Aborigen

The roar of the crowd picked up again. A game was going on between presentations: the screen flashed questions to identify what kind of nerds the audience was. Rylee begged Dakota to read them off to her—not because she couldn’t see, but because she was uploading images of their “girls’ night out” to Instagram.

“The obvious one: Star Trek vs. Star Wars.” Dakota read the crowd as they held up their fans, blue-side to the stage for Star Trek, yellow-side for Star Wars (reversed where she was sitting, obviously). It looked to be about an even split, but then, she guessed most of these kids were going by The Mandalorian and Andor, not having been alive to see A New Hope in the theater.

“Dumb,” said Rylee. “I’m all about Battlestar Galactica.”

Dakota blinked at her friend and came threateningly close to smiling. “Oh, now they want to know which house in Harry Potter you are. Funny, no one’s protesting the mention at all.”

“I’m Hufflepuff. You’re Sourpuss.”

Dakota shrugged and took the time for some people-watching. Most prominently, there was a gorgeous Black man across the room from them, towering, with a finely chiseled beard and deep, knowing eyes. The heavy canvas of his blue blazer looked like nice Italian wool at his scale, and the lights hanging from the ceiling around his chest were downright magical. He only looked down a few times, grinning softly at something his company was saying, but more often studied the crowd intensely, slowly. Dakota had the sense of his eyesight sweeping the normies like a searchlight. She looked down into her stout when his glance swung near.

There was the young Asian woman in the utility-yellow rain jacket, heavy build or else short for a titan, huddled by the floor-to-ceiling window blocks in the wall. She laughed a lot, nodding and laughing, chatting with a group of friends who’d climbed all over her folded legs. Dakota studied her round face and bright eyes. She had a lot of energy, but not like someone who needed attention. She would listen to her friends, motionless for a moment, then erupt in giggles and speak very rapidly in response. She’s probably on the roster, Dakota decided.

It was so hard to focus on the regular people in the crowd with five or six titans in attendance. There was a woman in the center of the room, hardly talking to anyone. She was an older woman, draped in a quantity of flannel and kinda dumpy. When she glanced back at the bar, she had a tired smile, as though her friends had bullied her into showing up. But who could ever make a titan do something they didn’t want to?

Even that poor guy in the gray tee, skootching to the wall: as much as he didn’t want to be seen, people’s eyes naturally drew to the density of his mass in the fabric of the brewery’s reality. His beard was thick and luscious, any number of normies could’ve gotten lost in it. And then Dakota realized why it had to be held in a place like this: a hulled-out, converted warehouse or factory was useful for brewing mass volumes of beer, but it was even better for expanding your buying audience to include titans.

“Everybody ready?” Hoodie-girl was back, waving one arm frantically, as though that would turn people’s heads toward the stage. It didn’t, necessarily. She glanced at the sound tech, the poor guy plugging and unplugging and turning dials to remove the muddy mute effect in the sound system. He shrugged and she continued.

“Okay, we got round two! Everyone, get ready for round two. Can we get Kathryn’s friends up here? Kathryn’s group?”

A rolling, mild disturbance from the center of the room made its way to the steps on the left, and a beefy white guy took the stage, holding a tiny person in one hand. The man accepted the microphone from Hoodie-girl and introduced them: “Hi, my name’s Jonathan, and this is Chanel.” He raised his hand to the video tech, who captured the full-bodied little woman simpering and bowing in his palm, waving cheerily at the audience. “We’re here to talk about our friend and coworker, Kathryn.”

Chanel stomped the clicker in her friend’s palm, and the tired woman in the center of the room took up the screen. Cheers erupted around her, and the titan—Kathryn—winced and forced a smile, waggling her fingers at the crowd around her. She was one of the two or three largest titans in the room, but seeing her smile up at a camera (the photographer was probably in a building window), she looked just like anybody else.

“This’ll be good,” murmured Dakota, leaning onto her table. Rylee, her face glowing blue from her phone, asked if she’d said something, in the tone that assured she wouldn’t hear it a second time.

Jonathan was going for a vintage style, with thick-coiffed hair and a tailored shirt he was slowly growing out of. He looked like a bartender and a bouncer in one. His smile was warm and his eyes were slightly sad, and Dakota thought she wouldn’t have minded a little chat with him.

“Maybe you guys noticed Kathryn already?” A cheer went up, and the titan waved the attention off like smoke from a campfire. “I’ve been working with her for about ten years, at Walsh & Golden Construction. She’s one of our greatest and highest-ranking builders, which is why she can afford a barrel of the good stuff here.”

The titans around the room chuckled and raised their own barrels. “Ain’t cheap,” murmured the mountain in the gray tee. Dakota noticed the girl in the yellow rain jacket was only having a tank of water.

Jonathan inhaled deeply, knowingly straining the buttons down his front. “Where do I start with Kathryn? Well, when I started at Walsh & Golden, she was in charge of in-processing me. And they didn’t really have an onboarding policy yet, which meant they didn’t have an office. I’ve asked Kathryn, and she says it’s cool to share this story with you: for a week-and-a-half, ten business days, my office was right there.” He pointed at the blonde titan with long, shaggy hair, and if Småkraft Brewing had been prepared, someone would’ve swung a spotlight at her chest. Instead, she hefted her own boobs, in her custom-designed tank top, shaking them to her right, then to her left, for raucous applause and oohs and ahhs.

“That’s right, we were pretty close from day one. I hung on to the bib of her overalls, and she rumbled and thundered around me, showing me the snack room, the bathrooms, our OSHA statements, all that good stuff.” Jonathan was laughing, but he was also blushing like a traffic light. “The guys still call me Boobsweat to this day … but not if she’s listening.”

The audience grew a touch quieter, which Dakota noted with interest. This cheesecake could talk.

“Without even factoring the size of her body, you will never find anyone with a larger heart. Kathryn is always there with a warm hand to lie down in, when you’ve had a rough day and need a quiet moment. She listens and listens, and then she asks you a question that shows how much she’s been listening.” He beamed up at the titan now, as though there were nobody else in the room. “She’s our mother hen, no joke. We’ve had no accidents in our last three jobs—let me correct that. We’ve had no injuries, because Kathryn is somehow always there to shelter us or hustle us out of the way.”

He walked to the edge of the stage. “The kind of person she needs is going to be like that. She’s big and giving, but she also hides so much of herself. Don’t gimme that look, Katy, I see you. I do. She can take on all our problems and celebrate with us, but … I get the feeling she thinks her problems are too big to share with anyone.” He stared at her for a beat, then nodded at the people in front. “Shielding us from her emotional fallout, too. That’s how much she cares. But it’s not true. Our pain, our sadness can be just as crushing as hers. I don’t think she gets that. And seeing her go through that, alone, causes her friends more pain than she’s aware. I’m just hoping tonight, she might find that special someone—at any size—who’ll make her feel safe to open up.”

The communal aww at this was deafening. Dakota turned slightly away from her friend to wipe her eye and swallow the lump in her throat, hating her own sentimentality. Kathryn herself soaked the cuffs of her flannel shirt with a river of tears, smiling through them, whispering to Jonathan that she was doing to stick him somewhere else as soon as the night was done. He lowered the microphone to Chanel, who shoved it aside and wrapped her arms around his thumb for a huge hug, all captured by the video tech.

“You guys,” wailed Hoodie-girl with shiny, rosy cheeks.

Chanel crawled to the steel cage of the microphone and surveyed the audience. Where Jonathan was this side of a Western movie, Chanel radiated casualness and coziness, wearing a black shirt with plunging neckline, further accentuated by a thin gold necklace disappearing into her décolletage. But casual, too, wrapped in a timeworn denim shirt, everything speaking to softness and warmth. “That was truly beautiful, Jonathan”—she gestured back to her friend—”and I don’t want to take anything away from that moment, but who wants to get rowdy?!”

The cheer, boosted by the strong show of emotion, filled the air. “All right, then! Let me tell you a little more about my girl, Kathryn.”

Click. “No one can pound ’em back like Kathryn.” The screen showed a gigantic woman spread out over two backyards, clothes rumpled, massive breasts hanging down her sides, surrounded by several large barrels. The photo was likely taken from someone’s upstairs bedroom, and it caught both the destroyed wooden fence under her pelvis and a screaming woman dragging her two small children from out of a cavernous armpit. The audience cheered, and Kathryn only chuckled in acknowledgment.

Click. “No one’s got finer fashion sense than Kathryn.” Now there was a wide photo of the titan in a stockyard, holding up an immense stretch of cloth, strong enough to support its own weight. Piles of colored fabrics lay in the background, a common setting for tailored titan wardrobes. The next picture was a close-up shot: Chanel stood on the toe of an enormous boot, pointing up at the golden fabric with pounds and pounds of sequins. Kathryn had appeared much less enthused about it than her friend.

Click. “And no one’s there for you like Kathryn.” Chanel’s presentation now included a 360° image, and Jonathan slowly guided the view around. It was a photo taken from inside a car, with huge fingers along the passenger window and a huge thumb pressed to the driver’s side. When the view turned to the front, three lanes of cars with glaring brake lights stretched on for considerable distance, disappearing around a hillside. “That’s my girl, getting us out of a traffic jam. You remember when that military truck—we won’t say what it was carrying—jack-knifed on the 380? Those poor fools were stuck there for over three hours.” She leered at the audience. “Three! Hours! And this is Kathryn bringing us home in ten minutes.” Again, the cheer was deafening.

There were videos: Kathryn holding a stallion between her palms, calming it down; laughing as she treaded water in a large lake, with two people resting on her floating bosom like pale islands. Her face was truly beaming when she was sitting cross-legged among the California Redwoods, trees reaching so much higher than herself. “And she’s into sci-fi, if anyone remembers Babylon 5 and Lexx.” With that, Chanel clicked to the contact info and the host beseeched the audience to give it up for Kathryn.

Jonathan walked to the edge of the stage, smiling and waving, and tucked his little friend into his chest pocket. Kathryn reached over the crowd to gently grasp him and display him to everyone, making him swoop and glide like an airplane over laughing faces and waving arms.

Dakota sat back, and she was aware of a pain in her face. She discovered she was smiling. “That was actually kind of sweet,” she remarked to her friend.

“Huh ..?” Rylee’s eyes were half-lidded, her jaw was slack over her phone.

Sighing heavily, Dakota slid out of her stool and charted the best path to two open spots at the bar.

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