The House of Cupcakes

We met at the Labyrinth Bookstore over the new book section. It was near Halloween, so the display books had grotesque covers: a dying sloth, a man impaled on a sword, an A-frame house covered in yellow eyes. 

I wore a terrible and new dark blue suit from Ann Taylor Loft, dressed for an interview at the local art museum. I even brought my hopeful little black portfolio of event postcards. I was proud of the work I had done in my early career working for Penn State’s liberal arts college. Not one bad thing had happened at an event I managed—not one date had been written backwards, not one tent had collapsed, no one had a heart attack and planted face down in the beef bougainvillea. 

During the interview, I sat with a fake smile on my face. The interviewees sized me up, as if I had been wearing Day-Glo neon lipstick even though it was actually a subtle shade of orange called Pumpkinhead because of the Princeton tiger colors (orange and black). I wanted them to know I had an affinity, the word was one from reunion land, that I had Ivy League potential when in fact, I had gone to a public university in Florida and graduated with a middling GPA.

He bumped into me just as I was holding a book up to my nose to inhale the gluey smell of its pages. “Sorry,” I said, a reflex, even though it was his elbow that grazed my arm.

When I looked up, he was staring at the book I held, a novel by a woman who wrote Gothic horror set in present-day Poughkeepsie. The cover showed the outline of a chalk body, and you couldn’t tell if the dead figure was a man or a woman. “I’ve read her,” he said. “She’s not very good.”

I put the book down, straightened it on the pile. “Maybe she didn’t want you to like her book,” I said. I felt reckless. I hadn’t gotten the job, I knew it, and it seemed like a sign for the rest of my life. I had prepared for all the questions: my best qualities (brutal honesty), my worst qualities (same). 

These were things I usually practiced with my best friend, but she had died two months before, a bleak fact that occurred to me every hour on the hour.

I’d even anticipated the biggest accomplishment question, and I knew I was supposed to say something boring like retention rates or alumni engagement, but really, the best most truthful thing I created was the tower of cupcakes. They were beautiful, white frosting like frozen waves, tiny blue sprinkles, perfect little cupcake papers with bows on them. 

I was mad at my stupidity because I believed the job would change my life. So, why had I answered most of the questions like an idiot? 

I had thrown away my chance at my dream, and now I was going to do the same with Book Store Man, who any other day of the week might have been my potential husband. Not for me. I would burn it all down. 

It wasn’t that I was completely lonely. I had a plant. I had a temp job at the Plasma Lab and fun co-workers. Sometimes we played jokes on one another to pass the time, like putting a flattened birthday hat in an interoffice envelope and sending it to Kyle in processing. I had been written up twice, once for the birthday hat (“inappropriate use of office materials”) and once for eating an apple at my desk (“food consumption restricted to eating areas only”). This was a different kind of event planning. It was event planning for scientists, who really didn’t like you to be whimsical. I managed my day job by taking Tylenol PM in the evenings and playing Sims until I passed out. It was a life.

I remember now that I was emotional that day because I had to fake sickness at my temp job, and I’d been unable to sleep the night before after listening to a podcast on This American Life about missing cats and how some were found by a pet psychic. This made me think of my dead friend, whose cat was left behind when she died. The cat went to her mother’s house. I should have taken the cat. We were friends. But I didn’t want another living thing in my care.  

He picked up a book next to the one he claimed not to like. It had a picture of the blue Cezanne dog on it, yellow eyes like little daffodils. “This is the one. If you buy it, I’ll take you out to coffee and tell you what I loved about it.” 

I took it from him, half fearing that the picture on the back cover would be him. He might be the kind of man who loitered in bookstores near his newest publication. The photo was not him, but the author was a male. I said, “How about if I promise to check it out from the library? I don’t usually buy books.”

He said, fine, fine, and I noticed he had a piece of lint on his shirt, as if he’d just taken it out of the dryer. I didn’t mention it. 

We walked to the coffee shop called Small World. He was tall, and I liked how he bent forward when he walked, as if afraid of bumping his head on a wayward awning. He led with his head, and my dead friend would have said this meant the guy was brainy, probably bad in bed. An overthinker. 

At Small World, he ordered a vanilla latte, joking with the barista who had a bull ring through her nose and short bangs. Clearly, he and I were doomed if that’s the kind of woman he liked. I had just regular ear piercings, two holes, like the kind you give an infant to make sure everyone knows she’s a girl. I was not the kind of person who had a secret anything—no tattoos, no bejeweled belly button, just a birthmark under my right arm in the shape of a peanut. Ordinary, boring. Like Anne Taylor. But then he turned to me and said, “I love your outfit. It’s like you’re a sexy librarian.”

“I am a sexy librarian. This is my lunch break, but then I have to go back to the reference desk and stamp things to death.” I struck my fist in my palm, a gesture my mom taught me to do whenever I saw a white horse. It was meant to bring good luck. He gave me a quizzical look. I brushed the lint from his shirt. 

He handed me my drink, shouldered his way through the crowd, and found us a table in the back, underneath a painting of a meadow landscape, the wheat bending in the wind. I wanted to say something clever about the picture, how it reminded me of the dark hills of England in a Bronte novel. But maybe that would seem desperate, like I was carrying the library joke too far.

He told me about the book—what he liked about it, what he found implausible, what his favorite passage was, etc. I mean, who cares what he said, I still didn’t know his name and couldn’t listen. I wanted his name to be unusual, like Heathcliff or Bronwyn. Please, not Jared, I prayed, nodding my head at whatever he was saying. He had full lips and a dimple tucked in one cheek. Please, not Brandon. 

My phone buzzed in my purse, but I ignored it.

As if reading my mind, he said, “Henry, that’s my name.”

I nodded. That was good, that was sufficiently old-fashioned. “Clara is my name,” I said. 

He grasped my hand, “That was my great grandmother’s name,” he said. It seemed like it should mean something. 

“Maybe we’re related.” I gave his hand a squeeze. 

A little frown appeared between his eyebrows, but he smiled. “What are you doing later?”

In an instant, I projected forward to the evening I had not planned. Uber back to Hopewell. Feed the feral cats in my back yard, wave to my married neighbor, go inside and fantasize about him coming over to check on my hot water heater, watch two hours of TikTok videos, imagining what I would make if I had the courage to do my own. A TV dinner with crime shows. Try not to think about Jodie, who used to live down the street, but now lived nowhere because she had died. Had died seemed like a passive way to think about it, as if she had made the choice to die, instead of fighting and failing to live.

The barista, I imagined, would have much better plans. She would be going to a concert in New York, or stopping by her square of shared farmland in Lambertville, or completing an ironic needlepoint pillow while listening to an educational podcast about sewage.

I said, “I’ve got a bunch of stuff to do, but I can make some calls.” 

“Good,” he said. “I want to take you to dinner.”

***

It took me a while to find an appropriate date dress. I finally decided to wear my all-time favorite, the white one with the big pockets even though it was out of season. I added a blue satin ash. I wanted to call Jodie and tell her, This is the one. And also, He’s the one.

What would she have said? She would have reminded me that I was a single gal with no breast cancer and that I could live it up! I could go out and drink until I vomited on my shoes, make out with the bartender, play pool, smoke clove cigarettes, lasso a pony, anything, anything, anything because you never know when you’re going to get a double mastectomy and then die. Instead, I often found myself in my pajamas by 7 o’clock, watching whatever detective show I could find on PBS, the non-violent ones where the crimes are solved by priests and sad-eyed men from the 1960s.

By the time the date rolled around, most of my clothes were on the floor like chalk outlines from a crime scene. I had even tried on red tights. Tights, for God’s sake. Jodie would have said, Calm down. This is not a matter of life or death. 

He was in front of the restaurant when I arrived, his Adam’s apple clearly defined against the white of his shirt collar. In the nighttime light, he seemed altered, like a vampire: a good guy by day, hair slicked back and wet looking by night. He ordered white wine for me and I said, “I don’t drink wine,” even though I do, since you have to set boundaries early, you can’t have these guys just bossing you around. I ordered a virgin daiquiri. 

He said, “Are we on spring break?” I hated him a little just then. 

Next, he recommended the veal and I said, “I do not eat baby cows.” This is true, but he gave me a look like I was being high maintenance. 

I mentioned that he smelled like paprika. “I’m a chef,” he said. “I grow my own parsley.” 

“How wonderful for you!” I had nothing to add. 

“Huh.” We were fizzing out like a Fourth of July sparkler.

The restaurant was called La Mezzaluna, and the waiters spoke in hushed, serious tones, as if there were a funeral unfolding in the next room. The décor was sparse, with long silver tables like medical tables and echoing wooden floors and one giant red mural that showed a fork dancing with spaghetti. I ordered the penne pasta with garlic and olive oil, just to demonstrate how little I cared about kissing him.

The drinks arrived and I took a careful sip, already worried I would spill the red frozen drink on my white smock. Why must I complicate my life so? a person might wonder.

But then after a few sips of my non-alcoholic drink, I felt a little drunk. We were grooving, we were connecting, he was telling me about his life—his German Shepherd, his mother in Idaho, a fish he caught and let go as a kid. I am sensitive, he was saying, I love my mother. I would be good in bed, he was saying, I don’t hurt the little fishes.

His face seemed familiar and I imagined it was a face I could watch age, but I had thought this same thing before, many times. I had dated lots of men who I had fallen for, married, grown old with, and lost in our twilight years, (statistically, women live longer)—all of this played out before the appetizers arrived. Correction: the women usually live longer. 

The waiter appeared, his arms trembling with the effort of the giant plates. I said, “Wow, that looks so great!” as if the waiter himself made the spaghetti from scratch, getting flour under his fingernails.

We ate our meals without immediate upset. No one choked, and he asked me about my upbringing, and I gave answers that were basically beige but true. 

Once the plates were cleared, he leaned forward, “But you’re not really a librarian, right?” 

I told him that I was in between real jobs but that I had a feeling I was meant to do something great, something with purpose. Not in a Teach for America or Peace Corps way, but more like a classroom revelation for young kids’ kind of thing. I told him that I wanted to buy books but that I often didn’t and instead went to the library to check them out because I didn’t think I should spend money on myself. I told him that I thought every country-western song sounded whiny and like dogs howling. That I failed geometry and algebra and could barely do more than add and subtract, but I knew how to calculate a tip faster than anyone. I told him that Tammy Wynette’s songs made women stay with their abusive partners. I told him all magicians were liars and that I didn’t trust any performer in a hat, not even a baton twirler. That there is no God but that the most amazing thing about us is that we’re all made out of stardust. I learned that from the Discovery channel. I told him that I missed my best friend, and then I took the napkin when he handed it to me, and I blew my nose in it. 

These were things, I later realized, most dates would not find sexy or compelling. He listened, and he nodded, and he ate his food and took a bite of my pasta, and the intimacy of that presumption sent a thrill of desire through me, as if he had touched my breast with his tongue. 

The meal ended, and I could tell he might want to get coffee to find out about my dating life, my love history, my parade of fuck ups so I told the waiter, with a rush of power running through me, “We’ll take the check.” 

I had already mentioned that I had an early morning meeting about the Plasma Gala. Even though a part of me wanted to keep talking, I also wanted it to end. He picked up the bill, and not in a hubba-hubba way. He waved me off, saying that it wasn’t a big deal. 

I thanked him, my hands clutching the chair seat as if I might suddenly levitate. 

And now I had a moment to stare directly at him because he was taking so long with the bill, and I liked the curl at the end of his dark hair, and his jawline, but these, of course, were superficial things, though Jodie said you could always tell a person’s character by how he treated the wait staff.

I had forgotten to worry if he liked me, and then it all returned in a flood, this fear—but when he excused himself to use the loo (I didn’t like that he used the word “loo”), a strange thought occurred to me: what if I didn’t like him at all? It was such a novel idea, I almost tipped over in my chair. It hadn’t occurred to me to wonder. I often wished that I had a pause button on my life like you have for TV. I had wanted one in the interview—a pause and rewind, to go back to the handshake so my hands wouldn’t be sweaty, to rewind to the moment at the end when I had said, “Thanks, y’all,” like a Southern belle, and the worst moment of all: when the interviewers asked me what my biggest accomplishment was. I knew I was supposed to lie and talk about raising engagement rates and upticks on social media, but instead, I told the truth and mentioned the cupcakes. I had loved my cupcake arrangement and was very proud of how, as more people came into the ballroom to celebrate, they exclaimed about the display. It was beautiful, with shimmery lights around it that blinked on and off. The Nittany Lion shape got smaller and smaller until there were only ten cupcakes left, part of the tail. And I loved that they were all going around the room smiling with blue lips and teeth. 

Once we were outside of the restaurant, I stuck out my hand. “It was a true pleasure, Henry,” and it occurred to me then that I had handled the whole day wrong. I had treated the job interview like a meet-cute date and the date like a job/Terry Gross interview for NPR. It was all topsy turvy.

He shook my hand and that felt like the end of something. Then he said, “Oh, wait, wait, I forgot.” He pulled at his backpack. “I got this for you.” He handed me a copy of the book I had been inhaling when we met. “I think this is the one you wanted,” he said.

The book was small, a paperback, and I did not at that moment evaluate how much money he spent on it ($12.95), because love has no price tag. I was glad I had worn the big pocketed dress after all, the book fit right inside of it.

Before I ruined it further, I kissed him on the mouth, so we would know that I liked him and because I did like him, and I knew it for sure in that moment. 

He waved goodbye and walked away, and I walked away too, and then I did this stupid thing where I turned around to see if he was watching me, but he wasn’t, but then he was, and I ran across the street, nearly getting hit by an SUV in orange and white (Princeton colors), and how embarrassing that would have been, to be killed on a first date for jaywalking, but I made it safely to the other side where a dog was tied up by a fire hydrant, a big-eared bloodhound with sad droopy eyes. I petted him, and he slobbered on me, and I decided this was the dog we would buy together, and I was sort of right, wasn’t I? 

Except ours was a border collie, and we named him Cally, because we ordered calamari that first night. But I didn’t know any of this then, just that I was standing next to a nice dog under the pink awning of House of Cupcakes, which is where we might have gone after the date if I hadn’t been so determined to end things first. 

Instead of going home, I decided to treat myself.

The girl behind the counter wore a pressed yellow shirt and a green striped apron (school colors for University or Oregon, the Ducks). She said, “Hiya,” and I recognized her from the interview earlier. She was named Marigold, and she represented one of the student run groups. 

There I was in this big jumper and braids and I said, “Oh, I bombed it today!” 

She said, “No, no, no, no, I thought it was fun. I liked your cupcake answer.” I thanked her and was awkward with my elbows out, but she said, “We have blueberry if you want.” 

I said, “Yes, please.”

I sat in the front window and cracked the book open to smell the pages. I put my finger on a page, deciding that the word I landed on would tell me something about my future. The word was “indigo.” That seemed fine to me.

I ate the cupcake in small delicate bites, savoring the taste of sugar on my tongue, imagining that it was already turning blue.