Slim to None Read Online Free PDF

because everyone knows what the Queen looks like."
    "Not to mention her entourage would give it away." I roll my eyes at him. I hardly think there’s much comparison between me and a stuffy old goat who looks and dresses like an aged governess and carries outmoded handbags. Though I bet her Flexees work better than mine. Hers are probably hand-woven of royal gossamer, and even if she got too fat for them, the damned things would fit by royal decree or something. No, wait, she’d have little puffy-sleeved minions sewing faux sizes in the waistband of the things, just to placate her regal sensibilities. Oh, if only I were a queen. Then my Flexees would gladly fit me, too. Instead, I’m only queen-sized. Actually, at this point, I’m probably more like empress-sized.
    "Well, this is sort of like that. Only you can’t even disguise yourself. You’ve just gotten too, er, expansive."
    "That’s not true, I don’t talk very openly," I say, but my joke falls flat because we both know exactly what he meant when he said that word.
    Mortie perches both hands on his desk and leans forward, staring directly at me. "Abbie, it’s like this: I am responsible to this paper and to its readership. I can no longer continue to send you out to review restaurants right now, because everyone knows who you are and what you look like. No one will be able to trust a Sentinel restaurant review under the circumstances."
    Whoa. He didn’t just say he was firing me, did he? Me? Is he honestly chucking me to the curb?
    "You’re firing me? Giving me the old heave-ho? You’re booting me, like sending an old horse to the glue factory? After all I’ve done for you? Boosting your restaurant advertising revenue. Ensuring that the Sentinel is the go-to source for restaurant reviews. And the thanks I get is a swift kick in my—oversized—ass? Don’t you think that’s a pretty cheap—not to mention easy—target?"
    "Calm down, Abbie, I’m not firing you. You’re our champion reviewer. I’d be crazy to get rid of you. Trust me, this whole thing will die down. In six months time there will be enough turnover at city restaurants that this will be a moot point. But until then, you are stepping away from the restaurant review duties—you’ll get a food column instead."
    He couldn’t do this to me.
    "How can you demote me like this?"
    "Abbie, it’s not a demotion. It’s a lateral move."
    "Lateral schmateral. Lateral moves are fine in a game of checkers, maybe, but not when one is happily ensconced in her dream job."
    "Plus it’s only for a set period of time." As if that’ll sell me on the idea.
    "Yeah, just long enough for you to realize you don’t need me. And for me to lose my reviewer’s edge. You know how bad that is? My palate will lose its touch. I’ll be barren. Barren-tongued. This is probably a known condition listed in the pages of Gray’s Anatomy, you know."
    I pick up a dictionary, pretending it’s the medical compendium, and leaf to the middle of the book, as if I’m looking it up, and with flourish jam my finger on a page.
    "See? ‘Barren tongue: An affliction particular to demoted food critics.’"
    Mortie just waves both hands away from me, like he’s trying to get rid of an odor that’s lingering nearby. "Look at it this way: with this column, it will free up time for you. No more working dinners. Spend some time with William. Maybe you can join a gym. Research a book."
    "Or why don’t I use the time to invent the cure to cancer? At least make good use of myself."
    My face burns with shame. In one fell swoop I have gone from the pinnacle of my professional career to a fatso posting in food critic Siberia. Lateral move my ass. Make that fat ass. A column. Yeah, maybe I can write a column about being humiliated by being exposed in a major daily and then having my boss tell me I’m too fat to do my job.
    My gaze drifts to the banana cream pie in front of Mortie. I want so badly to just take the pie back. Or at least grab