Chapter 3
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rrayed on the Ladies’ Day banquet table were yellow-greenavocado pear halves stuffed with crabmeat and mayonnaise, andplatters of rare roast beef and cold chicken, and every so often acut-glass bowl heaped with black caviar. I hadn’t had time to eatany breakfast at the hotel cafeteria that morning, except for a cupof over-stewed coffee so bitter it made my nose curl, and I wasstarving. Before I came to New York Id never eaten out in a properrestaurant. I don’t count Howard Johnson’s, where I only had Frenchfries and cheeseburgers and vanilla frappes with people like BuddyWillard. I’m not sure why it is, but I love food more than just aboutanything else. No matter how much I eat, I never put on weight.With one exception I’ve been the same weight for ten years. My favourite dishes are full of butter and cheese and sour cream.In New York we had so many free luncheons with people on themagazine and various visiting celebrities | developed the habit ofrunning my eye down those huge, handwritten menus, where atiny side-dish of peas costs fifty or sixty cents, until I'd picked therichest, most expensive dishes and ordered a string of them. We were always taken out on expense accounts, so I never feltguilty. | made a point of eating so fast I never kept the other peoplewaiting who generally ordered only chef's salad and grapefruit juicebecause they were trying to reduce. Almost everybody I met in NewYork was trying to reduce. “I want to welcome the prettiest, smartest bunch of young ladiesour staff has yet had the good luck to meet,” the plump, bald master-of-ceremonies wheezed into his lapel microphone. “This banquet isjust a small sample of the hospitality our Food Testing Kitchens hereon Ladies’ Day would like to offer in appreciation for your visit.” A delicate, ladylike spatter of applause, and we all sat down at theenormous linen-draped table. 28 | Chapter 3 There were eleven of us girls from the magazine, together withmost of our supervising editors, and the whole staff of the Ladies’Day Food Testing Kitchens in hygienic white smocks, neat hair-netsand flawless make-up of a uniform peach-pie colour. There were only eleven of us, because Doreen was missing. Theyhad set her place next to mine for some reason, and the chairstayed empty. I saved her place-card for her—a pocket mirror with“Doreen” painted along the top of it in lacy script and a wreath offrosted daisies around the edge, framing the silver hole where herface would show. Doreen was spending the day with Lenny Shepherd. She spentmost of her free time with Lenny Shepherd now. In the hour before our luncheon at Ladies’ Day—the big women’smagazine that features lush double-page spreads of technicolourmeals, with a different theme and locale each month—we had beenshown around the endless glossy kitchens and seen how difficult itis to photograph apple pie a la mode under bright lights becausethe ice-cream keeps melting and has to be propped up from behindwith toothpicks and changed every time it starts looking too soppy. The sight of all the food stacked in those kitchens made me dizzy.Its not that we hadn’t enough to eat at home, it’s just that mygrandmother always cooked economy joints and economy meat-loafs and had the habit of saying, the minute you lifted the firstforkful to your mouth, “I hope you enjoy that, it cost forty-one centsa pound,’ which always made me feel I was somehow eating penniesinstead of Sunday roast. While we were standing up behind our chairs listening to thewelcome speech, I had bowed my head and secretly eyed theposition of the bowls of caviar. One bowl was set strategicallybetween me and Doreen’s empty chair. I figured the girl across from me couldn't reach it because of themountainous centrepiece of marzipan fruit, and Betsy, on my right,would be too nice to ask me to share it with her if I just kept itout of the way at my elbow by my bread-and-butter plate. Besides,
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