CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
If Diana's first real singles nightlife experience had proven anything, besides the necessity of lipstick, it was that she needed to update her wardrobe. The only nice clothes she owned were the ones she'd debuted in at Scott's Tavern last week. She couldn't exactly get away with wearing her Easter outfit every Saturday night. That outfit was a little conservative for the bar scene anyway. What Diana needed were some downright sexy clothes. And if she could find them in her size, she was going to wear them.
It used to be a mortifying thought—a large woman attempting sex appeal in a size-sixteen version of something that should never have been manufactured past a ten. But Diana's new lease on life included a new clause on her relationship to the fashion industry: if it's sexy, and they make it, and it fits, it will be bought. Diana knew it could take months until she was the size she'd always wanted to be, but why waste those months hiding out in potato sacks? Did overweight women not deserve to feel sexy? Because Diana had not only been feeling sexy since she'd ventured out of her cocoon—she'd been feeling damned sexy. Memories of Barry had begun to heat her bed each night, and she knew it would only be a matter of time before those memories were replaced by the real thing. Well, not exactly the real thing. It wasn't like she was on some sort of psychotic quest to find the long-lost love of her life or anything. Besides, what would she want with the real Barry anyway? He had to be forty-three by now and was probably balding. No, for Diana the "real thing" simply meant a warm body of the opposite sex that could replace her fifteen-year-old memories with action—and hopefully a lot of it—in the here and now. The desire, and the confidence that it would be fulfilled, made her feel like a smoking circuit of sexual energy. Lust coursed wildly through her veins, casting a radiant glow that shined through her eyes and skin. She felt dazzling and dangerous, like a predator—and not one who stalked strawberry shortcake and fatty breakfast muffins, but one who stalked life and sex. And the idea that how people are perceived by others is contingent upon the way they perceive themselves gave her hope—hope that every man who saw her, saw her as an undeniably hot force that he could only dream of reckoning with. Now all she needed was a new outfit to match her new image.
It had to be an outfit that gave her in-your-face confidence, far less subtle than the silent celebration of sexiness she'd been carting around in her strut. Not that she wasn't off to a great start by acknowledging her inner goddess, but now she wanted the fact that she was desirable and confident to be unmistakably obvious to more than just herself. She needed verbal confidence now, the kind that would lift her over the threshold of bystander and make her a player. She wanted to be able to go up to that blond, pool-playing miracle of nature she'd seen at Scott's and make him notice her—by engaging him in a real, live conversation, as opposed to just a series of longing, one-sided stares from across the bar. But first she needed the proper equipment.
She'd already taken care of the lipstick void, but that honestly hadn't been too much fun. The teenage clerk at Taylor's Pharmacy in the mall had gawked at Diana like she was a circus freak when she'd asked what color the girl would recommend for her lips.
"Uh, I don't know," the clerk had finally stammered. "Pink?"
"Well, what shade of pink would you suggest?" Diana had asked enthusiastically, while the girl stared at her in a horrified, yet hauntingly familiar way. It was the way Diana used to look at her mother when she was a teenager and Mrs. Christopher was severely embarrassing her in public, the way she'd looked at her just last week in Dr. Mason's office when she'd suggested that Diana had willed herself into a false pregnancy.
"Well, uh . . ." the clerk had begun. A line of customers had formed behind Diana, and some of them looked very annoyed. "Makeup's in aisle four . . . Can I help you?" she'd asked, looking over Diana's shoulder to the next in line.
A little hurt, and not exactly sure what she had done to incur such rudeness, Diana had left the line and found her way to cosmetics, where, in order to make sure she didn't miss anything, she'd spent over half an hour picking up each and every tube of lipstick and reading the color names aloud to keep them straight in her mind. Occasionally, she just had to stop and laugh. Some of their names were just plain ridiculous! "Vanilla Brownie," "Sunset" and "Poison Ivy" were colors?
She had finally settled on "Malibu Pink"—at least there was a color in the name—when the clerk she'd consulted with earlier began leading a mall security guard down the aisle. They seemed to be headed right in her direction. Diana feared they thought she was shoplifting, so to put an end to their suspicions, she'd exclaimed, with what in retrospect seemed like perhaps a little too much enthusiasm but at the time seemed applause-worthy clever, "I've found it! Malibu Pink!" Proudly waving her intended purchase before the guard's eyes, she had slipped by before he could make any accusations. And as she went, she tossed her hair haughtily in the direction of the clerk whose face bore a squeamish look of apology for wasting security's time. Diana had then paid for the lipstick and gotten the hell out of there. Who would've guessed that buying makeup could be so tremendously difficult?
"Can I help you to find anything today?" asked a big, jolly saleswoman with bright pink cheeks. Diana had just entered The Queen's Closet, a store whose sign boasted Fabulous fashions for real-sized women. Translation: We specialize in fat clothes.
"Yes. I'm looking for something, um . . ." Diana was suddenly embarrassed. How could she tell this cheery, wholesome, mother-of-three-ish type that she was looking for slut clothes?
"Dressy?" the woman offered.
"Sort of. I'm actually looking for, you know, um . . .singles clothes," Diana said, winking at the saleslady in a We-both-know-what-I-REALLY-mean sort of way, and inwardly marveling at her own tactfulness. Unfortunately, good old Pink Cheeks didn't understand and therefore couldn't appreciate Diana's talent for tact, proving that she had absolutely no concept of sisterhood, no from-one-heavy-girl-to-another sensibilities. For the sales clerk took "singles" to mean separates, and told Diana that at The Queen's Closet everything was mix-and-match because they understood that "real" women weren't always the same size on top as they were on the bottom. Seeing that this woman was going to be no help at all, Diana pretended to be relieved at the store's innovative and humane sizing policies, and said she'd just look around for a little while, which seemed to please old Pink Cheeks.
In the dressing room, Diana noticed something startling. She couldn't be positive but it seemed her right thigh had gotten smaller. Right then and there, she vowed not to return home without a bathroom scale. Meanwhile, she'd also found an outfit: fitted, black, satin pants and a shimmery, short-sleeved, silver top with black trim around the arms and neckline. It cost $112—about seven weeks' worth of chocolate banana muffins and large hazelnut cream coffees. But she'd already made her down payment this week—she hadn't gone to The Doughnut Bin once. Six more weeks of good behavior and the outfit would pay for itself. Of course, at the rate her right thigh appeared to be going, in six weeks she might not be able to wear it. However, not fitting into clothes because they were too big would be a problem Diana could get used to.