“Or a complaint about how I ruined their big day.”
Amelia shakes her head. “Pessimist. I cannot imagine you could ruin someone’s big day.”
Except my own, I think. “Wow. This is crazy.”
“Not crazy. Just trying to parlay your skills into some cash flow.”
It takes Amelia about an hour to walk me through my new Facebook and Twitter and Pinterest accounts, all of which seem to have about a thousand followers each. “I just followed a bunch of folks in the industry so that we could build you up some people; in this business, everyone has a follow-back policy, so it didn’t take much time to get you some decent numbers. If you start using the accounts, you’ll find those numbers will go up even more.”
“I don’t know what to say.”
“Look, if it doesn’t work, or you hate it, no harm, no foul. I never get to work on fun stuff like this, and it was totally easy to do. But if it works, you can take me to dinner.”
“Deal.” I’m a little overwhelmed. No one has ever done something like this for me before, been so kind and selfless, and even though she is downplaying how much work it was, I know it must have been complicated and time-consuming. And while a few weeks ago my every impulse would have been a “thanks but no thanks,” I immediately recognize that I cannot sanely turn down any opportunity for extra income, not with Cake Goddess breathing down our necks.
Amelia gives me a hug, picks up Snatch, and dances him around the kitchen while I clean up the teacups and give her the rest of the baklava to take home. I say that I want to make plans for a girls’ night for her to meet Ruth and Jean, and she seems genuinely excited. When she leaves, I take Snatch for a walk, the lumpy pug snuffling in the moist patches of grass around every tree. Now that we have had a full melt of all of winter’s ice and snowpack, things are a little boggy.
I check my watch after we get home, but Bubbles isn’t back yet. It’s after eleven, but I know opera can go forever, so it doesn’t really worry me. I give the dog a treat, which he snarfs down quickly, pour myself a small glass of the sherry Bubbles keeps in a crystal decanter in the bar, and head up to my room. I plug my laptop back in on my desk and open it up. I log in to my email account, and there it is: Email from WeddingGirl.com.
I open it, and there is a question.
Dear Wedding Girl—
My future in-laws are insisting that it is socially essential for them to invite a bunch of their longtime business colleagues to our wedding, but my parents are paying for the wedding, and my in-laws have not offered to cover the cost of this potential significant increase in the guest list. I just want to tell them no, since we don’t really know any of these people and my parents aren’t inviting business associates, but my fiancé thinks that is petty of me. If we do decide to include them, is it appropriate to make that inclusion contingent upon their financial participation?
Respectfully,
Put-Upon Bride
I look at the bottom of the email, take a sip of my sherry, and hit Accept.
Adam’s Rib
(1949)
And after you shot your husband . . . how did you feel?
• KATHARINE HEPBURN AS AMANDA BONNER •
“Thank you! Come again!” I say to the noisy gaggle, and they all wave and laugh their way out the door. Herman and I look at each other and burst into laughter.
“There were so many!” he says.
“And they were so hungry,” I say.
“We’re going to have to refill out here.” He gestures at the case, which, for the first time since I started working here, is pretty well decimated. About a half hour ago, we got slammed with nearly twenty women from the twenty-five-year reunion class from the neighborhood high school. Apparently, in a fit of nostalgia, the entire class-of-1990 cheerleading squad had toked up behind the school, the former head cheerleader being in possession of some serious medicinal-grade weed for her osteoarthritis. They all got smacked with a killer case of the munchies, and one of them remembered Langer’s was nearby. Between the sweets they shoveled in as fast as we could hand them over and the boxes they had us pack up to take back to the reunion, about all we have left in here is a few sad little butter cookies, some poppy seed rugelach, and roughly a quarter of our stock of breads.
“It’s a good problem to have.” Even better, a good portion of the women who were here are still local, so I’m hopeful that maybe we will have some new fans and regular customers.
“Yes, it is.” Herman has been in a very chipper mood of late. I’d love to think that it is because business has been on an uptick—not over-the-top bonkers, but a steady increase, steady enough that it’s noticeable. But maybe it’s just that spring has fully sprung. The rains and winds of April gave way to the soft breezes of May, and now that we are knocking on the door of June, Chicago is in full rapturous bloom. The flowers are all up; the trees are lush and green. It is the magical few weeks before the oppressive heat and humidity of summer drop on our heads like a ton of bricks. The neighborhood has been out and about in force, and while we still aren’t getting much of the mommy crowd, at least the hipsters and young couples have started stopping in for bread and nibbles now that we have a sign up front proudly announcing our use of organic products and our daily specials. Weekday business is still relatively quiet during the day, but we do get more end-of-day walk-ins, mainly people coming home and getting off the train at the stop up the block, and weekends are officially hopping.
“Let’s get this place restocked before the after-work crowd pops in.”
“I’ll restock. You need to work on that cake.” I’ve just started on Amelia’s wedding cake. It’s been so long since I’ve done one I’m giving myself a full week, just in case something goes awry. It should only take me three days, so I’ve got plenty of time to make one completely wrong and still be able to do it all over.
“Okay. But if it gets busy out here again, call me.”
He winks, takes the cupcake tray out of the case—its contents now reduced to crumbs and a couple of smears of frosting—and heads back to fill it up again. I follow him with the empty cookie tray, leaving it for him in the rack, and begin making the batter for the bottom tier of the cake.
My biggest fear with this cake is getting these large circles out of the pans in one piece without chunks of moist cake sticking to the bottoms. I fill the pans with batter, slide them both into the oven, and clean up the worktable and the mixer bowl. I love getting into the groove in the kitchen. It keeps my head clear. I know a lot of chefs who say that while they are working, they think about all sorts of things, getting ideas for new recipes or working out personal relationship issues. One of my classmates from pastry school said that when she cooked alone, she had conversations with herself, arguing out loud with people she was mad at and speaking both sides of the exchange. I’ve never been like that. My brain tends not to wander too far. I think about the steps of the recipe; I go over the details; I focus on technique.
When I’m cooking, there is nothing else. Which is probably why I could never date another chef. Dexter wasn’t a cook; he was a gourmand. And when it came to the kitchen, that was my domain. Just how I liked it. It isn’t that I’m not a team player; from a professional standpoint, I may not have been warm and fuzzy, but until those last few months, I was good with the other people in the kitchen at S&S. And I genuinely like working with Herman; since the work itself is fairly easy and repetitive, his chattiness is fine and doesn’t distract me from getting things done. But personally? I’ve never understood all those movies that show the couple cozily cooking together, chopping at side-by-side cutting boards, feeding each other tastes of things, offering sauces on spoons or frosting on the tip of a manicured finger; it always looked fake to me.
The door cracks open and Herman pokes his head in and says that Mrs. Freidman called to see if we had any of the strawberry cream puffs left; her family is coming
for dinner, and she doesn’t have time to make dessert. They were our special of the day yesterday, and we still have about a dozen of the shells baked off already, and the pastry cream and strawberries are in tubs in the walk-in. But the whipped cream is gone. I could have sworn there was some left last night when I went home, but I must be wrong.
“How many does she want?”
“Can we make her eight?”
“Yep. We only have a dozen of the puffs left. Should I make the other four and hope that one of the walk-ins tonight grabs them?”
“Might as well, unless you want to take them home.”
“Herman, if I keep taking things home, neither Bubbles nor I will be able to fit in our pants.”
“Bubbles fills her pants just fine,” he says with a wink, in a shockingly knowing tone that is probably making my grandmother wonder why she is blushing right now for no reason.
“Wicked man. Go watch your store.”
He disappears, and I grab the pastry cream and strawberries out of the walk-in and put them on the table. The amount of cream we need for a dozen puffs is fairly minimal, just three cups, so there is no point in dirtying a mixer. I grab a large bowl and the immersion blender with the whisk attachment. Back in the day, I might have done it by hand, just to show off, but these days my attitude is that technology is my friend, especially since there is no one here to impress. I dump the cream into the bowl and turn the blender on. I hold the bowl tight to my waist as I move the blur of a spinning whisk around in the cream in a wide figure eight. Watching the white liquid start to swell the smallest bit as it begins to absorb air, I get a little mesmerized. I start thinking about the email I got last night from WeddingGirl.com. It had been a few days since I had gotten anything from the site, so I thought perhaps the first couple of weeks of one or two emails a day had been some sort of fluke, and that business was just going to trickle away until it stopped. The questions I’d gotten so far had all been pretty mundane and easy to answer: suggestions for favors, or how to handle dietary restrictions, or how to tame a maid of honor whose nickname is Tequila Tina. I’ve officially earned enough to have one dinner out. Provided I don’t drink. To be honest, I’d almost forgotten the site even existed until I saw the email last night.
Dear Wedding Girl—
I’m not sure if I should be getting married. I love my fiancé and he makes me happy, and I believe we would have a great life together. I don’t want someone else or anything like that. And his family is lovely to me, everyone gets along well. But there is just something nagging in my gut that makes me want to run away, and I don’t know if it is just cold feet and nerves, or if my subconscious is trying to tell me that I’m not ready or don’t want this.
How do I know if I should go through with it?
Bride in Crisis
I almost declined to answer when I first saw it. On the one hand, I’m a big believer in going with your gut, and if your gut says don’t do it, don’t do it. But then I thought about a loving fiancé, a beautifully planned event, and the devastation that comes when someone runs, and I shut the computer down and went to bed. What can I tell her? She has a fifty-fifty shot either way. Half of marriages end in divorce however they begin. So barring a real “reason” beyond some butterflies, should she, in what is from her own account a happy and loving situation, go for it and hope they are in the lucky half that makes it? And if I suggest that and in a year it all falls apart, will she blame me? Would I blame me? I never thought about Dexter’s end of things, assuming as everyone did that he made a cold and calculated financial- and business-driven decision and not an emotional one. But what if that wasn’t the case? What if he didn’t want Cookie for her money but just wanted her more than he wanted me?
I’m wondering this very thing when my grasp on the bowl loosens a bit. The bowl starts to spin on the metal tabletop, and the cord of the immersion blender gets caught between the side of the bowl and the spinning whisk. The bowl slips completely out of my hand, doing a wild spin and sending a wave of barely soft-peak whipped cream all over me, the work surface, and everything in a six-foot radius. I drop the immersion blender in my shock, and the whisk continues to spin, sending thwacks of cream shooting out as it skitters along the table, knocking things over and creating a sound like machine gun fire, until I grab the cord and yank it out of the socket to make it stop. This is why I don’t let my mind wander when I cook. Because I’m a total klutz by nature, and the only way to tamp that down is to stay super focused.
The door flies open, and Herman comes running in.
“Are you okay?” he says, looking stricken.
“Yeah, just a small whipped cream incident.” I look down. I’ve got a swath of cream straight across my boobs, and I can feel it all over my face, in my hair.
Then I look over Herman’s shoulder and through the open door, and see Mark in the Suit. Great.
Herman starts to laugh and walks over to me. He gently takes the immersion blender cord out of my hand and offers me a side towel.
“Sophie, my girl, I want you to meet my son Herman Jr.”
“Sounds good. Is he out front? Can I clean up first? Want to make a good impression.”
Herman looks at me quizzically, and then Mark in the Suit heads into the back room and waves at me. “Hi there,” he says, smirking.
“But you’re Mark,” I sputter.
“Mark is his middle name, and he prefers it, but his mother and I named him Herman Jr., and so he will always be to me,” Herman says with an edge in his voice. Mark winks at me. I don’t know how to take this. I certainly get the whole “use the name you want and not the one you were given” thing, which weirdly endears him to me a bit. But then I remember he has been in twice and neglected to mention his connection to the place, which makes me feel retroactively idiotic.
“Well, Herman Jr., nice to meet you.” I hold out my hand, which he looks at. When he raises an eyebrow, I glance at my hand; there is a glob of whipped cream on it. I wipe it off on the towel and let it drop to my side.
The bells on the door up front peal, and Herman heads back up front to manage the customer, leaving Mark behind. I start to clean up.
“Nice to see you again, Sophie.”
“Why didn’t you say you were Herman’s son?”
“You didn’t ask, and it didn’t seem relevant.”
What a pompous ass. “It didn’t seem relevant that you were in the store and you are my boss’s son, that maybe I should know that?”
“Would you have done anything different?”
“I dunno. Maybe.” Flirt less, probably.
“Exactly. My dad ran this place on his own since Jose left over ten years ago. Never replaced him, never hired someone else to help. Suddenly there is some random girl working here, making new things, changing recipes. I wanted to get a sense of you, and if you knew I was his son, you wouldn’t just be yourself; you would have been trying to make some sort of impression.”
Suddenly a clump of whipped cream falls from the ceiling and onto his shoulder. It totally looks like he got nailed by a pigeon. He doesn’t seem to notice, and considering his accusatory tone, I’m inclined to just let it sit there.
“So, what, you think I’ve got some nefarious plan where your dad is concerned?”
“Do you?”
“That’s a shitty thing to ask.”
“Trust me, it’s a shitty thing to wonder.”
I can feel my face burn. “What on earth could I possibly be plotting here? I mean, your dad is adorable, but if I were an Anna Nicole type, he isn’t exactly rolling in it.”
Mark laughs. “No, I’m certain you aren’t trying to marry him for his money. Nor, before you mention it, do I think you are trying to become ‘like a daughter’ to him so that he writes you into the will and denies me my birthright.”
If his air quotes around “like a daughter” didn’t inf
uriate me enough, his sarcastic tone on the word “birthright,” accompanied with a dismissive wave around the kitchen, implying that inheriting the bakery would be like getting some horrible ugly piece of battered old furniture you never liked, makes my eyelid begin to twitch with rage.
“I see, so we’ve established that I am neither trying to get in your dad’s pants nor oust you as favorite child. So tell me, Junior,” I say with deep emphasis, “exactly what about me worries you so damn much?”
He peers down his nose at me and lowers his voice. “You’re making it better.”
I throw my hands in the air. “God forbid! I am so sorry. Shall I make it crappier?”
He sighs. “Look, Sophie, I’m sure you’re a very nice girl with perfectly good intentions. And my dad says he’s known your people forever, so I believe you genuinely think you are doing a good thing for a family friend. But here is the reality. I had almost convinced my dad to sell this place, the whole building, to move into a really spectacular retirement community, where he could rest and relax and make friends and enjoy the time he has left. But now the business is picking up, and you are revitalizing things, and new customers are coming in, and it is getting him excited.”
“And this is bad because?”
“Because he is eighty-three years old and has a heart condition, and because you will leave. Cake Goddess is coming in six months; they announced it in the trades this week. Once she is spitting distance? This place already is barely worth the price of the bricks it’s made of.” Now he seems to be getting mad.
“This isn’t my fault.”
“It’s not not your fault.”
“That’s unfair.”
“You’re not kidding!”
“How on earth could I possibly know that the goddamned Cake Goddess was going to plunk herself down around the corner?”
“How on earth could you possibly not know that my dad’s business is a dinosaur in a changing hipster neighborhood? How could you not know that how this place runs and what it sells is none of your business, and certainly not your place to change!”
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