LITMIR.BIZ

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a few minutes to get her breath back “—never let him get close to you. We couldn’t make a life together knowing you were so miserable. So he left, too.”

       No. My daddy was dead!

      “We should have told you. But I didn’t want you to know what we’d done. At least, not till you were older.” She shook her head. “But we should have told you.”

      “Told me what?” I don’t want to know.

      “Hannah, baby, Dan was your father.”

      LINDA WIKEN is owner of Prime Crime Books in Ottawa. She’s written for radio, newspaper and magazines, and has published a number of non-fiction books. Her short stories have appeared in the anthologies The Ladies’ Killing Circle, Cottage Country Killers and Menopause is Murder, Murderous Intent magazine, and her mystery novel is in search of a publishing date. She also writes articles for the Ottawa Police and adds her voice to their choir.

       FIT TO DIE

      The detective looked at the splattered gore

      On the walls, the windows, and the floor.

      There wasn’t much left of the late Mr. Horner

      Except for his wife alone in a corner.

      “I confess to the deed,” Ms. Horner lamented.

      “He did nothing but exercise. He was demented.

      He was a fitness freak in a fitness fog.

      All night he’d lift weights; all day he would jog.

      He’d rather score on the court than score with me,

      So I put nitroglycerine in his last herbal tea.”

      The detective looked round and then said with a wink,

      “Guess that was a pretty dynamic Power Drink.”

       JOY HEWITT MANN

       LAS FLACAS

      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,

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