She’d gotten very thick around the middle all of a sudden. Her pants were always tight—Wayne would say wonderfully so—but now getting them on was a chore beyond reason. She was used to the roller coaster of weight, but this time was different. Her jeans were so tight that she couldn’t zip them closed. Luckily she had a wide belt that hung over the open zipper. What had her confused, and a little alarmed, was her eyes. Being a college student, she was used to chronic bags under her eyes from lack of sleep, but this was something else entirely. Her eyes were puffy all around, as if she’d been partying all night, eating too much salt, something. They didn’t hurt, but they looked awful. She felt like a frog.
“What can I do for you, Lisa?” Tony asked quietly, rubbing reddened eyes.
Lisa followed his motion with envy. Even with crappy eyes, he still looked better than her. Men had it so easy. Tired of his hair? Chop it off. Five extra pounds? He was already two hundred, who would notice? Nobody wanted a man too skinny anyway. Don’t want people to focus on this or that? Grow a beard. That’s all anyone’ll talk about.
“Can you talk to some ladies at table 26 for me?” Lisa asked, her focus returning to work.
“Sure,” he replied with a forced smile. “Introduce me?”
In the dining room, the sour lady was suitably placated by the presence of Chef Tony. Purple Hat, however, continued to prove she needed no further attention. “When the moon is full!” she repeated with a giggle, a snort, and an all-around obsessiveness that freaked Lisa out. She and Mr. Arno were made for each other. Was she doomed to be surrounded by stupid people?
“Miss?”
Lisa’s shoulders tensed. Yes, it was her lot in life.
Keeping the fake grin on her face—the perma-grin all waitresses had mastered—she spun on her heel to face the pillar. There he was at his little table by the pillar, hands buried in a mound of pink husks. His belly, grown alarmingly fast, squeezed under the table most disagreeably.
“What was that about the full moon?” he asked. “It’s not for another eight nights.”
Lisa squirmed in embarrassment and said, “Yeah? Well, it was nothing. Just a little joke.”
“Please, I want to know.”
“It wasn’t funny. Really,” Lisa said. She did not want to have any conversation with Mr. Arno regarding shrimp!
“I insist you tell me,” Mr. Arno said firmly. His tone was domineering, but he looked nothing short of ludicrous. His arms remained buried in the mound of shrimps, as if he were praying and somebody just happened to pour on several pounds of shrimp. He pushed, “You must tell me. I love the moon. She is so important.”
“Important?”
“Oh yes!” he said earnestly, pulling his hands out from the mess. Lisa was astonished. She had not seen him alter his routine even once that entire week. His eyes glinted strangely, and he intoned, “She is the most perfect pearl set in the most perfect sea of all—the sea of stars. Though she changes in appearance every night—why, even disappearing entirely from view once a cycle—she is always there. Always. She affects every tide of every sea and every ocean everywhere. All life depends upon her. But more than that, there is much she knows—much indeed. Secrets of the sea, secrets of the stars. She knows things.”
“…right,” Lisa droned slowly, unsure of a proper response. This guy was officially nuts. She mumbled some excuse and fled.
Back to the service station she ran, so fast that she nearly collided with Wayne. He seemed genuinely unhappy that she had not bumped into him. He bobbed before her, flashing a rosy, pimply grin. Out of the frying pan, into the fire!
“Get out of my way, Wayne,” Lisa demanded, trying to step around him.
“You read the paper today?” He asked, bubbling.
“No, Wayne, I didn’t,” she answered flatly, moving around him. “I don’t read the paper. Who reads the paper? Will you please excuse me?”
“They found the waitress from that other restaurant!” he called after.
Lisa stopped up short, then retreated from her descent down the hallway, asking, “What did you say?”
“Yeah,” he continued. “Found her in a dumpster. She had that same disease the other server had. You know, the one who died a couple months ago?”
“The fat thing?”
“KBS,” Wayne clarified, “Kheoghtom’s Bloating Syndrome.”
Lisa was stunned. Though she generally acted as if she had no time for anything Wayne had to say, it was only a cover. There was no denying his intelligence. He read the paper and everything. She’d heard about the waitress who’d gone missing. Everybody had. Lisa was glad to hear some details.
“It’s really rare,” he continued. “I don’t get what’s the big deal. The paper said she put on a lot of weight before she died anyway, from what I understand.”
“What do you mean, ‘anyway’?” Lisa snapped. “You make it sound like it’s okay to die if you’re fat.”
“Hey,” he defended hastily. “I didn’t mean anything by it. But I don’t like fat chicks. If she got fat… well, I don’t know. What do you want from me?”
“Wayne,” Lisa chastised, “She’s our age and she’s dead. Don’t talk about her weight.”
“Our age?” he repeated excitedly. “You saying we’re the same age now?”
Lisa rolled her eyes for answer.
“I don’t know what’s the big deal,” he said again. “Women are scared to talk about weight, as if it doesn’t exist or something. I’m trying to gain weight. I gained twenty pounds in the last four months. All of it muscle.”
Lisa noted his neck tense, his veins pop––early warning signals she never missed.
“Whatever, Wayne,” Lisa dismissed. “Tell me about the waitress. Where was she?”
Wayne shrugged and said, “Guess she was hiding out in her apartment. They said it looked like she lived as a shut-in for a couple weeks. Probably ran out of food, so she had to go out. That’s when she died.”
“So she wasn’t kidnapped, like they were saying?”
“Nope. Just busy eating herself to death, apparently. That’s amazing to me. Thad—he’s my training partner—and I have to eat six times a day, and we’re still calorie deficient. I lose eight pounds every night in my sleep, no matter how much I eat during the day.”
“Nobody cares, Wayne,” Lisa scolded, then continued down the hallway ramp to the kitchen. She didn’t want to hear about gaining weight—intentionally or otherwise. This whole KBS thing was a little unnerving. She’d been feeling bloated the last few days herself. It wasn’t the right time of the month for that. And she’d had cramps, too—bad ones. Usually she didn’t have any cramps. Now she understood why everybody bitched about them.
It could have been stress, she thought. Stress can change things, and she’d been totally freaking out over her role as Roxane in the play. Surely that was it. Lisa sighed with envy at her roommate, Catherine—again. She was on the pill, and said it made her period stick to schedule no matter what. If Lisa could just be accepted into the Emoting Society—like Cat—she’d be able to afford the pill, too. Just a few more weeks, that’s all she had to handle.
Behind her, Wayne entered the kitchen. Feeling up his own biceps again, he murmured, “Damn, I’m good.”
Waxing Gibbous
1
Large hands manipulated the boiled prawns, deftly removing the small amount of meat from inside the shell. The legs, which had been curled below the small body, were ripped off and dropped to the linen as waste. Though the movements were done with a mechanized precision, they sometimes erred. The shrimp slipped from Mr. Arno’s swollen fingers, bounced off his ponderous belly, and landed on the floor. Wayne approached table 29.5, his cheap dress shoes crushing the small pink body into the carpet.
Mr. Arno did not pause his procedure.
Wayne did not say a word.
Finally, Mr. Arno glanced up. Upon seeing the young man towering above him, he returned his attention to his beloved shrimp. Disintere
stedly, but politely, Mr. Arno said, “Good afternoon.”
Wayne nodded, flaxen hair flapping, and said, “What’s up? What number you on?”
“This is my fifth plate,” Mr. Arno responded.
“That’s a lot.”
Mr. Arno shrugged. Enlarged bulk shivered.
“So why you only eat shrimp?”
Without looking up at the busboy, Mr. Arno answered simply, “I am required to daily ingest a certain quantity of these benevolent sea creatures.”
“No shit,” Wayne said. “For the protein? Thad—he’s my training partner—and I eat eight hundred grams of protein a day.”
“For the connection,” Mr. Arno corrected, eyeing his procedure closely. “Only in this manner can I properly splice into their tidal connection. If I vary from this schedule, it will have horribly adverse effects.”
“Tidal connection, eh? Okay. So you know about nutrition?”
“Nutrition?” Mr. Arno repeated blandly. “I referred to appearance. Perception is everything.”
“Sure is,” Wayne agreed heartily. “But you’re not doing it right. You gotta eat lots of small meals, not one big one. If you keep eating more and more, you’ll keep expanding your stomach, which makes you hungrier at other times.”
“That is not a factor.”
“Sure it is. It’s showing already. Now, if you lift weights, you can change that.”
“You lift weights?” Mr. Arno did not seem the least disturbed by the reference to his rapid weight gain.
Wayne instantly flexed beneath his shirt. Proudly he answered, “Twice a day!”
“Twice a day?”
“Yeah.”
“You have much time to waste.”
“It’s not a waste,” Wayne defended, absently caressing his biceps. This was a mechanical action done so frequently it had become second nature to him. Mr. Arno continued peeling the shrimp in much the same manner.
“When you are older, you will see that there are more important things to spend your time on.”
“Like eating shrimp?”
“Yes, if you’re smart enough to learn what she has to teach.”
“Who?” Wayne asked. Before Mr. Arno could answer, he continued, “How much shrimp do you eat a day, anyway? I don’t think Thad and I together could eat all that shrimp.”
“After finishing the prawns on this plate, I will have had five today,” the man replied.
“How do you know?”
“I designate one hundred prawns per plate. I lost one to the floor just now, so I’ll have to take up an extra next plate.”
“Why are you so specific if you’re not working out?”
“Because I am required to ingest a designated amount of prawns a day to splice into their tidal connection,” he replied irritably. This was the first emotion he’d shown with the boy. “That is why I don’t gain weight.”
Wayne frowned in confusion, noting the obvious. “But you have!”
Mr. Arno did not seem concerned by the apparent contradiction. He merely said, “You will see. This moment is far from permanent. I assure you, next phase I will appear as if I had not gained a single pound.”
“But gaining weight is good,” Wayne commented, confused.
“Most people, I think, would disagree,” Mr. Arno mused as he pulled the last prawn from the dripping, greasy plate. This round of his ritual was nearly complete.
“Like who?” Wayne scoffed. “All you have to do is work out a little, and you can be huge.”
Mr. Arno halted his process of peeling. This was an unusual occurrence. Languidly he asked, “Being huge is good?”
“Yeah, just look at me.”
“You are huge?” he asked, eyeing the average-sized busboy. Neck veins bounced. White brows knit together in thought.
“Not as huge as I’m gonna be,” Wayne defended, noting the man’s dismissal. “I want to be over two hundred pounds by the summer’s end, like Thad. I already gained forty pounds.”
“I see,” Mr. Arno said, turning back to his business. “Could you send Lisa over when she has a moment, please?”
“Sure,” Wayne replied, recognizing the dismissal—surprisingly. He trudged obediently off. Finding Lisa was not something he needed much urging to do, after all.
2
Lisa held up a pair of tights, face smirched in thought at the fat purple stripes. They stretched horizontally, making the garment look like something from a circus. She crumpled them up and tossed them back in the pile of laundry. Though she was fishing through the heap of garments, she didn’t really know what she was looking for. She only knew she needed something different. But most of the clothes were hers, anyway. Her roommate’s clothing was often dry-clean only—having the money for that was just another perk of being a member of the prestigious Emoting Society. No, most of the clumped tights and underwear were Lisa’s. Most no longer fit. How could she grow out of spandex in just a week?
Working the pile, Lisa became agitated. She stopped digging and began tossing. Soon the apartment—occupied by two young women and not very tidy—became a real mess. Lisa didn’t care. Throwing things kept her from crying, and that seemed the more preferable of the two reactions. At the bottom of the heap, something caught her eye.
She pulled out a wide black leather skirt. Cat was a voluptuous woman with hips aplenty, but her place was in the library or in the theater, not in some meat-market gym. Conservative as that might sound, Cat was anything but conservative. She would gleefully wear such a short leather skirt into any hallowed institution of learning. She was fond of saying education and flair need not be mutually exhaustive… or was it mutually exclusive? Something like that, Lisa didn’t know. She only knew that Cat’s miniskirt would look regular on her—and cover her own rapidly widening hips. Though in the dirty pile, she had no other choice; classes were starting soon. She wriggled them on.
Lisa stared at herself in the mirror. The skirt looked terribly out of place. She was a spunky, happy girl—a girl of pink and glitter. She didn’t own a single article of clothing that was black. Even her tights were brown. But so what? She was also just another poor college kid, trying to survive on Ramen and a prayer. So what if she borrowed her roommate’s clothes? She really had no choice anyway: she couldn’t fit into her pants anymore. Oh, her tops fit fine, she mused sourly. Her hips and thighs grew huge, but her chest stayed as flat as ever. Figures!
Indulging in a moment of self-loathing, Lisa meandered past Cat’s sewing table. It was cluttered with a variety of fabrics: purple satins, black lace, silver crepe. Catherine Ebonaugh was an extraordinary woman with an extraordinary wardrobe because she made most of it herself. From that cluttered, scarred tabletop emerged gorgeous, decadent full-length Victorian gowns and stitched leather bustiers. An old, but lovingly maintained, sewing machine waited patiently for its next moment of passion. Lisa’s eyes shot to the open closet, slid along the array of well-endowed halter tops and bodices. Cat wore double D’s. Lisa couldn’t fill those things even if her butt got three times as big!
Standing in the quiet apartment in her roommate’s skirt, Lisa pondered. Her body was going through changes that made no sense. She was reminded of puberty. God knows she didn’t want to go through that again! Yet she felt the same frustrations as a teen; her body was changing, she didn’t understand why, and she didn’t understand what it was becoming. The only thing she knew for sure was that she didn’t like the way it was going—and, of course, that she was helpless to stop the changes. Above all, she worried about the end result. But this wasn’t puberty. This was weight. But she didn’t eat. She had done nothing to deserve this!
Lisa returned to the mirror, this time stepping up close in order to hide her figure. Her hair was tussled, but she didn’t care. If only people would look at her hair instead of her everything else! Lisa leaned in even closer, closer to the hated glass. Her eyes were puffier than ever. They tingled, too, threatening tears again. Too bad she couldn’t hide her eyes behind a quick fix
like Cat’s skirt. Then again….
Lisa reached for Cat’s makeup.
3
The break room made her sigh. Small, cramped, and squalid was a generous description. The walls were concrete, painted a dull yellow. Light from the wall of vending machines turned everything a sickly orange. It was a restaurant, but management would be damned if it actually served the employees any food. Not that Lisa had eaten much of anything in the last week. As her waistline grew monstrously, she’d eaten less and less. Now she survived by sipping soup. Yet still her thighs grew. So did her frustration. She couldn’t think anymore, couldn’t focus on anything. Her script stayed by her side—her big, ugly side—read and reread, but never remembered. She was losing her grip.
To add to her misery, Wayne entered the room. Desperate, Lisa had spent a few days practicing lines with him—much to his joy. The feeling was not mutual. The punk memorized everything in no time, reciting Cyrano de Bergerac as if he’d been studying it since childhood. He only needed the script for three days! Lisa had been working it for a month, yet still struggled with it every day.
“Wayne,” she greeted lukewarmly.
“What’s up?” he replied. He wore blue jeans and, for some reason, only a tank-top undershirt of knit cotton.
“Nothing much,” she admitted, putting away her script. “Just toying with lunch. None of this stuff looks any good, though.”
“What do you want, some peel-and-eat shrimp?”
Unsinkable Mister Brown (Cruise Confidential 3) Page 38