“What is that? Are you taking one of those GLP-1 weight-loss shots?” Jenny asked after she saw me give myself a jab in the stomach at dinner. “How can you afford it? Didn’t you just get back from vacation?”
“It wasn’t exactly a vacation. It was cheaper to pay for the plane and the hotel and the medications in Russia than to just buy the medications here.”
“And they’re the exact same meds?”
“Well, they’re the Russian version. They do the same thing.”
“And they’re safe?”
“As long as I don’t eat coriander. That causes some kind of reaction. Other than that, completely safe.”
“All right, then. Let’s wash down these tacos with some margaritas and you tell me all about your trip.”
The next morning I could feel every heartbeat slamming painfully against my brain. The tacos had been spicy, requiring more margaritas, and the margaritas had stimulated my appetite for more tacos. So much for appetite suppression.
My sheets felt suffocating. I couldn’t find the edge to lift them from my throbbing head. I wriggled and crawled for what seemed like twenty feet before I was able to clear the covers. My pillow was the size of a feather bed. What a weird dream. I pinched myself. It hurt and the pillow was still huge.
The side table was about six feet from the edge of the pillow. It was hard to gain speed on the soft pillow, but I ran as fast as I could and leapt the gap. I came down hard on the wood of the tabletop and slid against the edge of my cell phone hard. Thank goodness I had it in a rubber case or I would have been bruised.
I climbed up on the screen, disgusted by all of the fingerprints. I had to hopscotch my code in, barefoot, because there was no way for me to activate the fingerprint in my diminished state. I hopped on the phone icon and found the number of the weight loss clinic in Petrograd.
“I’m sorry, can you speak up? I can hardly hear you,” the voice that answered replied to me. I had to scream directly into the mouth of the phone to become audible. Once I explained my predicament, they had only one question.
“Did you eat any coriander?”
“No!” I screamed. “I don’t even know what coriander is. I had a bunch of cilantro with my tacos last night, but no coriander.”
I was corrected without kindness in heavily-accented English, then told that I would have to be extracted for my safety. Forty-seven minutes later, my front door lock was picked and I was carefully placed in a carrier outfitted with doll’s furniture. I was taken to a location with others who shared my predicament and we were treated to music and luxurious foodstuffs on a small scale. The fact we ate coriander, along with the fact that we lost weight, meant that we did not win our subsequent class action lawsuit.
