COLLECTING
To begin with, Nathan wasn't all that fired up about the idea of collecting. A grown man caching crap and poring over it in the solitude of his study, like Scrooge McDuck diving around his money bin: sounded pretty childish. But Cindy had been struggling to come up with something they could do together for weeks - and the stamp and postcard show sounded like the least annoying option to date. Sure beat that tour of local 19th century homes she'd talked him into taking last month. At least the Convention Center had a decent concession stand.
The event, put on by the Soyland Philatelist Society, was in its tenth year, Nate saw, so it obviously had its dedicated followers. As they passed through the concession area to the echoey showroom, he saw a sparse mix of casually dressed Midwestern men and women chatting across the indoor picnic tables. At the entrance, a cheery grey-haired lady was handing out pamphlets and stamped postcards they could fill out to be invited to next year's bash. Nate smiled and took both offerings, putting the postcard in his polo shirt pocket without filling it out.
He winked at Cindy, but she was too busy peering into the showroom to notice.
"So what are you interested in?" he asked, following his wife's gaze to the rows of dealer tables and sedentary types sitting behind each one, then turning back to her. Even after seven years of marriage, he never stopped appreciating how sexy his wife looked: dressed in jeans and tee-shirt, she still could grab his attention. Her long dark hair framed a gorgeously girlish face with big eyes, lips and a sweetly upturned nose. Her frame had curves that just kept a-going: not the least bit boyish like you saw on too many actresses and models these days. If you asked, Cindy'd tell you that she wished her butt were a skosh smaller, but she looked jes' fine to Nate.
"Inexpensive decorative cards," she told her hubby. "Something pink and flowery and early twentieth century. Thinking of doing decoupage for some stocking stuffers." That was Cindy. Though it was only September, she was already thinking about getting her craft on for the holidays. Once or twice a week, his wife worked as a substitute teacher in the area; the rest of the time she kept herself busy with the DiY thing. "Want to help me look?"
"You know me," Nate begged off, "I'm aesthetically bankrupt. You wouldn't want any of the cards I'd pick out!"
"Probably right," his wife agreed. "Have fun on your own then. But stay away from the girlie postcards!" With that, she immediately headed for the first table of bargain boxes she could find, leaving Nate to wander aimlessly around the room and ponder the bewildering array of open file boxes. Girlie cards? he wondered. Why look at them when he had a living pin-up all his own?
Eventually, he stopped at a set of tables manned by a dealer who looked close to Nate's age, though he had to be at least three times Nate's weight. Seated on an armless rolling desk chair, the portly figure wheeled toward his potential customer and gazed up at him quizzically.
"Lookin' for something in particular?" he asked in an amiable, if slightly wheezy, voice.
"My first time at one of these shows," Nate explained, "so I'm not sure. The wife over there," indicating Cindy at a nearby table, "brought me along."
"What you into?" the fat man pursued. "Sports? World War II memorabilia? Local landmarks?"
Nathan stopped and thought for a moment.
"I'm into being with my wife," he finally said, but as a whiff of barbecue from the concession suddenly wafted his way, he added with a grin, "Could do with a barbecue sandwich or two, I suppose."
"No eatin' allowed in the convention center," the dealer told him. "Don't wanna get sauce on the collectibles." He rolled his chair down two rows of file cards. "You look like a man who appreciates a good joke, why not try some of the 'comic' cards?" He indicated a large box with the word written in magic marker on the front; they were separated into two categories: "Linen" and "Glossy." The descriptors, Nate quickly realized, referred to texture - much like they did with household paint coats - not to fabric.
Reaching into the box, he pulled out a handful of individually wrapped postcards. Though he found a few photo cards, the majority appeared to be the work of pen and brush cartoonists. Their topics and rendering style definitely belonged to his grandparent's time. Most of the punchlines were at least as old.
But the cards were kind of fun to look at: the colors were brightly striking, the jokes harmlessly unconcerned with political correctness. They were also fairly inexpensive - you could even use the unmailed ones for correspondence yourself without spending any more than you might on a modern postcard. He picked out a few he thought would go over well with his work-mates, then he hit a batch of fat lady cards.
Whew! Talk about venturing into risky territory - if Nate sent any of these to the women he worked with, he'd be tarred and feathered. The jokes were usually the same: full-figured women making puns about their behinds or how much they'd eaten on vacation or the amount of shade they provided for kids and dogs. What surprised Nate was how good-natured and matter-of-fact so many of 'em were. Fat jokes they were, but they frequently were jokes that the woman made about herself. So I've put on a few pounds, they all seemed to say. I'm still having fun!
When you got down to it, the attitude was rather refreshing. Though Cindy wasn't obsessive about it like so many women, there were still plenty of times she complained about "being fat" when, to be honest, he didn't see the slightest thing wrong with her figure. On more than one occasion, she'd chided him for bringing home ice cream that wasn't low-cal or candy that she "didn't need." If only she could be as blithely unconcerned as the cartoon women in these cards . . .
He stopped at an orange linen card featuring a curvy brunette standing on a penny scale, staring at the numbers with a smile on her face. The woman was wearing a green patterned dress and a hat with a feather in it, high heels and a pair of seamed stockings that showed off her fulsome calves; her rear shelved out observably. "I'm gaining a few pounds. Guess where?" the card's legend said, but what most struck Nate was the realization that - but for her rounder end - the woman in the card looked like a straight-up caricature of Cindy, large eyes, pert nose and full mouth highlighted with just the right degree of cartoonly exaggeration. The woman wore more makeup than his wife, but that was just a period detail.
The dealer immediately caught the resemblance. "Kinda looks like the missus, doesn't she?" he smirked, as he tallied up Nate's five-card purchase. "Gonna show it to her?"
"Naw," Nate decided, handing him a five then placing the card alongside the blank in his shirt pocket. "She might take it the wrong way."
"Mebbe not," the fat man told him. "I've been collecting fat cards myself, and the wife thinks nuthin' of it." He cocked his head toward a massive womanly figure who was standing across the room, chatting with a rival dealer. "Sez they're kinda cute, actually.
"Course," he added, tapping his own considerable paunch for emphasis, "she's kinda into fat guys herself."
Nate chuckled, then grabbed the little bag containing the rest of his purchases and rejoined his wife. He watched her swiftly rifle through the file boxes, pulling out handfuls of cards with dainty floral patterns, and when she'd gathered enough to decoupage a full-sized steamer trunk, she announced that she was ready for lunch. Nate had been feeling famished for the last half hour, but he wisely refrained from saying so.
"What'd you get?" Cindy asked once they'd settled onto a picnic table with a plate of chips and a barbecue sandwich in front of each of 'em. He opened his bag and showed his small pile of purchases, telling her who he intended to send each gag card to. "What about that?" she said, pointing to the orange card peaking out of his shirt pocket.
"Forgot I had it there," Nate flushed, as he handed the linen card over to her. She stopped to take a bite of her sandwich, then held the card up for inspection, carefully keeping it 'tween her thumb and forefinger on the edges. She raised her eyebrows questioningly.
"Sort of looks like me, doesn't it?" she said, as she gave him back the card. Nate made a show of re-examining it.
"Now that you mention it, it maybe does," he finally decided. "Guess I just can't stay away from you, babe."
"That's sweet," Cindy decided, as she wiped barbecue from her plump lips. "But if my ass ever starts to get that big, it's back to the 'Y' for yours truly!" She rose and grabbed her purse. "In the meantime, I'm getting another b-b-q sandwich. How about you?"
"If you're buying," Nate grinned.
With the exception of the woman on the scale, Nate's postcard purchases quickly found their way to the bottom of a drawer at work. The "guess where" babe, however, got taped by his home computer monitor. The longer he looked at her, he found, the better it made him feel. And as time went by, Nate began to wonder if the artist responsible for the image had other joke cards with the same heroine in 'em.
He began to spend his early evenings on the Internet, Googling in quest of other comic cards by the unnamed artist. There were, he discovered, several sites devoted to collecting cartoon postcards, but the first artist he identified was a guy named Walter Wellman. Wellman had a somewhat more old-fashioned drawing style than the unknown artisan responsible for Cindy's cartoon double - in general, his women wouldn't have looked out of place in a "Betty Boop" cartoon - but he clearly had a knack for drawing cute girls. Shorter and considerably plumper than the Woman on A Scale, they nonetheless possessed a sexy self-assurance he found appealing.
Wellman's plump babes typically favored tight sleeveless patterned dresses with a surprising amount of cleavage and hemlines that frequently rode up to reveal both stocking tops and garters. Their heads were rounder than his sweetie's and their curly hair somewhat shorter, but their eyes remained large and playful and their lips were full. They were clearly remnants of the flapper era, and on more than one card, the Wellman Gal came across as quite the party animal: innocently flirting with balding dandies and tipsy boyish playboys - or just provocatively looking out at the reader. He soon found himself seeking out more of Wellman's work, and as he did, he grew more familiar with the Wellman Woman.
Cindy, meanwhile, observed his newfound obsession with amusement. She started to joke about being jealous of his postcard women and, one weekend, about three months after their visit to the postcard show, she'd posed before him in the exact same stance as the Woman on the Scale. When he swiveled in his desk chair to get a full view, Nate suddenly realized how much closer she now was to his cartoon pin-up. She'd taken to wearing lightweight housedresses more often and curling her hair and, most significantly, had gained a little more "behind" in her lower chassis. It made it difficult for her to fit into her old jeans, though Nate had to admit that he dug the sight of her walking in them too-tight Levi's.
The reason for his wife's extra back was fairly obvious: larger courses at dinner, two sandwiches instead of just one. The pile of postcards that she'd purchased for crafting had apparently been forgotten. Instead, his spouse had begun spending more of her home time in the kitchen. In place of decoupage, she made and packaged cheese balls and beef logs for the holidays - and mailed the successful results to relatives. They'd been a big hit, so Cindy promised to keep 'em a holiday tradition. All of the less-than-perfect attempts had remained at home for Nate and Cindy, of course.
Nate didn't say anything out loud about his wife's extra avoirdupois. Perhaps he was spending too much time with his Wellman Women, but he got a charge out of seeing Cindy with about twenty-five more pounds on her. Amazingly, she didn't seem bothered by it - even when she struggled into her jeans - and, if anything, seemed more comfortable with herself than he'd ever remembered her. It was as if the example of those self-assured postcard plumpers had somehow rubbed off on her.
He'd begun scouring websites devoted to selling postcards and had already picked up some Wellmans, when he discovered the card that'd replace his first purchase alongside the computer monitor. This 'un featured one of the artist's plump heroines resting on the ground, propped up against a large rock with a pillow in between for comfort. Her chubby nyloned legs were crossed and her full round belly encased in a red dress with circular patterns on it; it was obvious that she wasn't wearing a bra. Above the Wellman Girl was a large thought balloon with images of a guy in a fedora, a wad of money, a diamond ring, a large ice cream soda and a great big open box of chocolates. The card's legend read, "Just daydreaming about this and that and them and those!"
Pretty damn cute, Nate thought, admiring the image on his monitor, when he heard his wife coming through the front door. She'd just returned from a trip to the grocery store, so he knew he should help her bring the groceries in from the car. When he saw her walk into the living room, though, he nearly did a comic double-take.
She was, he saw, wearing a loose-fitting dress with the exact same pattern that he'd seen on the Wellman card and had also apparently just gotten her hair trimmed and permed at Cost Cutters. It was curled like the archetypal Walter Wellman Woman's, and she'd even applied some extra makeup onto her plump face. Her cheeks and lips looked as rosy as any of Wellman's dames. As icing on the cake, his wife was holding a large heart-shaped box of chocolates.
"Stopped at Fannie May," Cindy explained, noticing him as he eyed the candy box. "Urge just suddenly came upon me. I hope you don't think I'm bad for giving into it." This last was delivered in a girlish, slightly flirtatious tone that Nate had never quite heard from his wife before. He shut his gaping mouth and took a few seconds before answering.
"Sweetie," he said, "you deserve to reward yourself now and again. Sit down and I'll go unpack the groceries." Cindy smiled gratefully and collapsed on the couch, kicking off her half-heel shoes and tearing the cellophane from her five-pound box. Her loose dress appeared to have bunched behind her, since it showed off her small potbelly and somewhat thickened thighs. Nate blew her a kiss as she popped her first chocolate in between her plump lips, then he went out to the car.
There were half as many grocery bags as he was used to seeing, but the biggest surprise was in a sack from the local kitchen outlet store. Inside, were two large glasses like you saw in an old-fashioned drugstore soda fountain. To go along with it, he also discovered four cartons of Edy's ice cream in one of the grocery bags. Cindy had apparently been daydreamin' just like her postcard counterpart.
By the time he'd finished unloading groceries, his wife had made a significant dent in that box of chocolates. "Like one?" she asked, but he shook his head and returned into the study. The Wellman card was still on the monitor, he saw, but it looked a little different from the way he remembered it. The plump daydreamer remained in repose against that rock, but two of the items in her thought balloon weren't quite the way he remembered them. The money pile looked larger, and he was pretty sure that large cheeseburger hadn't been in the card before. It also appeared as if something was missing, but he couldn't figure out what it was: money, big ring, ice cream soda, chocolates, burger - that was it. Be that as it may, he decided to order the card from the postcard dealer. At less than five bucks, it was a bargain, so he clicked on the site's shopping cart option and pulled out his Visa card.
It took two weeks for his newest postcard purchase to arrive in the mail, and in the intervening time, Cindy had shown her skills as a soda fountaineer. Every night, she made a pair of ice cream sodas and served 'em as they watched teevee together; it quickly became a part of their evening routine. She'd also taken his advice to "reward herself now and again" to heart. Several times a week, Nate'd come home from work to see his wife on the couch digging into a fresh box of Fannie Mays.
The results of all this additional snacking were hardly surprising. That once-loose red dress grew much less roomier as the weeks flew past. Thoroughly unconcerned by this, his now-plump wife spent more and more time in the kitchen, working up newer and more elaborate treats. She was clearly getting a kick out of her newfound interests; her mien was bubblier and more girlish. It was almost as if she were a different woman.
Nate had no complaints when it came to the new Cindy. Though his wife'd always had a playful side to her, there were times now when she seemed positively giddy. She took more pleasure in the simplest of things and was more readily responsive to even the slightest loving touch from her husband. He'd always thought they had a good marriage together, but somehow this was even better.
By the time the next postcard show came around, Nate had amassed a decent Wellman collection - and Cindy'd grown into a living version of the chubby Wellman Woman on the Rock. Her dresses now clung to her ultra-plump frame, showing off her wide rump and well-fed belly; their hems were up high enough to reveal her roundly fulsome calves and dimpled knees. Her arms had also filled out considerably and, like her knees, were beginning to dimple at the elbows. Cindy's subtly rouged cheeks had similarly grown fuller, widening her face so it more closely resembled the old-styled cartoon beauties of his postcard collection.
First thing she did when they hit the convention center was head for the concession stands, planting her ample end on a picnic table by the food window and ordering a plate full of barbecue. "You go ahead, Pappy!" she squeaked, happily biting into her first sandwich. "This is your show more than mine!" Nate nodded and left his wife to her mid-morning snack. He sought the dealer from his first year's visit and was quickly able to find him. There weren't a lot of folks his size in the room.
"Welcome back!" the man huffed, rising from his chair to shake Nate's hand. "Looks like you've been bitten by the collecting bug!"
"Just a mite," Nate confessed, reaching over the postcard table. A year of Cindy's kitchen work had given him some paunchiness, though he was nowhere near the size of the postcard dealer, who had to be a good four-hundred-and-fifty pounds or more. "Especially interested in Wellmans, if you have any."
"'Course I do," the dealer reassured him, "but you won't find 'em in the 'Comic' section; the man has his own selection in the 'Artist' boxes. So you go for that type, eh? I'm not a big fan of Wellman - the cutey pie look gets old after a while. Prefer a more grown-up full-figured artist. Craig Fox or Walt Munson, say."
"Who?"
"Fox. Munson," the fat man repeated, reaching for a box from under the table. "They were both prolific postcard artists who did a lot of big lady cards in the nineteen-forties. Women who looked like they had a little more experience than the Wellman Girls: Mae West more than Betty Boop." He pulled out a card with a tall and suntanned redheaded BBW standing in the ocean, holding up her skirted swimsuit to show off her fleshy shapely thighs; her double-chinned face was beaming saucily at the reader. "Sure, the boys all love me," she was bragging, "there's so much of me to love!"
"That's Craig Fox," the dealer told him, then he flipped a second card in front of Nate. "This here's Walter Munson." This 'un showed a zaftig blond with her back to the viewer, wearing a girdle and holding a phone, her prominent end highlighted. On her twice-chinned face was a smile as she told whoever was on the other end of the line, "I'm in great shape and feeling fine!"
"Pretty nice," Nate said. "Either of the artists do any cards with brunettes?"
"Funny you should ask," the dealer said, and he reached back under the table to pull out two more cards that were duplicates of the cards he'd shown Nate but for one small detail: both women's hair was dark.
The cards were a tad pricier - three dollars to the usual one - but Nate was willing to pay. They spent the next half hour going over other Fox and Munson postcards, but none immediately said, "Buy me!" to Nate. He did buy another comic card that was unsigned, however: a shot of an overfed matron with tightly ringletted yellow hair sitting at what appeared to be the dinner table of a country inn. In front of her was an array of still steaming platters - a whole chicken, a mound of mashed potatoes - while a waiter was bringing in a large covered platter of something more. This was no chubby or zaftig figure, but an out-and-out fat lady. She was dressed in an patterned orange-ish dress with a cloth belt that disappeared into the folds of her torso, and her cleavage looked like it was more the result of overstressed buttons poppin' than a deliberate attempt at looking provocative. The fat diner was delicately holding a heaping spoon of potato to her mouth, her tongue reaching out to sample it first. "This is what the country air does for ME!" the card announced, the implication being that the postcard's heroine would probably be a whole lot thinner if she wasn't having such a good time on vacation.
Nate bought the card as well, though he wasn't sure why - the figure was fatter than ones he usually considered attractive, but the cartooning was nice. He'd worn a windbreaker with a zippered pockets this year, so he carefully slipped the third card into his jacket, did a quick scouting of the other dealer tables and returned to his wife with his purchases. In the time since he'd left her, she'd apparently gone for seconds and thirds on the barbecue sandwiches.
"Any luck, babe?" she asked, wiping her lips with the back of a plump and red-nailed hand. He pulled out his first two buys and showed 'em to his wife. "They don't look like your usual cards," she noticed.
"I'm branching out," he explained. "Found a dealer who appears plenty knowledgeable about this stuff, and he steered me toward some new artists. Also gave me his card," he concluded, showing off a business card with the name Karl Downe Kards emblazoned in the center. "He and his wife have a website, too," he noted.
"'Wife' you say?" Cindy echoed, after ordering a pair of jumbo hot dogs for the two of 'em. "She look anything like the wimmen on the postcards he sells?"
"To be honest, I haven't really met her," Nate answered. He rose from the table and retrieved what could only be the start of their lunch together. "Saw her from a distance last year, but I don't even know if she's around this year."
"Think she is," Cindy grinned, and, with that, a living version of the fat blond hidden in his windbreaker waddled their way from out of the Ladies' Room. "Lydia, this is my hubby, Nate!" she called out to the super-sized woman as she stopped by the concession stand for a pair of frankfurters. The woman pulled up a folding chair and set herself up at the end of the picnic table, obviously unwilling to bother with negotiating the immoveable table benches, then fastidiously set her meal in front of her - the gesture amusingly reminded Nate of the movie comedian Oliver Hardy - and unfolded her napkin.
"Your lovely wife tells me you and my Karl share a collecting passion," she finally said, carefully spreading catsup across her dogs. Her voice, he thought, had a hint of a Pennsylvania accent. "It's not an area many postcard dealers know or care much about, so you two are really lucky to've connected." She raised her first hot dog, taking a large bite from it, a droplet of catsup falling from the other end onto one of her large white breasts. Daintily, she dabbed the spot away with the corner of her napkin. "Last year was our first time at this show," she said between chews. "You never know what people are gonna be lookin' for at these things, but I'll tell ya, Karl was not expecting to meet anyone into fat collectibles."
"Are you," Nate slowly asked, "also . . . into, um, fat collectibles?"
The question brought a large chuckle that reverberated through the stout woman's chins, breasts and belly.
"You're right, Cindy," she finally puffed when she'd gotten herself back under control. "Your husband is adorable! The way he oh-so-carefully broached the question!" She finished her first hot dog and then answered Nate's question. "I don't do fat collectibles; I collect fat!" She gestured across her torso with the matter-of-fact pride of the Country Air matron. "It's cheaper and so much more enjoyable!"
The joke brought a guffaw from Cindy that didn't sound the least bit girlish . . .
When they got back home from the postcard show, Nate checked out the Downes' website, but most of it, he discovered, was still "Under Construction." As planned, the site would focus on the history of fat-themed postcards: "from real photo to 'toon, from insult to celebration - with a particular emphasis on the latter" and contained a list of artist names that were by and large unfamiliar to him. Wellman, Fox and Munson he knew, but who were Bud Dudley, E.L White or Donald McGill? A quick Googling yielded the answer to that last at least: McGill apparently was an English postcard artist responsible for all those ruddy-faced fat lady beach cartoons. Not quite his cuppa tea, though they'd obviously once been big sellers.
He also spent some time just generally checking out Fox and Munson: found some more examples of their fat cards on the auction websites, including some jpgs of the two he'd purchased. None of the examples he saw contained brunette heroines, however. He wondered where Karl Downe'd gotten a hold of 'em.
When he finished, he found Cindy in the living room, clipping newspaper coupons and deliberately enjoying the contents of a ten-pound box of chocolates. His spouse had grown adept over the past year at hunting down grocery bargains: much of their horde in the refrigerator was either Buy One/Get One Free or even cheaper, while she'd also grown acquainted with every source of freebie coupons on the Internet. It wasn't as if they needed to watch their pennies that much - though Cindy wasn't getting called as often to substitute teach, a new contract at Nate's job had brought in a good salary bump - but she obviously liked to scout out bargains.
"What did you and missus talk about before I got there?" he asked, reaching over to grab a Dark Chocolate May from the tray.
"Oh, this 'n' that," Cindy vaguely replied. "She's really happy that her hubby turned you onto - what'd she call them? - Fat Collectibles. 'Anything that celebrates us full-figured gals is worth holding onto,' she sez." She stopped to briefly consider one of her chocolates than shrugged and popped it into her mouth. "Wasn't really thinking of myself as a 'full-figured gal,' but I guess I am these days. More of me to love, eh?"
Nate kneeled on the couch beside her and kissed his wife on her plump red cheek. "But definitely," he said.
It took several months for Downe to put up new pages on the postcard website, and by that time Nate had already grown quite familiar with both Fox and Munson. The former was a bit more cartoonish in his rendering style - reminding Nate of this book of old newspaper strips he'd once read as a kid at his grandparents' house - and was more inclined to draw his fatter women as frumpy housewife types. But he was a master at rendering "red hot mamas" who looked like they could've been transplanted from the days of Diamond Jim Brady. Walter Munson's plus-sizers were typically more upper middle-class matronly, but they clearly were enjoying their lot in life.
As was Cindy.
Where once his wife had been a typical modern American woman - worried about weight where there was no extra weight to worry about - she now was undeterred by her size. It was almost as if just meeting the super-sized Mrs. Downe and being welcomed into the sisterhood of "full-figured gals" had given her leave to never look back at her old weight-worried ways. And once let loose, her appetite swelled to a degree that might've given the Country Air breather pause. She was rarely seen for long without something edible at hand: whether in the living room with a large box of candy, a bag of chips or one of her homemade fountain concoctions - or seated on a stool in kitchen, baking cookies or pies or just preparing one of her multi-course meals. Where once their house was characterized by the scent of heated glue guns and potpourri, now it was awash with the tantalizing scents of simmering roasts, cheese-laden casseroles and appetizing baked goods. Just walking through the door was enough to get your mouth watering.
As the months passed, his wife looked less like the plump Wellman girlies and more like the mid-sized matrons who populated his newest collecting obsession. Her breasts and butt rounded out considerably; her belly swelled but remained sufficiently overshadowed by her fulsome breasts to maintain the suggestion of an hourglass. Though her calves and arms had continued to roundly fatten, Cindy still wore her sleeveless dresses short enough to provide a full view of 'em. Instead of further widening, her face had filled in with one, then two, extra chins, obscuring her neck and more fully framing her facial features with flesh. Over eighteen-plus months, his wife had grown fat - and she was even more confoundingly sexy to Nate.
She'd swapped personal email addresses with Miz Downe, and the two, while he was at work during the day, apparently spent time corresponding over broadband. He tried to respect her privacy, but over time it became harder to keep his curiosity in check. One night, lingering over a pot roast dinner that would not see any leftovers, he asked his wife the previously unspoken question, "What do you two say to each other?"
Cindy was sitting at her end of the dining room table, the teevee nattering on a shelf behind her, swirling a trail of gravy on top of her newest helping of pot roast. "Just fat girl talk," she said, as she cut a bite-size chunk of meat. Her voice had become a lot less girlish in the past few months and was even more provocative for it. A month before, Cindy had cut her curly hair shorter, which showed off her bulging cheeks better. "You wouldn't be interested," she concluded with her mouth full.
"Probably not," Nate agreed, as the back of his mind registered the astonishing fact that his wife had just referred to herself as "fat" - not "full-figured" or any other weak-assed euphemism - without using it to put herself down. Whatever the "fat girl talk" was, it seemed to be doing Cindy a world of good.
"Lydia did give me the recipe for tonight's dessert," she continued. "Chocolate torte: very rich and very yummy." They ate in silence a few more minutes, Nate contemplating his fat wife as she slowly and appreciatively relished every mouthful she devoured. Sometimes when she ate, you could see the same pink flush spread across the top of her chest that she got when they were in bed together. Watching her appreciate her food so fully, Nate couldn't help feeling more than a little aroused himself. It was exciting to see her enjoying life so much.
Plus, he thought, feeling his own increasingly substantial abdomen press against the table as he finished off his third - or was it his fourth? - plate, she really had become a wonderful cook.
"She have anything to say about her husband?" he finally asked. "Or the web page?"
"Not really," she said, after putting a large spoonful of cream-blended mashed potatoes into her mouth. When she finally swallowed, she dabbed her bright red lips and suggested, "What would you say about taking dessert to the other room? Just one big pie plate, two spoons and a bed."
"Now that sounds very rich and yummy," Nate agreed. "That's not part of Missus D.'s recipe, is it?"
"I'll never tell, big boy," Cindy purred in her best Mae West. They left the table uncleaned and quickly made their way for the bedroom. . .
When Nate awoke, three hours later, he found his wife had left their bed and was back in the dining room, polishing off the final third of their five-pound roast, scooping out the bowl of microwave re-heated potatoes. By her dimpled elbows were two large fountain glasses with half-finished chocolate and vanilla ice cream sodas. She was seated in a frilly translucent negligee that didn't hide any of her bulging body and wearing a pair of pink slippers he'd never seen on her plump feet before. In the light, she looked like some apparition from the 1940's, so much so Nate almost feared she'd disappear if he made a sound. He returned to their bed, his own mouth watering, but it was a long time before he could return to sleep. The vision was just too strong in his head . . .
It wasn't long after that memorable night that a flock of new pages were added to the Downe Kards site. Now he finally had a better idea of who Bud Dudley and E.L. White were: he'd seen their work before, just didn't have a name to go with the graphics. Dudley favored cartoonishly short men and women who made Wellman's little chickadees look tall; his figures had a doll-like quality that didn't really do much for Nate, but he was also fond of posing his heroines bent over so their skirts rose enough to show off their well-padded heart-shaped rears and the bottoms of their frilly lingerie. White typically featured barrel-shaped dames who thought nothing of wearing striped bathing suits or dresses that accentuated their girth.
The third new artist, Donald McGill, was already a familiar name to him, but until Nate saw Karl's page, he would've also put the artist in the category of "okay, but not for me." McGill was a British artist whose style was frequently copied whenever one wanted to suggest a certain style of old-fashioned beach cartoon. His women and his men were often fat and ruddy faced, as fond of their ale as they were their chocolates. Though a few of 'em looked cute, in general, they weren't as appealing as the artists Nate truly loved. But there was a card on Karl's site that proved the exception. In it, a very fat couple who looked about ten years younger than the usual McGill middle-class middle-agers were standing in a bedroom that had two twin-sized beds in it. Both man and woman were somewhere in the range of 400 pounds and large enough to take up a bed apiece, but still the husband was asking, "Two beds? I wonder if they're going to put anyone else in this room."
The nudge-nudge/wink-wink implication of the cartoon was appealing in itself, but McGill had also outdone himself with his super-sized brown-haired wifey, standing by her husband with her hands on her massive hips, an anticipatory smile on her lovely face. As he was in the process of saving the card on his computer, Cindy toddled into the study with a plate of glazed oatmeal raisin cookies; when she set it by the keyboard, she noted the postcard image.
"Ooh, that's a nice one," she proclaimed, before taking one of her own baked creations from the plate. "You don't own that, do you?"
"No," Nate told her, "but Karl has one up for sale. It's a bit steep, ten bucks, but I really like the image."
"Can see why," she said, handing him a cookie - he never could resist oatmeal and raisin. "They look like a pretty frisky couple. Kind of like us, wouldn't you say?"
"I would," Nate thought, as he steered his cursor for the website shopping cart. "Hair's not your color, though," he noted between bites of cookie.
"Been thinking of coloring mine," Cindy told him, and she patted her curly hair, her large upper arm jiggling as she did. "Nothing too extreme, just a little bit of highlighting. What you think?"
"I think you're gorgeous the way you are," he told her, eyeing her ripely sensual three-hundred pound figure as he took a second cookie from their plate.
"Aww, you," she said, blushing, and, perhaps he was imagining it, but he could almost hear the lilt of a slight British accent in her words. "I think we should get a frame for that card," she continued, "maybe do like people used to when they bought postcards like this on vacation: write our names on the card with little arrow indicating 'This Is Us.'"
"You just gave the collector in me the chills," Nate stated. "Frame, yes. Writing on the card and decreasing its value, a definite no." He swiveled in his chair and patted his wife on an ample thigh. "Know what would go good with these cookies?" he grinned. "One of your patented three-scoop ice cream sodas."
"You know how to show a girl a good time, you do," she cooed.
They did frame the McGill card when it arrived and placed it on the wall behind the computer. True to his word, though, Nate refrained from writing on it. By the time the annual postcard show came around, they didn't need any names and arrows to make the point, anyway - together, they were the living image of the Two Beds couple. Cindy had been so actively feeding them both that they were more than three times their former weights, and neither could see going back to their old way of living.
Nate took to walking with a cane to help support his voluminous seventy-inch waist. At work, he'd taken the position of Fat Man in the Office, a role he good-naturedly accepted and was as ready to joke about as anyone else. "I'm proof we must be doing well," he'd say, holding himself like a Victorian banker proud of his heft. "Wouldn't want me losing any weight; otherwise the customers might get nervous."
Cindy had given up part-time teaching to fully devote her time as a homemaker. In addition to her kitchen skills, she'd pulled out her craft smarts and her way around a sewing machine, letting out their clothes to keep up with their ballooning bodies. She'd even made a vest to wear with his work suits. It spilled over his belly and invariably drew more attention to it, but, then, there was no way you expect to hide a bay window like his. It did a good job of covering when his slacks slid a bit too low down his shirt front - which they invariably when he sat for any length of time at his work desk - so he quickly made it part of his regular dress.
The day of the Soyland Postcard Show, Cindy got out of bed early to prepare two large picnic baskets. "Thought we could have a little picnic lunch with the Downes," she explained. "Weather's nice, and I make much better sandwiches then the concession stand." She indicated two towers of multi-tiered creations wrapped in wax paper within the first basket. Propping them up were three gallon-sized zip-lock bags filled with her own homemade potato chips; a large bag of veggies and some Tupperware filled with freshly made dip rounded out the package. In the other basket, he knew, was a selection of pies, cakes and some homemade chocolates.
"I don't remember," Nate confessed. "There any picnic tables outside the convention center?"
There were - and Nate left his wife by 'em to set up their feast. He found Miz Downe at the table by the showroom entrance, chatting with the little white-haired lady as the two of 'em noshed on a pair of cherry Danishes. "You've arrived!" she cried out happily, flouncing across the floor to hug him happily. As she grabbed his sides with her great fat hands, he felt a vest button pop loose between their bellies. "Is Cindy outside?" she gushed. "Can't wait to see her." When they separated, Lydia Downe gestured toward the tables and a set of coolers beneath 'em. "Brought a little something to add to the party," she explained. "You willin' to lug 'em out for me?"
Nate couldn't say no, but he had to admit there were a couple of moments when he wished he could've. The coolers were heavy, and to haul both, he had to leave his cane by the table. He just wasn't one for walking around as much as he used to be - the past years of home-life had turned him into a stay-put kinda guy - so he was red-faced and out of breath by the time they got to the picnic tables. As his wife and her friend embraced each other (looked like Cindy had a good fifty pounds on Miz Downe now), he rested with his podgy hand on the table for support and wiped his sweaty forehead with a handkerchief. First thing Lydia did when she turned back to her coolers was lift the lid and hand him a sixteen-ounce bottle of sarsaparilla. Nate thanked her, quickly quaffed it, then toddled back into the convention center to find her husband.
When he got to the dealer's tables, Karl invited him to pass between the tables. "Pull up a chair," the fat man greeted. "Got some cards I wanna show ya." Nate gratefully accepted Karl's invitation, lowering himself onto a sturdy metal chair that looked like something the Downes had brought for their own personal use. Once seated, he couldn't help noticing that his belly had a good six inches on the dealer's.
"What you got?" he finally asked.
"Brought a book with some of my personal favorites," Karl told him. "Not for sale, but I'm sure they'll pique your interest. You heard about Arthur Thiele?"
Nate shook his head.
"A Dutch artist at the start of the twentieth century. He's well known among postcard collectors for his fantasy cards of animals dressed like people as well as scenes of Turn of the Century Dutch life - but he also painted a marvelous string of postcards featuring fat women and men." He pulled a large three-ring binder from a box that was out of customer reach, then flipped it open and handed it to Nate. There were six Thiele cards displayed in the plastic sleeves, and as soon as he saw them, Nate knew that he'd found his next collectable artist.
Herr Thiele did not believe in holding back when it came to imagining fat figures: his women and men were large and convincingly hefty enough to be appear in a sensationalistic tabloid piece - or as performers in an old-fashioned circus sideshow - but Thiele drew 'em going about their daily business. The first card featured a pair of his super-super-sized femmes out for a stroll, colorfully bedecked in frilly tent-sized dresses, their slender husbands following in their wake. The women took up two-thirds of the picture. In another postcard, an obese gal in a swimsuit was standing among a group of smaller women. From her place in the picture, it was obvious she was the center of attention, and the way she stood with her hands on her hips, she was obviously digging it. "Seastars," the postcard said in one of three languages, and Nate agreed with the appellation.
But the card that he immediately fell in collector love with was on the second page: a picture of a dressed-up couple - the woman in a bright yellow dress and hat, the man in a suit with spats and an orange vest - leaning forward to kiss each other. Both figures were enormously fat, so much so that their forefronts forced them to step back and lean their whole bodies to get within reach of each other's lips. The woman's globular breasts lifted her head and chins, pushing the latter so they billowed ahead of her lips; she was gripping the lapels of her boyfriend's jacket for support. Her red-faced beau had beads of perspiration on his forehead, whether from excitement or exertion was unclear. The two-line caption was apparently in Romanian, so he didn't have a clue as to what it said.
"Got one of these for sale?" Nate asked, tapping a pudgy finger on the card, but the dealer shook his head.
"Had a feelin' you ask about that 'un," he sighed, "but it's the only one of its kind I've found. You'll be the first collector I contact if I come across another, though." They rifled through two more pages of Thieles, and Nate found one that the dealer did have for sale: a seaside image of a super-sized bathing beauty improbably playing leapfrog over the backs of two sturdy men. Like the other Thiele Women he'd seen, she had to be over a quarter of a ton and was so abundantly chinned that they widened the bottom of her face by several inches. Her eyes were small due to her cresting cheeks and her splayed hands fat and dimpled. Though noticeably smaller than the kissing woman - he'd guess the latter had at least a hundred pounds on the former - she still was pretty damn impressive.
"That's all I can spend today," Nate said, after parting with a twenty. "You ready for lunch?"
Karl was, and, after asking the dealer at the neighboring table if he would watch the boxes for a spell, he rose to follow Nate to the picnic a-waiting. The gals had spread out everything and were noshing on two of Cindy's picnic sandwiches when their husbands arrived on the scene. But they quickly stopped to pull out paper plates and sandwiches for their spouses. The next hour was spent happily, as all four fat adults sat and chatted, making their way through everything that the two super-sized housewives had prepared, unapologetically enjoying everything they ate. Long about the time they'd gotten into Cindy's strawberry cheesecake (they'd simply sliced it four ways), Nate asked the dealer if he wasn't feeling antsy about getting back to his table. Karl pooh-poohed the idea.
"Don't know if you noticed, but there ain't much of a crowd this year," he said. "Folks're doing more of their shopping on-line these days. At the cost of tables, it's barely worth my while to come out to these smaller shows. We may be one state over, but it's still a four-hour drive."
"Meeting people's important, though," his wife protested, "if we hadn't come to Soyland, we wouldn't have gotten acquainted with Cindy and Nate here." She reached across the table and patted Cindy's utensil-free hand. Cindy, her mouth full of cheesecake, beamed contentedly. When she finished her helping, she invited the dealers to their house that night for dinner. Not surprisingly, the couple accepted.
After their picnic, Nate and Cindy shot back home to prep dinner for their guests. Nate had been spending more time on weekends in the kitchen with his wife - they'd bought a pair of stools to support 'em through more time-consuming projects - and had grown accustomed to their cooking time together. Cindy always had some readymade on the counters while they were working, so the afternoons were a non-stop nosh.
For their guests, Cindy decided to make some Balkenbrij, a Dutch blend of sausage and meatloaf. "Your newest acquisition got me thinking about Hollander cuisine," she explained, though when she'd found time to look up this previously unknown dish was beyond him. It took much of the day to prepare the Balkenbrij - they had to cook it twice - so to make up for it she went simple on the side dishes: cheesy potatoes and some fresh chopped cole slaw. Instead of baking bread, she sent him out to the grocery store for a couple of loaves; on his way, he took a detour and bought some Fannie Mays for his wife and guests. May not've been his wife's chocolate, but it'd have to do . . .
The evening was a success, and, by its end, both couples had become fast friends. The Downes were charming guests - though occasionally Lydia came out with a statement that struck Nate as a little, well, New Agey - and by the end of the night, they'd extracted a promise from Nate and Cindy to come for a weekend visit at their farmhouse in Indiana.
"It's smack in the middle of nowhere," Lydia told 'em, "but there's a friendly little town less than a mile away and we've got all the modern conveniences. I know you'll like my kitchen, Cindy, and wait 'til you see Karl's other fat collectibles, Nate."
"Don't know if I need any new fixations, Karl," Nate protested. "Collecting postcards is enough, thanks."
"What'd I tell you, Nathan?" Lydia teased, as she gestured to her husband to pass the serving platter. "Do like I do - just collect the weight; it's so much easier!"
"Looks like I've been doing that, too!" Nate answered, which brought guffaws from all around the table.
"Me, too, bubi!" his loving wife chimed in, her wonderful body jiggling with glee within her well-packed dress . . .
It was almost a year before Cindy and Nate made the trek to Indiana. As they started to plan their trip, they realized they'd needed a car with stronger shocks than their current Mitsubishi sedan, so they spent time looking into something that'd accommodate their present sizes. In the nine months since they'd been invited to visit the Downes, Cindy's cooking had done a major job on them both. They'd long exceeded the capacity of their now-broken 450-pound bathroom scale. The super-sized couple still got around okay - if much more slowly - though neither of 'em were capable of engaging in a round of leapfrog on the beach.
His wife, God love her, was now as wide as she was tall. When she sat in the kitchen, which was most of the day, she had to use two stools to support her massive end. She usually cooked sidesaddle, since both her breasts and belly surpassed the length of her arms even when she was standing. Cindy constantly wore a self-made apron since she was forever rubbing up against the stove or counter - when you had the kind of body that required you to go through most doors sideways, accidents were bound to happen. They'd gotten rid of a lot of extraneous clutter in the last six months, and Cindy was worried that they both might be china shop bullish once they got to the Downes' house.
"You just know that they'll have a lot of collectibles around the place," she said, nervously devouring her fourth sandwich in the Suburu Outback's passenger seat, her pillowy chins quivering as if to reflect her agitation. She'd packed two large picnic baskets for their trip, but from the way she was tucking into 'em, they'd probably have to stop at a good buffet outside Indiana.
"The Downes know how we are," Nate said reassuringly. "You're the one who told me that Lydia was big on size acceptance. Bet they have the house totally fat friendly."
Nate was right - about the Downes and the need for a decent buffet stop. When they arrived at the farmhouse, they found it spaciously laid out and extra friendly to a couple their size. The passageways between rooms were all six-feet wide and arched, with translucent curtains keeping them separate. There wasn't a tiny piece of furniture in the place. And Karl kept most of his collectibles locked in a barn away from the house: the country version of Scrooge McDuck's money bin.
Soon as they arrived, they were made to feel welcome. Lydia had large fruit and cheese platters prepared for each of them, with mugs of hot coffee topped with whipped cream. Her kitchen was vast and equipped with a restaurant-quality oven and dishwasher: Cindy immediately fell in love with it. "Glad you like it," Lydia smiled. "I figured you might wanna play around in it with me while the boys are in the barn. Got a little proposition I'd like to offer you two."
Karl's barn collection turned out to be as roomily displayed as any museum's. The walls were lined with glass cases and shelves loaded with more than just postcards, but fat representations of all sizes: ceramic figures, novelty dolls, works of art. In the middle of the barn sat a large animatronic laffing fat lady that'd been used at the entryway to a Coney Island fun house. There were postcards hanging on the walls, of course, and what even seemed to be an actual McGill fat lady painting in a frame. But what really caught Nate's attention was the circus sideshow banner dangling from the rafters. It advertised a sideshow performer named Miss Peggy, who purportedly weighed 558 pounds - if the numbers to be believed. She looked puny compared to his own Miz Cindy, however.
"What you think?" Karl asked, noticing that Nate was affixed on his prize collectible.
"That the poor little girl hasn't got a thing on my wife," Nate admitted, and his friend nodded knowingly.
"Ladies like your Cindy - who are comfortable with their size - are like wondrous visitors from another century," Karl said, patting Nate on his broad back. "We're both lucky men," he said, grasping his guest's hand, and, as they stood there in the barn, Nate thought back to the first time they'd met: the day that he and his gorgeous super-super-sized wife had impulsively stopped at the postcard show on their way to the Fannie May outlet store. Nate and Cindy'd been a bit thinner, if memory served, back then - fifty, maybe sixty pounds smaller - but they'd both been Thiele-like long before they knew what that meant.
"Found something for you," Karl told him, looking into Nate's eyes and smiling. "Wanted to bring you here to present it, but I think you'll like it." Waddling over to the altar of the laffing fat lady, he kneeled down (Nate's knees ached in sympathy just watching him) and pulled open a drawer on the figure's base. He lifted a small picture frame and carried it back to Nate. Mounted within was a copy of Thiele card with the obese kissing lovebirds; in place of the foreign caption were the words, "Cindy and Nate."
"You have this made up?" Nate said, delighted by the gift.
"No," the dealer reassured him, "it's genuine." The longer Nate looked at it, the more the woman resembled his beloved Cindy: same bottom heavy pear-shaped face, same upturned chin and protuberant lips, same beautifully immense body. She was even wearing the same bright yellow dress with a red cloth belt that was tied into a bow on the side. Nate had tied the bow himself since Cindy had trouble reaching it; to give room for the bow and some extra hang, the cloth had to be 110 inches long. He knew for certain now that the beads of sweat on the face of her fat beau were purely from excitement, not strenuous effort. How could they not be with such a vision of beauty in his arms?
"How much?" Nate asked.
"It's yours," the dealer told him, "yours and your lovely wife's. Why should I charge you for it? My wife'd never forgive me. The card is you!" He patted Nate once more on the back, then led him out of the barn. "Let's see what the ladies are up to," he said, as he started locking the barn door.
When they returned to the house, Miz C. was already going to town in the kitchen, working up trays of chocolate tarts. She was wearing an apron that only managed to cover about a third of her burgeoning belly, so there were traces of flour on her bright yellow dress. But his wife didn't seem to mind. As she prepared the tarts, regularly taking healthy samples of the chocolate filling with a tablespoon, she had a beatific smile on her chubby lips. Off to the side, Lydia was watching with her arms crossed over her Miss Peggy-sized belly.
"Lydia thinks I have a future as a special order baker," Cindy told Nate, as she continued to pour her filling into a row of crusts. "Apparently, there's a company that specializes in catering to the needs of well-to-do customers across the country: women and men who appreciate fine food and lots of it but, for whatever the reason, don't have the wherewithal to make it themselves." She finished off filling the last of the crusts, and, when she saw that there were several good spoonfuls of filling left, held out the bowl to Nate. Though the sight of all that chocolate was tempting, he shook his head and told his wife to go ahead, so she cheerfully scraped out the bowl for herself. In the heat of the kitchen, her yellow dress clung to her, bunching into the rolls on the side of her torso; it showed off every bulge on her body. As she sat back on her stool, her belly visibly dropped halfway down her calves within her dress. If she reached back too much, her lower belly flesh was exposed to view, but Cindy was totally unconcerned about it.
"There's a small bakery in the town nearby that recently went out of business," she continued, the faint Dutch lilt that was always in the back of voice becoming more prominent with her excitement. "Perhaps we could drive out and take a look. You haven't been very happy at work lately . . ."
Which was true: while he didn't mind his job, the fact was he'd grown less and less enamored with spending so much time away from his wife - and her cooking.
"We'll check it out," Nate promised, though as soon as he spoke, he was seized by the conviction that everything that'd happened since they first met the Downes had been leading to this. He had plenty of experience on the business end, he thought. He could manage the orders and bookkeeping while his wife oversaw the preparation. Perhaps they could make a go of it . . .
He pulled his wife down off her stool; as she jounced to the floor, her body shook within her dress excitedly. Leaning forward and grabbing his wife on both sides of her billowy forefront, Nate moved forward to re-enact the Thiele Kiss. He looked into Cindy's opulent large face, at the provocatively puffed-out lips that didn't push as far as her cushiony lower chin, and he knew this was how they were meant to be. He felt their bellies mash against each other; as he got closer to her lips, her magnificent breasts pressed against his chins. In the heat of the kitchen, he could feel his face flush.
"I love you, lieveling," he puffed, and he squeezed his spouse more tightly.
"My handsome hubby," she panted back to him, the scent of Dutch chocolate on her breath. Off to the side, the Downes observed the moment happily. It was, they both thought, just like a scene from a postcard - not a comic card, but a deeply, profoundly romantic one . . .
The next six months were devoted to moving and setting up shop in the small Indiana town. They missed the postcard show, since they were still in the process of getting the bakery ready, but the company Lydia had talked about - a little known concern called Ample Services that apparently employed her as a part-time consultant - had already emailed Nate a list of daily orders that'd keep 'em pretty busy once they got started. Some of the customers clearly had appetites that surpassed Cindy and Nate's, and they were willing to pay for the service.
Their shop, Cindy's Bakkerij, was going to specialize in Dutch pastries - almond butter cakes (boterkoeks), spice cookies (speculaas), as well as Pennsylvania Amish variations like Shoofly Pie - along with those items like homemade chocolates and tarts that Nate and Cindy still made part of their own voracious dining routine. (If you were gonna bake 'em for yourself, you might as well use the bakery oven to make a few sheets more.) Their shop came with an apartment right above it - and an elevator that was only large enough to carry one of 'em at a time but still quite convenient.
Since they'd gotten rid of their extraneous crap and spent most of their days downstairs in the bakery, anyway, the massive couple felt quite comfortable in the place. Nate had his office and computer downstairs to oversee orders, and they planned to hire a couple of high school kids to do walk-in counter work and help with clean-up. Lydia had already recommended one of the locals, a dimply-faced farm girl named Becca, and Cindy had found her charming. A few years older, and she'd pass for a Wellman Girl, Nate thought.
They put the framed Thiele postcard in pride of place behind the counter, so that visitors would immediately see it when they entered the shop front. From time to time, as they prepared for their grand opening, Nate would heft himself from his desk chair, take his cane and waddle up to the front, his free hand drumming on his tight vest coat as he did - and he'd stand and happily look at the card, listening to his wife hum merrily in the back, as she grew acquainted with her new domain. When it came time for lunch - or one of their regular between-meal snacks - he waddled into the bakery to the area where his Cindy had prepared their meals. Soon as he saw his mountainous wife, perched atop her custom-made stool, her voluminous apron dress raised enough to show off her massive calves, his mouth would water at the thought of everything she'd prepared for them.
These were the people they'd become and the people they'd remain. As the years passed and their bakery prospered, they couldn't imagine living any other way. Their rural Dutch American accents grew thicker over time, as did their middles.
Nate's interest in fat postcards, apart from Thiele, dwindled, and he eventually had Karl sell most of his collection through the Downe's Kards website. Karl still regularly invited him out to the barn to view some new acquisition, and he dutifully came, though he had to admit that not even the fattest of Karl's collection could match his lijvig wife. Like Lydia, he'd become much more invested in collecting the real thing over some representation, no matter how skillfully it was created. Perhaps he'd simply outgrown the collecting impulse, he thought; it wouldn't be the only thing that he - or his happy wife, for that matter - had outgrown . . .
Copyright (c) 2005 - OakHaus Designs
