The Glass Kitchen by Linda Francis Lee Read Free Book Online Page B

places like that from New York City in the Dark Ages.
    Not a big plus, but the lady seemed to be available, and she didn’t have that gold digger look in her eye. No self-respecting gold digger would get anywhere near that run-down apartment.
    But she was kind of cool, even though she was a horrible dancer. Her hair was a nice sort of curly, which Ariel liked. And boy, could she cook. Didn’t they say that the way to a man’s heart was through his stomach?
    Whatever, Ariel had to get this taken care of.
    Miranda’s journal entries were getting weirder. She had gone from just drawing big teardrops all over a blank page to writing Life Sucks! And now she had moved on to I Hate Dad. No exclamation mark. Strangely, an exclamation mark would have made Ariel feel better about it. An exclamation mark meant emotion. Miranda’s journal didn’t seem to have an ounce of emotion in it anymore.
    Ariel knew from experience that the clock was ticking before her sister did something stupid.
    She wasn’t sure how she would hold on if another bad thing happened.
    She was done with bad things. Seriously done.
    Now she just needed the universe to listen to her.

 
    Six
    I F ANYONE HAD TOLD Portia a year ago that the only job she could get in New York City would be as a “hamburger,” she would have laughed and rolled her eyes. Not that she was much of an eye roller. But really? A hamburger? Could anyone with half a brain believe that a woman as smart as her could go from highly regarded Texas political wife to, well, hamburger?
    But after two weeks of unsuccessful job hunting, that was exactly what she had done. Or rather, what she had become.
    “Shoo!” Portia hissed, waddling down West Seventy-third Street as fast as the hamburger suit allowed, attempting to outpace the pack of little dogs that had escaped their dog walker.
    It wasn’t as if she hadn’t thrown her heart into looking for a job. She had. She’d made calls and sent out résumés, but not a single person had been willing to so much as interview her. Sure, two weeks wasn’t that long in the scheme of things, but her bank account told a different tale. She needed money, sooner rather than later. Robert still hadn’t deposited the settlement in her account, and her savings were evaporating like a reservoir in the middle of a Texas dry spell.
    As a result, she had jumped for joy when she received the e-mail from Angus Industries offering her a job in public relations. In hindsight, she should have wondered why they offered her employment without so much as an interview or a phone call. It turned out that Food Industries PR for Angus Industries hadn’t entailed any actual public relations work. Instead, when Portia arrived at the address provided, only a block away from her apartment, she found herself at Burger Boy, where she was handed a rubber hamburger suit and told to direct the public to the fast-food hellhole.
    When Portia realized what the job entailed, she wanted to say no. A thousand different ways she should say no flashed through her mind. But her pride had to balance the staggering expense of living in New York. Was it possible that a two-dollar box of cereal in Texas cost five dollars in NYC?
    End result?
    She had pulled on the burger suit, though no sooner had the manager zipped her up than Portia thought it smelled strange. Mr. Burger Boy had assured her she was imagining things. But as she stood on Columbus Avenue trying to entice passersby with discount coupons, the unseasonably hot fall day beating down on her, the suit began to waft the aroma of charcoal-grilled burgers. Not long after that, the dogs that had been sitting clustered around their dog walker as he talked on his cell phone made a break for it and came after her, leashes flying in the wind, like buzzards sensing fresh kill.
    The manager emerged from Burger Boy just long enough to threaten her miserable life if she let one of those dogs take a chunk out of his costume. She had tried to