Slim to None Read online

  "Been with us for twenty five years."

  "And isn’t she in your employ to cook for you?"

  "Uh huh."

  "Then why won’t she cook for you? Surely she’s anxious to see George and ply him with her weiner schnitzel or whatever her spécialité de la maison is."

  "It’s you." Sally let’s that drop like a thud.

  "Me? I’m the house special?"

  I can practically hear Sally rolling her eyes at that one. "No! You’re the reason she won’t cook! She knows you’ll be there."

  "How’d she find that out?"

  "She saw your name on the guest list."

  "Yeah but how’d she know I was anybody?"

  "She saw your picture in the paper. Read about your little exposé back in the springtime. Never forgets a name or a face. Abbie you’re notorious!"

  God, even the hired help knows about my humiliation? Besides, I’m not notorious! That would imply something bad about me. And I can’t think of a bad thing about me. Although perhaps my reputation is a bit tarnished, what with my being demoted and all.

  "Just what we need. A housemaid with performance anxiety. Can’t she at least take some pity on me?"

  "Heavens no! She won’t dare serve you food. She thinks you’ll be feeling vindictive after the incident and give her cooking a bad review."

  "Oh, come off it. Vindictive? Me? I wouldn’t hurt a flea!" I can’t seem to get a break these days, can I? "Besides which, what food critic gives reviews to home cooking?"

  But Sally is too busy verbally wringing her hands. "What are we to do? This dinner is only days away—who can I get to help?"

  "What about all of your friends’ chefs. Don’t they moonlight for extra cash?"

  "Tried that. Couldn’t even get Bittsy Malone’s cook, and she’ll do just about anything for enough money," she moans. "What am I going to do?"

  "She’ll do anything? Sounds like deep in the jungles of your version of suburbia instead of Desperate Housewives you have Desperate Housemaids."

  "This is no laughing matter."

  "Of course not. So let’s think. Who can we get to prepare an elegant dinner for a slew of people on short notice?"

  Sally’s silent for a moment before yelling out loudly into my ear as if she’s got BINGO. "You! My God, Abbie, why didn’t I think of this earlier? You are the perfect person to prepare this meal. There’s no way that George could bag out on this if you’re at the helm in the kitchen. He loves your cooking too much. Plus you have that kitchen! You cook! Oh, this is absolutely perfect. Wait’ll I tell Bittsy. The food critic for the Sentinel being my personal chef!"

  "You can’t boast all around town about something like that! I’m not anyone’s personal chef! Not that there’s anything wrong with that. It’s just not what I do! Besides, you have that kitchen too! Why don’t you roll up your sleeves and give this little thing called manual labor a whirl?"

  How do I get myself involved with this stuff? Here I was trying to do a little Good Samaritan deed and next thing you know I’ve been impressed into servitude?

  "Oh, Abbie, I’ll pay you handsomely, of course. You just send me the bill and I’ll pay you on the spot for everything. It’ll be just divine. Tell me, what are you going to prepare?"

  Well, if there’s one thing I’m not, it’s a quitter. And I’ll be darned if this thing will lose momentum over lack of kitchen staff. How hard can it be to do this? I’ve been cooking my whole life. This is what I’ve been preparing for, forever. Sure, I’ll need a sous chef, but I’ve got just the slave labor in mind: Jess owes me one. I’ll rope her into helping me and we’ll call it even with the Dex affair. Literally.

  "I can’t believe these words are about to pour forth from my mouth, but...I’ll do it," I say, sounding more enthusiastic than I’d have expected myself to sound. I must be losing my marbles. "But you really can’t be bragging to your pals about this. You need to keep this on the down-low. You got it?"

  "I could hug you! I knew you had a heart of gold. I can’t thank you enough for doing this for me. This is going to be a night to remember, I just know it."

  Let’s hope it’s not a night destined to be notorious, that’s all I have to say.

  * * *

  It seems to be the trend of late to destroy my well-intended sleep with phone calls. This one is well past bedtime. A glance at the caller-ID shows that it’s Jess calling. I hesitate to pick up, but then I reconsider, since I’m trying to just take the chill approach to life now. No sense in having a million axes to grind. I’m all about good ju-ju and holding a grudge against Jess isn’t going to benefit me one iota. Plus I need a huge favor from the woman.

  "Jess?"

  "Hey, Abbie. How’s it going?"

  "It’s going, all right," I say, figuring it’s going to be a long conversation if I get into my whole gloomy saga at this very minute. "You?"

  "Oh, same ol’ same ol’," she says. "Did you get my truce offering?"

  "Yes, I did, and they’re gorgeous. Thank you for the gesture and the sentiments behind them."

  "Look, I just wanted to call to apologize again for how things happened. I didn’t want to stick you in the middle of things. It was wrong of me and I really am sorry about that."

  I’m quiet for a minute, digesting this.

  "Uh, you could say that again, just so we’re clear on the matter? As much as I can appreciate your situation, I just don’t want to be any part of it, and you made me a part of it. It was just so awkward, Jess. Obviously, your private business is your business, but please, please don’t make it mine, ever again. Friends?"

  "Friends. I really am sorry, you know."

  "I know you are. Otherwise I’d have told you what to do with your apology. But with my acceptance of your apology comes a slight penance."

  "Penance?"

  "I need your help. I’ve been corralled into fixing dinner for an important family gathering—"

  "Uh, Abbie, you don’t exactly have a family, last time I checked."

  "Not my family. But actually I do. So much has gone on, I have to catch you up. But before that, here’s what I need from you."

  I tell her about George’s reunion dinner and Jess is so charmed with the notion of helping out the wealthy homeless man that she immediately accepts the challenge.

  "As long as I can also go along to Pound Ridge. I love Pound Ridge!"

  "Actually, that would be good. Maybe we can get you husband’s driver to take us out there? I hadn’t quite figured out how I was getting to their house."

  "Not a problem."

  Jess and I talk longer, I fill her in on the unfortunate turns of events around here, she’s duly empathetic, and then we say our goodbyes.

  * * *

  One important project I’m left to do in planning this sweeping dramatic reunion is to clean George up. I mean who wants to embrace someone who smells like a candidate for a body odor transplant? And this is my project du jour.

  It’s cold out today so I throw on my leather jacket—noticing it’s gotten rather loose on me, and take a walk, minus Cognac, who I’ll visit later today, in search of George. I need to get all of my plans in place.

  I find him at my third stop of his regular haunts.

  "George!" Normally I’d hug someone I haven’t seen in a while but I am partial to cleanliness and instead wave. Is that bigoted of me? I hate to be scent-biased. I guess I’m just partial to lovely aromas, kitchen ones.

  "Abbie, my dear, where have you been hiding? And don’t you look skinny? It appears those peanut M&Ms are doing you well!"

  Me? Skinny? And the man doesn’t even want anything out of me. He’s just saying it because, well, just because.

  "Why thank you, George! And I suspect my sweet tooth has little to do with it and it has more to do with
other things." I’m trying to take a compliment at face value, no small task for a girl used to being invisible to men.

  "Things? Like what kind of things?"

  I update George on Cognac, what happened since the time I saw him and Sally. I fight back the tears as I talk about it because I can tell George is squeamish around waterworks.

  "Enough about me. Today is going to be about you. Today it’s time for George."

  "Time?"

  "Prep time, George. Prep time."

  He raises his eyebrow, curious.

  "For the dinner. It’s time to polish you up a bit. Turn that lump of coal into a diamond."

  "I’m a lump of coal then?"

  "Course not! But we need to unearth the former George just a little bit."

  "But I like who I am!"

  I tut-tut him. "We’re not changing anything about who you are—only changing how you look."

  "What’s wrong with the way I look?"

  "Sometimes we all just need a little overhaul. And I’d like to be truthful here—to put it delicately, um, George, you could use a good scrubbing. You could use a good overhaul, for that matter. I’m all for putting a spit shine on you if that’s fine by you."

  I think George must feel badly about my misfortune because he holds up his wrists as if allowing me to cuff them. "I’m all yours," he says. I’m touched that he’s willing to do this. I’ve never given someone a makeover before. This should be fun.

  First we go to Metro, a chic little man-spa in Soho that Jess suggested. I don’t dare tell George that the full name of the place is Metro(sexual). Even I would be put off by that. I think the well-groomed receptionist is a bit repulsed by George’s appearance and ushers him quickly back to the facilities.

  "Don’t forget to shower first, George! And scrub yourself really well!" I tell him, speaking the obvious.

  I have him slated for the works: a cut and a shave, a mani-pedi, facial, massage, even back-waxing. By the time he’s done in here he won’t ever want to look back on his days of wandering the streets. Although that waxing might be enough to send him back there regardless. While he’s in the oven, so to speak, I grab a cab and head uptown to visit my pup at the animal rehab center.

  "Cognac! Baby! Come tell mama how you’re feeling!" I talk in sickening baby talk to him as he limps his way over to me. He’s wearing an enormous radar dish on his head to keep him from chewing on his bandages, and he looks as if that alone is worse than all his injuries put together.

  "Oh, fella, you are a sight for sore eyes!" I scratch behind his ears and shower him with kisses and I can’t believe he’s right here, all warm and furry and clean-smelling. My perfect doggie. He tries to lick me but that radar dish keeps bumping into me so I stick my head right up to his head inside the dish so he can lick me all over my face. I’m tempted to lick his own face right back, I miss him so much, but that might be a little weird. I brought him cookies and feed him too many so he knows who loves him the most and finally have to let him go back to rest for a while. At least this place isn’t as dreary as where my father is a permanent resident. "Dad and I will be back to pick you up in just a few days, I promise," I tell him before giving him one last kiss. Of course I don’t know if William will be with me to pick him up, but I can’t foresee him missing such an auspicious occasions. He’s mad at me, not the dog.

  When I return to retrieve George, he’s wearing the pair of loose-fitting jeans of William’s that I lent him, along with a black t-shirt and too-large sneakers. George looks so normal, albeit it in an ill-fitting manner.

  "You sure do clean up well," I tell him. "Who’d have known your skin was so pale! I didn’t realize you were Caucasian!" I lightly brush my fingers across his newly-shorn face.

  He looks worried.

  "Joking! But you are a few shades lighter. Doesn’t it feel good to be so clean?"

  He nods his head. "I have to admit I forgot what being pampered feels like. It’s not so bad after all. I could get used to it. Minus that part where they ripped off a layer of flesh from my back."

  "Oh, that? I didn’t think you’d notice. But Sally will, trust me." I wink at him. He shakes his head at me. "Next on the list is clothing. Can’t have you showing up in William’s baggy clothes."

  This time we hop a cab to mid-town, where I take him to a haberdashery William favors and get him suited up with a few outfits. By the time I’m done with George, he’s truly a new man.

  "You sure you want to go back to the park tonight, George? You know I’m gonna make you clean up at my brownstone before the party on Saturday, don’t you?"

  "I need to say goodbye to some of the guys," he says.

  "Fine, but I’m taking all of your new things to my place for safekeeping—deal?"

  "Deal."

  "And you promise to show up at my place Saturday by nine? Gives us time to get you all spiffed up, right?" I write down the address and tuck it into his hands.

  * * *

  When I get back, I decide to email in my column this week, as I just haven’t drummed up the interest in dealing with the office fallout over Barry’s demise. Happy it happened, sure, but not quite sure ultimately at this point that I give a care about my old job. Amazing, I know. But I owe it to my readers to keep up the dialogue, as word has it I’ve garnered a bit of a fan base. Now if I ever get really skinny I wonder if I’ll lose them, if I stop talking about weighty matters. Because it is interesting how people receive you once you’ve lost an obvious amount of yourself...

  Hair Today, Thin Tomorrow

  Or:

  The Complex Mathematical Properties of Haircuts in Relation to Weight Gain

  Did you ever notice that when you’ve lost a lot of weight, people start asking you if you’ve had your hair cut? Isn’t that a strange phenomenon—as if the appearance of your head has been minimized by the disappearance of your body. Which is actually odd, considering those really, really anorexic-thin girls have gargantuan heads in comparison to their bodies.

  It’s a funny thing when you lose weight. People start to heap praise on how awesome you look, which always leaves us to wonder exactly how horrid they thought we looked before the weight loss. Interesting correlation between this and haircuts, actually, as now that I think of it, I can recall many times in my life when I cut my hair, only to have people gush about how wonderfully it looked, and sometimes even outright telling me it looked awful before. I can’t ever recall having anyone compliment me on my weight gain, though. Bummer there.

  I have also observed over the years that there seems to be some sort of nefarious pound inflation occurring in the world. Kind of like the SATs and college grades where you do less and gain more. After all, let’s face it, a 1300 in the SATs nowadays can’t compare to a 1300 score from 25 years ago. And in the same vein, it seems now that weight is more now than it was before. Like 150 pounds today is heavier than 150 pounds used to be. Could that actually be possible? Or am I just reaching for straws? And is there truly a phenomenon of being "big-boned"? Or is that merely a passé and more genteel euphemism for being fat?

  Don’t you remember long ago when Liz Claiborne created generously proportioned sizes? When you could have a size-10 body but her label would read a size-6? What happened to those days of garment goodwill? It was so emboldening to be able to say with confidence that I fit a size six. Wait a minute, hmmm, then perhaps that size six I was 15 years ago wasn’t truly a size six. Maybe I’ve never been a size six? Could that be? And would I rather be a non-size six size-six than be Mary Kate Olsen in eating disorder rehab? So many questions, so few answers.

  I do know this: I remember a time in my life when 125 pounds seemed like an obscenely high weight. Now it seems like nirvana. Valhalla. Arriving at the Elysian fields. A state I will only reach when something dreadful happens to me. Which leads to this point: find me someone wh
o wouldn’t rather be plump and healthy than thin and wasting away from disease.

  I have a male friend who wrestles with weight problems. A good looking guy, I noticed over the past several months that he’s been slimming himself down to a fraction of his former self, so I asked him what his secret was. Well, I learned that he is on a green grass diet. He’s eating lots and lots of grass. Wheat grass, I guess. But grass, nonetheless. And that’s pretty much his diet: the meadow. Man, if that’s the only way I can lose weight, well, then, I think you’d better just put me out to pasture. Moo.

  Another way I have devised to boost my morale on this weight issue is to refer to my size only by British standards. If I tell people I’m eight stones, or ten or whatever, I’m bound to flummox them. Who the hell knows how much a stone is? So I can put to rest the issue with that simple vague yet mysterious term: the stone. Don’t ask me the US equivalent, because I don’t know. And even if I did, I’m not gonna tell you. And even if I knew it, I’d struggle to calculate it, because I’m a failure in mathematics. Which perhaps explains my weight issues yet again: maybe I have a hard time assessing proper portion size because of my shortcomings with calculating. Yeah, yeah, I think I’ve hit on it. Because I’m bad in math, I’m fat.

  * * *

  As I head off to bed I notice I’ve got a message on my answering machine, so I play it back: a tearful, despondent-sounding Jess, reneging on her sous chef commitments in between gasping sobs. She called from JFK, where she was about to board a flight to St. Lucia. Seems that Jess found out the hard way that not only is Dr. Dex married, with children, but he’s got another one on the way. So much for Dex and his Hippocratic anything.

  I know I should be angry with her about this. What kind of friend would ditch me when she knew how badly I needed her, particularly under the terms of our agreement? But I know that beneath her happy façade, Jess is ultimately a terribly lonely woman, and I understand lonely. Fact is, I wish I could do something to help her out, but I know that she’s going to have to do it on her own. Maybe licking her wounds under the tropical sun will be a good way to start.