Good in Bed

“Lily?”

“Starving,” Lily said promptly.

“And emotionally?”

“Umm… okay,” she said.

“Just okay?” asked the doctor.

“There’s a new episode of ER on tonight,” she said. “I can’t be anything less than okay.”

“Esther?”

“I’m ashamed,” said Esther, and burst into tears. I opened my eyes. The doctor pulled a small packet of Kleenex out of his pocket and handed it over.

“Why ashamed?” he asked gently.

Esther smiled weakly. “ ‘Cause before we started I was looking at the plastic pork chop, and I was thinking that it didn’t look half bad.”

That broke the tension. We all started laughing, even the doctor. Esther sniffled, wiping her eyes.

“Don’t worry,” Lily said. “I was thinking the exact same thing about the pat of butter on the food pyramid.”

The doctor cleared his throat. “And Candace?” he asked.

“Ca

“How are you?”

I closed my eyes, but only for a second and what I saw was Bruce’s face, Bruce’s brown eyes close to mine. Bruce saying that he loved me. Then I opened them and looked right at him. “Fine,” I said, even though it wasn’t true. “I’m fine.”

“So how’d it go?” asked Samantha. We were panting on side-by-side StairMasters that night at the gym.

“So far, not bad,” I said. “No drugs yet. The doctor who’s leading the class seems okay.”

We climbed in silence for a few minutes, the belts grinding and squeaking beneath our feet as a Funky Fitness class blared away beside us. Our gym seemed determined to attract new members by offering every flavor-of-the-week fitness class, so we had Pilates, gospel aerobics, interval spi

“And how was the rest of your day, dear?” asked Sam, wiping her face with her sleeve. I told her about Mr. Deiffenger’s angry defense of Celine Dion.

“I hate readers,” I gasped, as my StairMaster kicked into a higher gear. “Why do they have to get so personal?”

“I guess he probably figures that you were messing with Celine, so you deserve it.”

“Yeah, but she’s public property. I’m just me.”

“But not to him, you’re not. Your name’s in the paper. That makes you public property, just like Celine.”

“Only bigger.”

“And with better taste. And not,” said Samantha sternly, “with any plans to marry your seventy-year-old manager who’s known you since you were twelve.”

“Oh, now who’s being critical?” I asked.

“Damn Canadians,” said Samantha. She’d spent a few years working in Montreal, had endured a disastrous love affair with a man there, and never had anything nice to say about our neighbors to the North, including Peter Je

After forty miserable minutes, we adjourned to the steam room, wrapped ourselves in towels, and assumed prone positions on the benches.

“How’s the Yoga King?” I inquired. Sam gave a satisfied-looking smile and raised her arms above her head, reaching toward the ceiling.

“I’m feeling very flexible,” she said smugly. I threw my towel at her head.

“Don’t torture me,” I said. “I’m probably never going to have sex again.”

“Oh, cut it out, Ca

“What’s wrong with that?” I’d asked.

“She was topless,” Samantha’d replied. Exit Dr. Right, enter the Yoga King.

“Look at it this way,” said Samantha. “It was a lousy day, but now it’s over.”

“I just wish I could talk to him.”

Samantha brushed her hair back over her shoulders, propped her head on an elbow, and stared down at me from her perch on one of the upper tiers of wooden benches. “To Mr. Deiffledorf?”

“Deiffinger. No, not him.” I ladled more water on the hot rocks so the steam billowed around us. “To Bruce.”

Samantha squinted at me through the haze. “Bruce? I don’t get it.”

“What if…,” I said slowly. “What if I made a mistake?”

She sighed. “Ca

“What if I think something different now?”

“Well, what changed your mind?”

I thought about my answer. The article was part of it. Bruce and I had never talked about my whole weight thing. Maybe if we had… if he had some sense of how I felt, if I had some inkling of how much he understood… maybe things could have been different.

But more than that, I missed talking to him, telling him how my day went, blowing off steam about Gabby’s latest salvos, reading him potential leads for my stories, scenes from my screenplays.

“I just miss him,” I said lamely.

“Even after what he wrote about you?” asked Sam.

“Maybe it wasn’t so bad,” I muttered. “I mean, he didn’t say that he didn’t find me… you know… desirable.”

“Of course he found you desirable,” Sam said. “You didn’t find him desirable. You found him lazy, and immature, and a slob, and you told me not three months ago lying on this very bench that if he left one more used piece of Kleenex in your bed you were going to kill him and leave his body on a New Jersey Transit bus.”

I winced. I couldn’t remember the line exactly, but it sure sounded like something I’d say.

“And if you called him,” Samantha continued, “what would you say?”

“Hi, how are you, pla

Real men wear condoms, was his first line. Which was a hoot, considering that during our three years together Bruce had been almost completely spared the indignities of latex. We’d both tested clean, and I went on the pill after a handful of dismaying times when his erection would wilt the instant I produced the Trojans. That minor detail was, of course, notably absent from the story, along with the fact that I’d wound up putting the thing on him – an act that left me feeling like an overprotective mother tying her little boy’s shoes. Do

Now, the memory of the way he’d really been regarding condoms seemed too tender to even consider. And the thought of Bruce and I in bed together made me cringe, because of the thought that came dashing in on its heels: We’ll never be like that again.

“Don’t call him,” said Sam. “I know it feels awful right now, but you’ll get through it. You’ll survive.”