Good in Bed

“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-shirt 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 shifted 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 governmen t 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 pe

Employees could run free classified 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, Ca

I took him in. And, of course, Nifkin spent the first months of our time together pooping 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 constitutional 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 ma

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.