by Dark, Aubrey
Tonight I was delivering a cake. The fanciest cake in the world.
Not wanting to risk squishing the cake, I spent most of the walk on the curb, dodging the groups of pedestrians that threatened to surround me. Finally I turned onto the street Steph had sent me to.
Craning my neck, I looked down at the directions. Then back up. Then back down.
This was a scene. In front of the building, a line of cars waited to be valet parked. Each one was more expensive than the other. I saw a Ferrari, two Maseratis, one of the new super Teslas, and a car I thought I recognized from the latest Batman movie. It was incredible.
I stopped for a moment, gathering my senses and trying to figure out the easiest way to get into the building without being crushed by the mob of people gawking outside the door. Elevators whooshed up and down the outside of the upscale highrise.
A woman jostled my elbow and I instinctively pulled back, cradling Steph’s cake.
“Hey, watch it!” I said.
“Excuse me?” A six-foot tall blonde stick figure stared down at me contemptuously. Her eyes swept over my figure. “It looks like you should be the one watching out.”
I swallowed, my mouth suddenly dry.
Obnoxious guys I could handle. They were just like a more annoying version of my brothers. Tease me, and I’d tease them right back. It was the same with my art buddies who tagged alongside me, occasionally helping me throw up some of my bigger pieces. They poked at me without pushing any of my buttons.
But bullies? Especially female bullies? I couldn’t take them. Maybe it was being bullied through my preteens. It had gotten so bad that I was taking more sick days off of school than going. My parents eventually pulled me out of school and I finished my GED on my own.
Whenever another woman looked at me with that look, something inside of me turned back into a little girl, and not the brave one my mom knew. The scared one who ran and hid in the bathroom to cry during class.
Another benefit to not wearing makeup: you don’t utterly mess up your face with mascara when you cry.
“I thought all the whores stayed in the bad part of the city,” she murmured to her friend, just loud enough that I could hear.
My face turned bright red and I turned away quickly, hugging the cake in my arms. My Iowa upbringing had done nothing to prepare me for being called a whore by another woman.
“Are you girls going up to the party?”
A man dressed in an expensive looking suit waved in my direction. I stepped forward, making sure to avoid the blonde supermodel who’d called me a whore.
“Please come through this way,” he said, motioning to a side entrance. I hung back and went through the doorway near to last. All of the other girls were dressed in gorgeous gowns of every color, and they were all at least half a foot taller than me, in even taller heels. It was a parade of models.
I slunk in after them, holding the cake in front of me like a shield. There was a good reason I was there. Even if I wasn’t a runway model. I held my head high. This was a two thousand dollar cake I was carrying, after all.
The girls congregated near a table at the end of the hallway. The table was covered in clipboards.
“Everyone must sign the waiver form before going up to the elevator,” the man said. He sounded bored.
I set the cake down carefully on the edge of the table that was empty, and picked up one of the clipboards.
The form was three pages long, and all of the other girls were busy initialing and signing in the appropriate spots. I glanced down at the first page.
“…signee agrees to waive all personal liability on account of the owner…”
“…in signing, agrees to complete non-disclosure under severe penalty and prosecution of law…”
“…strict dress code, enforceable and negotiable only at the discretion of the owner…”
I flipped to the next page. Things got even weirder.
“…will not speak unless spoken to…”
“…signee must obey all orders given…”
I looked up to see the first few girls already handing their forms in. They gathered near a marble elevator door where the man in the suit motioned them toward. The elevator doors opened and the girls disappeared into the building.
I picked up Steph’s cake and stepped forward to the man in the suit.
“Excuse me,” I said. “Is this the entrance for the party—”
“Is your form done?”
“Uh, no. Do I need to do that? I’m just—”
“Everyone needs to fill out the form,” the man said. He looked down at me with irritation. “Or you can find another way up.”
“Sure,” I said, slinking back to the table. Whatever. I just needed to get in and out so I could get to my new job.
Everybody else was finishing up and there were only a few clipboards left. I grabbed one and signed all of the blank spots quickly, then handed it over to the man in the suit.
“On the elevator, please,” he said. I got in, pressing myself back against the side of the elevator along with a half dozen other girls. The elevator swooped upwards quickly, leaving my stomach down on the first floor.
The elevator was made of glass, and as we lifted past the first few stories I gasped. I hadn’t realized what was so obvious. If I could see the elevators from outside, the elevators could see out.
I could see all of New York!
The elevator shaft was made of glass panels, and we looked out onto the city with all its glimmering lights and narrow alleys where darkness hides. The floor, too, was glass.
Oh, jeez.
My palms turned clammy with fear. All of the blood in my body sucked down into my feet, and I felt like I was going to collapse. God, I felt so vulnerable in a dress. I couldn’t run in heels. As we rose higher and higher, I gulped air and tried not to look directly down.
My fingers were sweating, but I held the cake firmly in my grasp. I was not going to let anything get in the way of delivering this cake successfully. Steph was counting on me.
I heard a giggle, and looked up to see the tall blonde woman staring daggers at me. Her friend was the one laughing. I flushed again and averted my eyes.
“You’re not going to the party, are you?” the friend said. She wasn’t—yep. She was talking to me.
“I’m just delivering this to the kitchen,” I said, in as confident a tone as I could muster. I felt like throwing up. The only thing holding me back was the thought of ruining a two thousand dollar cake with puke.
“Right. The kitchen.” The girl rolled her eyes, and Blondie dissolved into giggles. I turned my head to look away from them.
Bad idea. From so high up, the people down on the street looked like ants. The cars looked like tiny Hot Wheels versions of themselves. And I was way, way too high up.
“Scared of heights?”
I looked up to see another one of the supermodels whispering at me. She didn’t look like she was making fun of me, though. Heck, she looked just as green around the gills as I did.
“Yeah,” I said. “A little. You?”
“I’m terrified of heights,” she said. I noticed then that her hands were clutching the rail. Her fingers were white with pressure.
“It’s alright,” I said. “They probably spent a million dollars on this elevator. No way would it ever break and send us all flying down to our deaths. It would be a publicity nightmare. Right?”
Her mouth dropped open. She stared at me in terror. Okay, so maybe that wasn’t the most comforting thing ever to say. Fortunately, the elevator stopped just then and the doors opened. I felt my heart rise back up into my chest as I tottered shakily out of the elevator.
“Alright,” I said to myself, trying to get my head back into the game. “Deliver the cake. Deliver the—”
As I walked out into the top-floor penthouse, I forgot all about what I was here to do. My legs stopped working and I just stood there gaping. There really were no words for it, but one of my mom’s ol
d phrases came into my head and so that’s what came out of my mouth.
“Jesus’s jumping jelly beans!”
***
I stared out across a huge room. Every square inch of the place glittered and shone. Crystal chandeliers lined the ceiling, sending their glowing light out onto the floor that hummed with hundreds of people, all dressed in evening gowns and tuxedos. Something about it seemed strange to me, but I was too much in awe to figure it out. The art on the walls. The servers gliding through the masses of chatting partygoers.
And the ice sculptures!
Near me, a towering ice sculpture arched over the hallway. It was an angel wrestling with a demon, and their hands were locked together as they stared into each other’s eyes. It was gorgeous, a sculptural masterpiece. It should have been in the museum of contemporary art, but instead here it was, melting in some rich guy’s apartment. Nobody was even looking at it!
Another man in a tuxedo was talking to the supermodels, and when he saw me he motioned me over angrily.
“Sign in here before you go inside,” he said, pointing to another clipboard. “Leave your ID in this case with me. And put on a collar.”
He held out a red leather collar in my direction. I just stared at him. Apart from having both of my hands occupied with holding a cake, I was totally weirded out by his request.
A collar?
That was when I realized what was weird about the party going on. All of the women were wearing collars. I gazed around. Some of the women had thin black bands around their necks. Others had chunky gold collars ornamented with diamond studs. And the supermodels were all fitting collars around their necks, too.
“What the heck?” I murmured. Was this some sort of bondage orgy thing for millionaires? I had no idea what was going on.
The man looked like he wanted to send me back down the elevator, or perhaps throw me off of a balcony to get me away from him sooner. Fortunately, the supermodels spoke up.
“She’s not with us,” the bitchy blond girl interrupted.
“Yeah,” her friend echoed. “She’s going to the kitchen.”
The man frowned at me.
“Cake delivery,” I explained, holding up Steph’s creation.
“Yes, yes,” the man said, clearly irritated at having to deal with me. “Down the hall and to your left. But leave through the servants’ exit, please.”
I didn’t bother asking him where the servants’ exit was. It would be easier to just ask someone once I got to where I was supposed to be going. I turned around and exhaled, thankful that I didn’t have to deal with collars or supermodels anymore.
Me? I was just delivering a cake.
Chapter Four
I wandered off underneath the ice sculpture of the angel and demon. The ice was melting, and water dripped off of the ends of the angel’s wings. Passing through, I continued walking along the outskirts of the party, the cake box clasped in my hand.
The hallway led out of the main room. As I walked away, the noise of the party grew quiet. Here, the hall was paneled with thick oak. Crushed velvet drapes framed sculptures—these ones made out of a more permanent marble—and the ceiling was vaulted with gilded wood ornamentation. Whoever this rich guy was, he had a taste for antique design.
As I was walking past the first door on the left, I heard a noise. That wasn’t the kitchen, was it? I pulled the door open with one hand, holding the cake with the other. I poked in my head.
“Oh!” I cried. The room I’d opened up was a den of some kind, with leather sofas and books lining the walls. There was a pool table in the middle of the room.
And on the pool table, a woman lay on her back. The man standing at the far end of the table looked up at me, his pants around his ankles. His tie fluttered over her ample cleavage as he bent over her, between her legs.
From his expression, he was busy putting something into a pocket. When he saw me, his eyes widened only slightly in irritated surprise.
“Room’s occupied,” the man grunted.
“Unless you want to join,” the woman said, looking at me from upside down.
“Uh… no. No thank you. Sorry to interrupt,” I said, a fierce shame burning on my cheeks. I closed the door quickly behind me.
I made my way down to the end of the hall. From the left, waiters streamed out of a door. Okay. That was the kitchen. I was almost there when something caught my eye.
No way.
I snuck over to the door across the hall from the kitchen. It was ajar, and inside I had caught a glimpse of something.
But no, it couldn’t be.
One of my favorite graffiti artists in NYC had stopped putting anything up in the city two years ago. Nobody knew who he was apart from his tag—he signed all of his pieces with the name “Kage.” I’d tried to catch him in the act of tagging, lots of people had, but he was invisible.
His letters flowed like water, like sunlight through tree branches. When he painted a wall, nobody ever dared paint over it. That was how good he was. His pieces grew out of cracks in the brick, like his paint was a force of nature finding a way to flow out and into the world. Every painting he did was perfectly suited to the place he put it. It was as though the ugly bare walls had been waiting for him to come along and make them beautiful again.
I’d pored over his work, finding his stuff posted online and going to visit some of his pieces in person. He liked to throw his bigger pieces up in the alleyways downtown rather than in the subway. Much more dangerous. Much more risky. Maybe he had finally gotten caught, and that’s why he wasn’t painting anymore.
Now, though, staring me in the face was a painting by him that I had never seen before. I darted a glance back over at the kitchen door, swinging shut after another tuxedoed waiter passed through.
I had time, didn’t I?
I always had time for art. Just a peek, and I’d be back to deliver the cake. Then back to Steph’s to change, another ten minutes to get to my job… yeah, sure. I had plenty of time.
Pushing the door open, I stepped inside of the dimly lit room. There was nobody in the front of this room, although it looked like the room continued on through another doorway. The painting by Kage took up most of the wall, lit up by a single spotlight from below. I took a step closer and—
“Ohh!”
My heel sunk into the carpet and caught there, sending me tumbling forward. I lunged forward and caught the cake before it fell, but I heard the contents shift inside the box.
“Stupid heels! Stupid, stupid,” I repeated. I kicked both of my heels off quickly and set the cake down on the carpet. I opened it up, praying it hadn’t gotten messed up.
“Oh no. Oh no.”
I bit my lip and looked closer. One of the orchid branches had bent, it looked like. The flower petals were digging into the gold icing on top. I reached in and pried back the fake flower, only to have the gold lift away on my fingertip. Frowning, I pushed the flower back. It didn’t look wrong like that. Maybe a little different from the one Steph had finished, but not bad.
I closed the lid, picked the cake back up, and was debating whether to enter the kitchen barefoot when I heard a noise.
“Hello?” I whispered. The rooms in here seemed so dim that I couldn’t imagine anyone from the party would be inside. But I had heard something.
I stepped inside, edging my way across the room. I still held the cake box in my hands, but it was easier to creep barefoot on the plush carpet. My toes sank down into the lush fibers.
“Hello?” I said, a bit louder. Then I poked my head around the doorway into the next room.
“Wow.”
This wasn’t a bedroom or a kitchen. This wasn’t just another ordinary part of the house.
It was an art gallery.
I gaped at the paintings that filled the walls of the room. There were a dozen or so large canvases hanging from steel wires in the middle of the room. The canvases were big, and hung a couple of feet above the floor, creating a sort of viewing maze.
And there, in the middle—
Another painting… by him.
I walked forward, holding the cake still, but my attention was entirely on the canvas in front of me.
KAGE. This was all lettering, none of the decoration that marked his other pieces. But there was no need for decoration, no need for any ornaments or frills. The lettering was art already. The broad swoop of the first letter carried over through the name, and each letter seemed to flow through to the next with a hundred small tendrils, all green and gold and vibrant. It felt natural. It felt real.
This was what I was shooting for every time I put up a flower. I wanted this—to be able to make the art seem as though it was growing out of the canvas on its own. The art was composed of the letters of the artist’s name, but the artist was invisible in the art itself.
When my mom scolded me for painting graffiti on our fences, I couldn’t explain why I was doing what I was doing. But this painting, this piece of art, made sense to me in a way that nothing else could. I couldn’t do watercolor postcard-sized paintings and hope to have this effect.
Kage’s art was big; it loomed. It was meant to fill this space.
Looking up at the painting, I was too distracted to notice anything until I saw his shoes.
It was a man, standing on the other side of the painting. If the canvas hadn’t been there, he could have reached out and touched me. I didn’t know where he had come from.
In my shock, I gasped… and my hands slipped. The cake box that I had carried for blocks and blocks in high heels, the cake box I’d clenched all the way up the insanely scary elevator—it slid out of my grasp.
I could only watch in horror as the cake box opened and Steph’s two-thousand dollar masterpiece split in half, the top layer of cake falling upside down onto the plush carpet.
Oh dear Lord. Oh my sweet jelly bean Jesus.
What had I done? I stood stock still, my fingers splayed outward as though I might be able to reverse time and put the cake back together. I didn’t want to be here. This wasn’t happening. Two thousand dollars. This was a nightmare.