Bob reaches for the chain hanging from the light above the bathroom mirror and pulls it to examine his face. Thin blonde hair makes his twenty-eight appear thirty-eight, but he is neither handsome nor ugly. He frames his face with the thumb and index finger of each hand and admits that he is the type that reminds everyone of someone they know, only it’s never anyone important enough to be memorable. He wishes he wasn’t so forgettable. 
         The mirror is chipped at the edges and a small crack at the top spiders into the corner, which he covers up with a yellow sticky note that reads: I am intersting. He tapes a sheet of paper on the left side of the mirror. The Four Commandments of a Positive-Self. He looks at the phrase scrolled across the top and whispers, “The Real You is a marvelous, distinctive being with enormous potential and power.”
         He takes a cigar box from the back of the toilet, puts it on the edge of the sink and opens the lid. Katherine’s picture is on top of a pile of sticky notes with happy faces and pictures of two thumbs confirming approval. Katherine is beautiful without trying and even in this picture where she’s handing out NDP pamphlets in the lobby of their building, it’s clear she’s stunning. He presses two pieces of tape to the back of the photo and sticks it top-centre on the mirror. Just looking at her picture makes his stomach flutter, so he bows his head for a moment and then raises it and looks straight at his reflection.
         “I think you’re beautiful Katherine. I’ve never seen eyes like yours and your smile, well it makes me smile. Not that I’m focusing on your physical appearance, I mean I sense that who you are on the inside is the best part of you. But I don’t mean that you’re not attractive; I’m not trying to label you as one of those people whose …” He pauses to mock question marks with his fingers. “Whose ‘personality’ is recognized because they’re ugly. Not that your personality isn’t amazing, I mean I know I barely know you so I can’t say that your personality is amazing, but what I mean is that it isn’t a cover up for your looks. Which I find very attractive.”
         He grabs a cup of water from the sink and throws it in his face. I deserve a muzzle, he thinks, and takes a towel from the back of the door and dabs his face with slow blows of punishment. His cheeks flush and he takes three quick breaths before exhaling with puckered lips. He leans towards the mirror to read Number One on the list of The Four Commandments of a Positive Self: There is no subsitute for the truth; honesty is the path to the heart.
         “Honesty,” he whispers.
         And he remembers the afternoon at the office when he approached Tara’s cubicle. Tara’s tan leather boots and three-quarter sweater coats are symbolic of her mindset. She’s always more concerned with where she’s going after work than with impressing people at the office. Bob knocks on her divider.
         “Do you have as second?”         
         She sweeps her brown hair from her eyes and smiles, accentuating a beauty above her lip. “Sure.”
         “I uh, I was thinking about what you said the other day at the staff meeting. About how we’d make a good couple and I’d like to take you out to dinner tonight to see if that’s true.”
         “I don’t think so.”
         “I don’t understand.”
         He had waited for a response, but she picked up her coffee with no intention of offering one.
         “You said you thought we’d make a good couple.”
         She put down her coffee and screwed the left side of her lips into the ball of her cheek.
         “Yeah, see I’m in a support group and that was part of my therapy. We’re supposed to say something nice to a different person every day.”      
         “So I was your quota?”
         “Sorry.”
         He pulls off his shirt in defiance of the memory and stand in front of a full-sized mirror with his stomach sucked in. He pulls his pants up above his belly button and draws the belt as tight as possible to try and cage the fat, but it’s too much strain.
         “No more desserts,” he promises.
         He returns to the bathroom and mouths number two of the Four Commandments: You are successful; take time to bath in your accomplishments.
         The top drawer of his desk squeals when he opens it to removes his annual performance review. As he begins to read, he paces the room’s circumference.
         “During the past year Bob has been a positive contributor to the department. He has satisfied customer complaints on a consistent basis and referred to the company’s rebuttals without prompts. Bob works well with his team and helps to keep morale high by coordinating softball, weekly lotto tickets, and the yearly hockey pool. Bob is a very positive individual and we hope to have him on our customer service team for years to come.”
         Sweat begins to bead on his brow. He wipes it with his shirt cuff and drops the Performance Review on the desk.
         “Positive energy, okay.”
         He takes a box from off a chair and removes the lid to reveal a girdle. A cream girdle with thick straps in the shape of ribs. He kicks off his pants and slips into the girdle one leg at a time, each pull decreasing the space between fat and bones and fat and organs until his skin feels pinched and his insides squeezed.  From the side he looks ten to fifteen pounds lighter, so he puts on a sweater and rubs his palm over his flat stomach. Another pivot for a new profile and he smiles. He returns to the bathroom mirror and looks at number three of the Four Commandments: you set your own barriers; ambition is the key to the lock keeping you from your dreams.
         Katherine’s picture stares at him, so he rubs his hand over his stomach once more and nods his head. He had been full of ambition the morning he walked into his boss’s office, despite her unwritten rule of never meeting with anyone before ten o’clock.
          “So, what did you want to see me about, Bob?”
         “I want to talk to you, uh, I want to talk to you about my salary. My calls are up ten percent from last year, which is uh, twenty percent higher than the team’s rate.”
         “Are you suggesting the team isn’t meeting their expectations?”
         “No, not at all. I uh, I’m just pointing out that my performance is high and I was wondering if we could talk about a raise. I haven’t had one in over a year and I know that, uh, I know that a few of the people on the team have had a raise in that time.”
         “That’s private information.”
         “Well, you know, people talk,” he said.
          “People shouldn’t.”
         He takes a breath and tries not to look at her eyes. “Look, my calls are up, I finished two continuing education workshops this year and I haven’t had a raise in over a year, and I think I deserve, uh, I think I deserve a three percent increase.”
         She leans into the high-back of her chair.
          “Three percent?”
         “Yeah.”
         “No.”
         This memory makes him want to punch, so he lashes out at the five-foot pop-up doll of a clown that he keeps in his bedroom.
         “Katherine, I’m glad I ran into you because every time I speak with you it’s uh, it’s the best thing that happens to me that day. And to tell you the truth I don’t do this all the time and it’s not easy for me but I … I just wish, uh, I just wish I was as interesting as you.”
         He strikes the clown a final time and returns to the bathroom mirror. The overhead light makes it clear that he’s balding and he does his best to make his hair look thicker by spreading around what’s left, but the futility just intensifies his frustration. He runs his hands over his eyes and hopes that when he opens them he’ll see a different man, and when he reopens he actually feels disappointed to see his usual reflection. His eyes shift to The Four Commandments: #4 – Remember that you have help; listen to others and associate with positive, suportive people.
         He considers his options and raises his eyebrows at the thought of his best friend Carl. 
         “You’re not exactly the best looking guy in the world,” Carl said one night at their local bar. “So you shouldn’t be worrying about your weight or your hair; those are just distractions. It’s not like I get women because of my looks either; but I just say fuck it and things seem to flow. You can’t get caught up in that vanity shit.”
         “I don’t know how you do it,” Bob says.
         “You over think things.”
         “Maybe, but it’s like we’re both on the same beach looking at the water only where you see beauty, I see drowning.”
         Carl finishes a deep drink of his pint. “People waste too much time thinking about opening lines. What you do is, you say the most suggestive thing possible and then you know instantly where it’s going. I mean you get more immediate rejections but then you know instantly where it’s going. You get more immediate rejections, but you’re saving time and increasing your hits in the end. It’s like a Vegas, big-business cost benefit analysis thing.”
         Bob stares at him a moment. “Where do you get this stuff?”
         “I read it in a book a while back.”
         “That’s scary.”
         “That’s what I’m trying to tell you.”
         “No, it’s scary that you believe yourself.”
         Carl sits up in his seat and his cheeks tighten making his face pointy.
         “Hey, I’m not the one at home on a Friday night toggling between the television and the Internet.” He flicks his wrist like he’s masturbating. “Am I?”
         Bob shakes his head holding back laughter. “It’s funny you say that,” he says. “Because I’ve been thinking of using an online dating service.”
         “No, no, no,” Carl waves his pint glass. “That’s for freaks. There’s no coming back from that.”
         “I’m serious. Rusty Conners has been telling me a lot about it.”
         “Please tell me you’re not listening to Rusty.”
         “Why not? He’s a computer technician; he knows about these things.”
         “He’s a loser.”
         “We’ll he’s offering to help me, and step four in my program is accepting help from others.”
         Carl shook his head and swatted at the air. “Not the program again. You want a commandment? I’ll give you a commandment about Rusty; repeat after me. Thou will not associate with people more dysfunctional than myself.”
         Bob laughs at the memory, adjusts his sweater to make sure the girdle is just right and takes three deep breaths. 
         “Moment of truth,” he says.
         The staircase is a better choice, he thinks. That way he can run it through his head one more time just to be sure. The staircase’s urine odor swirl in his stomach until he opens the door to her floor. The sunflower pattern on the carpet is a bright yellow and he feels the glands in his throat tighten as he passes 402, 404, and finally reaches 406. Two more quick breaths and puckered exhales and he raises his hand to knock and brings it back down almost immediately. He closes his eyes and runs his hand over his stomach and raises his knuckles to knock when Katherine approaches from behind.
         “Hey Bob.”
         He spins around to see her with arms full of groceries. He feels the colour leave his face.
         “What’s up? Are you okay?” she asks.
         “Yeah, I uh, I was just uh …”
         “About to knock on my door?”
         “Yeah.”
         She passes him the groceries. “Can you hold these for a minute?”
         “Sure.”
         She fishes in her purse for keys. “It’s amazing that you’re here right now because I was going to come up to your place tonight and ask you if you want to go to a play Saturday. A friend of mine gave me two front row tickets.” She smiles the smile that makes him sweat. “You’re not psychic are you?”
         “No.”
         “So do you want to come?”
         He looks over his shoulder for a camera, expecting to see Carl with his stupid grin set to catch the humor of his hope on tape, but they stand alone in the hall.
         “I’d uh, I’d love to.”
         She puts the key in the door and looks back at him.
         “So why’d you drop by, what’s up?”
         “Uh, nothing. Nothing. I was just saying hello.”
         She opens the door and a sweet smell drifts into the hall.
         “Okay,” she says. “Well, I’m going to put on some coffee. Do you want to come in for a cup?”
         “I’d love to.”
         But he doesn’t move. She enters and he remains cemented in his spot.
         “So come in then,” she says with a quick wave.
         He steps forward and the door closes. There is no Carl with a camera, no commandment, and no rehearsal. 

Scott Carter lives in Toronto. His short fiction has appeared in numerous literary journals including Toronto's Lichen, New York's tsur and Inertia and Washington's Cenotaph.  He has also written two short films for Fifth Column Films that debuted at the Exploding Cinema festival in L.A. and played at the Toronto Online and Digital Gun Film Festivals.