How to Eat a Cupcake (17 page)

I had no doubt that Julia could easily put back at least one cupcake a day without ever adding an ounce to her slender, toned frame.
Runners
. Was there any more annoying population in the world? Fifteen minutes into our meeting, she was already halfway through her second chocolate cupcake, eating it in her slow, disciplined, Julia-specific way. So far during that meeting I had wolfed down one coffee cupcake, telling myself the caffeine would rev my metabolism, and then consoled myself with sips of actual coffee while I watched Julia dive lip gloss first into her second. And still, her legs looked like toothpicks in her skinny jeans.
If I ate that many cupcakes,
I thought,
I'd wind up wearing them around my hips like dimpled holsters.
The cupcake cowgirl. Not as cute as it sounded.

“A cupcake truck. Brilliant,” I said. “But I worry that we're still just getting things off the ground here in the shop. It's only been a few weeks. I already feel like I live here—which is fine, a cupcakery makes for a surprisingly lovely second home—but we probably shouldn't spread ourselves too thin.”

“Oh, absolutely,” Julia said hurriedly. “Couldn't have said it better myself. I just want us to know what's in the pipeline. We should have ideas nailed down for when we're ready to grow.”

“Right,” I said. “The nailing and the piping. I forgot that's why I keep you around.”

Julia laughed. She snapped her laptop shut. “You're right. I'm getting ahead of myself. Let's just focus on the shop for now.”

I could tell she was embarrassed. Don't ask me how I knew, because on the outside she was all easy-peasy confidence. Our shared childhood ran deeper in my veins than I cared to admit, though I still preferred to think of it as Stockholm syndrome rather than friendship.
I'm just identifying with my captor.

“I meant to tell you I liked Wes a lot,” I said, apropos of nothing. I guess I was trying to make her feel better. “We spoke at the opening party.”

Even with his Southern twang, Wes had the rich, melodic voice of an NPR newscaster, and I'd been surprised by how much I liked him from the moment he introduced himself at the party. He didn't have any hint of that pretentious, upper-crust vibe I'd always assumed was Julia's type. Knowing he loved Julia made me attempt to look at her anew. Soon after, I started to notice that she asked me how I was doing every single day, and not just in an offhanded, polite way, but in a way that convinced me she really wanted to know. She asked me questions about baking that I was surprised to find I enjoyed answering. I wouldn't have enjoyed those questions half as much if she'd been blowing smoke up my ass, but I could tell she was legitimately curious. I'd forgotten that when it was just you and Julia, and no one else was around, she looked at you straight-on and with full attention as though you were the only person in the world. It was a quality my mother had had as well, and one, I realized with a start, that she had probably instilled in Julia. All of Julia's focus, her drive, her determination, zeroed in on you as you spoke and you could almost
feel
her listening, digesting, empathizing with your words. It was a remarkable skill and I could only wonder why she didn't employ it more often. Probably, if she could have, she would have.

But she still hadn't apologized for what she'd done to me in high school, and until she did there would always be a partition of ice between us that would not melt, leaving a slight chill to our every interaction.

“He liked you, too,” Julia said. “He said you were funny.”

I could tell something about this troubled Julia, though I could not for the life of me imagine what.

“Two girls, one fat, one thin, walk into a cupcake shop—”

“You've got a better repertoire than that,” she interrupted, taking the final bite of her second cupcake. I decided it wouldn't kill her to hang out with a little smudge of chocolate cake on her lip.

Meeting adjourned, I double-checked that all of the ovens were off in the kitchen while Julia switched off the lights in the shop. She set the alarm, and its frantic beeping hurried us onto the sidewalk. We'd gotten in the habit of walking together to Julia's car; she'd drop me off at my apartment a few blocks away on her way back to Pacific Heights.

Outside the shop's front door, Julia clicked the deadbolt into place and turned in the direction of her car. Then she froze. I followed her gaze, my pulse suddenly loud in my ears, and there he was—the same man who had been in front of Treat after the opening party weeks earlier. The hood of his dark sweatshirt was pulled again over his head, leaving his face shadowed. His hands were hidden in the sweatshirt's front pocket. He took a few steps toward us and began to pull one of his hands from his pocket. When I backed away he swung his head to look directly into my eyes.

“Do not . . . move . . .” he said in a gravelly, accented voice.

Julia stopped him in his tracks with a night-crackling scream—not a high-pitched, girlie cry, but more like an angry, aggressive yowl. The man stumbled back a few steps, looking over his shoulder. I glanced at Julia in surprise, but she was frozen in place.

“Julia!” I barked. “Unlock the door!”

She snapped to attention and in one brisk motion unlocked the deadbolt. We scurried into the shop just as the man strode toward us again. She locked the door behind her and punched in the code to deactivate the alarm.

“Shit!” she cried. “There's some code that calls the police, but I can't remember what it is!”

“It's okay,” I said, noting that my hand shook when I pulled out my cell phone. “I'll call them.”

As I spoke to the police, we both stared at the front window of the shop, waiting for the man to appear in its frame. He never did. Finally, Julia walked up to the window and pressed her face against it, looking in both directions.

“I think he's gone,” she said, sighing. She sank down onto one of the bar stools.

I stayed on the phone with the police until they arrived fifteen minutes later. Since we'd already reported the graffiti and key gauge incidents, a criminal investigator showed up in addition to several police officers.

“Inspector Ramirez,” the investigator said gravely as he shook our hands. The outdated-sounding title, which he seemed to take great pride in, contrasted humorously with his appearance. Young and heavyset, Ramirez had kind dark eyes squished in between puffy cheeks and a smooth brown forehead. I couldn't help thinking of a little kid who was playing cop. We explained what had happened, noting that we'd seen the same man a few weeks earlier.

“I'll have the guys drive down this block more often and keep a lookout for anything worrisome,” he said. He seemed to have trouble meeting Julia in the eye, and spoke mostly to me. “We've got the description of your guy now, but since you didn't actually see a weapon it's hard to prove he's done anything. I'm afraid we can't pick him up on this info alone.”

“You mean there's nothing you can do?” Julia asked. Her voice was strained. Instinctively, I reached out and squeezed her shoulder. She glanced at me, surprised and grateful.

I was feeling guilty. The truth was, I'd seen that guy around the neighborhood a couple of other times since the night of the party. Once, after Julia had dropped me off at my apartment after a long day at the shop, I'd caught sight of him on the corner of my block just before I slipped in my front door. Another time in the middle of the day, when I went out to grab lunch for everyone at a nearby taqueria, I'd spotted him sitting on the stoop across the street. We'd locked eyes for a moment before I dropped my gaze down to the sidewalk. When I'd worked up the nerve to look back half a block later, he was gone. I hadn't told Julia about these sightings because I hadn't wanted to get her upset over nothing—at that point, I didn't believe the guy was connected with the graffiti incident. And even the night of Treat's opening party, weren't we just two women terrified by the simple fact that an unknown man was walking down the same dark street we were? Did that incident alone give us the right to assume the guy was up to no good? I convinced myself the whole thing was a misunderstanding—he was just a guy who lived nearby, he wasn't following us, he wasn't threatening us.

But now that he'd approached us in that way on the sidewalk, gruff and menacing, his hands jammed into his sweatshirt pocket like he was hiding something, I could no longer deny that his presence was a real threat.

“I've seen him a couple of other times, too,” I admitted to Julia and Ramirez. “I think he's been hanging around the shop a lot.” Julia looked at me, her eyes wide. “I thought maybe he lived in the neighborhood,” I said to her quietly. “We don't have proof of anything. I didn't want to worry you.”

“I'm afraid Ms. Quintana's right,” Ramirez said. “We really don't know what this guy is up to. Nonetheless, there
are
some things you can do to take charge of your own safety. Don't leave the shop alone at night. Always have a buddy.” Despite the circumstances, I couldn't help smiling at this. Julia and I had perfected the buddy system back in elementary school. “Tell your employees what's going on,” Inspector Ramirez continued. “Keep alert. Buy Mace. Always carry a cell phone. Call us if you see him again or if anything else happens. Use common sense.”

I stifled a laugh. This was quickly deteriorating into a public service announcement. Julia looked at me sharply.

“Take this seriously,” she said.

“I am,” I said, deadpan. “I plan to exercise my common sense to the full extent of the law.”

Now it was Inspector Ramirez's turn to look at me sharply. “The worst thing you could do would be to take matters into your own hands. Don't confront this guy. If you see him again, I need you to call 911. Or,” he said, handing me a card from his wallet, “call me directly.”

I turned the card over in my hand, sighing. “Oh, I didn't mean anything. I cower in the face of violence. I can't even watch
Bambi
!”

Julia rolled her eyes and turned to Ramirez. “Thank you,” she said. “Would you mind walking us to my car?”

We went through all the motions of closing up the shop again—turning off the lights, activating the alarm, switching the deadbolt. It was eleven p.m. by then and the street was quiet save for the occasional car whizzing by. Below the streetlight on the corner I saw a group of men huddled together, but none had the stocky build of our guy.
Our guy
. We had a guy now. Great. Inspector Ramirez walked us to Julia's car as promised and waited on the sidewalk until we'd locked the doors behind us and pulled into the street. I noticed Julia's knuckles were white as she gripped the steering wheel.

“It's okay,” I told her. “That's the last we'll see of him. I'm sure your Native American huntress scream scared the crap out of him.”

Julia breathed out a laugh. “Was that me? I thought that was you!”

“No way. Are you kidding? I scream like a little girl. You scream like a freaking entertainment wrestler. I thought you were going to put that guy in a half nelson.”

Her tight grip on the wheel began to loosen. “Why is he hanging around? Everything else about the shop is going so well. I love walking through the door each morning. I feel so happy there all day. Really, it's the best I've felt in . . . a long time. And now I feel like he's poisoning it.”

This was about as forthright as Julia got. I heard in her voice a hint of that sadness I'd seen dulling her polished edges at the Save the Children benefit so many months ago. I felt a strong—
sisterly?
—urge to reward her for this show of vulnerability, to show her that she wasn't alone. Maybe Becca was right. Maybe my relationship—my
friendship
, there, I admitted it—with Julia was different from any other because of all we'd been through together. All I knew was that, despite how miserable she'd made me over the years, it gave me no joy whatsoever to see her so unhappy now.

“I love Treat, too,” I said. “And . . . I'm incredibly grateful for everything you've done. We can't let this guy rain on our parade.” It was as Girl Power as I got.

Julia pulled up in front of my apartment building. She looked over at me and smiled. It was her real smile, not the perfect, composed one she usually displayed, but the one that was wide and sort of cockeyed. I hadn't seen it in years. As I was about to shut the door behind me, she leaned over the passenger seat and called out, “Buddy One!”

“Buddy Two,” I responded, wincing and grinning at the same time at our ridiculous hokiness.

November

Chapter 18

Julia

“J
ulia!” my mother called. “Oh, Juuuuuliaaaaa!”

I walked from my room to the top of the stairs and looked down. The odd angle made my mother look like a floating head, her body hidden beneath her smooth, round bob.

“There you are!” she said. “Why we didn't install an intercom system in this place years ago, I'll never know. Have you seen your father's Cartier watch? He can't find it anywhere. He'd lose his own head, if it weren't—”

“No,” I said, interrupting. I hated when my mother talked about my father as if he weren't there. I could hear him speaking to Curtis in the kitchen at that very moment, their duet of deep, muffled voices as comfortingly familiar as an old nursery rhyme, so it was safe to assume he could hear us, too. “When did he wear it last?”

My mother threw up her hands. “Sunday, he thinks. He doesn't really know.” Suddenly, she was striding up the stairs. I took a few steps back from the landing. Within moments, she stood in front of me, not in the least bit out of breath from the climb, her head lowered conspiratorially. “He also lost his Hermès cuff links a couple months ago. You know, the ones I got him for his birthday last year. Did he tell you that? He never used to be so careless! I'm starting to think I shouldn't buy him anything nice. Let him go to the opera with safety pins in his cuffs! That will teach him.”

“Should we be worried?” I asked, ignoring her indignant tone. “It's not like him to be so absentminded.” I thought of my father's desk, with his Montblanc pens lined up perfectly straight in the drawer, the monogrammed crocodile skin box that held a carefully edited, alphabetized stack of associates' business cards, the silver tray of mail that he read and discarded or appropriately filed daily. A place for everything and everything in its place.

My mother raised her eyebrows. “Oh, don't be silly. Your father is fine. Sharp as a tack. He does these things for the simple pleasure of driving me crazy.”

“Are you sure?” I lowered my voice. “I've noticed a few things, too. The other day I found his car keys in the silverware drawer.”

“Julia darling, when is the last time you saw your father drive himself anywhere? Curtis must have put them there.”

“Well, there have been other strange things, too.”

“And I'm sure there's a reasonable explanation for each of them,” she said dismissively.

If there was one thing that irritated me more than anything else, it was when my mother didn't take me seriously. In high school, in college, in graduate school, in business meetings across the globe, people immediately took me seriously—but at home, when push came to shove, I was just a daughter. In the eyes of mothers, it seemed, daughters never truly grow up. I'd found, over the years, that this realization made me speak less and less openly with my mother. She didn't seem to notice, filling the air with opinions and anecdotes and advice until it seemed every room in the house was crowded with her words and there was barely room for anyone else to breathe.

She must have noticed my frustration because she added, “If it makes you feel any better, I'll keep an eye out for anything off-kilter. You have enough on your plate without worrying about this.”

Which overflowing plate, exactly, is she referring to—everything that has been happening at Treat? The wedding? Or something else?
Not for the first time, I wondered how much my mother had deduced about the true cause of my abrupt return home that summer. She raked her manicured fingernails through her white-blond hair, smoothing some imagined imperfection, her pale blue eyes trained on me.

“Julia darling, I hope you don't think these little foibles of your father somehow keep me from seeing the elephant in the room.”

My heart skipped a beat. “Which elephant is that?”

“The
gown
, darling!” she rasped. “The wedding gown! I can handle the rest of the planning, but the dress . . . we simply must go shopping. And I'm not using the royal ‘we,' my dear. I mean
you and I
must go shopping, with emphasis on the
you
. Time is running out! Only six more months until your wedding! A wedding gown can take
years
to make!”

The dress! Of course.
I hadn't actually forgotten this critical piece of the wedding puzzle; I'd simply slid it, along with everything else related to the Big Day, into a mental folder marked TBD, and filed it somewhere between my return on investment predictions for Treat and the winter nail polish colors I'd seen in
Vogue
. I pulled out my phone and checked my online calendar. Every day had a block of time reserved for Treat, and I felt protective of that time now the way I used to only feel about the time I carved out for long runs, the early morning hour I spent reading the
Wall Street Journal
, and the rare weekend Wes and I would steal away, sans cell phones, to Woodstone, my parents' vineyard in St. Helena. Though I hated the thought of cutting my time at Treat short even for one day—the possibility of leaving Annie in the lurch, the likelihood of missed upsell opportunities with only Devi manning the counter—I knew from the look on my mother's face that it was unavoidable.

“Can you clear your schedule on December third?” I asked.

My mother nodded, pleased. “Anything for you.” Then her brow wrinkled as much as it could, two little furrows forming on either side of the bridge of her nose. “But I'm warning you, if you don't show up—”

“I'll be there, Mom. I promise.”

“Good.” She spun on her kitten heel. “Tad darling!” she rasped, clicking rapid-fire back down the stairs. She had a habit of speaking in full sentences to people who weren't even within eyesight, assuming, I suspected, that the whole world stopped to listen whenever she spoke. “If you can't find the Cartier, you'll just have to wear the Tiffany!”