Slim to None (13 page)

Maybe It’d Better If I Was a Vampire

My girlfriend and I were discussing photographs recently. Specifically how depressingly horrid we look in them. She was dressing up to attend a ritzy black-tie event at the British Consulate, at which she would be photographed alongside her husband and Prince Andrew. The Prince Andrew, of Fergie-with-the-foot-fetish fame.

Amy lamented the fact that her husband was going to look good, as usual, and that she would end up looking like a cow in the picture, forever preserved as the unidentified heifer in the photograph. I suggested that she take the celebrity approach to having her picture taken: tuck her head beneath one arm while extending her other arm out, quasi-blocking the photographer’s lens with her hand spread wide. You achieve two effects this way: one, your little tromp l’oeil with the photograph makes it look as if you’re so famous, you merely don’t want your picture taken again— you’re simply so weary of everyone wanting to snap your image; and two, you end up not being frozen in technicolor, front and center, as the blivet in the picture with British royalty.

Sometimes I wonder if it would be easier just being a vampire, because then at least your image doesn’t appear in photographs. So you’re not preserved for all of posterity looking too damned fat for the pictures.

Mercifully technology has come to the rescue of those of us unhappy with our Kodachrome images. Now we can photoshop our blubber away. My friend’s son came home with a project he’d worked on in computer class a few weeks ago. In it, he downloaded an image of a dreary plain-Jane jowly-looking woman. Through the magic of photoshopping, he was able to put a sparkle in her eye, trim the turkey gobble from her neck, style her hair, rid her visage of wrinkles, and just generally make her look like someone she’d probably rather look like.

If you can do this for a complete stranger downloaded from the internet, then why can’t we just doctor up our family photos for the viewing pleasure of all? Wouldn’t you rather be remembered as slightly better-looking than you might currently be? After all, think about those dreadful turn-of-the-century tin-types in which young women of childbearing ages look like they already have one foot in the grave. Dark circles ringing their eyes, stony-faced gazes, no smiles. Surely in real life these people had humor, had spark to them, were a little bit more pleasant than the dour image left in their stead. That’s all I’m after: to be preserved as how I think I ought to look, rather than how I actually look. Is that asking for much?

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.

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?"