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VIOLETTE MALAN

Oh, no,” Carlotta’s laugh tinkled musically, “I do not need to lose weight. I need a place to exercise. The toning of the muscles, the flexibility. These things are important for a woman, you know.” The look on the younger woman’s face quite amused Carlotta. It was well known that everyone in North America was obsessed by his or her weight. At home in Spain they couldn’t understand it. Everyone here was much too skinny. Why, Rodrigo even refused to watch television, especially that lawyer’s show that Carlotta found so funny. “It hurts me to look at those women,” he would say to her in Spanish. “They are starving. Las flacas,” he would call them. The skinnies.

“Oh, but you’ll want to sign up for our Super Weight Loss Special,” the young blonde woman insisted in the chirpy voice Carlotta was beginning to associate with North American working girls. She seemed to have far too many teeth. “Twenty pounds for twenty dollars. It starts tomorrow, so you’re just in time.” The young women held out a clipboard and offered Carlotta a pen.

“No, no,” Carlotta said, her own smile becoming just a little forced. “Exercise is so much more important for a woman of my age.” At first Carlotta couldn’t understand why the girl raised her eyebrows in that unattractive fashion. But then she realized. Of course! The poor girl was only twenty—perhaps twenty-two at the most. She thought she was always going to be flat in the right places. She thought that older women were rounder because they were fat. Carlotta smiled more easily. Poor child. She would learn soon enough.

And there were so many wonderful things about not being twenty any longer, though that was also something they seemed to have wrong here in North America. She shook her head. Strange people. After all, with age come status and dignity. Maturity and understanding. Carlotta thought of herself at twenty-two, still in the university, living with her aunt Emilia in Madrid, which was exactly the same as living with her parents. Never enough hours in the day for study, for friends, for romance.

And Carlotta considered herself now, almost thirty years later, a partner in the first all-female law firm in Barcelona, her daughter Antonia studying to be an architect like her father, and Emilio—well, Carlotta didn’t understand why her son wanted to breed dogs, but at least he made enough money to support himself, which was more than the sons of many of Carlotta’s friends could say. And, according to some of those same friends, maturity could also bring you younger lovers, who appreciated women who knew a thing or two.

Not that Carlotta had time for that, herself. Her own husband, her Rodrigo, was still very attentive, very attentive indeed, Carlotta thought with a satisfied smile. When the needs of her firm had required her to move to the Canadian capital of Ottawa for several months, Rodrigo had packed his briefcase, his AutoCad programs, his computer disks and moved his architecture business to Canada with her. Rather than do without her for what he had described as “an eternity”.

Ridiculous to suppose that she was fat!

Later that night, as she and Rodrigo were having dinner, she amused him by telling him of her day.

Rodrigo shook his head. “Watch out for that girl,” he said. “She sounds like my mother.” Carlotta knew exactly what he meant. Rodrigo’s mother was one of those made stupid by the force of their own certainty. Who always thought they were right, and never for one moment considered the feelings of others. A woman to be avoided. Carlotta shook her head. She wondered if people had already begun to avoid the little blonde. Poor child.

That first week, several other lithe young persons in spandex suits that looked hideously uncomfortable mentioned the weight loss class to Carlotta. Clearly these people were obsessed. It was somewhat annoying at first—the obsessions of others so often are—but most of the staff at the gym learned to just smile and nod at her as Carlotta came in every day at one o’clock. Perhaps, after all, she thought, they were not to blame. Victimized by their unpleasant advertising and browbeaten by their fashion industry.

But that first young woman—Tiffany her name seemed to be—she was different. Still chirpy, her blonde ponytails always bouncing, her gold earrings swinging, even when she was standing still.

“Oooo, hurry, you’re going to miss your ‘weigh in’,” she would say, very loudly and slowly, as Carlotta walked into the fitness centre in plenty of time for her Nautilus class. At first Carlotta would smile and remind the girl that she wasn’t signed up for the weight loss class, that, her accent notwithstanding, she spoke and understood the English language perfectly well. There was no need to speak in those exaggerated tones.

But as time passed and the girl Tiffany did not change her behaviour, it became harder and harder to keep smiling.

One day Carlotta spoke to the manager, just casually, remarking that on occasion Tiffany appeared to be abrasively aggressive. The manager nodded and smiled very brightly, pointing out that it was the girl’s job to be concerned for the clients. And so many people resisted the idea that they needed to lose weight. So many were in denial. Didn’t Carlotta agree?

Well, no. Carlotta didn’t agree. She thought the manager unnecessarily obtuse. She went back to her office that afternoon and asked several of her Canadian colleagues about other fitness studios, but, as she had feared, this centre was closest to her building. There was nowhere else she could go at lunch and return to her office in time for the afternoon meetings.

As well, Carlotta thought, there was the yoga instructor whom she liked so much. A woman of her own age, comfortable, strong and with what flexibility! Ah, if only Carlotta had the time to apply herself, she too could achieve that divine level!

In the weeks after Christmas things became, if anything, worse. The suggestion, it seemed to Carlotta, was that everyone had behaved like starving wolves gorging on a carcass for the entire month of December, and now required drastic work in order to be returned to their normal size. Or perhaps even thinner. To be ready for the February cruises, and to get what they called a “jump start” on the summer bathing-suit season. Well, Carlotta thought, to be fair, it is true that more food than usual seemed to be eaten at the holiday season. She had noticed this herself. Perhaps they had some reason to be concerned.

One day, Carlotta saw the little Tiffany standing to one side in the yoga class, watching. Later, as Carlotta was soaking in the whirlpool, the girl stopped beside the water.

“You know what would really help you get flexible?” the girl said brightly, her blonde ponytails swinging, her earrings glinting in the light. “I think you’d find that if you lost a few pounds, that would really help. Of course, if you feel you don’t need to…” and the girl shrugged.

Carlotta’s mouth fell open, but no response came out. She could only watch as Tiffany smiled and bounced away. The girl stopped to talk to another woman who was just stepping out of the shower. Carlotta could not hear the words that passed, but she saw the naked woman nod and hang her head like a chastized child.

Carlotta told herself she was not at all disturbed by this. But from that evening onward, she no longer entertained Rodrigo with funny stories about the fitness centre.

A few weeks later, Carlotta overheard two women in her office talking about having to lose weight, “just a few pounds”, and “look at how so-and-so has let herself go”, and “just as she was doing so well”. And the one who said she just needed to lose five more pounds—a senior administrator, a smart woman—she was actually a stick, an absolute stick. But then, most of the women looked fine to Carlotta. Why would they talk about themselves that way?

Later, as she walked to her car, Carlotta watched her own reflection in the glass front of her building. She examined her profile critically.

Could she really be certain that she wasn’t too fat?

That night, when Carlotta was eating dinner with her husband, she found she had no appetite. When they were getting ready for bed she asked him. “Dear one,” she said, “do you think I need to lose weight?”

“Let me look at you,” he said from where he sat on the edge of the bed. She stood very still. He frowned. That meant he was thinking. Her husband was a very serious man, who would not dream of answering such a question with anything but the truth. The idea of what he might say to her made her very nervous. “Can you turn around, my dear?” She lifted her arms slightly and turned slowly, counter clockwise for luck. When she had finished turning and faced her husband once more, she was relieved to see him smiling.

But why didn’t she feel happier?

The next day, Carlotta decided she was letting her imagination get the better of her. Of course she was fine. Nothing had changed. Everything was still the same as it had been four months ago when she first came to Canada. She must be working too hard to let these ideas take hold of her. Perhaps she and Rodrigo could get away for the weekend.

In celebration of her restored sanity, Carlotta decided to wear her favourite suit to the office. It was the one she had worn last year to the Business Woman’s Conference in Seville. The one she had been wearing when she had shaken the hand of Her Majesty, Queen Sofia of Spain.

Carlotta chose her blouse carefully. Slipped into the skirt and pulled up the zipper. Shrugged into the jacket and did up the button. Then she undid the button again. She looked at herself in the mirror on the door of the old-fashioned wardrobe in her bedroom. Somehow, she remembered looking better in this suit. She turned sideways. She examined her bosoms and her hips. Surely, she thought, it is not possible that I have gained weight? She remembered that there was a photograph of her in this suit on her husband’s desk. Quickly she rushed into his study and scrutinized the portrait-sized photograph. Her eyes narrowed.

Was it her imagination? Was there, even in this photo, a little tightness across the hips? A few horizontal wrinkles? Carlotta put her hand to her mouth and gnawed on the side of her finger, ruining her manicure.

Could it be true? Could she be fat? Could Rodrigo be wrong?

Carlotta clenched her teeth. Then she changed her suit.

Carlotta found that if she concentrated very hard, she could actually go whole hours and not think about her weight—while she was at work, or asleep. But every time she passed the scale at the fitness centre, with its evil red blinking numbers, it was all she could do not to step on. One day, when she was coming from her Nautilus class and feeling particularly forceful, Carlotta managed to walk right past it without looking. She went into the locker room, removed her sensible black leotard and stepped into the shower. When she came out, wrapped carefully in her silk shower robe, she found one of the other women in her yoga class weeping into her monogrammed towel.

“Oh, Carlotta,” Hilda sobbed, “I’ve been working so hard. I’ve lost twenty-five pounds you know, the second twenty-five pounds, which let me tell you is a lot harder than the first twenty-five, and I was feeling so proud of myself and so pleased with my new look and then…and then she said…she said, oh, it’s too horrible.”

“Do not tell me,” Carlotta put her arm around the woman. “It was the little one, the Tiffany.” Carlotta really didn’t need the other woman’s nod. She’d known who it would be. She let Hilda cry on her shoulder. This cannot go on, Carlotta thought. But what can be done?

Carlotta watched as Hilda finally dressed and went home, dragging her feet and clearly unhappy with the new outfit that she had shown off so proudly only that morning. Carlotta rose stiffly to her feet, wondering if she had the strength to return to the office. She felt something at her back. She turned, knowing that…yes, it was the red, blinking eye of the electronic scale. Carlotta looked swiftly around. She was alone. Surely there could be no harm…she stepped onto the scale. She was just waiting for the electronic numbers to stop flashing and announce her weight when she heard a noise behind her.

It was the little blonde Tiffany. Her earrings swinging. Her teeth longer than natural. Her grin a little too triumphant as she continued into the pool room.

In that moment Carlotta realized what was happening, and her heart turned cold within her. Of course she was not fat. She was never fat in her life. And Hilda, and the lady who had hung her head after stepping out of the shower, and who knew how many others, were not fat. They were normal healthy women. This was all a virus spread by las flacas, the skinnies. Brainwashed by the silly advertising, the foolish fashion designers and the people who made money from the diets and the exercises and the many, many books that all told you over and over that you were unhappy, that you were not living up to your full potential and that beyond all else you were fat, fat, fat. A conspiracy to make all women feel sick about themselves. To make women spend so much time worrying about how they looked that they had no time to think.

And this girl. This girl in particular was one of the conspirators, the plotters. Her little remarks, her little looks, all calculated, all poisonous. Look at what she had almost done to Carlotta herself. This girl is killing us, Carlotta thought. She is killing our happiness, our contentment. Our selves.

She has to be dealt with.

Carlotta took her bathing suit out of her dressing case. She would relax in the whirlpool for a while. It would soothe her nerves and help her think. She followed the girl into the pool room.

The next day Carlotta came in at her usual time to find the fitness studio in chaos. She carefully expressed her astonishment when she learned that the little Tiffany had been found drowned in the whirlpool. She had evidently dropped one of her gold earrings as she had entered the water—one could see where it lay gleaming at the bottom of the pool—and when she had reached for it, the vigorous movement of the whirlpool had wrapped her blonde ponytail around the chrome ladder, where it was fastened to the wall. Accidental death, the policeman said. A petition was being circulated to replace the whirlpool.

“Poor child,” Carlotta said as she signed in.

VIOLETTE MALAN writes from Elgin, Ontario. Her published fiction crosses several genres, including mystery, romance, fantasy and erotica. Violette won the inaugural short story contest at the Bloody Words Crime Writers Conference, and most recently she has sold a story to Over My Dead Body for their Canadian issue.