Slim to None Read Online Free PDF Page A

selling fresh butter three times a week, direct from a Mennonite farmer in Pennsylvania. And I can pick up a loaf of that yeasted jalapeno corn bread from the bakery. Maybe barbecue some ribs with it, in honor of spring. William loves those harbingers of summer-to-come, that sense of getting away from it all that comes with warm weather and fresh, local foods. He’d far rather flee the city for the quieter confines of the countryside or, better yet, the ocean. Just the two of us, walking hand-in-hand along the shoreline, Cognac ten steps ahead of us investigating the beached jellyfish and horseshoe crabs. But if I can’t give him that, at least I can offer it to him in the form of an escapist meal.
    Mortie, who’s sporting a scowl, looks at the pie with tepid enthusiasm.
    "Aw, Abbie, I wish you’d stop trying to fatten me up," he says. "My stomach might love this stuff but my arteries are going on strike." Nevertheless he grabs a spoon from a drawer and scoops it into the pie. After all, who can resist banana cream pie? Mission accomplished, I think confidently. Even if he did know about last night, he’ll have forgotten it with the pie.
    "So what’s up?" I ask.
    Mortie spears his spoon back into the pie and stands up.
    "Abbie—we’ve got a real problem on our hands," he says. He picks up a copy of today’s New York Post and holds it up to my face. I blanch.
    Staring back at me from the tabloid is a picture of me. A grainy picture of me looking like someone I don’t know. Someone fat and lumpy. Someone clearly in the throes of Flexee failure. Stuffing her face from the dessert sampler at Puka.
    Oh, God, even worse than the truth-serum of a picture of my corpulent twin (it is, isn’t it? It simply can’t be me. I don’t look that bad, do I?) is the banner headline, which has obviously been screaming out from newsstands across Gotham this morning, up until now to my merciful oblivion:
    STUFFED TO THE GILLS:
    Sentinel Food Critic Exposed!
    "Well?" Mortie fixes his gaze on me, expecting a response.
    "I can’t believe my girdle is that incompetent!" Maybe if I make a joke of this it’ll soften the blow.
    "Abbie, you’ve been outed!" he snarls. With that he slaps the back of his hand across my grotesque photograph. "What the hell do you think we should do about it?"
    "Welllllll..." I’m tap-dancing for time, trying to come up with a brilliant response. "Uh, I know when you hired me I said I wasn’t a big fan of disguises." And I’m not. They’re sticky and uncomfortable and my head itches with those wigs and I’d really rather go out to eat as me. I’m a food critic, not an actress. "How about we give that a try?"
    I bat my eyes at Mortie in a lame attempt to charm him, but he’s shaking his head. "It’s too late for that, Abbie. It’s one thing to disguise a woman who’s a size twelve. But it’s another thing to try to hide someone whose appearance is, uh, how to put this delicately? Whose appearance is a foregone conclusion?"
    "Maybe you can just spell it out for me, Mortie. You think I’m fat, don’t you? You think your top food critic has eaten her way out of being able to eat for a living."
    This time Mortie locks his eyes on mine and nods almost imperceptibly, like he’s trying hard not to nod, his pursed lips set in a grimace, as if he’s disappointed in me. "I’m afraid so, Abbie. I can’t have my premier food critic being known all over town by dint of her girth. And right now, with this picture of you being blanketed across Manhattan, you have become the elephant in the corner of the room, forgive the insensitive cliché. You’ll never get an honest depiction of a restaurant’s food and service when everyone knows exactly what you look like."
    My face must look dejected, because he tries to assuage my humiliation a bit.
    "Think of it like this. Take the Queen. You think she could get a true idea of what it’s like to be served at some of the most exclusive restaurants in London? No,