Good In Bed Part 4

"Cannie, then," he said. "We're running a year-long study of a drug called sibutramin, which works somewhat the way phen-fen did. Did you ever take phen-fen?"

"No," I said, "but there's a lady in the lobby who misses it sorely."

He smiled again. He had, I noticed, a dimple in his left cheek. "I consider myself warned," he said. "Now, sibutramin's a lot milder than phen-fen, but it does the same thing, which is basically to fool your brain into thinking that you're full longer. The good news is, it doesn't have the same health risks and potential complications that have been a.s.sociated with phen-fen. We're looking for women who are at least thirty percent above their ideal weight..."

"... and you're delighted to inform me that I qualify," I said sourly.

He smiled. "Now, the studies that have been done already show patients losing between five and ten percent of their body weight in a year's time."

I did some quick calculations. Losing ten percent of my body weight was still not going to put me anywhere near the weight I wanted to be.

"Does that disappoint you?"

Was he kidding? It was so frustrating! We had the technology to replace hearts, to put septuagenarians on the moon, to give old geezers erections, and the best modern science could do for me was a lousy ten percent?

"I guess it's better than nothing," I said.

"Ten percent is a lot better than nothing," he said seriously. "Studies show that even losing as little as eight pounds can have a dramatic effect on blood pressure and cholesterol."

"I'm twenty-eight years old. My blood pressure and cholesterol are fine. I'm not worried about my health." I heard my voice rising. "I want to be thin. I need to be thin."

"Candace... Cannie..."

I took a deep breath and rested my forehead in my hands. "I'm sorry."

He put his hand on my arm. It felt nice. It was probably something they'd taught him to do in medical school: If patient becomes hysterical at prospect of relatively minute weight loss, place one hand gently on forearm I moved my arm away.

"Look," he said. "Realistically, given your heredity, and your frame, it may be that you were just never meant to be a thin person. And that's not the worst thing in the world."

I didn't lift my head. "Oh, no?"

"You're not sick. You're not in any pain"

I bit my lip. He had no idea. I remember when I was fourteen or so, on summer vacation somewhere by the beach, walking down a sidewalk with my sister, my slender sister, Lucy. We were wearing baseball caps and shorts and bathing suits and flip-flops. We were eating ice-cream cones. I could close my eyes and see the way my tanned legs looked against my white shorts, the sensation of the ice cream melting on my tongue. A kindly-looking white-haired lady had approached us with a smile. I thought she'd say something like how we reminded her of her granddaughters, or made her miss her own sister and the fun they'd had together. Instead, she nodded at my sister, walked up to me, and pointed at the ice cream cone. "You don't need that, dearie," she'd said. "You should be on a diet." I remembered things like that. A lifetime's accretion of unkindnesses, all of those little lingering hurts that I carried around like stones sewn into my pockets. The price you paid for being a Larger Woman. You don't need that. Not in pain, he'd said. What a joke.

The doctor cleared his throat. "Let's talk about motivation for a minute."

"Oh, I'm very motivated." I lifted my head, managed a small, crooked smile. "Can't you tell?"

He smiled back. "We're also looking for people who have the right kind of motivation." He shut my folder and crossed his hands over his nonexistent belly. "You probably know this already, but people who have the best long-term success with weight management decide to lose weight for themselves. Not for their spouses, or their parents, or because their high-school reunion's coming up, or they're embarra.s.sed over something that somebody wrote."

We stared at each other silently.

"I'd like to see," he said, "if you can come up with some reasons to lose weight, other than the fact that you're angry and upset right now."

"I'm not angry," I said angrily.

He didn't smile. "Can you think of other reasons?"

"I'm miserable," I blurted. "I'm lonely. n.o.body's going to date me looking like this. I'm going to die alone, and my dog's going to eat my face, and no one will find us until the smell seeps out under the door."

"I find that highly unlikely," he said with a smile.

"You don't know my dog," I said. "So am I in? Do I get drugs? Can I have some now?"

He smiled at me. "We'll be in touch." I stood up. He pulled a stethoscope around his neck and patted the examining table. "They'll draw some blood on your way out. I just need to listen to your heart for a minute. Hop up here for me, please."

I sat up straight on the crinkly white paper on top of the table and closed my eyes as his hands moved against my back. The first time a man had touched me with any regard or kindness since Bruce. The thought made my eyes fill. Don't do it, I thought fiercely, don't cry now.

"Breathe in," Dr. K. said calmly. If he had any idea what was going on, he didn't let on. "Nice deep breath... and hold it... and let it out."

"Is it still there?" I asked, staring at his head, bent over, as he wedged the stethoscope beneath my left breast. And then, before I could stop myself, "Does it sound broken?"

He straightened up, smiling. "Still there. Not broken. In fact, it sounds like you have a strong and healthy heart." He offered his hand. "I think you're going to be fine," he said. "We'll be in touch."

Out in the lobby, Lily the daisy-s.h.i.+rt woman was still wedged into her chair, half of a plain bagel balanced on one knee. "So?" she asked.

"They're going to let me know," I said. There was a piece of paper in her hand. I was unsurprised to see that it was a Xeroxed copy of "Loving a Larger Woman" by Bruce Guberman. "You seen this?" she asked me.

I nodded.

"This is great," she said. "This guy really gets it." She s.h.i.+fted as much as her seat would allow her and looked me right in the eye. "Can you imagine the idiot who'd let someone like this get away?"

FOUR.

I think every person who is single should have a dog. I think the government should step in and intervene: If you're not married or coupled up, whether you've been dumped or divorced or widowed or whatever, they should require you to proceed immediately to the pound nearest you and select an animal companion.

Dogs give your days a rhythm and a purpose. You can't sleep ridiculously late, or stay out all day and all night, when there's a dog depending on you.

Every morning, no matter what I'd drunk, what I'd done, or whether or not my heart had been broken, Nifkin woke me up by gently applying his nose to my eyelids. He is a remarkably understanding little dog, willing to sit patiently on the couch with his paws crossed gracefully in front of him while I sang along to My Fair Lady or clipped recipes from Family Circle, which I subscribed to even though, as I liked to joke, I had neither family nor circle.

Nifkin is a small and neatly made rat terrier, white with black spots and brown markings on his long, spindly legs. He weighs precisely ten pounds and looks like an anorexic and extremely high-strung Jack Russell, with a Doberman pinscher's ears, pointing permanently upright, tacked onto his head. He's a secondhand dog. I inherited him from three sportswriters I knew at my first paper. They were renting a house, and they decided that a house required a dog. So they got Nifkin from the pound believing that he was actually a Doberman pinscher puppy. Of course, he was no such thing... just a full-grown rat terrier with oversized ears. Truthfully, he looks like pieces of a few different dogs that someone put together as a joke. And he's got a permanent, Elvis-like sneer on his face- the result, the story goes, from when his mother bit him when he was a puppy. But I refrain from remarking on his shortcomings when he's within earshot. He's also very sensitive about his looks. Just like his mother.

The sportswriters spent six months alternately showering him with attention, letting him lap beer out of his water bowl, or leaving him penned up in their kitchen, completely ignored, all the while waiting for him to grow into his Doberman pinscher-hood. Then one of them got a job at the Fort Lauderdale Sun-Sentinel, and the other two decided to split up and move to their own apartments. Neither one wanted to take along anxious little Nifkin, who did not in any way resemble a Doberman pinscher.

Employees could run free cla.s.sified ads in the paper, and their ad, "One dog, small, spotted, free to a good home" ran for two weeks with no takers. Desperate, with their bags packed and security deposits already paid on their new places, the sportswriters double-teamed me in the company cafeteria. "It's you or the pound again," they said.

"Is he housebroken?"

They exchanged an uneasy look. "Kind of," said one. "For the most part," said the other.

"Does he chew things?"

Another uneasy look. "He likes rawhide," said one. The other one kept his mouth shut, from which I inferred that Nifkin probably also enjoyed shoes, belts, wallets, and anything else that came his way.

"And has he learned to walk on a leash, or is he still pulling all the time? And do you think he'd answer to something other than Nifkin?"

The guys looked at each other. "Look, Cannie," one of them finally said, "you know what happens to dogs in the pound... unless they can convince somebody else that he's a Doberman pinscher. And that's unlikely."

I took him in. And, of course, Nifkin spent the first months of our time together p.o.o.ping furtively in a corner of the living room, chewing a hole in my couch, and acting like a spastic rabbit whenever his leash was attached to his collar. When I moved to Philadelphia I decided that things would be different. I put Nifkin on a rigorous schedule: a walk at 7:30 A.M., another one at 4 P.M., for which I paid the kid next door $20 a week, then a brief const.i.tutional before I went to sleep. We did six months of obedience boot camp, after which point he'd pretty much stopped chewing, was thoroughly housebroken, and was generally content to walk politely beside me, unless a squirrel or a skateboarder distracted him. For his progress, he was allowed on the furniture. He sat beside me on the couch while I watched TV, and slept curled up on a pillow next to my head every night.

"You love that dog more than me," Bruce would complain, and it was true that Nifkin was spoiled rotten, with all manner of fluffy toys, rawhide bones, small fleece sweaters, and gourmet treats, and, I am embarra.s.sed to say, a small dog-size sofa, upholstered in the same denim as my couch, where he sleeps when I'm at work. (It was also true that Bruce had no use for Nifkin, and couldn't be bothered to walk him. I'd come home from the gym, or a bike ride, or a long day at work, to find Bruce sprawled on my couch- frequently with his bong nearby- and Nifkin perched, quivering, on one of the pillows, looking as if he were going to explode. "Has he been out?" I'd ask, and Bruce would shrug shamefacedly. After this happened a dozen times or so I just quit asking). Nifkin's picture is my screen saver at work, and I subscribe to the online newsletter Ratter Chatter, although I've managed to refrain from sending in his picture- so far.

In bed together, Bruce and I used to make up stories about Nifkin's history. I was of the opinion that Nifkin had been born into a well-to-do British family, but that his father had disowned him after catching him in a compromising position in the hayloft with one of the stable boys, and banished him to America.

"Maybe he worked as a window dresser," Bruce had mused, cupping one hand over my head.

"Hand hat," I cooed, and snuggled into him. "I'll bet he hung out at Studio 54."

"He probably knew Truman." "And he'd wear custom-made suits, and carry a cane." Nifkin looked at both of us as if we were nuts, then strolled off to the living room. I tilted my head up for a kiss, and Bruce and I were off to the races again.

But as much as I'd rescued Nifkin from the sportswriters, the clas-sified ads, and the pound, he had rescued me, too. He kept me from being lonely, he gave me a reason to get up every morning, and he loved me. Or maybe he just loved the fact that I had opposable thumbs and could work a can opener. Whatever. When he laid his little muzzle next to my head at night and sighed and closed his eyes, it was enough.

The morning after my appointment at the weight management clinic I hitched Nifkin to his extend-o-leash, tucked a plastic Wal-Mart bag into my right pocket, four small dog biscuits and a tennis ball into my left. Nikfin was jumping about crazily, caroming from my couch to his couch, down the hall to the bedroom and back again at warp speed, pausing only to dart a lick toward my nose. Every morning, to him, is a celebration. Yay! he seems to say. It's morning! I love morning! Morning! Let's go for a walk! I finally got him out the door, but he kept prancing at my side as I fished my sungla.s.ses out of my pocket and put them on. We proceeded down the street, Nifkin practically dancing, me dragging behind.

The park was almost empty. Just a pair of golden retrievers sniffing at the bushes, and a haughty c.o.c.ker spaniel in the corner. I unleashed my dog, who promptly and without provocation made a beeline for the c.o.c.ker spaniel, barking frantically.

"Nifkin!" I hollered, knowing that as soon as he got within a foot or two of the other dog he'd stop, give a deep, disdainful sniff, perhaps bark a few more times, and then leave the other dog alone. I knew that, Nifkin knew that, and it was more than likely that the c.o.c.ker spaniel knew it, too (it's been my experience that other dogs mostly ignore the Nif when he goes into his attack mode, probably because he's very small and not all that menacing, even when he's trying). But the dog's owner looked alarmed as he saw a spotted, sneering rat terrier missile streaking toward his pet.

"Nifkin!" I called again, and my dog for once listened to me, stopping dead in his tracks. I hurried over, trying to look dignified, and scooped Nifkin into my arms, holding him by his scruff, looking into his eyes and saying, "No," and "Bad," the way I'd learned in Remedial Obedience. Nifkin whined and looked disgruntled at having his fun interrupted. The c.o.c.ker spaniel wagged his tail hesitantly.

The c.o.c.ker spaniel guy was looking amused.

"Nifkin?" he asked. I could see he was getting ready to pop the question. I wondered if he'd have the nerve. I made myself a bet that he would.

"Do you know what a nifkin is?" he asked. Score 1, Cannie. A nifkin, according to my brother's fraternity friends, is the area between a guy's b.a.l.l.s and his a.s.s. The sportswriters had named him.

I put on my best puzzled look. "Huh? It's his name. Does it mean something?"

The guy blushed. "Uh, yeah. It's, um... it's kind of a slang term."

"For what?" I asked, trying to look innocent. The guy shuffled his feet. I looked at him expectantly. So did Nifkin.

"Um," said the guy, and stopped. I decided to have mercy.

"Yes, I know what a nifkin is," I said. "He's a secondhand dog." I gave him the abbreviated version of the sportswriter story. "And by the time I figured out what a nifkin was, it was too late. I tried calling him Nifty... and Napkin... and Ripken... and, like, everything else I could think of. But he won't respond to anything but Nifkin."

"That is rough," said the guy, laughing. "I'm Steve," he said.

"I'm Cannie. What's your dog's name?"

"Sunny," he said. Nifkin and Sunny sniffed each other tentatively as Steve and I shook hands.

"I just moved here, from New York," he said. "I'm an engineer"

"Family in town?"

"Nope. The single guy." He had nice legs. Tanned, slightly furry. And those dumb Velcro-strapped sandals that everyone was wearing that summer. Khaki shorts, a gray T-s.h.i.+rt. Cute.

"Would you like to have a beer maybe sometime?" he asked.

Cute, and evidently not averse to the sweaty, queen-size woman.

"Sure. That'd be great."

He smiled at me from under his baseball cap. I gave him my number, trying not to get my hopes up, but feeling pleased with myself nonetheless.

Back home, I gave Nifkin a cup of Small Bites kibble, ate my Special K, then gargled, flossed, and took deep, calming breaths, preparing for my interview with Jane Sloan, lady director extraordi-naire who I'd be profiling for next Sunday's paper. In deference to her fame, and because we'd be lunching at the tres chic Four Seasons, I took extra care with my clothes, struggling into both a panty girdle and control-top pantyhose. Once my midsection was secured, I pulled on my ice-blue skirt, ice-blue jacket with funky star-shaped b.u.t.tons, the requisite chunky black loafers, uniform shoe of twentysomething would-be hipsters. I prayed for strength and composure, and for Bruce's fingers to be broken in some bizarre industrial accident guaranteeing that he'd never write again. Then I called a cab, grabbed my notebook, and headed to the Four Seasons for lunch.

I cover Hollywood for the Philadelphia Examiner. This is not as easy as you'd think, because Hollywood is in California, and I, alas, am not.

Still, I persist. I write about trends, about gossip, the mating habits of stars and starlets. I do reviews, and even the occasional interview with the handful of celebrities who deign to stop by the East Coast on their promotional juggernauts.

I wandered into journalism after graduating from college with an English degree and no real plans. I wanted to write. Newspapers were one of the few places I could locate that would pay me to do it. So, the September after graduation, I was hired at a very small newspaper in central Pennsylvania. The average age of a reporter was twenty-two. Our combined years of professional experience were less than two years, and boy, did it show.

At the Central Valley Times, I covered five school districts, plus a.s.sorted fires, car crashes, and whatever features I could find time to churn out. For this I was paid the princely sum of $300 a week- enough to live on, just barely, if nothing went wrong. And of course, something was always going wrong.

Then there were the wedding announcements. The CVT was one of the last newspapers in the country that still ran, free of charge, lengthy descriptions of weddings- and, woe to me, of wedding dresses. Princess seams, alencon lace, French embroidery, illusion veils, beaded headpieces, gathered bustles... all of these were terms I found myself typing so often that I put them on a save-get key. Just one keystroke, and out would pop complete phrases: freshwater pearl embroidery, or ivory taffeta pouf.

One day I was wearily typing the wedding announcements and musing on the injustice of it all when I came across a word I couldn't read. Many of our brides filled their forms in by hand. This particular bride had written in looping cursive, in purple ink, a word that looked like CFORM.

I carried the form over to Raji, another cub reporter. "What's this say?"

He squinted at the purple. "C-FORM," he read slowly. "Like MDOS, or something."

"For a dress, though?"

Raji shrugged. He'd grown up in New York City, then attended Columbia Journalism School. The ways of Central Pennsylvanians were strange to him. I headed back to my desk; Raji went back to his dread ch.o.r.e, typing in a week's worth of school lunch menus. "Tater Tot," I heard him sigh. "Always, the Tater Tot."

Which left me with C-FORM. Under "contact for questions" the bride had scribbled her home phone number. I picked up the phone, and dialed.

"h.e.l.lo?" answered a cheerful-sounding woman.

"h.e.l.lo," I said, "this is Candace Shapiro calling from the Valley Times. I'm trying to reach Sandra Garry"

"This is Sandy," chirped the woman.

"Hi, Sandy. Listen, I do the wedding announcements here, and I'm reading your form and there's a word... C-FORM?"

"Seafoam," she answered promptly. In the background I could hear a kid screaming, "Ma!" and what sounded like a soap opera on TV. "That's the color of my dress."

"Oh," I said, "well, that's what I needed to know, so thanks"