on,” Tamara says. “We’ll be PC. Equal opportunity haters.”
“Amen.” I wrap a pair of weighted cuffs around my ankles and wrists, then toss some to Tamara. We both start moving to the beat, ignoring the fact that outside the office door, someone is calling my name. There’s a lock on the door but I, of course, didn’t take the time to turn the brass knob, and already I’m regretting my carelessness.
five
I had this horrible nightmare last night. All about Jolie Bonjour. She was lying on a coffin-shaped tanning bed, her body slick with Chanel bronzing oil.
“Seulement cinq minutes,” she was mumbling. “Le tanning bed” wasn’t a good idea, “mais non,” she was telling Mike Taylor over and over, but she couldn’t resist “un peu” so that her skin looked, not bronze, mais non, but just “ze beige” to set off her white teeth, golden hair and sparkling blue eyes. She was the type, of course, that didn’t get freckles or mottling. She got tan. Just tan. A moment later, she jumped out of the tanning bed and headed for a quick swim, her leopard-patterned beach towel knotted smartly, sarong-style, around her hips.
There was Mike stretched out in the sun alongside his Olympic-size pool, scripts everywhere. He was contemplating a lead role as a marine biologist working out of a laboratory in Bora Bora. The biologist finds the embryo of a unique sea monster that has a mutant strain of DNA, giving it the potential to grow larger than any marine creature that had ever lived. The dilemma: Destroy it and safeguard the world, or keep the fascinating specimen in the lab, running the risk that if it escaped it could wreak world destruction.
His concentration was broken by the sight of Jolie strolling out of the house. She untied the sarong to reveal a scarlet thong bikini and red patent-leather high-heeled mules. She stopped behind Mike’s chair and draped her arms around his neck, her nipples tickling his back, her perfume pricking his senses.
“Swim avec moi,” she whispered, caressing his ear.
He told her to wait, he had to read more scripts. Moments later, he was on the phone with his shrink, confessing, “She says she loves me…I told her I love her. She’s good in bed, we’re compatible…”
“But?”
“…something’s missing.”
Then I walked in, my head on her body, wearing the same bikini. He was mesmerized…. Okay, so I’ll never look like Jolie, but after two weeks, I’ve already lost ten pounds.
But then I wake up in a sweat, sheets tangled around me. I am sick. So sick. Along with the weight, I’m losing my grounding.
If it isn’t bad enough that I’m involved in an underground makeover, the phone rings and it’s a call from a local gourmet store that asked me many months ago if I would help them taste-test a new line of pasta sauces from a famed Italian importer. Who was I to say no, especially since the free-lance change would help pay for the maintenance surcharge that my East-side co-op had just tacked on to cover waterproofing the aging bricks.
But now, who needs this? As if it weren’t hard enough to resist temptation, I now have to deal with a team of white-clad Italian chefs who walk in promptly at eleven o’clock on the dot, bearing steaming pans of penne, rigatoni, linguini and farfalle, each covered with a mound of rich sauce. Instantly, the air is perfumed with the scents of garlic, onion, sun-dried tomatoes and olives, and my “friends” from the news department, who have noses as keen as bomb-sniffing dogs, come flocking to my door, ready to pounce.
Tex, who is usually glued to the computer screen, leads the parade, working hard to pretend that he’s surprised to find food.
“Hey, what’s this?” he says, acting like it’s the first time he’s come upon Italian food.
“Pasta,” I answer dryly. “You know the starchy stuff they serve in Italian restaurants?”
“You wouldn’t happen to have an extra bowl for a man who’s had nothing the entire day except bacon and eggs for breakfast and a meager muffin and coffee, over an hour ago, would you?” he says, ignoring my sarcasm, and trying to get on my good side by coming up behind me and massaging my shoulders. I’m tempted to close my eyes and promise him anything if he continues since it’s been so long since I had a pair of hands working on me, but I snap to.
“It’s barely eleven-thirty, Tex.”
“Exactly my point,” he says, sliding the bowl out of my hand. “My blood-sugar level’s starting to go south.” He lifts a giant forkful to his mouth and tastes.
“Definitely respectable, if you don’t count the fact that it really needs a little more garlic and maybe some dill,” he says, continuing to eat.
“But that’s not stopping you.”
He shakes his head and continues. “Not terrible. About equal to Ragu. Not close to Rao’s.”
How would I know? I haven’t had a forkful yet. “If you’re going to eat my portion, you might as well fill out the questionnaire,” I say.
“I’d love to, sugar, but I’ve got a mountain of work waiting for me,” he says. “I just came by looking for a stapler.” He waves a piece of paper in the air as if that explains it. Tex starts to leave and then comes back and hands me the bowl. He pivots only to face a stack of garlic bread. In a nanosecond, his hand clamps down over a piece.
Tamara stares at him, saying nothing.
“Now this is good,” Tex says, reaching for a second. As he turns, Larry makes his entrance and they nearly collide.
“I knew I wasn’t crazy. I knew that I smelled garlic.” He laughs hysterically. “How ’bout sharing the wealth?”
Tamara looks at me and shakes her head. “Are we running a soup kitchen here?”
“What?” Larry says, holding his hands out helplessly. “We’re helping Maggie.”
“Do you think you could find room in your heart to leave just a little behind so that I can get just a forkful and fill out the survey that they’re paying me thousands of dollars to complete?” I ask.
“Nobody can judge food after just one tasting,” Tex says. “Tell them to bring a new round of plates over the course of the next few days,” he says, trying to wipe a red spaghetti stain from the front of his shirt that resembles blood oozing from a chest wound.
“I think you’d better get back to Metro,” I say softly. “I just heard that the stock market took a nosedive and the Dow slid to a record-low level.”
Tex and Larry look at each other, drop their plates and go running out of my office.
“Is that true?” Tamara says after they’re gone.
“So, I heard wrong,” I say, helping myself to just a strand of spaghetti with each of the different sauces.
I fill out the survey, and then, don’t ask me how, put the leftovers out into the newsroom, then write my column as the sharks attack.
Diet Foods: High in Calories, Low in Taste
America’s
