls it a dorm)—that I was hoping to get a BA one of these days, she said, “You don’t need to go to college. What you need to work on are your abandonment issues and the feelings of inadequacy you must feel for being dropped from your label and robbed by your mother.”

Which is kind of funny, since what I feel I need to work on most are my feelings of dislike for Sarah.

Fortunately Dr. Flynn, the housing department’s on-staff psychologist, comes hurtling toward us just then, his briefcase overflowing with paperwork.

“Is that the deceased’s file?” he demands, by way of greeting. “I’d like to see it before I talk to the roommate and call the parents.”

Sarah hands him the file. As Dr. Flynn flips through it, he suddenly wrinkles his nose, then asks, “What is that smell?”

“Um,” I say. “Mrs. Allington sort of—well, she, um… ”

“She yorked,” Brad says. “In the planter over there.”

Dr. Flynn sighs. “Not again.” His cell phone chimes, and he says, “Excuse me,” and reaches for it.

At the same moment, the reception desk phone rings. Everyone looks down at it. When no one else reaches for it, I do.

“Fischer Hall,” I say.

The voice on the other end of the phone isn’t one I recognize.

“Yes, is this that dormitory located on Washington Square West?”

“This is a residence hall, yes,” I reply, remembering, for once, my training.

“I was wondering if I could speak to someone about the tragedy that occurred there earlier today,” says the unfamiliar voice.

Tragedy?I immediately become suspicious.

“Are you a reporter?” I ask. At this point in my life, I can sniff them out a mile away.

“Well, yes, I’m with the Post— ”

“Then you’ll have to get in touch with the Press Relations Department. No one here has any comment. Good-bye.” I slam down the receiver.

Brad and Tina are staring at me.

“Wow,” Brad says. “You’re good.”

Sarah gives her glasses a push, since they’ve started to slide down her nose.

“She ought to be,” she says. “Considering what she’s had to deal with. The paparazzi wasn’t exactly kind, were they, Heather? Especially when you walked in and found Jordan Cartwright receiving fellatio from… who was it? Oh yes. Tania Trace.”

“Wow,” I say, gazing at Sarah with genuine wonder. “You really put that photographic memory of yours to good use, don’t you, Sarah?”

Sarah smiles modestly while Tina’s jaw drops.

“Heather, you went out with Jordan Cartwright?” she cries.

“You caught him getting head from Tania Trace?” Brad looks as happy as if someone’s just dropped a hundred-dollar bill in his lap.

“Um,” I say. It’s not like I have much of a choice. They can easily Google it. “Yeah. It was a long time ago.”

Then I excuse myself to go search for a soda, hoping a combined jolt of caffeine and artificial sweeteners might make me feel less like causing there to be yet another death among the building’s student population.