Free Eating Heaven by Jennie Shortridge Page A

head over the rim, the smell of commode water still familiar after all these years. Saliva collects in my mouth and my stomach roils, then stops. After ten minutes I give up, stand at the sink, and splash cold water on my face. It doesn’t matter anymore whether I want to vomit or not. My body has been conditioned.
    I’m now wide awake and nauseated, so I walk to my computer on thetable by the window, hit the button, wait for it to boot up while looking out at the snow-covered trees. When the computer whir has stopped, I check my e-mail. Sure enough, there it is, a message from Stefan. The subject line reads: Article???
    Should I open it or go back to bed? Would I be able to sleep now, anyway? I double-click the message and read:
    Eleanor,
    As of today, I still have not received the French favorites piece from you.
    I hope someone has died or the dog ate your computer, because this is unacceptable and puts me in a bind.
    S.
    I hit REPLY and type:
    Stefan,
    I’m not sure if he’ll die, but my uncle is in the hospital undergoing tests to determine if he has cancer. Good enough?
    E.
    Then I hit DELETE and open the article, type in the crème caramel recipe. Just reading “egg substitute” makes me shudder, but I’m feeling mostly better. I go back through the piece, tweaking it here and there. Maybe I’ll say I sent it and it bounced back; it wasn’t my fault he didn’t get it. He’s never used such a snippy tone with me, although I know he’s capable of it from hearing his stories. He once brought another freelancer to tears, he claims, over the simple issue of paragraphing.
    “Professionals shouldn’t need to be told to give me lots of white space,” he said. “I mean, insert an indent every once in a while, for Christ’s sake. I shouldn’t have to hold anyone’s hand. There are plenty of good freelancers out there, like you, Ms. Samuels.”
    In the hierarchy of freelancers’ transgressions, I’m pretty certain that missed deadlines are far worse than long paragraphs.

chapter six

     
    N ear daylight, I’ve just hit SEND when the heart-thudding sound of metal slamming into metal shatters the morning quiet. I jump to look out the window. Down at the corner, the front end of a mammoth SUV is wrapped around the back of a Hyundai on icy Everett Street. A business-suited woman jumps out of the SUV, waving her arms and screaming at the Hyundai driver, who has her hands to her mouth, shoulders quaking with sobs as she looks not at the accordioned back end of her car, but in front of it. She’s hit something or somebody, so I dial 911 on the cordless for the second time in less than twenty-four hours and run down the stairs.
    “Nine-one-one, is this an emergency?” a male operator asks as I yank open the glass door and step into the cold. The signal begins to cut out, so I stand, shivering, halfway in and halfway out of the open door.
    “There’s been an accident on Northwest Everett and Eighteenth.”
    “Are there any injuries?”
    Without injuries, a car wreck doesn’t qualify as an emergency? “Anybody hurt?” I yell to the two women.
    The crying woman looks over at me and wails, “I think I killed a cat!”
    “She thinks she killed a cat,” I report to the operator, then add, “but she looks pretty shaken up herself.”
    “We’re following storm-emergency guidelines,” he says. “If therearen’t any injuries, the drivers can just exchange information and report the accident within twenty-four hours.”
    “He’s alive!” the distraught woman yells, and suddenly a gray blur shoots straight down Eighteenth, bounding through snow and slush, past the neighboring apartment building and up the sidewalk. I start to close the door, but it’s all happening too quickly, and he tears past me into my building. “He’s alive,” I tell the operator, who starts to explain that he’s hanging up to handle real emergencies as I click the OFF button.
    The Hyundai driver chases the cat, plunging headlong