Fat Chance

“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 obsession with losing weight is to blame for the food industry’s outpouring of “low-fat” and “no-fat” versions of virtually all the foods we love: low and no-fat ice cream, yogurt, cookies, pudding, whipped cream, mayo, cream cheese, cottage cheese, milk, cake, chips, and my—ugh—favorite, fat-free salad dressings that are gluey-tasting syrups made up basically of sugar.

The truth is: Not only doesn’t the low-fat stuff taste good, it’s finally being unmasked for the fraud that it is. The idea behind low-fat foods is that they’re supposed to save you fat and calories, make you healthier and help you lose weight.

The truth is: America is getting fatter because of low-fat products. Guilt-free goodies, people think, give them license to eat more, and eat with impunity.

The truth is: Not only don’t low-fat and no-fat NOT mean low in calories, these poor imitations are often HIGHER in calories than the original, because they have added amounts of sugar in an attempt to mask flavor that is lost when fat is reduced.

When I go to the grocery story, I look for food-food. What does that mean? The real McCoy. Plain butter. Not air pumped. Plain milk. Not the kind where the fat is removed. Nothing added. Nothing taken away. Nothing genetically engineered. Do I have to buy a farm? Raise my own animals? Grow my own crops? It may come to that. Stay tuned.

It’s almost become a routine now. Every month or so, Bill Wharton takes me to lunch. Very simply, I’m his cash cow, and his goal in life is to keep the paper a success, something he’s done for over twenty years by vigilantly watching the bottom line. The Daily Record is having a banner fourth quarter, and Bill is particularly proud of “Fat Chance.” But also, he likes me. Somewhere in that enlarged, underexercised heart of his, he has a soft spot for my loud mouth and pleasing plumpness, I think, not to mention my irreverent wit and occasionally off-color jokes. He’s got five boys, and, well, you get the picture.

Of course, not all of Wharton’s innovations at the paper are as successful as the column. The style section’s recent cover stories make him wonder if he’s getting too old for all this stuff.

“Cross-dressing birthday parties; Upper East Siders who color-scheme their homes to coordinate with their dog’s fur; and hair stylists who are buzz-cutting customers’ astrological signs onto the backs of their heads. The editor is a moron,” he hisses. “But I’ll keep mum and give her more rope to hang herself before I pounce and obliterate her authority.” He gulps down some Maalox and scratches his head.

“I used to have a handle on the news, a gut feeling about what was fresh,” he said, one day over an osso bucco lunch at Carmine’s. “Now that part of the job is in the hands of a bunch of kids who think that Charlotte Russe was a star of film noir.”

So why, on this day, a full week after he called me, did I still not return his phone call?

“The fourth-quarter numbers look great,” his message said. “Your column continues to be a smash, why don’t we break out some champagne over lunch, restaurant of your choice.”

In hindsight, I now realize what a mistake it was to ignore him. Just as Tamara and I were—for the tenth time—cranking up the volume of our nauseating fitness tape, we saw the door of my office open and who should stand before us, a horrified look on his face, but old Wharton. Shit. Double shit. And what did I do? Wave. He closed the door as quietly as he opened it.

Next thing I know, a messenger is delivering a Bailey’s Irish cream cheesecake, to me, from, guess who? That was followed by a voice-mail message—“When your dancing fever subsides, call your publisher about lunch.”

“Tex might be on to you,” Tamara tells me after lunch one day.

This is not a particularly welcome development. “What did he say?”

I get the whole conversation verbatim.

“Something’s up with Maggie,” Tamara says he told her one day while she was sitting with him and Larry. “But I don’t know what.”

“I looked at him straight-faced,” Tamara says. “I asked him what he meant.”

“She hasn’t been herself lately.”

“Probably something you said.”