My Pleasure, Darling

33: Rub-a-dub-dub, Three Outlaws in a Tub

It's quiet for a long time before he asks. When he opens his mouth to speak, the horizon is tinging blue, and soon it will go yellow.

"Is she asleep?"

I glance back. A tiny huddle of Andrea exists in the blanket. She looks comfortable. Safe. "Yeah. She's asleep."

I know he wants to ask something. It's when he does that I feel worse.

"How bad is it?"

"How bad is what-"

"Don't." He spares a single glance away from his instruments to glare at me, and it's a dark look, darker than I've seen on him before. A warning. A warning from a soldier who has seen too much in the last three days and won't keep his cool much longer. "Don't ask me like we don't both know."

I don't know how to answer him. There's a lump in my throat. I want to cry. I don't want to cry. I am losing a battle and I don't even know what it is I am fighting.

"You are limping. You are hurt. How badly?"

"Not badly," I answer immediately, and for a few seconds, it's true. "A bullet half-grazed me. It's a flesh wound. It's not serious. I already checked."

"Are you sure?"

I pat my good thigh. It jiggles. "Perks of being a fat girl. Bullets and knives have to work a lot harder to do the same kind of damage to me as they do to you."

"I don't think you're fat," he answers.

It's an automatic response. People have been telling me this since I was a little girl. At one point, maybe, before puberty, I could have been convinced of this. Back when I was just a size or two larger than my classmates, when I was chubby and warm but not oddly shaped or disproportionate.

Those ships have sailed, the days long past. People still tell me you're not fat! in the hopes that I understand that what they mean is that I am not objectionable. That I am pretty, and therefore, am not completely worthless, which other fat people are, of course. They mean that I am the exception to the rule, that they are willing to allow my existence to go on unfettered, on account of me having other good qualities to cancel out my stretch marks and cellulite.

I don't really blame Felix for saying it. He's been saying it to skinny model-esque women his whole life, probably, and for them, it would have rung true. Everybody knows that this is what you say to a woman. It's a reflex.

I have to shop in special stores for clothes. And not even their smallest size. No, no. Up from that. The mid-range of their so-called fashion sizing. Unmistakably fat.

"Felix. I am fat."

He cringes. "That's not what I meant-"

"I know what you meant. It's alright."

"No, I mean – fat is good." He sniffs, staring out the window, eyes wide. Almost like he is scared to blink. "Fat is keeping you alive and by God, I'd have you alive no matter what. Fat people survive more car crashes, more suicide attempts, more botched operations, than any other demographic. What I meant was – was that you are perfect. And I wouldn't change a single hair on your head."

Tears well up in my eyes. It's stupid. It's been a long night. I haven't slept properly. I am tired and hurt and even my tongue feels like it's got a muscle pain. Emotionally, I am at my most vulnerable, and I honestly don't remember the last time somebody said something that kind out loud to me. It's been a long, a very, very long time.

They stream down my cheeks. He knows. He just doesn't comment. It takes me a moment.

"Thanks."

"Yeah."