Chapter 2

“Where’s Caitlin with our drinks? Maria finally asked. She had vanished into the back. The only person in sight was the middle-aged guy at the end of the bar.

Except, when they all turned to look at him, he too had vanished. Or, rather, had silently slipped around the bar, walked across half in the floor, and was now right behind Maria and taking a seat, nonchalantly, next to her. They all flinched and turned, Maria looking quite annoyed.

“Hey, we’re closing here,” she said, hoping she didn’t sound too rude to a customer.

“I was just listening and figured I‘d offer some advice,” he took a seat, their eyes all on his strange, deep eyes. An eerie clam came over them. Suddenly, Maria wasn’t snapping at him, and Allison and Kathy only felt the inclination to listen, or watch.

The man positioned himself until he was comfortable with his mug. He placed it in front of him and crouched over it, just as he was sitting at the other end. Minutes passed while tension built, but none said a word. Maria, both angry at the intrusion and confused by how she wasn’t yelling at him for trying to hit on three eighteen-year-old girls in a bar, eventually found the nerve to speak.

“What do you want?”

“I want to tell you how it’s going to be,” he said, looking into his mug and only sometimes glancing up as he spoke. “You were always the pretty one in your family, the exotic one at school, but you never appreciated the attention too much. You never showed off your body like some of the other girls with your beauty did, isn’t that right?”

Maria nodded, seriously pissed, but her emotional response was trumped by a strong, intellectual desire to just let it be, come what may, as if she had been switched to passive mode. A bright fire blinked in the man’s eyes as he finished and looked deep into Maria’s. She gasped silently. She was officially unsettled, yet didn’t think to turn to her friends to see what they were doing. He continued with his hypnotic, sleepy voice.

“But you never used to dress like that, all frumpy, unnoticeable, completely average. And you don’t like doing it much. Maybe you wished you could have shown yourself off when you had the chance. Or maybe you just don’t like not feeling automatically pretty like you used to. I don’t know, it’s your life, you tell me. But whatever the complexities of your emotional response to the recent college-based changes in your body, the point is you try to hide this.”

He placed his large, rough palm on her stomach, lightly pressing her minor little bulge. This was unacceptable and outrageous. There was no way she was going to let a total stranger touch her like that. Yet, while the incense was there the response wasn’t. A wave of crippling self-consciousness swept over her as she felt her tummy yield, no longer as flat and cute as it once was mere months ago. Her hands, until then hanging limply at her side, reached up to push him away, but all she found herself doing was putting them on her hips (also softer, she thought) and sucking in her stomach, flinching at his touch.

He removed his hand and went back to his drink. Maria’s eyes widened with indignation but she still couldn’t think of anything to say. She just sat there. She released her stomach muscles while her hands remained pressed to her sides, arms akimbo.

The man took a swig of his mug, then continued.

“You’re embarrassed by it, your . . . What do you call it . . .?”

In a dreamy voice she blurted out with as much venom as she could in her state, “My belly.”

“That’s right, your belly.” He smirked and took a drink, “Your gut.”

“My pudge,” she suddenly blurted out again, her forehead wrinkling in confusion and anger. Her body was barely responding to her mind and her voice was acting on its own. She squeezed her sides slightly, her fingers pressing into her flesh through her shirt.

“The point is, you don’t like it, and you miss how you used to look even though it’s not that big a change. Sure, your tightest pants don’t fit anymore, but most of your clothes still work for you, even if you’ve got some padding hanging out. Every time your able to pull yourself away from your studies and spend a second looking in the mirror the only thing you can think is . . . What is it?”

“I’m getting fat,” she said, almost hissing the words, her teeth clinched at this strange, strange man. For the first time since he sat down she felt a sinking, dreadful feeling that something was horribly wrong.

He continued, “But you’re not fat yet, no sir. No, you’re a fine young woman, if I do say so myself, and you’re just as lovely as before you put on those college pounds. But you don’t believe it. Still, no matter how much you’d like to make your weight go away, you’re making the same mistake so many young women before you have made. You ignore it. You figure, you’re too busy, or maybe you’re just so used to being naturally thin that it doesn‘t occur to you do even do anything. You assume you’ll slim down eventually, as if your body’s going to right itself with time.”

Despite herself Maria was nodding slowly as he spoke now.