Dr. Atkins, Dr. Tarnower, Dr. Bullshit, The Rice Diet, The Zero Protein Diet, The Zero Carbo Diet. He fasted once for six days, thinking he’d slim down for Ocean City, and had blacked out watching Hogan’s Heroes—the last thing he remembered hearing was: “Klink…shut up,” and next thing he knew he was in the hospital. The Tomato Juice and Sardine Diet hadn’t worked much better. That had been pollen season, and every time he sneezed, he’d rip a mean Hershey squirt in his drawers. He didn’t lose much weight, but he sure lost a lot of underwear. No, Lee reasoned that life was too short and beer was too good. He could be honest with himself. One thing he positively couldn’t stand was fellow comrades in tonnage making excuses for their waistlines. Oh, but I’ve got a metabolism problem or I’ve got a glandular problem. Bullshit! Lee would say. What you’ve got is a food to mouth problem, like me, so be real and admit it!
Yeah, fat is where it’s at, he thought, quoting Root Boy Slim as he toweled himself dry after the shower. He didn’t mind Dan B.’s ribbing over the lack of success in his sex life. Actually Lee wasn’t the twenty-year-old virgin that Dan B.’s jokes implied; he’d gotten it on with plenty of girls in his time—well, two, really, but that was plenty to him. Lee had sold ice cream his first summer out of high school; that’s where he’d met Belinda, the Good Humor girl. Blonde, flighty, cool, and cute as all. Lee didn’t understand how she could be so adorably slim driving an ice cream truck; hell, Lee himself probably ate a quarter of his inventory every day. They’d gotten together one hot July evening after their routes, and after a few T.J. Swans, one thing led to another. “The thing with girls is,” his buddy Dave Kahili told him, “you gotta show ’em you’re sincere, and not just out for a nut. You gotta go down on ’em.” I’ll show her I’m sincere, Lee remembered the words in his first and only clinch with her, in the woods behind Allan’s Pond. What Lee didn’t take into account, however, were certain consequences relative to personal hygiene. See, Belinda had been selling ice cream under the July sun for the last twelve hours, and Lee only realized the full, uh, impact of this once he got down to taking Dave Kahili’s advice—a bite-your-face-off stench like that of a fish market dumpster in high summer. It killed his sex-drive for about a year. That’s when he met Liddy, a busgirl at The Emerald Room. She was even cuter than the Good Humor girl, and she washed. “Liddy with Big Titty,” Dave Kahili called her. “She’s a hot number, man, and she likes you.” Me? Lee thought. And, by golly, it was true. Liddy hauled Lee’s ashes all summer, but what Lee didn’t know was that she’d been hauling the ashes of every other guy in town too, at the same time. Fortunately Lee had had the foresight to purchase condoms before every date. Too bad rubbers didn’t protect you from crabs.
You live and you learn, he rationalized. And I’ve learned. He strolled naked back out to the bedroom; it wasn’t like anyone was around to see him, was it? Then he stopped cold, his eyes bugging, and yelled, “Jesus!”
A woman sat on the edge of the bed, with her hands in her broad lap. She was looking at him.
Fat, naked, and jiggling, Lee froze in his impulse to dash. Where could he dash to? “Goddamn it! Doesn’t anybody knock around here! What, you just walk in?”
The woman made no reply. She just sat there, looking at him. Lee recognized her now, of course. It was the maid, the short, rather corpulent woman with frizzy bunned hair and pale eyes. Her bosom jutted, nearly laying in her lap.
Lee grabbed the Heineken beach towel he used for a bath towel and quickly draped it around his girthy waist. What the hell is she doing here, anyway? She was just sitting there. “What, you here to clean my room or something?” he guessed. “Well, don’t worry about it, I can take care of my own place.”
Still no reply.
“How about leaving?” he said. “You know, go away. I gotta get ready for work.”
But she wasn’t leaving, and clearly had no intention of doing so. Instead, she stood up. She gave him a paper bag, then turned around, unbuttoning the top of her housemaid’s dress and lowering it to her waist. She lay facedown on the bed,
