Cupcake (10 page)

"Okay. I'll just call you Myself."

"Good enough, Mold."

My lily-white hand met the Mikado/Penzance pirate emperor tattoo of his handshake. Here's to a beautiful LU_CH_ONE_TE friendship, Myself and Mold.

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Now all I had to do was take care of the little Planned Parenthood piece of business, and I could be truly ready to rock this new New York life--sober, contraceptively covered to allow for more Luis time, and with a master espresso machine to master and a Johnny Mold boss to usher in my next quest.

When caffeination calls, sometimes it pays to look a little harder.

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***

SEVENTEEN

My New-Olds haunt me in Washington Square Park.

My old friend Helen must have wanted
everyone
in Greenwich Village to know the whereabouts I haunted. She yelled so loud, I swear she could be heard all the way from San Francisco through my cell phone in New York, broadcast for everyone to hear within the entire expanse of the park, where I sat on a bench awaiting the arrival of my new friend Chucky.

"NOW THAT I'VE GOT YOU LIVE ON THE PHONE INSTEAD OF VOICE MAIL, LET ME BE CLEAR: DON'T YOU DARE EVER SAY 'OOPS' WHEN I ASK YOU HOW YOU GOT YOURSELF INTO THIS SITUATION ... A SECOND TIME!" Helen screamed at me, then a phlegm gobbet mercifully caught in her throat, and her voice toned down after she cleared it up. "If you didn't learn from your own previous

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experience, didn't you at least learn from mine? Once again, let's review. CC, WHAT WERE YOU THINKING?"

"I wasn't thinking," I said. "I was wasted."

"Yeah, so was I. Now I'm four months pregnant. And married. When you left San Francisco, I was supposedly on my way to college. But 'Oops' had other plans in mind for me. Can you believe I'm living at home and working in my mom's restaurant--like, the life I swore I would never have? 'Oops' is a crafty little fucker, don't you think?" Helen's words spouted disappointment in her unexpected circumstances, yet her laughing tone indicated otherwise. The camera phone picture she had flashed me, her dumpling cheeks puffed in a broad grin, her hands placed on her bulging belly, certainly proved it: Helen was not only knocked up, but happy about it--at least now that the initial shock (and morning sickness) had gone away. Marrying her true love, Eamon, and having a baby by the time she turned nineteen wasn't something she'd expected or wanted, but having gotten that lot in life, it turned out to fit her nicely. "Did you take the EC at the clinic?" she asked me.

"I did. Thanks for the information." The emergency contraception made me feel a little nauseous, and I'd probably beg Chucky for us to rethink our Tasti D-Lite plans, but at least I'd visited the clinic within seventy-two hours of the Luis experience. Thanks to Helen's emergency voice mail advice, I'd gotten the EC in time, along with a renewed prescription for birth control, my New choice.

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Oh, and one more thing, Luis? Let's definitely continue with the body-melding friendship, but in the future: no glove, no love. New-Old double-packed protection action. I'd like more "quite nice," just without the panic hangover, please.

Helen said, "You oughta prostrate yourself with thankful kisses on that nasty New York ground right now, sister. With this baby starting to kick inside my tummy, I can't imagine how different my life would be today if I'd known last summer that there even was a morning-after pill. But by the time the denial went away and I went to the doctor, it was too late. Already pregnant. Damn Guinness and damn irresistible Eamon." She sighed the true love classic. Damn jealousy.

"But you're happy with your decision," I said. Because even if she hadn't known about the EC at the time of the damn Guinness hangover, Helen still could have made the Old choice I'd once made, back in my boarding school days. How relieved was I to not have to make that choice again? Thank you, pharmaceutical conglomerates.

"I am," she said, content. Helen would march on Sacramento and Washington a million times over to support a woman's right to choose--but it wasn't a choice she could make for herself. Which I totally respect. "Were there any crazy protesters outside the clinic office?"

"Not as many as the last time, back when I was at boarding school, but yeah, there were a couple."

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"Didja give 'em the finger like I asked you to, from me?"

"Check out the picture I flashed ya."

"Good job." Pause. Then: "OHMYGOD, CC, what did you do to your hair?"

This was the same question Chucky had for me when she arrived at our park bench meeting spot. I didn't bother explaining about the New-Old rite of passage de-stress/de-tress hair change. I just tugged a strand of my new New Wave, Astor Place hair--totally a geometry-equation-equaling-chaos cut, with uneven bangs and the left side of my head clipped in an asymmetrical design so that strands fell in long-short random patterns, and the right side chopped to shoulder length and streaked indigo, like as in mood-- and said, "I wanted to not worry about bad hair days for a long while. Now every day will be a bad hair day."

"Excellent logic," Chucky said. "Sorta like being a couch potato, avoiding the Advil, and eating plenty of junk food when you're PMS'ing, to ensure you feel max crazy."

"Exactly," I stated. I looked up into the twilight clouds, awaiting the dark starry night sky, whose astral projections would surely confirm that Chucky and I were going to be cosmic-kismet friends.

Our park bench conversation definitely promised such a possibility. Chucky didn't mind sticking around in the park rather than grabbing a bite, so we sat cross-legged opposite each other on the bench, watching the crowds and talking, munching street vendor

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honey-roasted cashews (Chucky), and very bravely turning down the weed offered us at a steep discount by a very cute traveling white-boy-Rasta-salesman (me). We talked about our dreams, which turned out to be pretty similar. Chucky wants to marry her true love Marine-boy, Tyrell, and eventually get a small business loan so she can buy out Mrs. Kim's nail shop when Mrs. Kim retires. I want to find another true love, and eventually start my own business too, maybe a café like Danny and Aaron used to have. Like me, Chucky has no interest whatsoever in the college experience.

"So, are we like entrepreneurial wannabe soul sisters?" I asked Chucky after about the second hour of hanging and chatting, save for one coffee and bathroom run. I loved that as the night sky settled over the city, I could look up over the marble arch at the entrance of Washington Square Park to see the Empire State Building lit up in blue (in honor of my new hair, I'm sure), but despite the contemplative nature of the dark sky and the peaceful lit-up building beacon, the whole while we'd been talking, the park never ceased humming with action. It had its own pulse, like the city. A beautiful model-type lady walked by us, wearing a live snake wrapped around her waist like a belt, her bored model gaze indifferent to the fact that she had a live boa encircling her body instead of, you know, a non-organic feather boa left over from some pride parade. Kids played on the swings, and parents shared

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private-school-acceptance-rate tragedies. Park performers--jugglers, mimes, the guy painted silver who stood perfectly still, the blind banjo player and one-legged fiddler who played kick-ass hillbilly music with a hip-hop beat, the obligatory crazy people shouting for Jesus-- all livened the hang-out groove, as did the chilly late fall air settling over our shivering shoulders.

Even if Danny and I are wading into a new avoidance stage of our roommate connection, I still can't believe how much I love this city and how glad I am to live here. I may eventually have to give up living with Danny if doing so means rules that I thought I outgrew when I moved out of my parents' house, but I couldn't give up on Manhattan. Not now when it's just getting good--and cold, like San Francisco.

I told Chucky about my new job, about the Kona and La Marzocco and Johnny Mold. She said, "How you gonna pay your rent at a job with no customers? My tips barely cover food, my MetroCard, and laundry money."

Without thinking I said, "My parents pay my rent and help out with expenses. I just have to earn my own spending money." So maybe the caffeine wasn't as potently dangerous as Jell-O, but too much coffee = too much information. I hadn't needed to announce my privileged status, especially to a new friend who'd just spent an hour telling me about her mother's boyfriend who kicked Chucky out of their apartment when she turned eighteen and left her to

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sleep on the couch at her cousin's place till she could afford her own place.

"Oh," Chucky said. "So that's how it is." I sensed it wasn't just the autumn night air suddenly changing our vibe to chill. "How lucky for you."

I decided to change the subject back to a safe one: cute boys. "The thing with the ambulance driver George guy never took off," I told Chucky.

"¿Por que?"
she said, smiling and hopefully warming back up to me.

"Bad first date. Also, he pronounced 'library' as 'libe-ary' I have a thing about that. Also with people who say 'nuke-ular' instead of 'nuke-lee-ar.' Turns me off."

"With standards like that,
mamacita,
don't be surprised if you're single just a little while longer," Chucky said, laughing. Phew.

I showed her a picture of Luis on my camera phone. "Not totally," I said. "I've got a Mister Right Now." I didn't want Chucky to think I would camera-phone-photo a guy whom I'd just picked up any of where, take cheesecake shots of his laughing eyes, bare chest, and a hand holding a Dixie cup, so I added, "Luis used to work for my bio-dad."

Chucky's face looked less than enthused as she looked upon the gorgeous cinnamon vision that is Loo-eese. She said, "Oh" again,

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followed by some muttering in Spanish that went way beyond my twenty-word
español
vocab, but from the expression on her face, I suspect it translated to something like: "At least I thought I liked you, before I knew you were chasing after a hired help boy in my shade...."

I knew I wasn't paranoid when, just like that, Chucky stood up and said, "It's late and I should be going. I'll call you later."

By the look on her face, I'd say the friendship that rocketed off to such a great start was not going to progress any further.

She won't be calling.

In the responsibility column of my New life, I'd gotten a job and back on contraception. But in the "Oops" column of my Old habit of pushing too hard too fast, I suspected I could add Chucky to the Danny pile of not
-sympaticos.

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***

EIGHTEEN

I stood before La Marzocco for the come-to-Jesus talk that's nec
essary to bless a barista's new relationship with an espresso machine.

"Look," I told La Marzocco. "My track record for making new friends in this city is iffy right now, so I have to call it straight with you: You and I are gonna be friends--no ifs, ands, or buts about it. I realize you have been neglected and unappreciated in the past, but all that's about to change. So, I vow to you: I will keep you cleaned and maintained. I will let you take as long as you need to get primed before you're ready to serve up. All I ask from you in return is absolute loyalty and unconditional love. Do we understand one another, Holiness?"

La Marzocco churned out the perfect shot in agreement. Amen.

My new boss Johnny Mold sanctified my new job with his own

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form of baptism. He chugged down the perfect latte I'd made for him, then pulled out a gift from his jeans pocket.

He said, "Here. This belonged to the person who had the job before you. I adjusted it for you." He handed me a nameplate. The piece had a new name scratched in blue ink onto a piece of paper that had been cut to fit and messily taped over the nameplate's old name. Good-bye, "Rita." Hello, "Myself."

I started to say "thank you?" but Johnny Mold wasn't interested in my tender appreciation of his artistry. Instead, he sermonized a new employee initiation speech. His Game Boy in one hand, he pointed around the room with his other hand. "Be careful sitting down in the chairs at that table by the window. Kinda wobbly. That table over there, it's kinda a lot wobbly, so be careful when you set drinks down on it. As you can see here, we don't really have a proper kitchen, just a grill for short orders. Don't stand too close on account of the occasional electrical fire. Oh, and the cook doesn't always show up for work, so sometimes we don't serve hot food, we just serve whatever's available in the case or in the fridge, and the usual drinks and stuff."

"Sounds like a great business plan, Mold."

It's funny, but as Johnny explained the surroundings, I didn't see dilapidated fixtures. I saw potential. A fixer-upper. And that's funny
and
totally scary ... because that's how my mother would envision the place too.

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Johnny said, "What's it matter? The business will die out once my old man passes on, so I'm just gonna keep it running as long as he holds out. If he doesn't mind a business that makes no money, why should I? But if you're looking for job stability or something, you're in the wrong place."

"Job stability," I said. "Yawn."

"I think you and me are going to get on just fine."

Since there were no customers around to serve, I sat down at the counter next to Johnny. I like getting to know a new person by starting out with the big questions.

"What are you gonna do with your life once you don't have this place to run?" I asked him.

"I don't know. I guess if I ever truly thought about it, I'd say I kinda wanna be an architect."

"Every boy at some point says he wants to be an architect. What's up with that?"

It's true. It's like some biological boy imperative. No matter what level of talent or intelligence or whatever he might possess, at some stage of his life, a boy dreams of becoming an architect.