Shrinking

“You look really well,” the Fig says last night, looking at me from across the table. We have not seen each other for three weeks, and suddenly – in the last week, and despite the scale registering a pound gain – my size 31 Seven jeans and the Cutest Coat in the World (pink-black-and-white diamond patterned Pringle, and a UK size 12) fit. I was wearing both of them.

Later, at the bus stop, the Fig looks at me intently. “Have you lost more weight?” he asks.

“Um, a little,” I say, feeling a little embarrassed.

He looks me up and down. “Are you a size 10?” he wants to know. (That’s a size 6 in American terms. Why and how the Fig knows anything about women’s clothing sizes, I don’t know, since he’s completely uninterested in fashion.)

No, no, no, I am most definitely not a size 10. But thanks!

* * *

This morning, as I caught a glimpse of myself in the mirrored elevator and wondered what I was thinking wearing the Gap jeans I have on, a woman who works on my floor walked in. “I don’t know how you do it,” she said, “but every time I see you, you look thinner.”