thanks to that good-if-not-extraordinary metabolism—has pretty much kept up with
you. It helps at this point to think of the metabolic process as a work-crew. Men in
chinos and Doc Martens.”
It may help you, Sifkitz thought, it doesn’t do a thing for me. Meanwhile, his eyes
kept being drawn back to that red number, that 226.
“Their job is to grab the stuff you send down the chute and dispose of it. Some they
send on to the various production departments. The rest they burn. If you send them
more than they can deal with, you put on weight. Which you have been doing, but at a
relatively slow pace. But soon, if you don’t make some changes, you’re going to see
that pace speed up. There are two reasons. The first is that your body’s production
facilities need less fuel than they used to. The second is that your metabolic crew—
those fellows in the chinos with the tattoos on their arms—aren’t getting any younger.
They’re not as efficient as they used to be. They’re slower when it comes to
separating the stuff to be sent on and the stuff that needs to be burned. And sometimes
they bitch.”
“Bitch?” Sifkitz asked.
Dr. Brady, hands still laced across his narrow chest (the chest of a consumptive,
Sifkitz decided—certainly no breasts there), nodded his equally narrow head. Sifkitz
thought it almost the head of a weasel, sleek and sharp-eyed. “Yes indeed. They say
stuff like, ‘Isn’t he ever gonna slow down?’ and ‘Who does he think we are, the
Marvel Comics superheroes?’ and ‘Cheezis, don’t he ever give it a rest?’ And one of
them—the malingerer, every work-crew’s got one—probably says, ‘What the fuck
does he care about us, anyway? He’s on top, ain’t he?’
“And sooner or later, they’ll do what any bunch of working joes will do if they’re
forced to go on too long and do too much, without so much as a lousy weekend off,
let alone a paid vacation: they’ll get sloppy. Start goofing off and lying down on the
job. One day one of ’em won’t come in at all, and there’ll come another—if you live
long enough—when one of ’em can’t come in, because he’ll be lying home dead of a
stroke or a heart attack.”
“That’s pleasant. Maybe you could take it on the road. Hit the lecture circuit. Oprah,
even.”
Dr. Brady unlaced his fingers and leaned forward across his desk. He looked at
Richard Sifkitz, unsmiling. “You’ve got a choice to make and my job is to make you
aware of it, that’s all. Either you change your habits or you’re going to find yourself
in my office ten years from now with some serious problems—weight pushing three
hundred pounds, maybe, Type Two diabetes, varicose veins, a stomach ulcer, and a
cholesterol number to match your weight. At this point you can still turn around
without crash-diets, tummy-tucks, or a heart attack to get your attention. Later on
doing that’ll get harder. Once you’re past forty, it gets harder every year. After forty, Richard, the weight sticks to your ass like babyshit sticks to a bedroom wall.”
“Elegant,” Sifkitz said, and burst out laughing. He couldn’t help it.
Brady didn’t laugh, but he smiled, at least, and leaned back in his chair. “There’s
nothing elegant about where you’re headed. Doctors don’t usually talk about it any
more than State Troopers talk about the severed head they found in a ditch near the
car accident, or the blackened child they found in the closet the day after the
Christmas tree lights caught the house on fire, but we know lots about the wonderful
world of obesity, from women who grow mold in flaps of fat that haven’t been
washed all the way to the bottom in years to men who go everywhere in a cloud of
stench because they haven’t been able to wipe themselves properly in a decade or
more.”
Sifkitz winced and made a waving-away gesture.
“I don’t say you’re going there, Richard—most people don’t, they have a kind of
built-in limiter, it seems—but there is some truth to that old saying about so-and-so
digging his grave with a fork and spoon. Keep it in mind.”