Nothing To Lose (A fat girl novel) (25 page)

Luis dropped in to pump their creative juices (Missy’s description), and encourage lateral thinking (his description). They thought laterally about a lot of things including the year’s big promotion. They had done Italia Fabulosa, Paris a la Mode, Greek Fantasy, England Forever. The routine was tried and true. The buyers scoured remote European villages for cottage industries making tchotchkes (Erica’s word) unique to the country. “What it is, is garbage,” offered Selma. “Cute garbage.” Still, it was a very good way to satisfy ordinary people’s desire for the exotic and make the profit picture considerably brighter. Burdie’s is dedicated to your fantasies of fabled empires.

Another problem on their agenda, traditionally the bane of the retailer, was the dead time of 9:30 to 11:00 a.m. when the fully staffed, fully heated or air-conditioned store was chronically under populated. The president wanted their thoughts on how to stimulate traffic in the early morning.

April made it a point to walk through the store in the early hours and look at the people who came in. Many were mothers with small children. They looked harassed and the children were often cranky and not pacified by the bottle of juice or milk the mothers offered. If there was more than one child, the one who could walk begged to get into the stroller and the one in the stroller begged to be held.

“I don’t know what’s worse,” she heard a young mother say to a saleswoman, “staying home with them or coming out.”

April decided that these young mothers were the most identifiable target group for early morning shopping and decided to speak about them extemporaneously the next time the brainstorming group met.

Don was already there when April entered Ned Perkins’ office and when Luis came in, Don nudged her. “Hubba, hubba.”

“Him?”

“Don’t tell me you haven’t noticed.”

“Of course, I’ve noticed.”

“He called me into his office this morning, I almost fainted.”

“For what?” Her heart sank. Suppose he preferred men?

“He said, and I quote: ‘Uh, Don, the Execu-cycle display…it looks like the rider’s had a coronary. He’s lying across the handlebars.’ “ Don grinned devilishly. “I pushed the damned mannequin myself. I know he walks that way but I thought he’d just phone. I didn’t expect a facey-facey.”

She tried to calm herself before speaking to the group, knowing that Luis would be staring at her, listening, judging. ‘There is a segment of forgotten women,” she began, “there must be thousands of them right here in Newark. Women who wake up each morning to the same old breakfast dishes, the same baby crying, the same crayoned walls, the same irremovable stains on the same…”

“We get the picture,” Erica interrupted, “what are you driving at?”

“These are the women who watch Phil Donahue and David Hartman on Good Morning America because they feel that Phil Donahue and David Hartman are taking care of them. These women take care of everyone but Phil Donahue takes care of them. That’s an irresistible idea to that kind of woman – to be taken care of. To be comforted.”

“And the point is?” said Missy pointedly.

She was about to give a deprecating shrug and finish lamely. I didn’t mean it, folks. Here take back the floor. Instead she kept going. It was a good idea. Even if they didn’t follow through, they’d know she was thinking. “The point is these are the women we would like to have in the store every morning. They’re the ones who are available at those hours. True?”

“True.” Luis threw out the word loud and clear. He also smiled encouragingly.

“Well, then, we have to take care of her, too. We have to be just as comforting as Phil Donahue and David Hartman. We have to convince her it’s better to get out of her nightgown and into her car on a freezing morning or a hot morning and come to Burdie’s and be comforted by live humans instead of by a cold, glaring image. We can start by taking care of her preschooler – that’s right, a small nursery. Let’s say the first fifty children on any given day…not just watched, but enlightened with educational toys, games, companionship. Two hours each day. We could use the community room as a part-time day school. There could be a nominal charge, or nothing.”

How would we know that she stayed in the store? She could just plunk the kid down and take off,” said Ray Nolan.

“Maybe she could claim the child with a sales slip,” said Missy.

“What if she didn’t buy anything?” said April. “Would we hold the child hostage?”

“No,” said Luis. “It would have to be without any strings attached.”

“It might be such a success, we’ll have to franchise,” said Ned Perkins. “Burdie’s Nifty Nursery. Burdie’s Busy Bee Nursery.”

“We could put a baby shop nearby,” said April. “Small Blessings. We’ll sell them the toys the kids like best and children’s clothes. It would be a natural.”

Seeing that everyone was taken with the idea, Missy became excited, too. “What about scheduling special events for the mother? So it wouldn’t just be for shopping? Maybe it could be a club. The Nine-forty-five Club.”

“That’s what I was coming to,” said April. “It would have to involve either cooking classes or exercise tips or decorating ideas. We might schedule something different every day of the week on a continuing basis with the special merchandise of the event as well as whatever else they might buy on impulse.”

As the meeting wound down, Ned told Missy that he thought the three of them should meet again and map out a rough plan that they could present more formally. April walked out with Don, who said. “Jane Armstrong saves the day. Boy, did you ever make points. He was staring at you the whole time. He hung on your every word.”

“You’re just saying that. I know for a fact that he looked at Ned and Missy much more than at me.”

“Yes, but he looked at you with emotion.”

“No, he didn’t.”

“Yes, he did.”

She would have really liked to pump Don to tell her what nuance he had caught in the way Luis O’Neill had looked at her. But she knew that once encouraged, Don would go berserk with speculation. Instead she waved him away and returned to her cubby. She wondered if Luis equated the old her with the new her. At times he looked puzzled, as if he weren’t quite sure where she had come from.

Chapter Twenty-Five

On August 15th, the Feast of the Assumption according to Eyewitness News, celebrating the Virgin Mary’s being assumed into heaven without dying, April lost her fifty-first pound. Nine more and she’d be home free. It had been one hundred and one days since she had begun.

Pounds, inches, water and fat, stored toxins, stored pains, stored humiliation and despair had wafted out of her every orifice. She had laid in bed at night imagining all those layers of fat – yellow slabs – peeling away from her dermis, or wherever it adhered – softening, yielding to her efforts, liquefying and pouring out of her in so many ways. She had unloaded more than fifty pounds – a decent-sized six-year-old child, Don observed solemnly.

At a plateau of twenty pounds, everyone had been admiring and supportive, obsessively interested in what she ate, how many miles she ‘wogged.’ how she felt – was she hungry? – constipated? dizzy? happy? At thirty pounds, they showed surprise. ‘Oh, still with it, huh? How long you planning to keep it up? At fifty pounds, they turned hostile and suspicious. “Don’t tell me you’re going to lose more?” said Erica disapprovingly. “You’ll look like a skeleton.”

“You’ll make yourself sick,” prognosticated Gayle, a layout artist with adult acne.

“Nobody ever got sick from being beautiful,” said Selma.

“I read about a man in South Africa,” insisted Gayle, “he lost a hundred pounds and died. His body couldn’t cope.”

“Why couldn’t his body cope with a hundred fewer pounds?” asked Selma.

“Look, I don’t know. It was in the Times.”

The most revealing jab of all came when she was within seven pounds of her goal. Gayle said, “What are you trying to be, a glamour puss?”

“How does it feel?” asked Don one morning when they were doing their exercises on the roof of Burdie’s.

“Fine.”

“Come on. You know what I mean. How do you feel?”

“As if I’ve taken a journey through a long, long tunnel.”

“That’s it? Like you took a journey? What else?”

“Taller. I feel taller. And fragile. And light. Light as a feather. Corny but true.”

“You know your nose got bigger.” He peered critically into her face. “You’ve got a big nose now. Sorry about that. No refunds.” He cackled, and then he looked up at her impishly from the floor. “I thought you’d feel horny more than anything. All those nerve endings are right up front now.”

“All right. I feel horny.”

“Good.” He got up. “Why should you be so happy?”

‘What’s the matter, have a fight with Pierre?”

“I never have a fight with Pierre. Pierre has fights all by himself. Which reminds me, he made an appointment with this man to give you a body wave.”

“I don’t want a body wave, thanks.”

“You’ve got to have a body wave.” He sat with his legs crossed like a swami or a thwarted child. “You need volume. Your hair just lies there. Too limp.”

“That’s my cross. I’ll just have to bear it.”

“Have a body wave. Please. You can look leonine. You owe it to us. We’ve worked so hard.”

“Okay. I’ll give it three months as a lion and then that’s it.”

“Some streaks, too. Ten streaks.”

“No streaks.”

“Seven.”

“No.”

Don and Pierre decided that the only hairdresser they would trust to give her a body wave without any kink was Carlo, formerly with Kenneth, formerly with Mr. D. It was a three-day process and like no permanent she’d ever heard of. The first day she went home with gook on her hair and a scarf. The second day, she went home with different gook. The third day, Carlo washed her hair and put on more gook. True to his word, he had doubled the volume without a single curl. He showed her how to bend over and blow-dry it over her head and then brush it back lightly the other way. It was the Jackie Onassis hairdo. The old Baby Jane Holzer hairdo. Dina Merrill, Jane Fonda. Imitative but impressive. He must have snuck a little peroxide into the last bit of gook because her hair was definitely lighter. He also plucked a two-lane highway between her brows, which made her eyes look wide-spaced. Carlo was definitely a devotee of the ‘Jackie’ look.

Each time she looked in a mirror, she jumped. She felt as if she was hogging the air rights for two feet around herself. On the other hand, she looked fantastic – and the new manipulated eyebrows really punched up her eyes.

A few days later she was walking to the Newark train station. It was twilight on a rare, dry end of summer day. Luis’ limousine pulled up beside her and he put his head toward the open window. “Why are you walking on these streets?”

“This is the way to the train.”

“Don’t get smart. Get in.” And when she was in. “You could get mugged…pocketbook dangling, gold chain showing…” He looked her over for enticements to violence.

She looked around the limousine. It was overly upholstered in gray velour with deep, coffin-style shirred tufts. “This is a bit much.”

“Yes, it is,” he agreed. But I must have a limousine. I’m the president.”

“I know,” she smiled.

“You live in New York?” He asked it as if he deserved to know. She could see his mind going tickety-tick, adding up her situation. It was what he did, she supposed. He was in merchandising. Was he looking for a way to sell her?

“Yes.”

“Why do you work in New Jersey?”

She hesitated only a moment. “I couldn’t get a job in New York because of my weight.”

“Your weight?” He didn’t understand.

“I was too fat.”

“You look fine,” he said as if he were defending her. He didn’t even remember her as a fatter person.

“Not now,” she said. She was brought back to him by the realization that she was near and he had nothing on his mind but her. It was a small miracle.

“Now that you’re not fat will you get a job in New York?”

“No.”

“Good.”

He didn’t ask her to sit with him on the train. In fact, he made a point of saying good-bye as they entered the station, took his cowhide briefcase and walked purposefully to the end of the platform as if he had a special reason for doing so. She bought the Newark Evening News at a kiosk just for something to do. It was not a paper she felt connected to. It had nothing to do with her. There was one of her ads for electroplated gold charms. A full page of tiny replicas: tennis rackets, irons, a Cuisinart, hearts pierced by arrows. She stopped at a tiny calendar of February with a diamond chip for the 14th. Good. He had said good when she said she wouldn’t look for work in New York. Why good? Because he liked her? Because he liked her ass? Because. Because. Because. If he had said bad, or nothing at all, it wouldn’t have been polite.

The very next day, Selma came in and announced that she had taken a job with Grey Advertising in New York City. She was going to work on a large cosmetics account, do both radio and television commercials and receive a big hike over her Burdie’s salary. Part of it, she said, was due to her abilities and the other part was that she was black and attractive. But, she also insisted, the New York agencies were very friendly to copywriters trained by the Burdie’s chain.