Slim to None Page 13

  Much like a photographic negative, we see our self-image in the negative, rather than the positive that is projected from a photographic enlarger. Perhaps we would do ourselves well to focus on the projection, rather than the image in reverse.

  To safeguard one’s health at the cost of too strict a diet is a tiresome illness indeed.

  Francois de La Rochefoucauld

  Grate One Set of Nerves until Jangled

  How’s it hangin’ Abster?"

  I think you can guess where I am. Yep. Procrastinating about going into the office. So I’ve gone to the fitness center for my personal training session instead. Thor is straddled backward against a chair, whacking a set of calipers against the seat back like they’re drumsticks.

  "It’s hanging, I guess."

  "You ready for the moment of reckoning?"

  "I reckon." I smile a pained smile, like you would at the dentist who you really like but is about to yank your tooth out with no Novocain.

  I knew it was only a matter of time before I had to get on the scale again. Though I think this time it’ll be a bit like what I’ve heard other women say about childbirth: once you’ve had your legs splayed open, naked as the day you were born, with a handful of people focused on your gaping maw of a crotch, most everything comes with a sense of resignation after that. Granted, I can’t speak for the baby birthing, but it’s pretty much the same goes with once someone like me has finally mounted the scale of doom, in public, no less.

  "You’re not using those things on me again, are you?" I point to his calipers.

  "Only if you want me to. We save them for milestones."

  "Milestones?"

  "Yeah, like once people lose an obvious amount of weight. Then we take measurements again."

  "Oh." I feel a little disappointed. Like it’s obvious to him that I haven’t lost any weight of significance. Not that I’ve tried too much, mind you, but still.

  In stealth mode I creep up onto the scale with delicate steps, knowing that a light touch will work in my favor. I squeeze my eyes closed, awaiting the verdict.

  "I don’t suppose you can read the weight in stones?"

  "Huh?"

  "You know, stones, the British measurement. I think it’ll be a far more palatable figure that way."

  Thor laughs but continues with the weight-sliding. The sound reminds me of the executioner sharpening his blade on a whetstone. I know a scale is all about equilibrium, but where I’m concerned, it’s just imbalance, pure and simple.

  "Well, would you look at that!" Thor says, sounding surprised.

  I half-raise one eyelid, as if I might be blinded by too much exposure to whatever is visible before me. "What?"

  "Abbie Jennings, you’re down fifteen pounds!"

  "That’s impossible! How could that be? You must be wrong!"

  Wait a minute. I’m trying to talk the guy out of my weight loss? What the hell is my problem?

  I stare for a moment at the scale, the figure still being high enough that even though it’s less, it’s still more than I can look at without a sense of mortification. I turn my eyes away—I’m the Wicked Witch of the West: I’m melting...

  "Can I get off this thing?" I think I might shrivel up like a slab of bacon over hot coals just being near a scale for too long, let alone on one.

  "Sure, but Abs, this is great news!"

  I’m still shocked. I mean, I haven’t exactly lived on carrot sticks and lettuce over the past couple of weeks. Sure, I’ve cut back some. But I haven’t taken up residence in the Hotel Denial or anything. The only big difference in my behavior is all of that walking I’ve done with Cognac. Who’d have known?

  I go through the rounds of weights and cardio machines with Thor, this time feeling a smidgen less cynical and a heaping helping more optimistic. Maybe I can lose this weight and save my professional ass after all.

  Emboldened by my weight loss I divert to my coffee shop to grab a cappuccino. With whole milk, mind you. I figure I need my calcium intake and surely there’s more calcium in thick, rich whole milk than there is in that wimpy, watery skim alternative. Isn’t there?

  At work I slip into my cubicle and start writing immediately. I’ve been doing some research into what I think is at the root of my problem: I’ve got a damned heartless reptile at the helm of my brain. And so I thought I’d write about it, since it definitely ties into food. Clearly I am dominated by the lizard brain, that primitive section of our skull that responds instantly and emotionally to life events. The lizard brain does not ponder out solutions to complex problems. No. Instead it flicks its sensory tongue, seeking the immediate, that which will satiate it, regardless of negative ramifications. The lizard is obviously hard at work, eating its young deep within my gray matter, when it tells me to go ahead and eat that gorgeous, puffed-up buttery croissant (especially because it’s made the real way that croissants used to be made, so how could I not eat it? In fact, I’d be crazy if I didn’t eat a few of them because they’re practically antiques, they’re such relics of a day before you could buy such dreadful pre-processed things as tubs of prepared cookie dough at the grocery store).

  My lizard brain is a devious, hulking Komodo dragon, urging me into indulgences that otherwise would make no sense, but under the terms of his persuasion seem as if they are a fait accompli.

  The lizard brain is where our thinking is based on impulse—it’s the land of the three S’s: shelter, sustenance and sex. It’s the brain that encourages the guy to screw his secretary, even while his lonely, overwrought housewife is home feeding the kiddies franks and beans for dinner. It’s the brain that ensures that rival tribesmen murder each other so they can take over their village and move, unimpeded, into their neighbor’s fancier dung-hut. It’s the same brain that encourages me to leap at the chance to reach for food in my hour of need. Lizards are my enemy, I’m convinced.

  I glance up just as Barry slithers by me, speaking of lizards that eat their young.

  "Abbie, have I got a hot ticket for you!" He gushes.

  "You got a pass to Hell?" I’m surprised this guy even needs a ticket to get into that place. I figured he had a standing invitation.

  "Abbie Jennings, do I detect a sour note in your dulcet voice?"

  I ponder whether the judge would throw the book at me if I choked the life out of the man right now.

  "Sorry, Barr. Lizard got my tongue—"

  "I have two front-row tickets to the big cook-off next month, between dueling uber-chefs Louis Garçonnes and Yves Champignon. Ancien français versus Nouveaux français. This event will put the Rumble in the Jungle to deep shame."

  I stare at him with eyes agape. "The Rumble in the Jungle was a boxing match, Barry."

  "Yes, and here we have two preeminent French chefs slugging it out, only over their Aga stoves."

  "They’re using Aga stoves?"

  "Figuratively, Abbie. I’m just using loose terminology."

  "So let me get this straight—you’re inviting me along to this thing?"

  "Sure! I think we ought to let bygones be bygones. I understand you might be feeling a little raw about my taking over your slot, but hey, it all comes out in the wash! Consider this a bury-the-hatchet gesture."

  Bury the hatchet, indeed! I’d like to bury that hatchet deep into that man’s reptilian gray matter. Sorry, must be the lizard talking again.

  "Thanks, but I’m not really in the mood for French carnage. I’ve got a dog to walk."

  "Suit yourself," Barry sniffs, heading off in search of more gullible prey. Or maybe another baby lizard he can eat.

  I’m finishing up my column an hour later when I notice a cell phone on the floor near my desk. I haven’t the slightest idea how it got there. I pick it up to see if there’s a name on it, but nothing. Hmmm. It feels like such an invasion of privacy
to snoop on someone’s phone. But how else can I figure out whose it is? I open it up and start diddling around to see if it contains some sort of identifiable information.

  Whoa. The wallpaper is a picture of me. The very picture of me that appeared in the New York Post. How weird is that? I start pressing buttons, desperate now to figure out what this is all about. I open up the picture gallery and what do I find but about ten pictures of yours truly. Up-close head shots. Full-figured shots (damn whosever phone this is!). All obviously taken on the sly, when I didn’t realize I was modeling for anyone. All pictures of me, me, me, me and me. What is this about? I push more buttons and go into the call history. I find a succession of email addresses to which my picture was evidently sent: Albert LeDuc at Le Mistral, the trendy new French restaurant at which powerful fans force a chill wind on the customers, giving them the sense they are in Provence in the off-season. All that was missing from that dining experience were the fourteen elderly Frenchmen drunk on pastis. Nguyen Bok Choi, proprietor of recently-opened KoreaGate Restaurant, which features props from the 1970’s and life-size wax figures of Richard Nixon, Tongsun Park and Sun Myung Moon; and of course that damned little Telly Savalas look-alike chef from Puka.

  I am normally quite bad with math, but right now everything is adding up, and the new math smells rotten to the core. Two plus two means Barry is a slimy, sneaky bastard, passing my picture around to sabotage me.

  I’m not sure exactly how I should handle this, so immediately I take the phone to the Xerox machine and copy the list of emails, and the various images of me. And then I decide to storm into Mordie’s office with proof.

  "You see this? The cat’s out of the bag, Mordie. I had help in being outed—thanks to your cronie. Proof is here." I flip open the phone and it goes black.

  Nothing.

  NOTHING.

  "It was right here! I found Barry’s cell phone and I couldn’t tell whose it was so I started looking at it and he had me—me!—on the wallpaper screen. The big ugly picture of me from the Post article! And then I found a slew of photographs he’d taken of me on the sly. And then I found that he’d emailed them to owners of restaurants I was reviewing. He was trying to blow my cover, Mordie!"

  "Look, Abbie, I know you’re still upset about what’s happened, but this is taking it a little too far. Barry wouldn’t stoop to something so low." He takes the phone and tries to see what I’m talking about. "See, there’s nothing here—the thing doesn’t even turn on!"

  "Aha, don’t you worry. I’ve got this!" I show him my Xeroxed pages, which I realize now don’t look too damning, though with a magnifying glass and some detective tools you might vaguely make out some data. Though you certainly can’t pin it on Barrie with this evidence.

  "I can’t believe you’re not going to believe me!"

  "You know, Abbie, even if this crazy tale was halfway true, the fact is, we can’t use you right now. Everybody knows you! And guess what? Everybody loves Barry’s reviews. He’s a huge hit. I hate to tell you, but you’d better be watching your hide—literally—or you’ll be out of this job permanently."

  I storm back out of Mordie’s office, slamming the door behind me.

  "Where the hell is he?" I am a human hurricane, and my eye wall is blasting through the newsroom in search of that dirty rotten bastard.

  "Barry!" I scream, sounding like a fishmonger in London’s Billingsgate fish market. Once when William and I wandered London’s fish market we picked up the most delectable, mouthwatering sea bass. If I had that fish in my hands right now I’d club Barry over the head with it.

  Barry skulks out of his office, looking every bit as sleazy as I now know for a fact he is.

  "Abbie, babe. Calm down. No need to make a public scene. We can figure out a solution to your problem. Fire away." He pretends to whip out pistols from each hip and engages the triggers with his thumbs.

  "You double-crossing below-the-belt lying lizard of a dog. I know what you did, you bastard." I’m breathing hard now. I hope that heart attack Dr. Dex warned me about isn’t going to rear up now. "You are so low, I couldn’t even scrape the dog poop off my shoes with a poop scraper like you."

  Barry pulls me into his office and shuts the door. He smiles a hey, I didn’t just stick a dagger in your gut sort of smile.

  "Calm down, Abbie old girl. Now, what’s going on?" Abbie old girl. As if I’m a dog or something.

  I hold his phone up to me. "This. This is what’s going on."

  He snatches it from me before I think to secure my grip on it. "Gee, thanks. I wondered what happened to this. It’s been missing for weeks!"

  I try to grab it back. "Gimme that thing. Weeks my ass. I saw what you did. I know you took my picture and sent it to restaurants I was scheduled to review. You set me up!"

  "Why Abigail Jennings, whatever do you mean?" He cocks his head and flutters his fingers against his face like a fan, as if he’s Scarlett O’Hara.

  I grit my teeth and snarl. "You know damn well what I mean. My pictures are all over your cell phone!"

  He tries to turn on his phone but it still won’t boot up. He bangs it twice against his desk, then tries again, and it works. "Battery’s been acting up."

  "Ahhhh!" He holds his hand, fingers pressed tightly together, to his mouth, as if he’s aghast. "That’s you!"

  "Don’t play stupid with me, Barry."

  "Me? Stupid? Why did you put your picture all over my cell phone? Why were you playing with my phone? I think that’s rather unethical, don’t you?"

  I stare at him, my eyes as wide as silver dollar pancakes. Which sound pretty damned satisfying right about now. Buckwheat pancakes with homemade maple syrup. Like the ones we relished at a B&B in New Hampshire last winter. Warm and cozy by the crackling fire.

  "You know I didn’t do that. You did it."

  "Shucks, Abbie. I haven’t the faintest idea of what you’re talking about. But if you don’t drop it now, I’ll be happy to tell everyone that you obviously cannot face the fact that I was chosen as the better critic to take over the reviewing post and were so distraught about it you planted a series of freakishly ugly pictures of yourself on my phone to try to frame me."

  "Frame you? Freakishly ugly? You, you, you—"

  Just then his phone rings. "Yves? Oh, absolutely! Yes. Yes. Yes. Uh-huh. Uh-huh. Certainly. You can count on me, Yves. In a blank envelope. I’ll get it from you that night. Uh-huh, afterward. Great."

  He snaps his phone shut. "Gee, Abbie, love to talk but gotta run!"

  He pushes me out the office and shuts the door behind me before I can stop him.

  Left to stew in my juices, I decide I have to plot my revenge. I know he’s got something up his sleeve. Something involving Yves Champignons. Something that has a stench about it, no doubt.

  The Best Pasta Salad Ever

  ingredients

  1 lb. pasta—I like to combine things like orecchiette, rotini, farfalle, campagnelle, and conchiglie

  1/2 red pepper, sliced lengthwise into thin strips

  1/2 orange pepper, sliced lengthwise into thin strips

  1/2 red onion, sliced lengthwise into thin strips

  2 tbl. Olive oil (more as needed)

  1/3 lb. button mushrooms, sliced thin

  3/4 c. broccoli florets

  1 large zucchini, cut into thirds and sliced lengthwise into smaller strips

  1/2 lb. fresh asparagus (or can use tips)

  1/2 lb. sugar snap peas or snow peas

  1 basket cherry or grape tomatoes, halved (ideally use orange heirloom cherry tomatoes in season)

  1 6 oz. jar marinated artichoke hearts, not drained

  salt & pepper to taste

  (see remaining ingredients for dressing, etc, below)

  to prepare

  Add oil as necess
ary while cooking vegetables.

  Saute peppers and onions in olive oil till beginning to soften, add mushrooms, when softened set aside in large bowl.

  Stir fry broccoli till bright green on medium high (couple of minutes), adding zucchini after a couple of minutes, cook till tender but still crisp. Add to other veggies in bowl.

  Stir fry asparagus till bright green, add to bowl.

  Add tomatoes and artichokes to bowl.

  Season with salt and pepper.

  for dressing

  Combine in food processor:

  1/2 c. fresh parsley

  1 c. fresh basil (or 2 tbl. Dried)

  2 cloves garlic

  2 tbl. Oil

  Pulse till blended

  Then stream in:

  1/2 c. olive or canola oil

  1/2 c. red wine vinegar or balsamic vinegar

  1 tsp. each salt and pepper

  Next sauté 1/2 c. pine nuts or almond slivers in butter till lightly browned, drain on paper towel.

  Toss together: pasta, veggies, pine nuts, 1/2 c. parmiggiano reggiano, grated, and dressing, taking caution to use only as much dressing as needed to marry ingredients.

  Serve immediately.

  A balanced diet is a cookie in each hand.

  Anonymous

  Take One Fat Critic, Stir in Sneaky Replacement, Let Stew in Juices