Free Fat Chance by Deborah Blumenthal

be quaffing Fiji Water and snacking on orange wedges. NordicTrack time. The Dominican handyman rolls it up to my apartment door on a dolly and hauls it into the bedroom.
    He looks at the box and laughs. “Everybody buy these things, these equipments, but nobody use them.”
    â€œWell, it’s good to stay in shape.” How would I know? He looks at me, shaking his head, laughing, as if I told him a good joke.
    After a lightning-quick smile, I double-lock the door behind him. It would probably be fun. I’d make it fun. Sliding, gliding. I’m not the most coordinated person in the world, but I’d get the knack of it. I am a quick study.
    I change into my sole pair of cycling shorts, which were secreted in the back of my drawer years ago. I start to tug them on, but when I stretch the waistline apart, it stays that way. I fling them into the garbage. At least my dresser drawers are getting roomier. I pull on a dress-length STOP HUNGER T-shirt, sweat socks and sneakers.
    I tuck my feet into the toeholds, reflexively stiffening up as I slide forward, then back. Thighs make up one-quarter of women’s weight. Indeed. The effort brings me back to my first riding lesson and the resistance before it flowed. I was stiff, uncoordinated. Maybe if I try to relax and move a little faster, smoother. The phrase fluid movement comes to mind, whatever that means.
    I step up the pace but the machine begins working against me now, like a frisky horse that senses the unease of a new rider and starts to snort and buck. Like Mr. Ed—the first horse I was on at Camp Camelot, a weight-loss camp. When other kids were munching on bags of buttery popcorn at the movies, we walked in with Ziploc bags filled with sour pickles on sticks. Anyway, my Mr. Ed was named after the funny-talking horse on the ’60s TV show. Okay, maybe I’m heavy, and unsteady, but this Scandinavian-style Mr. Ed is starting to list and then lean and then… Ohhhhhhhhh, shit, I inadvertently lose my balance and vrooooooom, never mind riding, I am s-k-i-i-n-g over to the side as if part of a giant slalom.
    Mr. Ed crashes down on me with the weight of a work-horse, viciously slamming into my poor dimpled upper thigh.
    â€œJESUS, OH JESUS.” It feels as if I just took a bullet. I can only imagine what my downstairs neighbor is imagining as she hears the deafening crash. She probably expects my couch to come barreling through her ceiling any minute.
    I rub and rub the spot to prevent it from turning blue and magenta, and hobble to the refrigerator for ice. I deserve aSara Lee cheesecake for this. Or half a carrot cake. It’s not fair. I have the noblest intentions, and it backfires. But I’m not going to be a self-saboteur. I grab a giant bag of frozen corn kernels and wrap it around my thigh like a blood pressure cuff.
    I glare at the NordicTrack. I am not having fun. This is not about fitness, it is about pain and suffering. I feel desperately sorry for myself. All around the city, other women are dining out at restaurants, sitting in box seats at the opera, attending Broadway shows, or having marvelous mindless sex, and I’m here sweating like a pig with a black-and-blue mark the size of Texas tattooing my upper thigh. I want candy, a Milky Way. But there’s no way I can even think of going out for one like this. I call Duane Reade.
    â€œDo you deliver?” YES, there is a God. “Good. I’d like a Milky Way.
    â€œA Milky Way. A MILKY WAY, you know the CANDY bar. Haven’t you ever heard of it?” I cannot believe this. Is that such a hard question?
    â€œSorry? What do you mean, by ‘sorry’? Why can’t you deliver it? I realize that it’s not medicine…okay…okay…but you happen to be wrong, dear heart, it most definitely does serve a biological need.
    â€œSo how much do I have to spend before you’ll deliver it? What?” I slam down the phone.
    I lie back on the