A Second Bite at the Apple Read Online Free PDF Page A

on a morning news show. I wanted to be a food journalist, to write about the connections between food and culture, to interview chefs and bakers and food enthusiasts who would clue me in to new cooking techniques and food trends. That’s the stuff that turns me on, the stuff I could read about for days. One time in college, I was so engrossed in Ruth Reichl’s Tender at the Bone as I rode the “L” into Chicago that I missed my stop and ended up back where I’d started in Evanston. I loved immersing myself in her writing—the way I could almost taste the food she described through the pages—and I wanted to explore food and cooking through writing the way she did.
    The problem, of course, was that I couldn’t find a job like that after college, or at least not any job that paid anything. The only offers I got were “unpaid internships,” which I couldn’t afford to take without my parents’ help, and I knew my parents didn’t have the money to support me, so I didn’t even bother to ask. I did interview for one job at a small online startup, but it was located in Fort Lauderdale, which, after four years of long distance, was farther away than I wanted to live from Zach, who was set to start law school at Columbia in New York City. I often wonder what would have happened if I’d taken that job: if I’d be the food writer I’d dreamed of being, or if that dream just isn’t meant to be.
    No other paid food-writing jobs came along, so I took the best journalism job I could get and figured with a little finessing, I could make the transition from general television journalist to paid food journalist. Naïve? Probably. But I thought I could make it work. Whenever I had the chance, I pitched Morning Show stories with a food angle—a piece on farm subsidies that would take us to Loudoun County, or a story about the cupcake craze hitting the nation’s capital. Sometimes I felt as if I were trying to jam together two puzzle pieces that belonged to two entirely different puzzles, but I did my best to make the job and me fit. It wasn’t a perfect match, but it was close enough, at least until I found the food-writing job I’d always wanted. Which, of course, I never did.
    And now I’m unemployed.
    Not just unemployed—unemployed in the only industry for which I have any real qualifications, which, as it happens, is also an industry that is hemorrhaging positions by the day. The other major networks have either already laid off hundreds of staff members or are planning to do so in the coming weeks. Where am I going to go?
    I gulp down the last of the gin from the mini bottles and nestle myself into the couch cushions, determined to come up with a plan to pull myself out of this funk. All I need to do is close my eyes for a few minutes while I figure things out. Or, at the very least, forget why my life is a bit of a mess.
    Â 
    Four hours later, I jump as my cell phone hums and buzzes on the coffee table. A four-hour nap? This has not happened since I had mono freshman year of college.
    I grab the phone and see it’s Heidi Parker, one of my best friends from Northwestern who has been living in DC as long as I have.
    â€œHello . . . ?”
    â€œUh . . . hi,” Heidi says. “Did I . . . wake you?”
    I clear my throat and stretch my mouth wide to wake up my lips. “Kind of. Not really.”
    â€œSleeping on the job? That’s not like you.”
    â€œI’m at home. I got laid off today.”
    Heidi goes silent. “Oh my God,” she eventually says. “Syd, I’m so sorry.”
    â€œNot half as sorry as I am at the moment,” I say, breathing my stale, gin-laced breath into the phone.
    â€œWe need to get you out of that house. You need a drink.”
    I laugh. “Already have a head start on the latter.”
    â€œYou’ve been drinking alone?” I don’t answer. “Okay,