Everything to Lose

         It all started at a garage sale. I like garage sales. They are a substitute for social life, and they help me work out my urge to shop. I prefer something with a history to something with the impersonal smell of newness. I'd like to write a novel some day, tracing the stories that go with different items at a garage sale. But then, everybody wants to write a novel, and hardly anyone ever does. And even if they do, it's almost impossible to get into print. I know: I work for a publisher, Amber Unicorn Press. It's just a small enterprise, and God knows they don't generate much money for authors, but nonetheless the manuscripts keep pouring in and the slush pile grows and grows. It just sits there, waiting for something to happen. Sort of like my life was.

           As I said, I was poking around at a garage sale when I saw Charlene Harrison on her knees beside one of the tables, taking a bunch of dusty old bottles out of a wooden tub. Charlene is one of the garage sale regulars, and wherever she goes, she finds something to examine. I think she just likes to take things apart. After she got all the bottles out, she looked the tub over and decided she didn't want it. So she just left everything there, blocking the way. That's Charlene.

           Well, I'm different. As soon as I saw that mess, I went over and started putting the bottles back in the tub. They were really dusty, and I couldn't see what kind of bottles they were.  But one stood out because it was round with a short neck, like a Christmas tree ball. There was some sort of raised design on it. And it was sealed with wax.

           I rubbed some of the dirt off with my T-shirt. The bottle was blue, and even though it was filthy, I could see a weird sort of opalescence playing over it, almost as if it were alive. I had no place to put it and no earthly use for it, but I knew it had to be mine. Fortunately my mother wasn't around to give me the lecture about dragging useless junk home. 

           I walked over to the lady with the cash box. 

           "How much for this bottle?"

           "You can have the whole tubful for two bucks."

           :"I just want this one."

           She looked at me reproachfully. "I really wanted to get rid of them all. I cleaned out my basement, and I don't want to have to lug them back down."

           "Well, you'll have one less if you sell me this one," I pointed out. "How much?"

           "A dollar."

           I knew I could have bargained her down to fifty cents or even a quarter, but I gave her a loonie to show her I was sorry she might have to carry that tub back down her basement stairs.

            As I was trudging up the three flights of stairs to my apartment with my two bulging shopping bags, I was already regretting my impulsiveness. I didn't need another throw pillow or more plastic containers.  But the bottle was different.   I was burning with curiosity about that bottle.

           I stuffed the shopping bags into my closet and washed the bottle in the kitchen sink. I had to change the water three times, but it was worth it. It was the most beautiful piece of glass I had ever seen. Dark blue, with swirling colours that kept changing. The sort of thing I imagine in fairy tales.

           I shoved one of my ceramic dogs into a dresser drawer and put the bottle on top of the curio cabinet under the window. The light shone through it and colours flooded the whole room.  I caught myself singing as I showered and changed and rummaged through the fridge for a snack. I settled down on the couch with chips and coke and turned on the TV. I punched the remote, looking for something to get involved in, but I was too restless. My eyes kept wandering to the bottle.

           For one thing, the opalescence fascinated me. And then there was the raised design--it looked like a man and a woman in a flowery garden, but I couldn't figure out what they were doing. Most intriguing of all, the bottle was sealed.

           I looked through it, shook it, even listened to it. It seemed to be empty. But I knew I would never be satisfied until I pried the cork out and looked inside. Even if it ruined my bottle, I had to know for sure.
 
          Give me credit--I held out for two days before I finally scraped off the wax and started working on the cork. It was old and brittle, and bits broke off twice, but I finally worked the corkscrew all the way through it and started to pull. After some huffing and puffing on my part, it came out with a loud pop, and multicolored smoke started pouring out. 

           I sprawled back onto the couch, wondering if this was some sort of bomb or booby trap. I thought of running out and calling 911. But I was too curious.

           The smoke swirled around and thickened and became a creature. A female creature about three feet high, wearing a long green gown and a tiara, rather like Scarlett O'Hara going to a ball. She was holding what looked like a magic wand with a star on it.

           Obviously, the bottle contained some sort of hallucinogen. I levered myself to my feet and tried to flee into fresh air, but I tripped over the empty coke can I had left on the floor beside the couch, and sprawled ungracefully on the rug. The creature laughed a silvery laugh.

           "It's all right--I won't hurt you."

           I picked myself up gingerly and put the coke can on the coffee table.  "Are you a genie?" I asked.

           "A genie? Heavens, no. I'm a water sprite. Can't you tell?" 

           She twirled around, and a shower of sparks flowed from the tip of her wand.

           "Sprites don't live in bottles," I said. I felt pretty silly, arguing with a figment of my imagination.

           "Shows how much you know," she said. "What year is it?"

           "1996."

           "1996? Wow! I've got a lot of catching up to do."

           "How long have you been in there?"

           "Since 1904."

           "1904! And nobody ever broke the seal on the bottle?"

           "Nobody," she said sadly. "But never mind. I'm really looking forward to exploring."

           "There's been a lot of changes," I warned her.

           "I know," she said. "I got some reports from the others."

           "There are others?" I asked. "Why didn't they rescue you?"

           "Against the rules. I was put here fair and square, and I had to wait for a human to release me."

           "How did you get put in there?"

           "It's a game we play. The water sprites and the air sprites have been competing for centuries. It keeps us occupied."

           "You mean there are other sprites sealed in bottles?" I asked incredulously.

           She shrugged. "Bottles. Tins.  Even balloons, sometimes. Anything that can be sealed. But I've got to be going. What's your wish?"
          
 "Huh?"

           "You get a wish," she explained. "For setting me free."

           "I thought it was three wishes."

           "Only in the fairy tales. Actually, I'm more generous than most. I have a follow-up program. I'll come back in a year and grant you another wish, just in case the first one didn't work out satisfactorily. So, what's your wish?"

           I hesitated. There was no doubt in my mind what my wish was. I wished it every morning when I looked in the mirror, and wished it again just before I went to sleep, and every hour in between. I wanted to be thin.

           I'd always been a bit on the chunky side, but I was doing not too badly until I was twenty-two and broke up with George Masterson. After that I just let myself go, and during the next three years I ate and ate and gained eighty pounds. No matter how much I fixed myself up, nothing could hide the fact that I was five foot four in all directions. But was I going to embarrass myself by saying that out loud to an imaginary water sprite? On the other hand, suppose, just suppose she was real and could actually grant my wish? 

           "I want to lose eighty pounds" I said. Just in case. 

           "Okay," she said. She raised her wand.

           "Stop!" I yelped. "Not all at once. I can't show up at work tomorrow eighty pounds lighter. They'll put me in the National Enquirer."

           She considered. "Good point. I'll fix it so you finish just before I come back for the follow-up. How about a big loss the first month, and then we sort of taper off?"

           "Okay," I said.

           She waved her wand again, and more sparks trailed from it. This time, though, they came at me. They tickled, like champagne bubbles.

           "Done," she said. "What's the date today?"

           I glanced at the calendar. "August 4."

           "All right. I'll be back in exactly a year. Mark it on your calendar."

           She began to decompose into smoke again.

           "Wait!" I pleaded.

           She re-composed. "Yes?"

           "What's your name?" If she had a name, maybe she wasn't imaginary after all.

           She smiled. "You couldn't pronounce it. But you can call me Eleanor."

           "Eleanor--that design on the bottle. What are they doing?"

           She grinned. "That's a position from the Kama Sutra.  My favourite position, to be exact."

           I swallowed hard. "People actually make love tangled up like that?"

           "Not too many," she said regretfully. "Very few males have enough stamina."

           My fantasy was really getting out of hand.

           "Eleanor--how am I supposed to know whether you're real?"

           "Silly. You'll know when your wish comes true." Instead of dissolving again, she just zapped out.  The air in the room cleared instantly. The bottle lay on the rug where I had dropped it. It was the same blue colour, and the design was still there in all its convoluted glory, but the opalescence was gone.

           I put it on the curio cabinet and went for a walk.  Obviously, I had just experienced a serious psychotic episode. I thought about the consequences of turning myself in, and decided to wait a while before doing anything so rash. In the meantime, I tried to figure out the deep psychological implications of my fantasy. Maybe it was time I got another boyfriend.

           When I got home, I looked at the design on the bottle again. At least that was real, not a figment of my feverish imagination. Or was I still hallucinating? I wondered if Eleanor would ever find a male with enough stamina.

           For a few delicious moments, I imagined what it would be like doing it with Alfonso. He was the new junior editor at the Amber Unicorn, the publishing company where I worked. He was a dream walking. Six feet of sculptured muscles, silky hair, and a chiselled face to die for.

           "Eleanor is not real," I said out loud, to convince myself. "And anyway, water sprites don't have sex--or do they?"

           I desperately wanted to phone John Burgess, my best friend, to discuss the whole thing with him and ask his advice. He'd been my one-man support group in every one of my crises since I was eight. We had been drawn together at school because we were both shy. The kids called me "Four Eyes" and him "Dopey" because he stuttered, and they did awful things to our lunch boxes and gym clothes. We partnered for everything because nobody else wanted us. In time, I got contact lenses and he got speech therapy and a university degree. Our lives improved substantially, but our closeness remained. But this would be too much, even for him. John was too level-headed to believe in water sprites. 

           I was pretty nervous for the next two weeks, wondering whether I would have more hallucinations. But nothing unusual happened, and I convinced myself that the whole thing must have been a vivid dream. Then I noticed that my clothes were becoming looser.

            I dug the bathroom scales out from under a mess of towels and gently eased myself onto them. That last time I had worked up enough nerve to do that, I had weighed 220 pounds. Now I weighed 207.

           "It's the stress," I reassured myself. Or maybe I had forgotten what my weight was. 

           Two weeks later, I was down to 194, and people were starting to notice. I decided I had to do something to provide a logical explanation, so I joined a diet club. Everyone was very sweet and encouraging, and gave me diet sheets, fat-free recipes, calorie counters, and workout schedules. They told me their ups and downs, and preached to me about the evils of saturated fats and chemical additives. A couple of them invited me out for doughnuts after the meeting, to reward themselves for a good weigh-in. It was difficult to follow the conversation when they lapsed into their food exchange jargon, but it felt good to have a social life again. 

           I started working out at the gym with a couple of the girls from the diet club. I was sore for a few days, and then it started to feel good. When had I lost another ten pounds and my trainer started looking down my cleavage, I started branching out.. I joined a couple of clubs and watched a lot less TV. 

           The only thing that was not going well was my relationship with John. Naturally, he noticed I losing weight, and asked about it.  I wanted desperately to tell him about Eleanor, but I couldn't stand the thought of having him think I was crazy. Every time I was with him, I thought of Eleanor and how much I wanted to tell him. It was easier to avoid him, especially with my new improved social life,

           By Christmas, I weighed in at 180 pounds, and I was a party animal. I was still wearing fat ladies' clothes, but they were smaller and newer than the ones I had before. I drank a lot and flirted with Alfonzo every time I saw him, but he did not seem to notice.

           In April, I reached 160 pounds, the goal weight the doctor had set. There was a little flurry of celebration at the diet club, but a number of women were decidedly cooler in their attitude. The weight recorder at the diet club sighed with exasperation every time she weighed me, and I wished I could gain a little occasionally, just to keep her happy. She was on her upper limit, and if she gained any more, she would lose her job as weight recorder. I invited her to come and work out, but she said that building muscle would cause her to gain weight. I tried to tell her it was healthy weight, but she started smoking instead.

           I kept losing, and she started lecturing me on the dangers of anorexia. Then she was replaced by another woman with a gaunt horse face who informed me gleefully that I was five pounds below my goal weight, and if I lost any more I would have to leave the group and get some therapy for my eating disorder. The doctor had probably thought he was encouraging me by setting my goal weight so high. But then, how could he know about Eleanor?  Every time I looked at that blue bottle, I knew I was going to lose every one of those 80 pounds.

           In June, I was kicked out of the group for being too thin, but I didn't mind. Nobody there was particularly friendly any more. I bought myself a dynamite jogging outfit and started jogging on the path Alfonso usually used. With a little fine-tuning of my schedule, I managed to see him almost every day after work. If I didn't see him, I would sink into depression for the rest of the day, and I would think of phoning John and unloading. But we were barely speaking now. When he phoned me and asked me to go jogging with him, I told him some ridiculous lie and I could tell he didn't believe me. But I had to be alone just in case I bumped into Alfonso.

           In July, the weather got hot, and Alfonso started swimming instead of jogging. I got my bikini line waxed and my hair lightened and I found a suit that showed just about everything. I was down to 129 pounds, even less than I had asked Eleanor for, and all the working out had put those pounds in exactly the right places. Men stared at me now, and I had all the dates I could fit into my schedule. But the only way I could get turned on was by thinking about Alfonso.

           John came swimming too, but I ignored him. I didn't want Alfonso to see that we were close, in case he got the wrong idea. I tried everything I could think of to get his attention, and wondered whether he still saw 220 pounds when he looked at me. But it finally paid off.

           On July 28, 1997, Alfonso asked me to go to a party at his place. I floated home and wrote VICTORY on the July 28 square of my calendar in big red letters. I was planning to celebrate The-First-Time-Alfonso-Asked-Me-Out Day for the rest of my life.

           The Friday of the party, I made up something about having to clear up some legal matters, and left work early. I spent two hundred dollars on a herbal wrap and hair and make-up and manicure and pedicure and sensual massage to make me irresistible. I slipped on a tiny black dress and went to Alfonso's by cab, just in case he asked me to stay the night. George had dumped me because I had refused to surrender my virginity to him. I had always regretted my decision, but now I could see it was gloriously right. I was meant to bestow this gift on a worthier champion.

           I was the first to arrive. Alfonso served me rye and ginger ale in a plastic beer glass and amused himself by tossing peanuts down my cleavage. I wondered how I could have failed to notice that he was incapable of any kind of intelligent conversation. An hour later, it had become painfully obvious that nobody else was coming.  I was the party.

           I was going to call a cab, but he tore the phone out of my hand. He would take me home, he said, when he was good and ready, and not before. He started pawing at the zipper of my dress. If he hadn't been so drunk, I would have lost my virginity in a tasteless way that I had never imagined in my fantasies. He threw up on me instead. I got away while he was going to the bathroom.

           I cried a lot when I got home and thought longingly of John and all the fun we missed because I was hung up on Alfonso. I phoned John to apologize and got the answering machine and hung up before the beep. He was probably out on a date, and it served me right.

           I slept all day Saturday, and in the evening I went to another party, a real one this time. I was hoping John would be there, but he wasn't. Alfonso was, large as life and twice as obnoxious.  The way he remembered it, we had a great night together, and he made sure everyone knew. I looked around desperately for someone else to partner with, but they were all respectful of Alfonso's territory. Those muscles of his weren't just for show. I kept drinking and drinking, and in the end it was more bearable and I let him paw me. Fortunately, I was still sober enough to say no when he offered me a ride home. I left my car parked where it was and took a cab.

          I barely made up those three flights of stairs. Almost as soon as I stepped inside my apartment, I started throwing up. I vomited and vomited. The dizziness cleared a little, but the room kept spinning every time I lay down. I made myself a cup of herbal tea and regurgitated that. Not even flat pop would stay down. Long after I stopped trying to drink anything, I kept retching and retching until my stomach muscles were in agony.

           At two-thirty in the morning, I phoned John. I was ashamed to do it, but I couldn't think of anyone else who would listen to me at that hour. I told him I was dying and asked him to take me to the hospital.

           He came right over and had no trouble diagnosing my condition. He tried to talk me out of going to the hospital, but I insisted. I threw up in his car on the way over, and apologized profusely.

           They dropped me to the bottom of the triage list, and I didn't see a doctor until five. By that time I had stopped vomiting and fallen asleep on John's shoulder. The doctor had the nurse give me an anti-nauseant suppository and told me I'd be fine in a day or two. By that time I was sober enough to realize what a complete fool I had been.

           I fell asleep in my clothes and when I woke up it was almost evening and I was terribly, terribly lonely. I phoned John and he came and I told him what a jerk Alfonso was and I told him I was scared of the dark and he spent the night on the couch. The next morning, I phoned in sick and pleaded with him to do the same.

           "I have a responsibility to my kids," he said. He's a teacher, and he talks about those kids as if he had personally fathered them all.

           I asked him to come back after school. He told me he had a date. I started to cry again and he said he would break it. I spent the rest of the day feeling guilty. But I needed him.

            When I turned the calendar from July to August, I saw the red circle around August 4. This was the day of Eleanor's follow-up visit. 

           I almost phoned John at school to tell him not to come. Then I realized that if he could see Eleanor, it would mean I wasn't crazy. If he couldn't, well...I would just ignore her and hope she went away. Or I'd ask John to help me find a good shrink. Anyway, it was unlikely that she would show up at all. There was no way Eleanor could be real--except for the inescapable fact that I now weighed 129 pounds. My wish had been granted, and more.

           I took a bath and fixed myself up and made a salad and my mother's famous steak and potato casserole. I owed John. I had kept him up all night on Saturday watching me barf, and I screwed up his plans for tonight. Even after I pulled away from him and lied to him and ignored him for months, he was still my best friend.

           I tried to apologize to him over dinner, but he said it was all right. I could tell he had been badly hurt, and he didn't want to open up about it. I finally decided I had to tell him about Eleanor.

            If he thought I was crazy, he didn't say it out loud. I told him how awful it was to spend every waking hour feeling put down because I was fat, and how equally awful it was to have women lecture me for being too thin and men grab at me just because I had big boobs. I told him Alfonzo had the intelligence of a retarded slug, and then I started crying and told him that I was just as dumb as Alfonzo about the things that really mattered. I showed him the bottle on my curio cabinet and explained how the whole thing had happened. He looked at the design very carefully and asked what the man and woman were supposed to be doing and I told him it was Eleanor's favourite position in the Kama Sutra.  He said he couldn't imagine how any man would be flexible enough to get into that position or have enough stamina to stay in it long enough. I said maybe that proved that Eleanor was a fantasy. He scratched his head and said the bottle was real enough, and so was the fact that I had lost a lot of weight, and he was going to keep an open mind. 

           He said he would like to hang around and see if Eaeanor showed up. That was fine with me. We sat on the couch and pretty soon we were talking like in the old days. Then suddenly we were kissing and it was better than anything I had ever imagined with Alfonso.

           John untangled himself very slowly, breathing just a little heavily, and looked at his watch. It was almost midnight and he had to work in the morning. Eleanor or no Eleanor, it was time to go home.

           I let him out, feeling all fuzzy and happier than I had for years. I closed the door. I reached for the chain to put it on. I decided I couldn't just let John go as if nothing had happened. Instead of locking the door, I opened and looked down the hall. He was not quite at the stairwell.

           "John!" I said as loudly as I dared. I didn't want any other tenants storming out to see what the noise was.

           He didn't hear me. I sprinted down the hall and yelled into the stair well. "John!"

           He stopped and looked up.

           "John, please stay with me tonight."

           He came up the stairs and stood beside me. "On the couch?" he asked.

           "No," I said.

           He shuffled uncomfortably and cleared his throat. "I've read quite a few sex manuals to appear knowledgeable, but I haven't actually...."

           I took his hand. "Me neither. You don't happen to have one of those books in your car?"

           He laughed, and I knew the hurt was gone. "Maybe some things are better learned by experience."

           We had to wake up the building manager because my door had closed and we were locked out, but that didn't dampen our enthusiasm. We were so involved with each other that nothing else seemed to matter.

           We had figured out the basics fairly well and were conducting a review when Eleanor arrived. I was completely caught off guard.

           "What do you mean, waltzing in at this hour? Where in the hell have you been?" I scolded, sitting up and pulling the bedspread over me. 

           Eleanor no longer looked like Scarlett O'Hara. She was wearing a micromini black leather skirt and a silver lame crop top and a silver ring studded with rubies beside her navel. She had removed the star from her wand and was using it as a cigarette holder. I could tell by the way John was staring that he could see her too.

           "Eleanor," I said, moderating my tone as best I could, "this is my friend John.  John....I've told you about Eleanor."

           "I go by Zizi now," she informed us.

           "G-g-glad to meet you," John managed to say.

           Eleanor/Zizi looked tousled and more than a little pleased with herself. "I don't have much time," she said. 

           "You mean you found someone with enough stamina for your favourite position?" I blurted out.

           She grinned. "Looks like you did, too."

           "That remains to be seen," I said stiffly.

           She considered John carefully. "Wiry types like him usually have a lot of stamina. Would you like me to come back later and show you?"

           "No!" we both said definitely. "We don't want to be rude," John said, "but some things are better learned by experience." He took my hand and squeezed it, and I put my head on his shoulder.

           "So--what's your wish?"

           I bit my lip. "I want you to put me back the way I was."

           John stared at me. "Why? I thought you hated being fat."

           A painful tear squeezed out of one of my eyes. "I did. But when I got thin, I became vain and self-centred and almost lost my best friend."
           He put his arm around me. "But that's all over--isn't it?"

           "I hope so." I snuggled into him.

           "You know I'll love you any size you are, but it seems silly to waste a wish on this," he said. "If it's really something you want to do, it won't take much effort to eat yourself back to the way you were."

           "Besides," Zizi chipped in, "I can't reverse the wish. I didn't grant it."

           "What do you mean?" I asked.

           "I gave you a little help with the first twenty pounds, but then you started tearing around and working out and eating all that healthy food they told you about at the diet club. You lost that weight on your own."

           I stared. "You mean I did something I didn't think I could do without trying because I believed in a magic wish?"

           "Something like that," Zizi said.

           "Makes perfect psychological sense," John said. Pop psychology is one of his hobbies. "Lots of people lose weight when they stop dieting."

           "So what's your wish?" Zizi asked again.

           For the life of me, I couldn't think of anything. I was too happy.

           "What do you want more than anything in the world?" Zizi prodded.

           "I want to marry John." I blurted it out without thinking, and as soon as I heard myself say it, I knew it was the truth.

           She raised her cigarette holder.

           "Belay that order!" John interrupted. He watches a lot of Star Trek. "We don't need to waste a wish on that either. Darling Four-Eyes, will you marry me?"

           "Yes, Dopey," I breathed. "Oh yes."

           "Four-Eyes? Dopey?" Zizi asked. "Are these normal terms of endearment for your species?"

           "Just an inside joke," I said.  "Now that I've got everything I want, I'm giving my second wish to John as an unofficial engagement present."

           "Very nice," Zizi said. "Unselfish. So what will it be, John? Fame? Fortune? Extra Stamina?"

           "I read a lot of fairy tales," John said. "And I've noticed that those kinds of wishes usually backfire. So I'll try something simpler. My wish is that the two of us will always tell each other the truth, and always trust each other no matter what. Or is that two wishes?" he asked anxiously.

           Zizi looked misty-eyed. "Well, it's stretching the point. But it's so beautiful I'd hate myself if I didn't grant it."

           She waved her cigarette holder and the champagne bubble sparks floated over us deliciously.

           "Do you mind if I take the bottle?" she asked. "I want to show Leo the picture. There's a couple of things he doesn't quite understand."

           "Go ahead," I said. "It could be years before we've reached that level of expertise."

           "I could always get the book out of the library," John volunteered helpfully.

           After Zizi zapped out, we continued where we had left off. A half hour later, he was telling me I was the most beautiful woman in the world. I told him there was no one I would rather have than him. And we believed each other.

           When we got up in the morning, the bottle was gone.

          John and I still go treasure-hunting at garage sales together, poking around and holding hands and saying hi to the regulars who smile at us and ask us how the kids and grandkids are doing. We haven't found any more bottles with water sprites in them, but that's all right. We don't need them.