"Playing Chicken, and Eating It"

"You know what really insults me, doc?"

"What's that?" Dr. Barnes set the notepad on his desk and looked at Neil, waiting.

"You, my parents, my friends -- people look at me and say, 'You're killing yourself, eating like you do.' As if that was some profound revelation that's never occurred to me."

"So you know it's self-destructive," Barnes said. "That's a good thing, a first st--"

"You're missing my point, doc. You all see this as a cry for help." Neil rose, slowly, wincing in pain and holding his left leg just above the knew. "A cry for help means a person wants to be saved."

"And you don't?" Barnes asked.

"When you have chubby cheeks, old ladies pinch your cheeks and say you're cute," Neil said. "When you have a bit of a gut, it adds character. When you get the boy-tits, you start getting harassed in the locker room or at school. When you get fat, you're a punchline. And when you keep gaining weight -- people start looking away."

"So you're blaming your breakup on your weight?" Barnes asked.

"She looked away," Neil said. "She's not the first. I can wait ten, fifteen minutes to get service at a restaurant or a department store. My office has moved me back to answering phones; I no longer deal with the public."

"Have you talked to human resources about your feelings on that?" Barnes asked. "I hate advising people to go into court, but you'd have grounds for a lawsuit."

"Bullshit," Neil said. "Not a jury alive would side with me. Anyway, I'll be out of that job soon -- I'm starting to have trouble just getting into and out of my car. My left knee's going -- funny, because the right knee is the one I fell on years ago, but the left bears all the weight getting into and out of the car, I guess."

"Disability can be hard to get," Barnes said. "Especially..."

"If it's something that could have been avoided?" Neil asked with a smile. "Yeah, I know. But all of this could have been avoided if my family and my friends and people like you had let me do what I wanted years ago and end it then."

"You can't blame your loved ones for trying to save you," Barnes said.

"I can and I do," Neil said. "If you save someone and then don't stick around to help put them back together, that suggests to me that you acted out of a selfish motivation -- 'I've got to help Neil, or people will think I was a shitty friend.' 'I've got to help Neil, or I'll be that poor mother who buried her youngest son.'

"So this is my revenge, doc," Neil said, leaning against the window sill. The wood groaned lightly. "I'll do the one thing I enjoy -- I'll eat fried chicken, I'll eat French fries with brown gravy, I'll eat French vanilla ice cream, I'll eat potato chips and drink regular sodas, and I'll develop diabetes and drive my blood pressure higher and higher until I finally die.

"But before that happens, before that happens, I'll watch and see them all turn away from me one by one. Amanda breaks up with me. Matt and Brian and Joe forget to call me when they go places. Karen and John and Jill and Frank slow down on the e-mails.

"One of these days, Doc, I'll be alone -- I'll gain so much weight, look so inhuman, that no one will be able to bear the sight of me. People's voices will crack when they say my name, even though I'm still drawing breath. I'll be out of a job and won't even be able to afford to come here for these pleasant little chats. And I know you're not going to come around pro bono when other folks and their insurance carriers are still shelling out $250 a session. I'll be alone. I'll be invisible. I'll be the dead man shambling, the guy whose friends forget he's still alive."

"You seem pretty set on this course," Barnes said. "Is there a point to it?"

"Having a point is really overrated," Neil said. "But, yeah -- I'm going to go as far toward nothingness as I can go, see if anyone's willing to go all the way with me. I'm betting no. And when I get there -- I don't know what'll happen. It may be that I've destroyed myself so thoroughly that there's no turning back. And that'd be OK, because really -- we didn't exist before we were born, I think there's absolutely nothing waiting for us after we die, so what's the difference? At least I know that when my obit did run in the paper, I'll have a last piss in everyone's cereal. You'll say, 'Maybe if I'd been there for him...'"

"And on the other hand," Neil said, "if I can walk up to the edge, wave hello to goodbye, then turn around and walk back -- lose weight, start resembling a person again, and get to the end of the road looking better, a bona fide hero, and spit in the face of every so-called friend who turned away after saying they'd stand beside me forever..."

"Either way, I win," Neil said. "Every time another bastard looks the other way when I walk into a room, every time a woman leaves the room after meeting me, every time a friend goes weeks without e-mailing or calling, it proves me right. Most people aren't worth a damn. Someone new teaches me that almost every day."

Barnes shifted in his seat, looked at the clock. "Looks like our time is up."

Neil nodded. "At least you're honest about it being about the money," he said. "That's above and beyond most of the bastards."

Barnes saw his patient out, then walked back into his office. He wanted a drink, for the thousandth time today. One day at a time.