with my head in his lap . . . We talked . . . He began stroking my arm . . .
I looked over at Les, who was still smiling happily.
âLes, you know I was wasted last night. Youâre not going to tell anyone about this, are you?â
His smile faded. He looked confused.
âLes, promise me you wonât tell anyone about this.â
âI promise.â
âIâm not feeling very well. Would you please go? Please?â
âYeah, of course. I . . .â
I turned over and covered my eyes with my hand. As I listened to him get dressed, all I could think was, Iâve slept with a fat man named Lester. Or did I sleep with him? Maybe we just slept slept. Naked, granted, but otherwise innocently slumbering. Yes, that was most certainly what had happened. Even if that was all that had happened, if anyone found out I was fraternizing with a naked fat boy, it would ruin my chances with Tom and it certainly wouldnât help my chances for a promotion. Werenât managers supposed to be responsible and do things like only sleep with their accountant husbands?
âCan I get you anything before I go? Some water? Some aspirin?â he asked.
âOh god, yes. The Advilâs in the medicine cabinet in the bathroom. Bring five, no six.â
Tell me I didnât sleep with a fat man named Lester. Tell me I didnât sleep with a fat man named Lester . . .
He brought the handful of pills and a large glass of water.
âCan I call you?â he asked.
âCall? No! I mean Les, you and I are just friends. Acquaintances really. We work together. I was drunk. This was a mistake.â
My head felt like it had lost a fight with a chainsaw and Lesâs presence was doing nothing to curb my nausea.
âIâm sorry I . . .â
âPlease, just go.â
I listened to him leave. He shut the door quietly behind him.
RETTE
Hindquarters of a Wildebeest
I always hoped Iâd be the kind of person who would have an affair with a dark-eyed stranger whose name I never bothered to get to know. Maybe weâd be on the Eurail going through Italy or France and weâd have sex in the bathroom without ever saying a word.
The thing was, I was getting married before Iâd done crazy stuff like that. Iâd only seriously dated two other guys besides Greg. I was too shy and too self-conscious to flirt. While Jen, flirt extraordinaire, never missed a school dance, I spent every dance at home with a book in one hand and a candy bar in the other, under the admonishing eye of my mother.
As soon as I started my job and I had a normal schedule, Iâd start working out regularly. Iâd finally get serious about getting in shape.
True, I had said this once or twice or three million times before.
I was nine when I went on my first diet. It didnât go well. For about three days I worked out and starved myself, then I ate Fritos and chocolate chip cookies for a week straight.
When I was eleven, I stood in front of the mirror with Seventeen magazine opened to the special Beauty Plus section. The article, complete with illustrations of thin, healthy girls measuring themselves, detailed the proportions of the ideal body. My waist, according to this, should have been ten inches smaller than my bust, and so on. I was mostly proportional, though on a large scale, but I was a little thick-waisted. I made charts and goals. Over the years, I started many, many diets, not based on any fad, but merely a regimen of serious deprivation to the point of near starvation (or at least so it felt) and then binging, a cycle I repeated so many times over the years that my metabolism became schizophrenic, terrified of a mythical starvation conspiracy, and eventually, my body refused to let go of my bloated fat cells, clinging to them like a drowning person to a life preserver.
Now, I had thighs that were dimpled like the hood of a car thrashed by a hailstorm, slashed by angry lines and riddled with bumps