~BBW, ~SWG, Romance - After her failed marriage, slim vegetarian Eve gets a new start in life with a waitressing job, a changed diet, a loving step-brother, and a growing midriff bulge. A story in five chapters.
CHAPTER ONE: WINTER
Gingerly, with the London cold creeping into her attic room, Eve began tapping her present, hefting it slightly in her hand, a suspicious look flickering over her face. She could have been a security guard weighing up a suspect package, not someone receiving a late Christmas gift. “If it’s a box of chocolates, I can’t eat it.”
He groaned inwardly. That routine again. “It’s not chocolates. I know you don’t eat chocolates.”
“Then I simply don’t know . . .”
The North American vowel sounds entranced Adam, as they always did each time he’d ever encountered his step-sister Eve. They’d grown up on either side of the Atlantic. He’d always lived in London; her childhood had been spent just outside Toronto, where his father, divorced from Adam’s demanding mother, had gone for work and soon started a new life with a Canadian divorcee and her own young daughter Eve. Adam’s father, who believed in the Bible at least as literature, had been immediately tickled by coincidence of the children’s names. Adam himself - relieved that he’d never been called Judas Iscariot - had been tickled too, and had always sensed that Eve was a soul mate during the occasional family visits back and forth. Now 26, she’d had some knocks in her life recently. Following college she’d done her own transatlantic shift, moved from Toronto to London for European excitement and married hastily, only to find the marriage collapsing, leaving her stranded and financially embarrassed. Adam might have taken her in if his flat hadn’t been so tiny. So a friend of a friend with an empty attic had housed her while Eve found her feet. Three months later she was still looking for them.
“Open it!”
She beamed her fetching smile and carefully undid the tape, so she could use the paper another time. Inside was a notepad with a Monet water lily painting on the cover. “I thought you could use a notepad. You could draw, or write a journal. Might help you sort your thoughts out, especially if combined with this!” From behind his back he produced a bottle.
“Bull’s Blood!” she cried. “Well, for a start I could make a list of all the things I hate about Jake.”
“Would that be productive? I want you to look forward, not back.”
She kissed him lightly on the cheek. “You’ve always had my interests at heart. I always remember how protective you were when we played on that garden swing.”
That had been their first encounter; they were both seven, when Adam’s father had come on a European visit. Adam’s mother, true to form, had treated everyone frostily, but Adam, not good at making friends, had immediately pounced on Eve as a lifetime pal and a source of wonder. She was pretty; she was Canadian, which seemed very exotic; and she was the first person he knew who had her own pony, Joss. The next time they met, Joss had gone to the pony stables in the sky, and Eve had developed breasts. The time after that, a few years later, she’d reached her maximum height, five foot five, cut her lightly curly auburn hair very short, dyed a patch of it blue, and proudly shown him two newly acquired tattoos. One depicted the serpent from the Garden of Eden, curling round her trim right hip. Another featured the Garden’s apple, the forbidden fruit, just to the left of her belly-button. She’d thought them cute; so did Adam, though not so cute as the sight of her tummy, toned as always (no puppy fat for her), looking almost sun-tanned with her skin’s light honey coloring. She didn’t look much different now that she was 26. The blue hair patch had gone; the rest had grown longer, just above shoulder-length, in a simple cut with an off-centre parting. But the brown eyes still looked mischievous, and her commitment to eating vegetarian, thinking green, and gym work-outs was 150 per cent. She weighed a brisk 115 lbs.
Her devotion to healthy living hadn’t eased her marriage, though Eve herself blamed its derailment principally on Jake’s immaturity and short temper. There was the famous night of the tofu brawl, when Eve had accidentally prepared a meal where every item was white, even including the plates. Jake flew off the handle; the floorboards shook.
They shook even more when Eve returned early from a trip to find Jake naked in bed with another woman. Accusations flew back and forth. “You never want to have fun. You never eat or drink.” “You act like a jerk. A teenage jerk. Do you know what the word responsibility means?” After more run-ins, they had agreed to separate, though not yet divorce. Jake had disappeared into south London’s suburban jungle; Eve had found her temporary perch with Kaylie, north of the river, in an area once down-at-heel, but now bright with wine bars, tapas bars, chic pubs (Adam worked in one specializing in Belgian beers), restaurants of every flavor.
“What’s happening on the job front?” They were drinking their wine sitting on the floor by the electric heater.
The past parade of unfulfilling jobs passed through her head: art gallery attendant, office receptionist, delivering the mail. She’d studied art at college, but what does that fit you for? “I’m looking. I can tell Kaylie wants me out soon. Wants to install her boyfriend, Stratford. It’s Stratford this, Stratford that. Fair enough, it’s her place, but sometimes now she’s just rude to me.” She puckered her mouth.
“That French bistro off Upper Street needs a waitress. . .”
“But all their waitresses are French, aren’t they? I couldn’t even pretend to be French. Besides, not my kind of food. Can you see me serving snails and gooey desserts?”
“OK, bad idea. Still, I’m sure the New Year will bring something.”
She rested her hands on the floor, and stretched out her lissome body. Breasts apart, it could almost have been the body of a boy. Out of sight, beneath her thick winter sweater, the serpent tattoo on her right hip winked across at the apple and licked its tongue.
***
“A quiet night!” Sandy said, behind the bar at the Beer Emporium. It was four days later.
“So far, yes.” Adam was wiping the glasses with his usual finesse. The shy person inside him appreciated quiet nights, though he’d partly taken the job to break down his barriers and become more socially adept. “Must make more of an effort to come out of his shell”: he still remembered the words of an early teacher’s end-of-the-year report. He was doing better now, though close friends were still few, and sexual intimacies had never gone beyond a few unsatisfactory flings; maybe all those years living with a domineering mother had blunted self-confidence. There had certainly been no steady girlfriends. Since she’d settled in London he got on best with Eve; but then somehow she felt like blood.
And there she was, suddenly in front of him. “I’ve done it!”
“Done what?”
“Got a job at the Sacré Coeur. Well, a trial run. I saw them this afternoon.”
“That’s great! It didn’t matter about not being French?”
“It didn’t matter about not being French. I have to say, though, I wouldn’t want half the things on the menu. They serve rabbit, for God’s sake. How could anyone eat Bugs Bunny?”
“Elmer Fudd would.”
“I don’t think he’ll come into the Sacré Coeur.”
“I don’t know. You meet strange people in bistros.” He suggested a drink to celebrate: Leffe beer, light, blond, and Belgian.
She paused. Her usual tipple was tonic water. “Not many carbohydrates in that?”
“I don’t expect so. It’s blond, after all.”
“I suppose that does make a difference.” Neither of them was good at science.
She began the following week, working through lunch and the quiet afternoon, when customers were fewer and the pressure less. It was an unpretentious place, check-patterned cloths on the tables, not very comfortable wooden seats, London theatre posters on the wall, plus the daily specials chalked up on two slates. The only oddity in sight was a battered chair bolted close to the top of a wall, almost on the ceiling; a conversation piece supposedly, close to the heart of the bistro’s owner, Maximilian, though most customers never noticed it. The little kitchen at the back was masterminded by Dmitri (Russian). The roster of serving staff contained the day manager Jimmy (Scottish), Magda (Polish), and Simone (English).
“The worst thing you can do,” Jimmy told her, “is to drop an order over one of the customers. The next worst thing is snatching away a customer’s plate before they’ve finished eating. For some reason, that’s resented.” Jimmy’s advice made her more nervous, but after a few uncertainties she got into the routine, weaving through the narrow gaps between tables, checking the settings, taking and delivering orders, processing bills, being smiley and polite.
The menu continued to bother her. She bridled at serving hunks of meat, and became flummoxed if anyone asked her to recommend a dessert. “I’m sure they’re all good,” she’d say, half-heartedly. During her lunch break, in the slow hours after three o’clock, she sat down with a selection of vegetables.
“You must be a vegetarian,” Simone, proudly slim like Eve, said on her first day. “That’s a bit limiting isn’t it?”
“In this place, yes.” Eve realized that wasn’t the best answer if she wanted to display team spirit. “Not that the other food doesn’t look great.”
“You should try a little. It’s good to know what the customers are ordering.” She looked at Eve’s plate more closely. “You’re not even having Dmitri’s famous roast potatoes!”
“I tend not to have potatoes – the carbohydrates, you know.” She patted her flat tummy.
Simone nodded approvingly. “Actually, I’ve found serving food hours on end is a great way to dull your appetite.”
“Ah!” Eve was very relieved.
As Adam suggested, she topped off her shifts by popping into the Beer Emporium, around the corner. Eve started by having tonic water, but Adam soon urged her to have something with more oomph. There were so many Belgian beers she could try. “I’m getting a taste for it,” she said one night. “This is getting dangerous!”
“Rubbish, rubbish, little Eve!”
She averaged four days a week at the bistro. Mornings and Sundays were usually free. At first her daily gym visits continued. But after the first week, the lure of lying in bed nibbled at her resolve. She began to go every other day; then two days a week; sometimes not at all. In bed she’d read, think, look at the accommodation ads in the local newspaper, or pick up her notepad and draw.
She was getting on well with her colleagues. She learned how to parry Jimmy’s jokes; she got used to Dmitri’s surly moods when a Russian deep freeze overcame him. She was fascinated by Magda - blonde, chubby. She grilled her about Poland, the social conditions, the politics, but Magda preferred to talk about living in Britain, a country with so many branches of McDonalds. Often they took their breaks together.
“You know,” Eve said one day, spearing her final broccoli stalk, “it’s odd that this is a French bistro, but no-one here is French.”
“But the food is! You have to eat this!” She was deep in a crepe suzette, covered with ice cream and strawberry coulis.
Eve hovered for a second, then gave in. “Well, I have to admit it looks interesting.”
Her crepe soon arrived. As Magda advised, she squeezed a lemon over it, and started to explore this unknown world. It was the contrast in temperatures and textures that stunned her: the warm strawberry sauce over the cold vanilla; the warm crepe, perky with lemon juice and sprinkled sugar; everything blending in a perfect ensemble, like a heavenly musical chord. “Oh God,” Eve said, as her first spoonful dissolved inside her mouth. “I’m not used to this, the sugar, the. . .“ For a moment she was lost for words.
“You like?” said Magda, grinning broadly.
She let another mouthful dissolve, then raised her eyebrows. “I like.”
At the end of the day, she dropped by the bar as usual, only to find that Adam had called in sick. He’d caught the winter flu bug, a vicious strain zipping around London. Eve phoned her commiserations, visited the patient the next day, did some shopping for him. He told her to keep her distance; he didn’t want her to be off work too.
It took almost two weeks to shake the flu off, and when he went back to the bar he still looked a little drawn and pale. Eve, he thought, looked healthier than ever, Leffe in hand, leather jacket unzipped, auburn hair bouncing as she asked how he felt and talked about her day. There was something different about her, he realized. She looked a bit smoother, more filled out in the face. Her slacks, too, seemed a slightly tighter fit than usual. Had she actually put on a little weight?
***
“Stratford doesn’t want to elbow you out, and nor do I,” Kaylie bleated in her thin, squeaky voice. Blonde, slimmish, imprinted with a permanent look of disdain, she looked like someone trying to imitate Scarlett Johannsson and failing. It was some weeks later. “But we think it’s time for us to get together, and it was only temporary you staying here. Could you move out at the end of the month?”
Wrong time; wrong place. Eve was just emerging from her morning shower. Her bathrobe was loose, her hair wet. One thing she looked forward to in any new place: a bathroom on the same floor as her bed; and, please God, if she was sharing, a companion that didn’t accept her on sufferance.
“That’s fine,” Eve said hastily, trying not to drip onto the floor.
“We’re going to turn this into a love nest, Stratford and I!”
“Oh that’s lovely.” She began rubbing her hair vigorously; hoping Kaylie would pick up the hint and let her go.
“You’re not getting a squishy little tummy, are you? You are!” She’d spotted Eve’s bared midriff. “The restaurant food must really be good!”
Swamped by embarrassment, Eve gingerly felt the area around her belly button. “Is it that noticeable?”
“It’s just a little softer, really.” In case that was too comforting, Kaylie twisted the knife again. “But it is softer.”
“I thought only I could tell I’d put on weight. I knew I shouldn’t have let up on the gym. But I’d better get dressed.” Bounding up the steps to the attic, she added a vague “Thanks,” though it was hard to see what for.
Sitting on the bed’s edge, Eve returned to her tummy, rubbing a hand round her apple tattoo and the belly-button nearby, feeling the small layer of new flesh moving under her fingers. Then she pinched the serpent tattooed on the right hip, lightly cushioned with its own fat, just like the hip opposite. She had first discovered this modest softening two weeks before, after a day of feeling unusually snug in one of her slacks. She blamed her beer intake more than the bistro bits and pieces; that, plus reduced time at the gym. But knowing the reasons didn’t make the situation better. Eve, famously boyish and trim, had actually put down fat on her tummy and hips – the possible foundation layer for female curves and, what she feared most, a midriff bulge.
Soon after she heard the apartment door banged shut: Kaylie had gone off to work. Eve went back to the bathroom, and pulled out Kaylie’s scales, the old kind with a pointing arrow, not the digital display she was used to at the gym. The arrow bobbed over the markings before coming to rest. “God!” she cried out loud. She had put on six pounds.
She spent the day feeling under a cloud. Buttoning up the black blouse that served as the bistro’s uniform, she was convinced her breasts and her white slip rubbed against her clothes more than before. Serving the meals, she felt Dmitri’s roast potatoes goading her. Every time her customers skipped dessert, she felt relieved; every time they went for ice cream, her heart sank. She ate her vegetarian lunch without pleasure.
“Not a good day,” she told Adam later as she slammed her handbag on the bar counter. She told him about Kaylie cornering her about moving.
“You expected it, though.”
“I know, and I’ve looked at some places, but they’ve been so freaky.”
“If you get in a crunch, I could try and find room.”
“But you have no spare bed!”
“I’d sleep on the sofa.”
Eve didn’t like the sound of that, but thanked him warmly. Then she hit topic number two. “Adam,” she said, in a shy little voice, “do you think I look different? Different from six weeks ago, say, before I got the job?” She sat upright, presenting herself for inspection.
He didn’t know what to say. He could see the smoother face, the slightly fuller cheeks, but felt awkward about raising the matter even with his best friend. Women, he knew, didn’t appreciate being told they had gained any weight. Slim women especially. So he fished around for something else. “Your clothes, you mean, or your hair?” He looked at her tan leather jacket, her hair’s brunette waves brushing its collar. They were all the same as ever.
Eve’s upright pose slumped. “I’ve put on a little weight recently. I – I just wondered if it was noticeable.”
He hesitated for a second, then realized he had to be honest. “Well, I thought you might have done, just a bit, in the face. Kind of a healthy glow. It looks good. . .”
“And I thought it was mostly my tummy. So I look fatter in the face too?”
Adam felt the ground shaking under him. “Not fatter! Just smoother. Really nice, actually.” Really nice? He was surprised he’d said that; but it was true. There was something about Eve carrying a few extra pounds. “Don’t worry, it’s not important.”
“Any gain’s important for a woman. It means you’re not perfect.”
He took another breath, and dived in. “It means you’re human. The original Adam and Eve weren’t perfect for long. Then they got hungry, she ate the apple – “
“Yes, and put on weight.” Eve thought of her apple tattoo, nestling on its new layer of flesh. Adam thought exactly the same thing.
“You’re worrying about nothing. You look great!”
“Thanks,” she said sadly. “It’s the beer. I’ve been drinking too much.”
“And the bistro?”
“I don’t think so. I serve the food, Adam, I don’t eat it. Well, except lunch. . .” Under her clothing, the serpent stretched out on its new bed of fat, and smiled.
End of Chapter One
EVE ENTERS PARADISE
By: Swordfish
By: Swordfish
And the Lord God said unto the woman, What is this that thou hast done?
And the woman said, The serpent beguiled me, and I did eat.
- The Book of Genesis, Chapter 3
And the woman said, The serpent beguiled me, and I did eat.
- The Book of Genesis, Chapter 3
CHAPTER ONE: WINTER
Gingerly, with the London cold creeping into her attic room, Eve began tapping her present, hefting it slightly in her hand, a suspicious look flickering over her face. She could have been a security guard weighing up a suspect package, not someone receiving a late Christmas gift. “If it’s a box of chocolates, I can’t eat it.”
He groaned inwardly. That routine again. “It’s not chocolates. I know you don’t eat chocolates.”
“Then I simply don’t know . . .”
The North American vowel sounds entranced Adam, as they always did each time he’d ever encountered his step-sister Eve. They’d grown up on either side of the Atlantic. He’d always lived in London; her childhood had been spent just outside Toronto, where his father, divorced from Adam’s demanding mother, had gone for work and soon started a new life with a Canadian divorcee and her own young daughter Eve. Adam’s father, who believed in the Bible at least as literature, had been immediately tickled by coincidence of the children’s names. Adam himself - relieved that he’d never been called Judas Iscariot - had been tickled too, and had always sensed that Eve was a soul mate during the occasional family visits back and forth. Now 26, she’d had some knocks in her life recently. Following college she’d done her own transatlantic shift, moved from Toronto to London for European excitement and married hastily, only to find the marriage collapsing, leaving her stranded and financially embarrassed. Adam might have taken her in if his flat hadn’t been so tiny. So a friend of a friend with an empty attic had housed her while Eve found her feet. Three months later she was still looking for them.
“Open it!”
She beamed her fetching smile and carefully undid the tape, so she could use the paper another time. Inside was a notepad with a Monet water lily painting on the cover. “I thought you could use a notepad. You could draw, or write a journal. Might help you sort your thoughts out, especially if combined with this!” From behind his back he produced a bottle.
“Bull’s Blood!” she cried. “Well, for a start I could make a list of all the things I hate about Jake.”
“Would that be productive? I want you to look forward, not back.”
She kissed him lightly on the cheek. “You’ve always had my interests at heart. I always remember how protective you were when we played on that garden swing.”
That had been their first encounter; they were both seven, when Adam’s father had come on a European visit. Adam’s mother, true to form, had treated everyone frostily, but Adam, not good at making friends, had immediately pounced on Eve as a lifetime pal and a source of wonder. She was pretty; she was Canadian, which seemed very exotic; and she was the first person he knew who had her own pony, Joss. The next time they met, Joss had gone to the pony stables in the sky, and Eve had developed breasts. The time after that, a few years later, she’d reached her maximum height, five foot five, cut her lightly curly auburn hair very short, dyed a patch of it blue, and proudly shown him two newly acquired tattoos. One depicted the serpent from the Garden of Eden, curling round her trim right hip. Another featured the Garden’s apple, the forbidden fruit, just to the left of her belly-button. She’d thought them cute; so did Adam, though not so cute as the sight of her tummy, toned as always (no puppy fat for her), looking almost sun-tanned with her skin’s light honey coloring. She didn’t look much different now that she was 26. The blue hair patch had gone; the rest had grown longer, just above shoulder-length, in a simple cut with an off-centre parting. But the brown eyes still looked mischievous, and her commitment to eating vegetarian, thinking green, and gym work-outs was 150 per cent. She weighed a brisk 115 lbs.
Her devotion to healthy living hadn’t eased her marriage, though Eve herself blamed its derailment principally on Jake’s immaturity and short temper. There was the famous night of the tofu brawl, when Eve had accidentally prepared a meal where every item was white, even including the plates. Jake flew off the handle; the floorboards shook.
They shook even more when Eve returned early from a trip to find Jake naked in bed with another woman. Accusations flew back and forth. “You never want to have fun. You never eat or drink.” “You act like a jerk. A teenage jerk. Do you know what the word responsibility means?” After more run-ins, they had agreed to separate, though not yet divorce. Jake had disappeared into south London’s suburban jungle; Eve had found her temporary perch with Kaylie, north of the river, in an area once down-at-heel, but now bright with wine bars, tapas bars, chic pubs (Adam worked in one specializing in Belgian beers), restaurants of every flavor.
“What’s happening on the job front?” They were drinking their wine sitting on the floor by the electric heater.
The past parade of unfulfilling jobs passed through her head: art gallery attendant, office receptionist, delivering the mail. She’d studied art at college, but what does that fit you for? “I’m looking. I can tell Kaylie wants me out soon. Wants to install her boyfriend, Stratford. It’s Stratford this, Stratford that. Fair enough, it’s her place, but sometimes now she’s just rude to me.” She puckered her mouth.
“That French bistro off Upper Street needs a waitress. . .”
“But all their waitresses are French, aren’t they? I couldn’t even pretend to be French. Besides, not my kind of food. Can you see me serving snails and gooey desserts?”
“OK, bad idea. Still, I’m sure the New Year will bring something.”
She rested her hands on the floor, and stretched out her lissome body. Breasts apart, it could almost have been the body of a boy. Out of sight, beneath her thick winter sweater, the serpent tattoo on her right hip winked across at the apple and licked its tongue.
***
“A quiet night!” Sandy said, behind the bar at the Beer Emporium. It was four days later.
“So far, yes.” Adam was wiping the glasses with his usual finesse. The shy person inside him appreciated quiet nights, though he’d partly taken the job to break down his barriers and become more socially adept. “Must make more of an effort to come out of his shell”: he still remembered the words of an early teacher’s end-of-the-year report. He was doing better now, though close friends were still few, and sexual intimacies had never gone beyond a few unsatisfactory flings; maybe all those years living with a domineering mother had blunted self-confidence. There had certainly been no steady girlfriends. Since she’d settled in London he got on best with Eve; but then somehow she felt like blood.
And there she was, suddenly in front of him. “I’ve done it!”
“Done what?”
“Got a job at the Sacré Coeur. Well, a trial run. I saw them this afternoon.”
“That’s great! It didn’t matter about not being French?”
“It didn’t matter about not being French. I have to say, though, I wouldn’t want half the things on the menu. They serve rabbit, for God’s sake. How could anyone eat Bugs Bunny?”
“Elmer Fudd would.”
“I don’t think he’ll come into the Sacré Coeur.”
“I don’t know. You meet strange people in bistros.” He suggested a drink to celebrate: Leffe beer, light, blond, and Belgian.
She paused. Her usual tipple was tonic water. “Not many carbohydrates in that?”
“I don’t expect so. It’s blond, after all.”
“I suppose that does make a difference.” Neither of them was good at science.
She began the following week, working through lunch and the quiet afternoon, when customers were fewer and the pressure less. It was an unpretentious place, check-patterned cloths on the tables, not very comfortable wooden seats, London theatre posters on the wall, plus the daily specials chalked up on two slates. The only oddity in sight was a battered chair bolted close to the top of a wall, almost on the ceiling; a conversation piece supposedly, close to the heart of the bistro’s owner, Maximilian, though most customers never noticed it. The little kitchen at the back was masterminded by Dmitri (Russian). The roster of serving staff contained the day manager Jimmy (Scottish), Magda (Polish), and Simone (English).
“The worst thing you can do,” Jimmy told her, “is to drop an order over one of the customers. The next worst thing is snatching away a customer’s plate before they’ve finished eating. For some reason, that’s resented.” Jimmy’s advice made her more nervous, but after a few uncertainties she got into the routine, weaving through the narrow gaps between tables, checking the settings, taking and delivering orders, processing bills, being smiley and polite.
The menu continued to bother her. She bridled at serving hunks of meat, and became flummoxed if anyone asked her to recommend a dessert. “I’m sure they’re all good,” she’d say, half-heartedly. During her lunch break, in the slow hours after three o’clock, she sat down with a selection of vegetables.
“You must be a vegetarian,” Simone, proudly slim like Eve, said on her first day. “That’s a bit limiting isn’t it?”
“In this place, yes.” Eve realized that wasn’t the best answer if she wanted to display team spirit. “Not that the other food doesn’t look great.”
“You should try a little. It’s good to know what the customers are ordering.” She looked at Eve’s plate more closely. “You’re not even having Dmitri’s famous roast potatoes!”
“I tend not to have potatoes – the carbohydrates, you know.” She patted her flat tummy.
Simone nodded approvingly. “Actually, I’ve found serving food hours on end is a great way to dull your appetite.”
“Ah!” Eve was very relieved.
As Adam suggested, she topped off her shifts by popping into the Beer Emporium, around the corner. Eve started by having tonic water, but Adam soon urged her to have something with more oomph. There were so many Belgian beers she could try. “I’m getting a taste for it,” she said one night. “This is getting dangerous!”
“Rubbish, rubbish, little Eve!”
She averaged four days a week at the bistro. Mornings and Sundays were usually free. At first her daily gym visits continued. But after the first week, the lure of lying in bed nibbled at her resolve. She began to go every other day; then two days a week; sometimes not at all. In bed she’d read, think, look at the accommodation ads in the local newspaper, or pick up her notepad and draw.
She was getting on well with her colleagues. She learned how to parry Jimmy’s jokes; she got used to Dmitri’s surly moods when a Russian deep freeze overcame him. She was fascinated by Magda - blonde, chubby. She grilled her about Poland, the social conditions, the politics, but Magda preferred to talk about living in Britain, a country with so many branches of McDonalds. Often they took their breaks together.
“You know,” Eve said one day, spearing her final broccoli stalk, “it’s odd that this is a French bistro, but no-one here is French.”
“But the food is! You have to eat this!” She was deep in a crepe suzette, covered with ice cream and strawberry coulis.
Eve hovered for a second, then gave in. “Well, I have to admit it looks interesting.”
Her crepe soon arrived. As Magda advised, she squeezed a lemon over it, and started to explore this unknown world. It was the contrast in temperatures and textures that stunned her: the warm strawberry sauce over the cold vanilla; the warm crepe, perky with lemon juice and sprinkled sugar; everything blending in a perfect ensemble, like a heavenly musical chord. “Oh God,” Eve said, as her first spoonful dissolved inside her mouth. “I’m not used to this, the sugar, the. . .“ For a moment she was lost for words.
“You like?” said Magda, grinning broadly.
She let another mouthful dissolve, then raised her eyebrows. “I like.”
At the end of the day, she dropped by the bar as usual, only to find that Adam had called in sick. He’d caught the winter flu bug, a vicious strain zipping around London. Eve phoned her commiserations, visited the patient the next day, did some shopping for him. He told her to keep her distance; he didn’t want her to be off work too.
It took almost two weeks to shake the flu off, and when he went back to the bar he still looked a little drawn and pale. Eve, he thought, looked healthier than ever, Leffe in hand, leather jacket unzipped, auburn hair bouncing as she asked how he felt and talked about her day. There was something different about her, he realized. She looked a bit smoother, more filled out in the face. Her slacks, too, seemed a slightly tighter fit than usual. Had she actually put on a little weight?
***
“Stratford doesn’t want to elbow you out, and nor do I,” Kaylie bleated in her thin, squeaky voice. Blonde, slimmish, imprinted with a permanent look of disdain, she looked like someone trying to imitate Scarlett Johannsson and failing. It was some weeks later. “But we think it’s time for us to get together, and it was only temporary you staying here. Could you move out at the end of the month?”
Wrong time; wrong place. Eve was just emerging from her morning shower. Her bathrobe was loose, her hair wet. One thing she looked forward to in any new place: a bathroom on the same floor as her bed; and, please God, if she was sharing, a companion that didn’t accept her on sufferance.
“That’s fine,” Eve said hastily, trying not to drip onto the floor.
“We’re going to turn this into a love nest, Stratford and I!”
“Oh that’s lovely.” She began rubbing her hair vigorously; hoping Kaylie would pick up the hint and let her go.
“You’re not getting a squishy little tummy, are you? You are!” She’d spotted Eve’s bared midriff. “The restaurant food must really be good!”
Swamped by embarrassment, Eve gingerly felt the area around her belly button. “Is it that noticeable?”
“It’s just a little softer, really.” In case that was too comforting, Kaylie twisted the knife again. “But it is softer.”
“I thought only I could tell I’d put on weight. I knew I shouldn’t have let up on the gym. But I’d better get dressed.” Bounding up the steps to the attic, she added a vague “Thanks,” though it was hard to see what for.
Sitting on the bed’s edge, Eve returned to her tummy, rubbing a hand round her apple tattoo and the belly-button nearby, feeling the small layer of new flesh moving under her fingers. Then she pinched the serpent tattooed on the right hip, lightly cushioned with its own fat, just like the hip opposite. She had first discovered this modest softening two weeks before, after a day of feeling unusually snug in one of her slacks. She blamed her beer intake more than the bistro bits and pieces; that, plus reduced time at the gym. But knowing the reasons didn’t make the situation better. Eve, famously boyish and trim, had actually put down fat on her tummy and hips – the possible foundation layer for female curves and, what she feared most, a midriff bulge.
Soon after she heard the apartment door banged shut: Kaylie had gone off to work. Eve went back to the bathroom, and pulled out Kaylie’s scales, the old kind with a pointing arrow, not the digital display she was used to at the gym. The arrow bobbed over the markings before coming to rest. “God!” she cried out loud. She had put on six pounds.
She spent the day feeling under a cloud. Buttoning up the black blouse that served as the bistro’s uniform, she was convinced her breasts and her white slip rubbed against her clothes more than before. Serving the meals, she felt Dmitri’s roast potatoes goading her. Every time her customers skipped dessert, she felt relieved; every time they went for ice cream, her heart sank. She ate her vegetarian lunch without pleasure.
“Not a good day,” she told Adam later as she slammed her handbag on the bar counter. She told him about Kaylie cornering her about moving.
“You expected it, though.”
“I know, and I’ve looked at some places, but they’ve been so freaky.”
“If you get in a crunch, I could try and find room.”
“But you have no spare bed!”
“I’d sleep on the sofa.”
Eve didn’t like the sound of that, but thanked him warmly. Then she hit topic number two. “Adam,” she said, in a shy little voice, “do you think I look different? Different from six weeks ago, say, before I got the job?” She sat upright, presenting herself for inspection.
He didn’t know what to say. He could see the smoother face, the slightly fuller cheeks, but felt awkward about raising the matter even with his best friend. Women, he knew, didn’t appreciate being told they had gained any weight. Slim women especially. So he fished around for something else. “Your clothes, you mean, or your hair?” He looked at her tan leather jacket, her hair’s brunette waves brushing its collar. They were all the same as ever.
Eve’s upright pose slumped. “I’ve put on a little weight recently. I – I just wondered if it was noticeable.”
He hesitated for a second, then realized he had to be honest. “Well, I thought you might have done, just a bit, in the face. Kind of a healthy glow. It looks good. . .”
“And I thought it was mostly my tummy. So I look fatter in the face too?”
Adam felt the ground shaking under him. “Not fatter! Just smoother. Really nice, actually.” Really nice? He was surprised he’d said that; but it was true. There was something about Eve carrying a few extra pounds. “Don’t worry, it’s not important.”
“Any gain’s important for a woman. It means you’re not perfect.”
He took another breath, and dived in. “It means you’re human. The original Adam and Eve weren’t perfect for long. Then they got hungry, she ate the apple – “
“Yes, and put on weight.” Eve thought of her apple tattoo, nestling on its new layer of flesh. Adam thought exactly the same thing.
“You’re worrying about nothing. You look great!”
“Thanks,” she said sadly. “It’s the beer. I’ve been drinking too much.”
“And the bistro?”
“I don’t think so. I serve the food, Adam, I don’t eat it. Well, except lunch. . .” Under her clothing, the serpent stretched out on its new bed of fat, and smiled.
End of Chapter One
