How to Eat a Cupcake

by Meg Donohue

  Wes shot me a look.

  “Oh, it’s nothing,” Ogden said. Even flustered he managed to hold himself very still. For a moment, I had a sense of the party flowing around him, like a river churning around a rock. “I just wanted to talk to her about the next delivery. We’re seeing remarkable results with this new compost blend we’re using. The Fuyus are coming in as big and glossy as tomatoes.”

  “Ah, the Fuyus,” I said. I thought I kept the mocking tone in my head, but Wes shot me another look, his brow furrowed with disapproval.

  “Persimmons,” Ogden said. He cleared his throat. “We grow Fuyu persimmons.”

  “I see,” I said. “You’re a proud papa. I’ll pass on the news to Annie.”

  Ogden was silent. He glanced again in Annie’s direction. I had the distinct sense that she had been purposely evading eye contact with him all night. I felt something like pity for Ogden then, knowing firsthand just how cold Annie’s cold shoulder could be.

  “Well, okay,” he said. “I’ve got a drive ahead of me so I should get on the road. Good night.” He thought for a moment. “And congratulations. It seems like tonight was a big success.”

  “Great to meet you, Ogden,” Wes said, clapping him heartily on the back. “I’m looking forward to trying those Fuyus.”

  I smiled and nodded but now the grasp I’d felt sure I had on myself was beginning to slip. The room seemed suddenly dim, the beat of the music too loud for the small space now that the crowd had thinned.

  “Who turned down the lights?” I said to no one in particular once Ogden had left. “I didn’t tell anyone they could do that.”

  “The lights are the same as they’ve been all night,” Wes said, sighing. “Julia, you were very rude to Ogden.” And then, almost to himself, he said, “I’ve never seen you like this.”

  I bristled. “Well, maybe you should leave then. I’d hate to disappoint you.”

  “I didn’t say—”

  “I know exactly what you didn’t say,” I interrupted, my tongue thick in my mouth. “My behavior may be a surprise to you, but I know you inside out. You couldn’t surprise me if your life depended on it.”

  “Is that right?”

  “Yes,” I said, looking away.

  “How sad,” he said softly. “Maybe I shouldn’t have come tonight. Didn’t you say something about not mixing business and pleasure? You might have been on to something. Can you promise me you’ll find your way safely home?”

  “I promise.” I’d meant to sound chilly, but the words came out childlike and small.

  “Okay.” He kissed my cheek, letting his hand linger for a moment on my shoulder before withdrawing it. “We’ll talk tomorrow.”

  And then I was alone in the tapering crowd.

  Chapter 15

  Annie

  Treat’s opening party was turning out to be the prom I never had. I was decked out in a new dress, the music was pulsing, and I couldn’t move a foot without bumping into a friend eager to shower me with a steady stream of praise. I deflected the first few compliments, but eventually I gave in and let the good vibes that were sent my way soak in. Sure, it was a decade late to aspire to being prom queen, but the people—my people—had spoken.

  I’d invited practically everyone I knew to the party—Jake, Becca and Mike, Ernesto and Lorena and Carlos from Valencia Street Bakery, and numerous members of the interconnected circles of bakers and chefs and culinary world people with whom I’d worked and socialized over the years since college. It was the This Is Your Life of opening parties—everywhere I turned, there was someone from my past or present life supporting me. The only person missing, of course, was my mom. That month marked the ten-year anniversary of her death, but I tried not to dwell on that thought. Instead, I found myself imagining that she was somewhere in the room, trying each and every one of the cupcake flavors offered to her, her face radiant with pride. There was even a moment that I could have sworn I smelled her distinctive vanilla-and-citrus scent; turning around, I realized I was only catching a whiff of a nearby tray of Key lime cupcakes, but the feeling of believing, if only for an instant, that my mom was close flooded me with a warmth that I carried with me for hours.

  “This must be the famous Becca,” Julia said, appearing beside Becca and me at the bar toward the end of the night. Julia’s little black dress was typically classy but her words, I noticed, were atypically slurred. “I’m Julia St. Clair,” she announced to Becca, sticking out her hand.

  Becca shot me a look as she shook Julia’s hand. “Why, hello, Julia St. Clair,” she said, clipping her words with the hint of an English accent. “Verrrry pleased to meet you.” I kicked her shin under the bar.

  “It’s so nice of you to make it tonight,” Julia said. “This has been such an enormous labor of love for Annie and me and it’s just wonderful so many people have come out to support us.”

  Labor of love? People? Us? Julia’s words seemed strategically chosen to draw some line in the sand between Becca and the two of us. I would have thought Becca would have been too secure in our friendship to take the bait, but when I looked at her, I saw an angry glint in her eye.

  “Oh, Becca knows I don’t consider any party without her a party worth hosting,” I said quickly. “Besides, with free booze and cupcakes, you couldn’t have kept her away if you tried.”

  “It’s true,” Becca said. “If there’s one thing I like even more than Annie’s company, it’s freebies.”

  “Well, you’ve hit the mother lode tonight,” Julia said, releasing one of her carefully arranged smiles. “Did you try the pink lemonade cupcake yet? It’s one of Annie’s best. I’ll track one down if you like.”

  I wondered if Julia had any idea how distantly she held herself, even when tipsy. Loosen up! I wanted to scream. It’s a party! It seemed to me that she had painted herself into a corner with this persona of perfection, and she wasn’t doing herself any favors. Why did she lock herself off like that? While I’d been having fun all night, she’d seemed tightly wound, her bare shoulders almost sinewy with tension.

  “I’m actually more of a mocha gal,” Becca said. “But thanks.”

  Looking back and forth between these two hardheaded women, I was struck by the sense that if Julia had actually been able to let her guard down and relax for a moment, she and Becca probably could have been friends. I felt sorry for Julia and the artificial life she seemed to have built for herself, but now that she had made her bed, I supposed all there was left for her to do was to lie in it.

  When the last guests had left, and we had paid the waitstaff and sent them on their way, Julia and I drained the final dregs of champagne and savored a few final cupcakes. For the first time all night, Julia appeared to actually be enjoying herself. I walked around, turning off the lights in the kitchen and the shop one by one until the room was lit only by the streetlamp out front. If I hadn’t been so surprised by the sight of Julia genuinely relaxed and happy, maybe I would have caught some glimpse of the shadowy figure awaiting us outside, but Julia’s ridiculously sloppy attempt to eat a banana-toffee cupcake in her usual methodical manner provided an inordinate level of distraction.

  “Why, Julia St. Clair, I do declare you’re drunk!” I said, laughing.

  Julia paused and frowned, but a split second later began giggling uncontrollably. “I am,” she said, coughing and laughing as she looked down at the crumbs that had fallen on her dress. “Drunk as a skunk.” As if her body had been waiting for this cue all night, it suddenly lost its rigidity. She slumped forward, barely catching herself on the bar at the front window.

  “Oh boy,” I said. “You really are.” I thought for a moment. “Maybe you should spend the night. I don’t live far. Can you walk?”

  This stoked another burst of laughter from Julia. “Can I walk? Can I walk? Can pigs fly?”

  “Well, no, actually,” I said. My shoulders, it
turned out, were the perfect height for wearing her limp arm. “Let’s go, Piglet.”

  “Heave ho, Pooh,” she mumbled.

  When we stepped outside, the cool night air seemed to revive her and I felt her straighten a bit at my side. Both of us must have seen the man at the exact same moment; our steps simultaneously faltered and then quickened in sync as we neared him, the only other person on the street at that late hour. Stocky in a black zippered sweatshirt and jeans, a dark cap shadowing his eyes, the man leaned against the shuttered bodega storefront next to the cupcakery and silently watched us hurry by. His footsteps immediately fell into an echoing rhythm behind us, the hard soles of his shoes crunching loudly against the sidewalk. My blood suddenly felt like it was pumping through my veins at twice its normal pace; my thoughts jumbled together indecipherably in my head.

  “Hey!” the man called gruffly.

  My heart leaped. I half turned around to face the man, but as I did Julia grabbed my arm and broke into a run. A group of twenty-somethings loitered on the corner at the end of the block. Julia sprinted toward them, dragging me along with her, apparently forgetting that we didn’t all train for marathons in our spare time.

  “Help!” she yelled. We didn’t stop until we reached the group, and when we finally looked back, the empty sidewalk behind us glowed eerily below the flickering streetlight.

  “Holy shit,” I said, breathing hard. “That was scary.”

  The cluster of people on the corner had turned toward us. “Are you okay?” one of the guys asked, eyeing my flowing turquoise dress with an amused expression and swaying slightly as he lit a cigarette. The cloud of smoke and beer that clung to them turned my stomach.

  Cars whizzed by us on this street, which was much busier than Twentieth. Even at that late hour, the sounds of traffic were punctuated by the laughter and chatter of people heading out, or in, for the night. “Yeah, we’re fine. Thanks,” I told the guy. At my side, Julia had turned a sickly shade of gray. “Let’s go,” I said to her. “My apartment’s just a few blocks up the street.”

  As we walked, I couldn’t help thinking of the graffiti that our contractor, Burt, had scrubbed out of the tiger-striped redwood bar. You don’t belong here. After feeling so elated with the party, I now felt shaken and exhausted and confused all at once.

  “You set the shop’s alarm, right?” Julia asked in a strained voice.

  “Locked and loaded.” I usually followed up any discussion of the alarm with a comment about how I felt as safe in the Mission as in any other neighborhood in the city, but now I fell silent.

  We walked the final blocks to my apartment in tense silence. It was only once I’d shut the locked steel gate at the front door behind us that I realized my teeth were chattering. The familiar carpeted flight of stairs now seemed impossibly long and I had to fight a strong urge to curl up right there at their base and fall asleep.

  “I didn’t know they had high-rises in this part of town,” Julia said when we’d looped around what seemed like the tenth landing.

  “I’m on the fourth floor—the top,” I said. “You have a generous definition of a high-rise. I’ll have to tell my landlady she should call my apartment a penthouse next time she lists it on Craigslist.”

  Once we finally reached my apartment, Julia made a beeline for the emerald-colored velvet couch steps from the door. She was sound asleep within seconds, not stirring even when I slipped a pillow below her cheek. I collapsed on my bed and tried to regain some of the exhilaration I’d felt an hour earlier, but a feeling of unease kept me tossing and turning all night.

  Chapter 16

  Julia

  I awoke to blinding sunlight on my face, the sound of silverware against china, and the smell of coffee. My mouth tasted sour. I blinked and sat up to escape the relentless stream of sun. Annie’s apartment. Each moment from the night before came back to me one at a time, like a puzzle being snapped together piece by piece. Annie and Jake kissing. Arguing with my mother. The interview with Lainey. Meeting Ogden Gertzwell. Fighting with Wes. The man who had lurked outside the cupcake shop, followed us, and then disappeared into the night. Annie and Jake kissing.

  I spotted the open door of a bathroom across the living room and delicately made my way to it. Inside, I swished cold water in my mouth and swept the mascara smudges from under my eyes. I pulled a small hairbrush from my purse and ran it through my hair. My dress was remarkably wrinkle-free considering it had spent the night half wedged in a couch. Thank God for wool blends, I thought, settling my face into a composed half smile in the mirror. And the minor miracle that is the Prada LBD.

  In the living room again, I took my first good look around. An overflowing bookshelf—IKEA, I surmised, cringing—separated the caramel-colored living room from what appeared to be Annie’s bedroom. Between copies of Elizabeth Falkner’s Demolition Desserts and Allen Ginsberg’s Howl, I spotted an unmade platform bed with a quilt in vibrant shades of blue and an entire solar system of white paper globe lanterns hanging from the ceiling above it. The living room contained the now all-too-familiar emerald-green couch, an open laptop on a low coffee table—how exactly had I slept through the annoying flicker of a computer light all night, considering I needed blackout drapes at home?—and a full wine rack topped by iPod speakers and a photo of a school-age Annie with her mother, Lucia. I distinctly remembered taking that photo. It was at the San Francisco Zoo, beside the penguin pond. We had taken Muni all the way there, rejecting Curtis’s offer to drive us in favor of the rare adventure and people watching that public transportation offered. Annie had shown me how to drop my change into the little metal machine at the front of the bus, and the tutorial had made me sullen for the rest of the bus ride, having deduced that Lucia and Annie were members of some club to which I didn’t belong. I had this left-out feeling again, looking at that photo in Annie’s living room. The only reason you’re not in the photo, I chided myself, is that you’re the one who took it!

  “Hey, Julia. I’m in here,” Annie called from around the corner. The kitchen was compact but sunny, with saffron-colored metal cabinets and spotless counters, the sort of kitchen someone who didn’t have a splitting headache and a yearning for darkness might describe as “inviting.” Annie was wrapped in a fuzzy white bathrobe, her hair messy and huge, her light brown eyes raccooned with mascara. The fact that she could pull off this look both impressed and bothered me. How hard was it to run a brush through your hair? I preferred to not look like I belonged on Hippie Hill in Golden Gate Park with a shopping cart full of blankets and cans, though I admitted, begrudgingly, that Annie did look more the part of bohemian beauty than greasy park dweller.

  Squinting in the sunlight, I lowered myself into the other chair at the small white table and accepted the mug of steaming coffee that Annie offered. So much for tea, fruit, and chocolate croissants, I thought, my stomach rumbling petulantly for my usual breakfast menu.

  “I’m making chocolate croissants,” Annie said, as though reading my mind. She nodded toward the oven, and sure enough, a sweet, buttery scent filled the room. How did I miss that?

  “Wonderful,” I said. But you still shouldn’t be dating my ex.

  “Well,” she said, “other than our little run-in with the world’s creepiest man, I’d say things went pretty well last night.”

  I felt my eyes widen, remembering. “That was terrifying.” I tried to recall the man’s face, but it was blurred by drink and darkness. I cupped my hands around the chipped coffee mug in front of me and took a long sip, feeling its bitterness coat and dampen the putrid taste in my mouth. “But, yeah, otherwise, I think the party went perfectly.”

  “Now I just have to wring the champagne out of my liver and get in there and start baking. Doors open at ten.”

  I groaned. “What time is it now?”

  “Seven. But don’t worry, I’ve got it covered,” Annie said, laughing. “You don’t have to c
ome in today. Tanya and Eduardo are already in the kitchen. Devi is coming in to cover the register.”

  Devi was one of the two college girls I had hired to help out in the front of the store. She was serene but savvy, an old soul with wide, almond eyes, skin the color of iced tea, and a glittering nose ring that annoyed me to no end but would probably make the Mission crowd feel right at home at Treat.

  “I’ll come in. I can’t miss our first day,” I said. “I just need to go home and change. But I’ll be there, I promise.”

  “I’m not worried,” Annie said.

  We sat in silence a moment, breathing in the rich chocolate scent that was filling the room.

  “So,” I said, clearing my throat a little. My eyes still felt swollen and dry, but I blinked them into alert submission. “I saw you with Jake last night.”

  “Oh.” Annie tapped her forefinger against her lips, thinking. “Well, we weren’t trying to hide anything.”

  “Clearly.”

  She blushed. “I was going to tell you, but honestly, I didn’t know what to say. We’re not anything serious yet. I don’t know what we are. I probably shouldn’t even be saying ‘we.’ ”

  “But you like him?”

  Annie looked at me steadily. “Julia, you know I’ve always liked Jake.” As usual, I had the sense she was looking right through me. What do you see? I wanted, and at the same time had no desire whatsoever, to know.

  “Well, that was when we were fourteen,” I said. “I don’t still like Gummi bears and scrunchies.”

  Annie smiled. “Are you comparing Jake to a scrunchie?” She didn’t seem to be taking this conversation seriously at all.

  “You know what I mean. This isn’t high school. He’s not the guy you think he is. I don’t want you to get hurt.”

  Whenever Annie got excited or angry her nostrils flared like a horse’s. Or, given her diminutive stature, perhaps more like a pony’s. They began flaring now. I could practically hear her mentally stomping her tiny hooves.