Growing love affair....with food!

chapter 2

Max was the owner of the diner where Maisie worked. The best way to describe Max was unremarkable. He sort of looked like everyone's next door neighbor. Average height, medium build, mousy brown hair. If you were to guess his age you might go as low as 40 or as high as 55. The one noticeable thing about him was that he seemed nice. That's why he gave Maisie the job in the first place. The minute he saw her come in the diner he felt there was something missing in her life and he wanted to help her. He couldn't help but be struck with how very thin she was. Most of the waitresses he'd hired over the years were a bit on the chubby side, at least they were chubby when they first started working there. Over time it seemed that each girl he hired just naturally started to put on weight. It was almost as if they absorbed calories through the air they breathed.

This situation caused a bit of a problem. The smallest waitress uniform Max had was a size eight and Maisie had a hard enough time filling out a size zero. Maisie managed to cinch up the waistline of the bright yellow uniform so she at least didn't seem ridiculous, although her slight figure certainly did look out of place, considering the lightest waitress on Max' staff had to weigh no less than two hundred pounds.

It was Max' policy to give his waitresses free meals. He couldn't afford to pay them much and while his customers weren't exactly what you'd call stingy, most of them were just plain old ordinary working stiffs who didn't have that much money to spare for tips. At first Maisie passed up the opportunity to try some of Max' cooking. She had been struck by the wonderful aroma coming out of Max' kitchen and the food certainly looked appetizing enough. But Max ran a working class diner. Nothing fancy on the menu. And for some reason the dishes he served looked a lot like the meals her mother prepared. So she passed.

A week passed and Maisie's reluctance to chow down on his cooking was giving Max a complex. He was bound and determined that he'd get that poor girl to eat if it was the last thing he would do. That evening Maisie went on break. Usually she'd step outside and walk around for half an hour and then come back and resume her shift. This time, however, Max stopped her before she could get out the door. He told her that he might be forced to fire her if she didn't sit down and eat whatever he'd put in front of her. Reluctantly Maisie agreed, a decision which was to have a profound impact on her!