Big Brother by Lionel Shriver

make you more conservative,” said Edison, folding his arms again. “But that cat’s got no reason to be abusive toward me .”
    However brutally, Fletcher must at last have referred directly to the subject I’d avoided since Edison’s arrival. I was tired of feeling like a coward. I’d thought my tact was kind, but maybe I’d simply been trying to make life easier for myself.
    “Listen . . .” I trained my gaze on the road. “We haven’t talked about it. But I couldn’t help but notice . . . since the last time I saw you . . . you’re a little heavier.”
    Edison slapped his knee and hooted. “ ‘Oh, Mr. Quasimodo, I couldn’t help but notice you’re a little stooped over.’ ‘Excuse me, Mr. Werewolf, I couldn’t help but notice you’re a little hairy.’ I guess you’ve finally ‘noticed’ the Empire State Building is a little tall, the sun is slightly bright, and the Earth is a smidgeon on the round side.”
    I laughed, too, if only in relief. “Okay, okay! I didn’t know how to bring it up.”
    “How about, ‘Whoa, bro, you sure are fat!’ Think I don’t know I’m fat? They make mirrors in New York, you know.”
    “All right.” I braced back from the steering wheel. “When I first laid eyes on you at the airport, I was floored. I’m still floored. I don’t understand how you could have put on so much weight in just a few years.”
    “Try it sometime. It’s not that hard.”
    He was right. Add four Cinnabons per day to a calorie-neutral diet, and you could gain 365 pounds in a single year. “But . . .” I asked feebly, “why?”
    “Duh! I like to eat!”
    “Well, everybody does.”
    “So it’s no big mystery, is it? Everybody includes me, and I like to eat a lot.”
    I sighed. I didn’t want to get his back up. “Would you like to lose weight?”
    “Sure, if I could push a button.”
    “What does that mean?”
    “That I would like ten million dollars. I would like a beautiful wife—again, I might add. I would like world peace.”
    “How much you weigh is within your control.”
    “That’s what you think.”
    “Yes. That is what I think.”
    “You gained a few pounds yourself. You like to drop those, too?”
    “Yes, as a matter of fact.”
    “So why don’t you? Or why haven’t you?”
    I frowned. “I’m not sure. Ever since Fletcher became such a goody-goody, it’s seemed almost like my job to be the one who’s bad. My coming home from the supermarket with a box of cookies has provided a release valve. If we only stocked edamame, you’re right: we’d lose the kids to Burger King for good.”
    “Pretty complicated for learning to skip lunch, babe.”
    “Well, maybe it is complicated.”
    “So for me it’s even more complicated, dig?” He was getting hostile. “You can’t even lose thirty pounds, and I’m supposed to lose—I don’t know how many.”
    “I don’t need to lose thirty pounds, thank you. More like twenty, at the most.”
    “Don’t worry, if this is a contest, you get the gold star.”
    “It’s not a contest. But we could both agree not to make things worse. That’s a start, isn’t it? The way you’re eating lately, you’re only getting heavier.”
    “There’s the one little problem of my not giving a shit.”
    That was, of course, not one problem, but the problem.
    A s I parked in front of Monotonous, Edison said, “Huh. This all yours? Pretty big.”
    It wasn’t much better than a warehouse, with offices on one end—but it was my warehouse. My idea, my employees: my project.
    “I couldn’t have anticipated it at first,” I explained as Edison heaved from the cab, “but one of the keys to this product taking off has been the way it excites competition. Not between companies, but between my customers. Who’s got the wittiest doll. Or the crudest. We’ve had more than one order for a male Monotonous that does nothing but burp, snort, sneeze, hawk, and spit. That has hiccups and a hacking cough. One customer wanted