“One does not serve carrot cake at a wedding,” Leah snapped. Dena, Mary Ann, Marcus and I were all gathered around the little table in the tasting room of an elegant bakery called I Dream of Cake. There were a dozen or more small slices of cake before us. Mary Ann was digging into the orange one that Leah found so offensive.
“Carrot cake is what you serve when you host a PTA meeting,” Leah continued. “Or as a rich finish to an Easter brunch. You don’t serve it after salmon!”
“She has a point.” Marcus waved a forkful of white cake with caramel swirl filling in the air. “Carrot cake is for people who like to pretend they’re being healthy even while they’re sucking up four-hundred-plus calories of sugar. If you’re going to cheat on Jenny Craig, the least you can do is be decadent about it. This, on the other hand—” he paused long enough to put the fork in his mouth and have his expression morph into one of pure ecstasy “—this is divine.”
“But nothing’s better than the banana cream cake with the walnut filling,” Dena protested. With a languidness that was impossibly seductive she licked the remaining frosting off the fork in her hand. Mary Ann had been engaged for exactly one year now and we still had another four months before the wedding. You would have thought that all that time would have made the planning less hectic, but that didn’t seem to be the case.
I sat back in my chair and contemplated how much had happened in the past twelve months. A year ago Monty had used a ruby to profess his love to Mary Ann, and a day later Dena had been shot. So much had changed, and so much hadn’t. We were still in the middle of wedding chaos, but I wasn’t worried about Dena anymore. Not even a little bit. Months ago she had walked into the courthouse to testify against Fawn. She had needed her walker then, but, still, she had walked. Now the walker was gone and all that remained was her cane. It was made of a beautiful briarwood and at the top in sterling silver was the image of Atlas holding the world on his shoulders for Dena to lean on. I liked it. Dena constantly had the world in the palm of her hand.
She had changed, but not in any way that could have been predicted. She was still fierce and her sexual appetite hadn’t abated in the slightest. She had broken up with Kim but still steadfastly refused to have a monogamous relationship with Jason. So they both dated other people and occasionally they engaged in a ménage à trois…the ménage à trois always being with Dena, Jason and another guy though, not another girl. Try as she might, she was never able to discover her inner lesbian and eventually had to admit to herself that she was, as Marcus called it, a flaming heterosexual. I wasn’t at all sure if Jason had any bisexual tendencies either, but in his eagerness not to be conformist, he would never admit to being completely straight, and besides he didn’t mind sharing Dena with others…not much anyway. As long as he remained her number one boyfriend (the way Holly had been number one with Hef for all those years), he was happy.
No, the thing that was different about her had nothing to do with her sexual prowess. What had changed was her level of empathy. She listened more. She volunteered her time to work with disabled girls. She even talked about finding a way to forgive her mother…although she was understandably having trouble with that.
Currently she was in the middle of writing a book about how to rediscover your orgasm after a spinal injury. I had a feeling her book sales would eclipse mine in the first month after publication.
“You know what I haven’t tried?” Dena said as she reached over her plate for another. “I haven’t tried the coconut cream cake with the Thai coconut flakes.”
“If you’re going to get something that exotic make sure that there is at least one layer of cake that will suit the less adventurous,” Leah said knowingly. “If you have a layer of the classic vanilla cake with the organic raspberry filling you can be assured that everyone will walk away happy.”
“Honey, nobody is going to be walking away period,” Marcus said, his mouth now full of chocolate fudge cake. “They’re all going to be gathering around your little animal-print wedding cake fighting for a second piece.”
“Do you love the cake design we chose?” Mary Ann asked eagerly. Her hair was pushed back by a muted-pink headband and a cloth flower with a sparkling crystal center flopped around in her brown curls. “You don’t think it’s too much?”
“No,” we all said in unison and then we all giggled and reached for our next tasting. It was clear by now that everything Monty and Mary Ann wanted for their wedding was “too much.” And yet somehow Leah always found a way to make their over-the-top preferences whimsical and attractive to the rest of the world. Each layer of the cake would subtly hint at a different animal print without overtly copying it. It fit with the theme of the wedding, which would be at the San Francisco Zoo. Leah had arranged for there to be animal handlers there with birds and bunnies and guests would even have an opportunity to feed the giraffes. The idea was that if Mary Ann wasn’t going to be Cinderella at Disneyland then she should be Snow White in San Francisco. Monty was all for it. He wanted to add his own touch by bringing truckloads full of animatronic ferrets to entertain guests on the dance floor. Leah was still trying to dissuade him from that.
It had taken Mary Ann a while to fully recover from the trauma of being held at gunpoint. The healing hadn’t really started until that day when Fawn had been sentenced to twenty years in prison. Rick had recovered from the physical attack quickly, but emotionally and psychologically he was a mess. Mary Ann initially forgave him for his stalkerlike behavior in the week that followed the shooting but quickly took her forgiveness back when she found him out by her garbage can sniffing a pair of badly worn high-heeled boots that she had thrown out earlier in the day. Now she had a restraining order in place and a rather interesting story to tell.
Anatoly hadn’t gone to Fawn’s trial. He initially said he was going to, but then he got embroiled in one of his cases and wasn’t able to make it. I teased him by suggesting that the real reason he wasn’t going was because he thought Fawn was too ugly to look at. Why else had he suddenly become so busy after he first saw her picture in the paper? He of course rejected the suggestion, rather gruffly I might add. But I hadn’t really been worried about his absence. As far as I was concerned, the only people who truly needed to see Fawn sentenced were Mary Ann and Dena. And they had seen it—and it had been wonderful.
The funny thing is that since her imprisonment Fawn had tried to call me twice. I got the messages on my voice mail saying I had an incoming call from a prisoner at the state penitentiary and asking if I would accept the charges. On both occasions I had heard Fawn’s voice in the background muttering curses. I hadn’t told anyone about that. Why would I? Everyone had moved on. I could deal with Fawn myself, and as for my friends…well, let them eat cake.
The young chef came over with a few more things to sample. Her smile was almost as sunny as her yellow apron and her almond-shaped Asian eyes were filled with warmth and friendship. “Try the pumpkin spice,” she coaxed and nobody argued with her.
My phone rang. I excused myself quickly and went to the other corner of the room where I could take the call without disturbing the others’ conversation.
“Hello?”
“You have a call from a prisoner at the…”
I sucked in a sharp breath as I listened to the message and then, out of morbid curiosity, accepted the charges.
I leaned my shoulder against the blue-gray wall of the bakery. “Why are you calling me, Fawn?” I asked in a hushed voice. The chef was serving everyone coffee and now the scent of the well-brewed beans tantalized my nose.
“Hello, Sophie. Did you miss me?”
“Yeah, I really don’t have time for this. Did you call for a reason or not?”
“Very well. I called because I figured that after everything you’ve done for me—or should I say to me—the least I can do is repay the favor by shedding some light on the true nature of your relationship.”
“What the hell are you talking about?”
“I wanted you to know that I used to know Anatoly. He knew me when I went by the name of Fedora.”
For a second I couldn’t say anything and then I burst out laughing. The four people on the other side of the room turned to look at me and I held up my hand for patience and stepped out onto the street.
“What’s so funny?” Fawn asked, irritated.
“Well, if you’re going to tell me that you slept with Anatoly years ago, you have wasted your week’s worth of phone time. I don’t care what or who Anatoly did before he was with me. He’s faithful now and he’s STD free, so we’re good. But hey, thanks for calling and have fun in prison.”
“I didn’t sleep with Anatoly,” she said. “I was just friends with his wife.”
I sighed and stared up at the black sign of the neighboring shop that read Live Worms Gallery. “Fawn,” I said, “you’ve got the wrong Anatoly.”
“Really? He’s not a tall, dark-haired man with fair skin? He didn’t serve in both the Russian and the Israeli military?”
My eyes were still on the sign. Live worms, live worms…like a can of worms? I wanted to focus on the sign. The sign was real but what Fawn was saying…that couldn’t be real, right? She had seen a picture of him, or maybe she had seen us together on the street. Maybe she had slept with him. But if so, why didn’t she try to taunt me with that? Why make up a wife?
The sign didn’t seem so amusing anymore. I turned my back to it and stared at the beautiful cakes in the window. Fawn may have had a one-night stand with Anatoly a million years ago, but it couldn’t mess up what I had today. Today life was every bit as lovely and sweet as these cakes.
“And this Anatoly of yours,” Fawn went on, “he didn’t marry into the Russian mafiosi in New York? Well, then perhaps you’re right. I must have the wrong Anatoly Darinsky.”
My cell phone slipped from my hand and crashed against the hard surface of the sidewalk.