Lose Weight Instantly???

Fritz Meyer stroked his gleaming bald head absent-mindedly. Sitting in his basement laboratory at Kutrate Kemicals, he felt like he was a rat buried in a cage deep inside the earth. He had invented a product that could revolutionize the dieting world but for the life of him Fritz couldn’t get the final bells and whistles that would make Fat Off a success. The idea was pure genius—a spray that took away a person’s appetite while at the same time melting the fat cells in his or her body—but the product had a huge flaw. It smelled terrible. Like mildewing sweat socks laced with the pungent scent of skunk and tossed with a touch of road kill. In spite of the fact that Fat Off had the potential to help millions of people shed pounds and lose inches, Fritz seriously doubted that even the most overweight person in the universe would want to endure the way the spray smelled at present.

“Excuse me, Mr. Meyer?” Fritz looked up and saw an attractive young woman standing in the lab’s doorway.

“Yes, I’m Fritz Meyer.” Fritz sat up straight and sucked in his gut. Good looking women seldom found their way down to his laboratory.

“Hi, I’m Mindy  Cooper,” the woman said breezily as she stepped into the lab. “I’m Bernard Morton’s assistant.”

“Oh, yes. His Girl Friday. He’s mentioned you.” Fritz didn’t add the details of how Bernard had mentioned this young lady. Fritz, unlike his boss, was a gentleman. “What can I do for you? Did Bernard send you down here?”

Mindy began to slowly circle the lab, taking in the test tubes and vast amount of chemicals that were on display. “So this is where the magic happens,” she remarked.

“Magic?”

“Your new fat loss concoction.”

“You know about that?”

“Well,” Mindy admitted, “I don’t know all that much. Bernard told me a little. It sounds amazing.”

Fritz was surprised since he thought that Fat Off was strictly confidential. Hmmm. Bernard’s relationship with this little tootsie had to be a lot more serious than anyone had believed. “It will be amazing once I get all the bugs worked out.”

“What kind of bugs are you talking about?” Mindy sat down on one of the high stools in the lab and looked up at Fritz with obvious interest. She was such a pretty girl with long dark hair and big brown eyes that Fritz momentarily forgot that he wasn’t supposed to tell anyone anything about Kutrate Kemical’s newest product.

“It stinks,” he admitted.

Mindy frowned. “I’m not sure I know what you mean.”

“I mean that the compound I’ve developed smells bad. I need to figure out a way to either make it odor free or at least mask the smell so that people can tolerate it while they lose weight.”

“Well, how bad does it smell? I think people would tolerate quite a stench if it meant that they could lose pounds painlessly.”

Bernard reached for a plain aerosol can and shot a short blast into the air. Instantly, Mindy recoiled as a stench filled the lab. “Oh, my gosh! I see what you mean—that’s hideous!” Waving her hand back and forth in front of her nose, Mindy tried not to gag.

“I know,” Fritz said forlornly. “Here I sit with the most incredible weight loss technique ever invented and it’s useless to me until I can get it to stop stinking.”

“Can you get it to stop stinking?”

“Not without a toxic impact to the environment.”

“How toxic are we talking?”

“Very toxic. Of course, I’m sure that Bernard has shared with you that he doesn’t care about the environmental impact.” Fritz pursed his lips. “Some of us have morals. Or perhaps I should say that some of us have higher moral standards than others.”

Mindy nodded. “I think I know exactly what you mean. But what are you going to do about it?”

“I’m going to try to figure out a way to make Fat Off that isn’t toxic but that is still effective.”

“While you’re at it, I’d come up with another name,” Mindy advised. “’Fat Off’ is a terrible name.”

Fritz looked at her hopefully. “Perhaps we could join forces on that one, Miss Cooper. Are you free for dinner tonight?”

Mindy nodded. “As free as a bird,” she replied.