Good In Bed Part 1

Good in Bed.

JENNIFER WEINER.

For my family Home is so sad. It stays as it was left, Shaped to the comfort of the last to go As if to win them back. Instead, bereft Of anyone to please, it withers so, Having no heart to put aside the theft And turn again to what it started as, A joyous shot at how things ought to be, Long fallen wide. You can see how it was: Look at the pictures and the cutlery.

The music in the piano stool. That vase.

- Philip Larkin.

Love is nothing, nothing, nothing like they say.

- Liz Phair

PART ONE.

Good in Bed

ONE.

"Have you seen it?" asked Samantha.

I leaned close to my computer so my editor wouldn't hear me on a personal call.

"Seen what?"

"Oh, nothing. Never mind. We'll talk when you get home."

"Seen what?" I asked again.

"Nothing," Samantha repeated.

"Samantha, you have never once called me in the middle of the day about nothing. Now come on. Spill."

Samantha sighed. "Okay, but remember: Don't shoot the messenger."

Now I was getting worried.

"Moxie. The new issue. Cannie, you have to go get one right now."

"Why? What's up? Am I one of the Fas.h.i.+on Faux Pas?"

"Just go to the lobby and get it. I'll hold."

This was important. Samantha was, in addition to being my best friend, also an a.s.sociate at Lewis, Dommel, and Fenick. Samantha put people on hold, or had her a.s.sistant tell them she was in a meeting. Samantha herself did not hold. "It's a sign of weakness," she'd told me. I felt a small twinge of anxiety work its way down my spine.

I took the elevator to the lobby of the Philadelphia Examiner, waved at the security guard, and walked to the small newsstand, where I found Moxie on the rack next to its sister publications, Cosmo and Glamour and Mademoiselle. It was hard to miss, what with the super-model in sequins beneath headlines blaring "Come Again: Multiple o.r.g.a.s.m Made Easy!" and "a.s.s-Tastic! Four b.u.t.t Blasters to Get your Rear in Gear!" After a quick minute of deliberation, I grabbed a small bag of chocolate M&M's, paid the gum-chomping cas.h.i.+er, and went back upstairs.

Samantha was still holding. "Page 132," she said.

I sat, eased a few M&M's into my mouth, and flipped to page 132, which turned out to be "Good in Bed," Moxie's regular male-written feature designed to help the average reader understand what her boyfriend was up to... or wasn't up to, as the case might be. At first my eyes wouldn't make sense of the letters. Finally, they unscrambled. "Loving a Larger Woman," said the headline, "By Bruce Guberman." Bruce Guberman had been my boyfriend for just over three years, until we'd decided to take a break three months ago. And the Larger Woman, I could only a.s.sume, was me.

You know how in scary books a character will say, "I felt my heart stop?" Well, I did. Really. Then I felt it start to pound again, in my wrists, my throat, my fingertips. The hair at the back of my neck stood up. My hands felt icy. I could hear the blood roaring in my ears, as I read the first line of the article: "I'll never forget the day I found out my girlfriend weighed more than I did."

Samantha's voice sounded like it was coming from far, far away. "Cannie? Cannie, are you there?"

I'll kill him!" I choked.

"Take deep breaths," Samantha counseled. "In through the nose, out through the mouth."

Betsy, my editor, cast a puzzled look across the part.i.tion that separated our desks. "Are you all right?" she mouthed. I squeezed my eyes shut. My headset had somehow landed on the carpet. "Breathe!" I could hear Samantha say, her voice a tinny echo from the floor. I was wheezing, gasping. I could feel chocolate and bits of candy sh.e.l.l on my teeth. I could see the quote they'd lifted, in bold-faced pink letters that screamed out from the center of the page. "Loving a larger woman," Bruce had written, "is an act of courage in our world."

"I can't believe this! I can't believe he did this! I'll kill him!"

By now Betsy had circled around to my desk and was trying to peer over my shoulder at the magazine in my lap, and Gabby, my evil coworker, was looking our way, her beady brown eyes squinting for signs of trouble, thick fingers poised over her keyboard so that she could instantly e-mail the bad news to her pals. I slammed the magazine closed. I took a successful deep breath, and waved Betsy back to her seat.

Samantha was waiting. "You didn't know?"

"Didn't know what? That he thought dating me was an act of courage?" I attempted a sardonic snort. "He should try being me."

"So you didn't know he got a job at Moxie."

I flipped to the front, where Contributors were listed in thumbnail profiles beneath arty black-and-white head shots. And there was Bruce, with his shoulder-length hair blowing in what was a.s.suredly artificial wind. He looked, I thought uncharitably, like Yanni. " 'Good in Bed' columnist Bruce Guberman joins the staff of Moxie this month. A free-lance writer from New Jersey, Guberman is currently at work on his first novel."

"His first novel?" I said. Well, shrieked, maybe. Heads turned. Over the part.i.tion, Betsy was looking worried again, and Gabby had started typing. "That lying sack of s.h.i.+t!"

"I didn't know he was writing a novel," said Samantha, no doubt desperate to change the subject.

"He can barely write a thank-you note," I said, flipping back to page 132.

"I never thought of myself as a chubby chaser," I read. "But when I met C., I fell for her wit, her laugh, her sparkling eyes. Her body, I decided, was something I could learn to live with."

"I'll KILL HIM!"

"So kill him already and shut up about it," muttered Gabby, shoving her inch-thick gla.s.ses up her nose.

Betsy was on her feet again, and my hands were shaking, and suddenly somehow there were M&M's all over the floor, crunching beneath the rollers of my chair.

"I gotta go," I told Samantha, and hung up.

"I'm fine," I said to Betsy. She gave me a worried look, then retreated.

It took me three tries to get Bruce's number right, and when his voice mail calmly informed me that he wasn't available to take my call, I lost my nerve, hung up, and called Samantha back.

"Good in bed, my a.s.s," I said. "I ought to call his editor. It's false advertising. I mean, did they check his references? n.o.body called me."

"That's the anger talking," said Samantha. Ever since she started dating her yoga instructor, she's become very philosophical.

"Chubby chaser?" I said. I could feel tears p.r.i.c.kling behind my eyelids. "How could he do this to me?"

"Did you read the whole thing?"

"Just the first little bit."

"Maybe you better not read any more."

"It gets worse?"

Samantha sighed. "Do you really want to know?"

"No. Yes. No." I waited. Samantha waited. "Yes. Tell me."

Samantha sighed again. "He calls you Lewinsky-esque."

"With regards to my body or my b.l.o.w. .j.o.bs?" I tried to laugh, but it came out as a strangled sob.

"And he goes on and on about your... let me find it. Your 'amplitude.' "

"Oh, G.o.d."

"He said you were succulent," Samantha said helpfully. "And zaftig. That's not a bad word, is it?"

"G.o.d, the whole time we went out, he never said anything..."

"You dumped him. He's mad at you," said Samantha.

"I didn't dump him!" I cried. "We were just taking a break! And he agreed that it was a good idea!"

"Well, what else could he do?" asked Samantha. "You say, 'I think we need some time apart,' and he either agrees with you and walks away clinging to whatever shreds of dignity he's got left, or begs you not to leave him, and looks pathetic. He chose the dignity cling."

I ran my hands through my chin-length brown hair and tried to gauge the devastation. Who else had seen this? Who else knew that C. was me? Had he shown all his friends? Had my sister seen it? Had, G.o.d forbid, my mother?

"I gotta go," I told Samantha again. I set down my headset and got to my feet, surveying the Philadelphia Examiner newsroom- dozens of mostly middle-aged, mostly white people, tapping away at their computers, or cl.u.s.tered around the television sets watching CNN.

"Does anybody know anything about getting a gun in this state?" I inquired of the room at large.

"We're working on a series," said Larry the city editor- a small, bearded, perplexed-looking man who took everything absolutely seriously. "But I think the laws are pretty lenient."

"There's a two-week waiting period," piped up one of the sports reporters.

"That's only if you're under twenty-five," added an a.s.sistant features editor.

"You're thinking of rental cars," said the sports guy scornfully.

"We'll get back to you, Cannie," said Larry. "Are you in a rush?"

"Kind of." I sat down, then stood back up again. "Pennsylvania has the death penalty, right?"

"We're working on a series," Larry said without smiling.

"Oh, never mind," I said, and sat back down and called Samantha again.

"You know what? I'm not going to kill him. Death's too good for him."

"Whatever you want," Samantha said loyally.

"Come with me tonight? We'll ambush him in his parking lot."

"And do what?"

"I'll figure that out between now and then," I said.

I had met Bruce Guberman at a party, in what felt like a scene from somebody else's life. I'd never met a guy at a social gathering who'd been so taken with me that he actually asked me for a date on the spot. My typical m.o. is to wear down their resistence with my wit, my charm, and usually a home-cooked dinner starring kosher chicken with garlic and rosemary. Bruce did not require a chicken. Bruce was easy.

I was stationed in the corner of the living room, where I had a good view of the room, plus easy access to the hot artichoke dip. I was doing my best imitation of my mother's life partner, Tanya, trying to eat an Alaskan king crab leg with her arm in a sling. So the first time I saw Bruce, I had one of my arms jammed against my chest, sling-style, and my mouth wide open, and my neck twisted at a particularly grotesque angle as I tried to suck the imaginary meat out of the imaginary claw. I was just getting to the part where I accidentally jammed the crab leg up my right nostril, and I think there might have been hot artichoke dip on my cheek, when Bruce walked up. He was tall, and tanned, with a goatee and a dirty-blond ponytail, and soft brown eyes.

"Um, excuse me," he said, "are you okay?"

I raised my eyebrows at him. "Fine."

"You just looked kind of..." His voice- a nice voice, if a little high- trailed off.

"Weird?"

"I saw somebody having a stroke once," he told me. "It started off like that."

By now my friend Brianna had collected herself. Wiping her eyes, she grabbed his hand. "Bruce, this is Cannie," she said. "Cannie was just doing an imitation."

"Oh," said Bruce, and stood there, obviously feeling foolish.

"Not to worry," I said. "It's a good thing you stopped me. I was being unkind."

"Oh," said Bruce again.

I kept talking. "See, I'm trying to be nicer. It's my New Year's resolution."

"It's February," he pointed out.

"I'm a slow starter."