by J. Bengtsson
“It was my mother’s favorite cake and became my signature dessert. Everybody just adores it, but my mother, you know, she… she passed away a while back.”
Gabriel broke down again, forcing Casey to continue practicing her nurturing skills. Anticipating this might take a while, I pulled out my phone to check my messages when I sensed resentment focused at me. I glanced up to find Casey, her lips perched in a thin, terse line, motioning me over to their circle of love. My eyes widened. What the hell? Was I also expected to comfort him? Look, I felt for the man, I really did. Losing a parent, at any age, had to be devastating, but – I don’t think I can stress this enough – I’d known the man for three days! I barely hugged my own father, and I was fully vested in him.
Like an ornery child, I shook my head. Casey’s eyes narrowed as she scowled in my direction. Not a good look on her, I might add. Meanwhile, Gabriel seemed totally oblivious to our non-verbal squabble as he continued with his heartbreaking tale. Apparently, this was no ordinary baked confection. Gabriel’s cake was a masterpiece of sorts, served to celebrities and politicians alike, and he rattled off a long list of famous names to prove it. Somehow I just knew that mine would be added to the roll call the next time he told this tale.
Anyway, the story went something like this – or at least the condensed version did: the cake had been a special family recipe from his mother who, sadly, passed away two years ago. He hadn’t been able to bake it since her death, but seeing Casey and me so in love had inspired him to plug in the old mixing bowl again. Casey held his trembling body as a new wave of emotion played out. I hated to be cynical, but when I counted back how many hours, in total, we’d spent with the guy, I came up with eight.
And when the big reveal finally arrived, Gabriel proudly opened the lid to his baked marvel, a German chocolate cake, and although I was no baking expert, the brown creation topped with nuts and coconut was underwhelming even by my standards. It looked more like a hedgehog dipped in dirt than an edible dessert. When I looked to Casey to judge her reaction, she appeared as let down as I felt.
“Oh, Gabriel, this looks fantastic,” she said, lying through her teeth. “We are so full right now, but I for one can’t wait to give it a try a little later tonight.”
“Nonsense! Surely you have room for one more bite to make an old man happy.” He was already cutting into the cake and extracting a slice. Resigned, I pulled the paper towels out of my pocket. I was going to need them after all.
“Thanks so much,” Casey said at the door with Gabriel, as she tried to get him out of our suite. “It was just heavenly.”
“Oh, honey, you are an angel. My mama is smiling down on you tonight. I know it might be tough, but don’t fill up on too much cake because I’ll be back in the morning to prepare you both a wonderful brunch.”
“Yay!” Casey said, clapping her hands. From my seated position I mouthed ‘Yay’ and silently clapped, mocking her fake joy. Once the door shut, she flattened her back against it and covered her mouth with her hands. Our eyes met from across the room and smiles broke across our faces.
“Oh, my god! That was” – Casey said, as she walked back to me – “painful.”
“I blame you and your whole Dr. Phil act.”
“What was I supposed to do? He was close to a breakdown, and it’s not like I could count on you and your ice-cold heart.”
“This is our honeymoon, Casey. I feel like we’re letting an emotionally disturbed chef get between us… and he carries knives. I’m just saying.”
“Stop being dramatic. So, what did you think of the cake?”
I shrugged. “I don’t know. It’s in my pocket.”
“What? I saw you put it in your mouth,” Casey said, laughing.
“No. You thought you saw me put it in my mouth. You know I don’t trust any cake that doesn’t come out of a Betty Crocker box.”
“Jake, we really need to cultivate you. That will be my pet project in our coming life.”
“Good luck with that. Anyway, you’d better get started. Gabriel is expecting a half-eaten cake by first thing tomorrow morning.”
“Me? I hate German chocolate cake,” Casey said, wrinkling her nose.
No way had I heard her correctly. “You don’t hate any kind of cake. You’ve made that very clear over the years.”
“I make an exception for this one. You know I despise coconut unless I’m spreading its lotion over my skin.”
“Why didn’t you tell Gabriel that, then?”
“For the same reason you’ve been shoving food into napkins for days,” she answered, her voice raised in amusement.
“Well, what are we going to do?” I asked. “You saw him – if we don’t eat this cake, he’ll need a forty-eight hour hold in the nearest psychiatric facility.”
“We’ll tell him we were just too full.”
“Great idea. And then a new one will show up tomorrow night, and the night after that. At some point, you’re going to have to eat the cake.”
“When did this become me and not we?”
“When you became emotionally involved. You called him Gabe, Casey. Now he thinks he’s part of the family.”
“Well, no way am I eating it, so what do you suggest we do – wrap it in paper towels and stuff it down your pants?”
“Sadly, there’s just not enough room in there,” I answered, pleasing myself with the big dick reference yet slightly offended when it garnered no response.
“All right, so we throw it away.”
“I tried that on night one, but Gabriel took out the trash and I swear he took a quick look at the contents and saw the snail I tossed in there. No, unless we take it to a dumpster ourselves, he’ll find it.”
“Yeah, you’re probably right. Okay, I have an idea. Why don’t we flush a couple of slices down the toilet? There will be no trace of it, and he’ll still think we ate some of it. Problem solved.”
I thought about her suggestion for a moment then nodded. That wasn’t a half-bad solution. Reaching over, I tousled her hair. “Look at you using that fancy degree of yours.”
“I knew it would come in handy one day.”
Casey and I cut realistic pieces from the body of the cake and fed a small, sample-sized chunk into the toilet to test her theory and, just as predicted, the chocolaty mass broke apart in a vile display before swirling and whirling and disappearing completely from sight.
“Yes!” I exclaimed as we high-fived our good decision-making abilities. We were totally going to rock the communication part of a solid marriage. “Next.”
She dumped a similar-sized piece into the water and flushed. Once again it spun aggressively in the bowl before vanishing. This was the smartest idea we’d ever come up with as a cohesive unit. We cheered our good fortune.
But with success came a feeling of invincibility, and simply put, we got cocky. The following slice, bulkier in size, seemed to go down without problem at first, but a hollow burping sound emanating from the innards of the toilet soon put a damper on the fun, and before we knew it, the toilet was hemorrhaging German chocolate cake. Casey and I watched in horror as our good idea became anything but.
The thing about flushing food down the toilet, I have since learned, is that it doesn’t look the same going down as it does coming up. Going down it still looked strangely like a hedgehog; but coming back from the bowels of hell, Gabriel’s dead mother’s cake was nothing more than a pleasant smelling pile of excrement… and it was rising.
“It’s gonna blow!” I shouted, jumping back as I looked for the nearest exit.
“Can you plunge it?” Casey screamed, in a swirl of panic.
“With what?” I yelled back. “My hands?”
So much for our communication skills. As it became evident that we were going to have more on our hands than just a depressed chef, Casey and I clung to each other as we helplessly watched the poo-nami of German chocolate cake crest in the rapidly shrinking toilet bowl. Just as the first bits and pieces began to d
rain over the sides, the water miraculously stopped flowing. Holding my breath throughout the entire ordeal, I allowed myself to breathe only when I felt our situation had stabilized.
“What do we do?” Casey whispered, as if she instinctively knew we weren’t in the clear just yet. The rising waters might not have breached the levee, but that didn’t mean we weren’t still in imminent threat of flooding.
“Would sneaking out of the hotel in the middle of the night be too extreme?”
“For the average human, no. But with your name on the guest registry, we are screwed. You’re just going to have to call for maintenance to come and plunge it.”
“Why me?”
“No way am I going to stand there and have them thinking that mess came out of my butthole. You’re a guy. They’d expect shit like that from you. So to speak.”
“I feel like this is a good time to remind you that flushing the cake down the toilet was your college-educated idea.”
“Yes. And clearly it was a poor one, but now you’re going to have to cover up my crime and dispose of the body. That’s what good husbands do.”
Before tonight, the luxury suite we’d booked for our honeymoon had been all it was promised to be. Casey and I had been so pleased with the accommodations we hadn’t found a reason to leave the room… until this very moment. Now, I’d rather be anywhere in the world but here.
“This way,” I said, opening the door wider and letting the maintenance guy in. I followed behind in a solemn procession, knowing that what I had to show him would be uncomfortable for the both of us. Scanning the room, I searched for Casey, already knowing what I’d find – nothing. She was gone… abandoning me in my time of need. We’d only been married three days, and she’d already shown her true colors.
Standing in the doorway as the man entered the bathroom, I braced myself for the reaction. There was no explanation that would make sense so, when he turned toward me with question in his eyes, I just kept my mouth shut. Embarrassment colored my cheeks as I shrugged my shoulders and averted my eyes. Really, no clarification was needed, and he knew it. As horrible as it might be, this was his job, and I comforted myself with the possibility that perhaps this experience might inspire him to go back to school and get an education.
Seeing no reason to prolong the inevitable, I stepped back, leaving him alone to clean up the mess we’d made. My ears were assaulted by deep gurgling sounds that resonated through the walls. Again, embarrassment seeped through. Whatever was happening in there, I didn’t want to know. From the corner of my eye, I saw movement behind the drapes. Casey! The coward. Oh, no, she wasn’t getting out of this one.
Like a cheetah, I sprang from the bed and lunged for her. She screamed, making a run for it, but I was too quick and grabbed her. Casey swung her legs up in an impressive attempt to escape me. Her screams were loud enough to bring the maintenance man rushing from the bathroom, plunger in hand. Sweat and confusion dripping down his horrified face.
“It’s okay. Sorry. Sorry.” Casey held her hands up to calm the man before breaking into a chorus of giggles so impressive that it made her McDonald’s fit seem tame. “We’re just joking around,” she said hiccupping through the hysterics. “Sorry.”
Not appearing the least bit amused, the disgruntled hotel worker turned away and bravely returned to the task at hand, mumbling something in Spanish under his breath. Oh, yeah, his silence was going to cost me.
There were two things wrong with our sunset snorkeling adventure. One, it was at sunset; and two, it involved snorkeling. The name itself should have tipped Casey off that she wasn’t going to like this particular adventure, yet not once during the planning process had she voiced any objections. It wasn’t until we were on the boat headed for Chileno Bay that my bride shared with me her traumatic snorkeling experience as a child. Apparently an unruly clownfish had tried to French kiss her off the coast of Mexico when she was ten, causing Casey to gasp in shock and suck a gallon of water down her tube, nearly drowning her in the process.
Or so she says. If you asked me, there seemed to be a lot of embellishing going on in her version of events. Casey had never been known for her factual storytelling. For example, her clownfish was named Pennywise and had long razor-like teeth as well as a propensity for head-butting unsuspected snorkelers. One thing was for certain: I’d be fact checking her story with Linda as soon as we came home. But for now, I had bigger issues at hand – namely that I was in the ocean at sunset with my newly minted wife strapped to my back like a tortoise shell. With her arms wrapped tightly around my neck and legs around my waist, I was struggling to stay afloat in this lop-sided embrace.
How we’d gotten into this predicament was easy to pinpoint. Moments earlier, our well-meaning tour guide had tossed some food in the ocean directly in front of us, causing an aquatic flash mob to form around us. School was in session, and its tens of thousands of pupils were swirling around us at a dizzying speed. Casey jolted her head out of the water, and I could hear her screaming before I’d had a chance to resurface myself. Even with the goggles covering the vast majority of her face, I could see the terror playing out in her eyes.
“They’re sucking me into their vortex,” Casey shouted before lapping up a healthy mouthful of sloshing waves. As she gagged and flailed, her grip on my neck tightened and she proceeded to choke the life out of me.
“They’re just fish,” I wheezed. “They can’t hurt you.”
“Tell that to the victims in Jaws.”
“Well, that wasn’t real, so…”
“And what about the fatalities in Sharknado?”
“Okay, really not real.”
“Look, I just hate fish, okay?” she said, with the whiniest of pouts. “They think they run the ocean.”
“Yeah.” I agreed. “Who do they think they are?”
“Exactly. I’m not even going to eat them anymore. That’s how much I hate them.”
“Shellfish too?” I asked, knowing full well that anything with shrimp in it was her very favorite meal ever.
“Let’s not go crazy here,” Casey replied, clearly amused by the conversation while remaining sufficiently terrified. “Look, I realize we’ve only been out here three minutes, but I want to go back to the boat.” A gurgle sounded from her throat after all the water she’d consumed. “I’m totally cool with waiting for you to swim but, babe, I’m done snorkeling for this lifetime.”
Seemingly determined to put the nail in the coffin of our snorkeling trip, the guide ignorantly dipped his hand back into a bucket and tossed yet another handful of food into the whirlpool. The grip around my neck tightened into a noose as Casey, not waiting around for me to rescue her, tipped us both backward and swam out of harms way.
“Casey,” I gasped, “You’re sort of strangling me right now.”
I felt her grip suddenly detach as she scrambled onto the boat, not even looking back. It was then that I realized she hadn’t been trying to save me. Casey had been using me as a human shield against the fishy hooligans who ruled the sea. The thought occurred to me that I was lucky this wasn’t a real life Jaws situation because I’d most definitely be dead by now.
The following day, we tried our luck at another water sport, this one above the water line. Renting jet skis, Casey and I quickly acclimated ourselves to the machines and were thrashing through the waves at breakneck speeds having a frolicking good time until something behind me caught my attention.
“I think we’re being followed,” I shouted to Casey. She immediately looked back to see a man trailing us. He was a big guy, with a shiny bald top and a GoPro camera strapped to his forehead. It hadn’t occurred to me that I might get recognized out on the water, so my bodyguard had stayed on shore. Maybe the best approach would be to let this guy take his picture so he would then leave me be; however, such an outcome was never guaranteed. Sometimes the photo chasers graciously disappeared after getting their shot, but other times, they morphed into flesh-eating bacteria. There was never any way
to gauge the direction of any particular encounter until the gangrene set in.
I turned to Casey to get her opinion, only to find her standing up on her jetski looking like a goddess in her yellow bikini top and jeans shorts combo.
“Let’s dust him,” she said, flashing me her most mischievous smile. Oh, hot damn! That’s what I liked to hear. I had my very own personal Charlie’s Angel. She took off like a bolt of lightning and I whooped my approval of her can-do attitude. Pushing down on the throttle, I took off after her. In a life filled with uncertainty, Casey was the one path I always followed.
We rode through the choppy waters, leaving the shutterbug in our wake. My sexy wife suddenly turned into the fiercest of competitors as the two of us hit the choppy waters at top speeds, sending our jetskis airborne on multiple occasions. No way was that follicly-challenged hanger-on with the geek headgear going to keep up with my girl.
It wasn’t until we’d circled back around that we saw the unmanned jetski bobbing on the surface, and its passenger flailing in the water. Casey and I exchanged glances. I could already tell what was going through her mind before she even opened her mouth.
“He’s wearing a life vest.” I shrugged, as if that might get me out of having to rescue my water-stalker at sea.
“We can’t just leave him out here. There’s nobody around.”
“Sure we can. We’ll go get help.”
“And what if we can’t remember where we left him and he drowns? We’ll never forgive ourselves.”
“Actually, I might not be all that heartbroken,” I said. Casey raised a brow at me as she fixed an angry scowl on her face. Strangely enough, she appeared more amused than anything else, probably because she knew I wasn’t going to let the dude drown.
“Oh, fine!” I huffed. “We’ll rescue him. But I get to be Pamela Anderson.”
We sped toward the thrashing photographer as I assessed the situation. His jetski had drifted away from him and he was now floating on his back.