Body Movers

Stephanie Bond

Body Movers

1

“Does this make my ass look big?”

Carlotta Wren stood in the dressing room of Neiman

Marcus in the Lenox Mall in Atlanta, Georgia, her arms ful

of designer bathing suits that Angela Ashford, one of her

least favorite customers, wanted to try on. They weren’t

even halfway through the selections and already Carlotta

wanted to murder the woman.

She dutiful y glanced at Angela’s surgically sculpted glutes

falling out of a tiny patch of metallic-blue fabric. “No, your,

um, ass looks…great.”

Angela tossed her blond hair over her shoulder and

pouted at her rear reflection in the three-way mirror. “You

think?”

Carlotta’s mouth watered to say, “Way better than it

looked in high school,” but bit her tongue. It was part of

the game, after al —Angela played the role of poor little

rich girl with a confidence problem, and Carlotta played

the stroking, sympathetic friend. Both of them deserved

an Oscar.

Angela turned around and careful y rearranged her newly

acquired breasts in the bikini top that barely covered her

nipples. Then she slipped her narrow feet into the silver

high-heeled sandals sitting nearby and performed a three-

quarter turn to peruse her long, slender figure from all

angles. Carlotta tried not to compare her own ample

curves to the woman’s lean lines. Or her own gap-toothed

grin to Angela’s perfect, Clorox smile.

She was not jealous of Angela Ashford.

“This suit is a definite maybe,” Angela announced.

Carlotta managed not to rol her eyes—the sixth “definite

maybe” so far. “I have to warn you that the trim on that

suit won’t hold up to chlorine.”

Angela made a face. “Good grief, I don’t actually swim in

our new pool—I don’t even know how to swim. I just want

to look amazing.”

Carlotta bit down on the inside of her cheek. “Do you want

to choose from the ones you’ve set aside so far, or do you

want to try on the rest of these?”

Angela looked irritated. “I’l try on the rest.” Then she

smiled meanly. “And I’l be needing several new spring

outfits. With shoes, of course. Peter told me to treat

myself to anything I wanted since he just got a huge bonus

and our wedding anniversary is coming up. He’s so

generous.”

Carlotta busied herself removing the next bathing suit

from its hanger, trying not to react. Peter, as in Carlotta’s

former fiancé. Just like every time Angela came in for a

shopping binge, Carlotta reminded herself that her

relationship with Peter Ashford had ended over a decade

ago. To be precise, one week after her father had skipped

bail on his indictment for investment fraud and he and her

mother had gone on the run. The local media had had a

field day.

RANDOLPH WREN FLIES THE COOP

RANDOLPH WREN, FUGITIVE JAILBIRD

RANDOLPH WREN AND WIFE VALERIE ABANDON

CHILDREN

Just a few weeks shy of eighteen, Carlotta hadn’t been a

child, but she’d led a rather charmed and sheltered life up

to that point. Suddenly faced with raising her nine-year-

old brother, Wesley, and with no extended family to rely

upon, she had clung to her boyfriend, Peter. Too tightly,

apparently, because after the headlines had exploded, he

had explained over the telephone that their lives had

grown too far apart—he was in col ege at Vanderbilt

University in Tennessee, and she stil had to finish her last

semester of high school in Atlanta. Translation: Your name

is tainted and I don’t want to be associated with your

family scandal.

With maturity and hindsight, she had come to understand

why Peter had bowed out, but at the time, the rejection of

the man she had loved for most of her teenage years, the

man who had taken her virginity, had been akin to having

her heart surgically removed.

“I hope it doesn’t make you uncomfortable when I talk

about Peter,” Angela said as she yanked the tie to the

bikini top, baring her rigid boobs. She kicked the two-

hundred-dol ar scrap of Lycra across the floor of the

dressing room.

“N-no,” Carlotta said, scrambling to rescue her

merchandise. She straightened, then handed Angela a

one-piece suit and gave a little laugh. “Why should it?”

Angela stepped out of the minuscule bikini bottoms and

stood nude before Carlotta for a few seconds before

stretching the next swimsuit over her tight bod.

“Because, wel , you know, the whole pretend engagement

you two had when we were in high school,” Angela said,

preening in the mirror.

The Cartier engagement ring was proof that it had been

more than a “pretend” engagement, but Carlotta wet her

lips and forced a casual note into her voice. “That was a

lifetime ago. We were…kids.”

“That’s what he says,” Angela offered cheerful y. “And that

if the two of you had actually married—” she laughed at

the improbability “—that it never would have lasted.”

Carlotta’s heart twisted, but she managed a smile. “Then

everything worked out for the best, didn’t it?”

In the mirror, Angela leveled her feline gaze on Carlotta. “I

suppose so.”

Carlotta steered the conversation back to clothes and,

thankful y, Angela was distracted by the appearance of the

“perfect” bikini (two of them) and the armfuls of designer

dresses and pantsuits that Carlotta pul ed from every

couture department. A phone call to the shoe department

on the lower floor brought Michael Lane to the women’s

clothing department. He headed toward Carlotta, pushing

a hand truck laden with colorful boxes of Pucci and Gucci,

Don Ciccil o and Donald J. Pliner. “Here’s everything we

have in size seven narrow.”

“Thanks—you’re a dear.”

He gave Carlotta a wry smile. “How are you holding up?”

Carlotta scowled toward the closed door of the dressing

room. “I’m ready to strangle her.”

“Down, girl. Double-A is one of your best customers.”

Carlotta smirked at Michael’s use of her nickname for

Angela. “I got an eyeful of her latest upgrade—let’s just

say she’s no longer a double-A in the bra department.”

He clucked. “Hey, what do you expect? The competition is

tough in Angela Ashford’s social stratum.”

In Angela Ashford’s social stratum. Michael didn’t realize

that he was talking about an arena that Carlotta herself

had been destined for prior to having her life jerked out

from under her. Michael wasn’t a native of Atlanta, and

she didn’t go out of her way to tel friends and co-workers

her entire sordid family history. In fact, she usually lied.

She’d gotten quite good at lying and pretending.

“I suppose you’re right,” Carlotta conceded. “But, Christ,

she always makes me feel like such a peon. And she’s in

rare form today.”

He looked sympathetic. “Just remember that commission

is the best revenge.”

Carlotta laughed rueful y and waved goodbye as she

wheeled the shoes toward the dressing room. Why did

Angela insist on shopping with Carlotta at her beck and

call? She could shop at any boutique in Atlanta or, as her

own mother used to do, she could call the store and have

a personal shopper select items and bring them to her

home for her approval. Or she could simply seek the

assistance of another clerk at Neiman’s. But the woman

seemed to take great pleasure in shopping under

Carlotta’s care, which, Carlotta realized, was a thinly veiled

excuse for Angela to flaunt her successful life with Peter. It

stung, but in truth, Carlotta needed the commission to pay

the seemingly unlimited number of bil s that she and

Wesley, now nineteen years old, generated.

At the thought of her brother, a bittersweet pang struck

her. Wesley had never fully recovered from their parents’

abandonment and had suffered more than his share of

emotional problems. When he was younger, those

problems had manifested into behavioral issues in school,

exacerbated by the fact that his IQ was higher than that of

most of his instructors, especially in math. Despite his

intel ect, Wesley had barely graduated high school last

year, and now as a directionless adult, his problems

manifested into compulsive behavior—more specifical y,

gambling.

His affinity for poker had landed him in debt up to his

neck—and hers. And he’d been foolish enough to borrow

from some unsavory characters. A henchman for one of

the loan sharks had come to see her at the department

store a few months ago, threatening bodily harm to both

of them if Wesley didn’t make a payment. Inadvertently,

her brother always seemed to drag her into his messes,

but every time she’d considered tel ing him that he was of

age and to hit the road, she couldn’t. She couldn’t

abandon him as her parents had, yet the knot of worry in

her chest never eased. She agonized over what trouble he

might get into next, and how they might stay afloat.

Carlotta sighed. One of the worst things about living

paycheck to paycheck was imagining Angela Ashford

having a one-hundred-dol ar lunch with her friends—many

of them girls Carlotta had gone to school with and had

once considered her friends—saying, “That poor Carlotta

Wren, stil single and working retail, can you imagine?” But

if it was the price she had to pay for a hefty commission,

so be it. If Angela spent true to form, the commission on

this sale alone would be enough to pay this month’s

mortgage and electric bil .

Or at least last month’s.

Carlotta opened the door to the dressing room to find

Angela sitting on a bench, half-naked, drinking from a

silver flask. She quickly swallowed and wiped her mouth.

“Just getting a head start on my two-martini lunch.”

Carlotta remained silent but knew that anyone who

packed their own booze had a problem. Her mother had

kept a similar flask in her purse for whenever the urge

struck for a “drinkie-poo.”

“I brought shoes,” Carlotta said brightly, wheeling in the

bounty.

Angela pushed to her feet shakily enough to tel Carlotta

that she’d taken more than one “drinkie-poo” in Carlotta’s

absence, but apparently it had given the woman enough

energy to embark upon another spending binge that

included six outfits, eight pairs of shoes, including a pair of

tall, exotic black boots that Carlotta coveted, plus a rather

astonishing array of risqué underwear (“Peter likes me in

black”). Angela even ventured into the men’s department

where she chose an exquisite cashmere jacket with a crest

embroidered on the lapel—Peter’s favorite brand, Carlotta

recalled fondly. And the charcoal-gray would look great on

Peter with his fair hair and dark skin. From the size, it

appeared that he had fil ed out a little in the shoulders.

She hadn’t seen him in ages, only once in the mall a couple

of years ago. He hadn’t known she was standing a mere

ten feet from him while he ordered a double latte from a

coffee shop. She had wanted to call out his name, to smile

and say how nice it was to run into him, that she’d seen his

and Angela’s wedding announcement and photo in the