Good In Bed by Jennifer Weiner Read Free Book Online Page B

samples of phen-fen in there, grab ‘em!”
    The doctor was fortyish, thin (of course), and going gray at the temples, with a warm handshake and big brown eyes. He was also extremely tall. Even in my thick-soled Doc Martens I barely came up to his shoulders, which meant he had to be at least six and a half feet. His name sounded like Dr. Krushelevsky, only with more syllables. “You can call me Dr. K,” he said, in his absurdly deep, absurdly slow voice. I kept waiting for him to drop what I took for a misguided Barry White impression and talk normally, but he didn’t, so I guessed that basso profundo was the way he did talk. I sat, holding my purse against my chest, while he flipped through my forms, squinting at a few answers, laughing out loud at others. I looked around, trying to relax. His office was nice. Leather couches, a comfortably cluttered desk, a real-looking Oriental rug covered with piles of books, papers, magazines, and a television/VCR in one corner, a small refrigerator with a coffee machine perched on top in another. I wondered if he’d ever slept there… if maybe the couch unfolded into a bed. It looked like the kind of place you’d want to stay in.
    “Humiliated in national publication?” he read out loud. “What happened?”
    “Ugh,” I said. “You don’t want to know.”
    “No, really. I do. I think that’s the most unusual answer anyone’s ever given.”
    “Well, my boyfriend…” I winced. “Ex-boyfriend. Excuse me. He’s writing this column for Moxie ”
    “Good in Bed?” asked the doctor.
    “Why, yes, I like to think so.”
    The doctor blushed. “No… I mean…”
    “Yeah, that’s the column Bruce writes. Don’t tell me you read it,” I said, thinking, if some fortysomething diet doctor had seen it, I could pretty much assume that everyone else in my life had, too.
    “I actually clipped it out,” he told me. “I thought our patients might enjoy it.”
    “What? Why?”
    “Well, it was actually a fairly sensitive appreciation of… of…”
    “A fat lady?” The doctor smiled. “He never called you that.”
    “Just everything but.”
    “So you’re in here because of the article?”
    “Partly.”
    The doctor looked at me.
    “Okay, mostly. It’s just, I don’t… I never thought of myself… that way. As a larger woman. I mean, I know I am… larger… and I know I should lose weight. I mean, it’s not like I’m blind, or oblivious to the culture, and how Americans expect women to look…”
    So you’re here because of America’s expectations?”
    “I want to be thin.” He looked at me, waiting. “Well, thinner, anyhow.”
    He flipped through my forms. “Your parents are overweight,” he said.
    “Well… kind of. My mom’s a little heavy. My father, I haven’t seen in years. He had kind of a belly when he left, but…” I paused. The truth was, I didn’t know where my father was living, and it was always awkward when it came up. “I have no idea what he looks like now.”
    The doctor looked up. “You don’t see him?”
    “No.”
    He scribbled a note. “How about your siblings?”
    “Both skinny.” I sighed. “I’m the only one who got hit with the fat stick.”
    The doctor laughed. “Hit with the fat stick. I’ve never heard it put quite that way.”
    “Yeah, well, I got a million more of ‘em.”
    He flipped some more. “You’re a reporter?”
    I nodded. He flipped back. “Candace Shapiro… I’ve seen your byline.”
    “Really?” This was a surprise. Most civilians skipped right over the bylines.
    “You write about television sometimes.” I nodded. “You’re very funny. Do you like your job?”
    “I love my job,” I said, and meant it. When I wasn’t obsessing over the high-pressure, in-the-public-eye nature of being a reporter, or scrapping for good assignments with territorial coworkers, and entertaining dreams of the muffin shop, I managed to have a good time. “It’s really fun. Interesting, challenging… all