I Was Told There'd Be Cake

by Sloane Crosley

  SMELL THIS

  “You can’t really dust for vomit.”

  —This Is Spinal Tap

  First, you must understand how to bake a successful dessert tart. Most baking, even complicated baking that results in caramelized pine nuts or perfect chocolate and vanilla swirls, consists of adding dry ingredients to wet. Any cookbook worth its weight in sugar will encourage you to experiment. Add craisins! Dally in dates! Go nuts! Perfection is to be found in the imperfect! Except with tarts. Unless you are a professional, you will find the tart to be a high-maintenance, unforgiving whistle-blower of a pastry. If they could sprout sexual organs and mate, they’d go extinct on the jungle floor. Chocolate chip cookies, impossible to fuck up, would breed like deer. Tarts are the red pandas of the baking Amazon. They are all about what you’re not allowed to do. The crust alone: don’t knead it too much too fast, don’t sprinkle too much water, not that much butter, cool it first, don’t cook it too long. This is a polite pastry. A civilized pastry.

  Second, you have to imagine that your kitchen is a Manhattan-sized kitchen, itself a narrow island of a room. Let’s say you have made a total of three tarts from scratch in the past. You have a supply of Crisco precisely for this purpose. You even invested in a twelve-dollar jar of pie weights, which was frustrating for you because “pie weights” are just rocks, but, this being New York City, you knew it was worth the splurge rather than going on a Clean Pebble Expedition in Tompkins Square Park. You think it’s finally safe to feed your fourth tart to a few friends without poisoning them so you invite them over to your new studio apartment for dessert.

  There are five of you in total. Two of your guests, a guy and a girl, you have witnessed having sex on several occasions, as they have been dating since freshman year of college and never saw a need to lock their respective doors. Because there are no more hippies, you don’t call them hippies. (But if you ever saw two people on a beach, gorging themselves on whole-wheat burritos and pot, picking sand out of each other’s toes, and diving into the water naked, that would be them.) Another girl, Justine, is a college friend as well. A Westport-bread WASP whose hobbies include water polo, impressionist art, cocaine, vintage clothing, and wandering through the history section of Barnes & Noble pointing out her great-great-grand relatives. Though you are probably closest to her, for months you’ve done little more than e-mail back and forth with jovial threats of getting together. Justine brings along her new boyfriend, Trevor. Trevor the investment banker who is not an actual investment banker but works in finance. Since this is the only money-oriented job you come remotely close to grasping, you call everyone who works on Wall Street an “investment banker.” You think he actually does something with hedge funds. Trims them, maybe. He has taken Justine golfing for the day and their faces and arms are burned Nantucket red.

  You make a dark chocolate and pear tart with an apricot glaze. While poaching the pears, you press the dough evenly into the tart pan and let it chill for an hour while you tackle the chocolate. In a few years you will invest in a Cuisinart but for now you have unsweetened chocolate ground into your nail beds from breaking apart the stuff by hand.

  As much as she’d like to, woman cannot live on dessert alone so you all go out to dinner first, to catch up. It’s not that you have lost touch with these people. You haven’t. It’s just that they have kept in such close touch with each other. When scrolling through your cell phone, you generally let their numbers be highlighted for a second, hovering, and then move along to people you have spoken to within the month. It’s not that you’re a bad friend to these people. It’s just that you’re not a great one. They know the names of each other’s coworkers and the blow-by-blow nature of each other’s dramas; they go camping in the Berkshires together and have such sentences in their conversational arsenal as “You left your lip gloss in my bathroom.” You have no such sentences. Your connection to your friends is half-baked and you are starting to forget their siblings’ names, never mind their coworkers’.

  But you’re still in the play even if you’re no longer a main character. Justine suggests a laid-back Italian restaurant down the street from your apartment, with designs on eating pasta and pale green salads with herb flecks in the dressing. Like the tart in the oven and your sparkling clean apartment, you think this is just perfect. The couple, Ryan and Mia, have come from a day in Brooklyn’s Prospect Park, communing with pigeons and making origami for the homeless out of recycled coffee sleeves. Mia, wearing a Bennington T-shirt with the sleeves curled up, has not shaved her armpits since you’ve known her. She hugs you, asks after your parents, your job, your chi. Everything is punctuated with a question mark.

  “We were making grass angels in the park? And there was this beautiful old oak tree? With lots of low branches? And Ryan thought he’d climb it?”

  Justine, smoothing her hair back into a ponytail, keeps a rubber band in her teeth and waves with her elbow. Trevor is playing with some square of pocket-sized electronics that makes him laugh periodically. Otherwise he says nothing to you. Whereas at dinner, he talks nonstop.

  “Lesbian sex is just hot.” He chews with his mouth open. “No two ways about it—unless it’s a three-way and then I’d be all about it.”

  You don’t take much of a liking to Trevor. He winks at Justine, which is expected—half acknowledgment of bad behavior, half flirtation—who in turn apologizes to you for her boyfriend’s behavior. You who did not deserve to get winked at over this. You are neither a practicing lesbian nor a close-minded prude nor have you ever had specific lesbian sex, namely with Justine. Thus leading you to deduce: Trevor wants to have a threesome with someone at the table and you are the only single girl there. You feel like telling him that you’re not single in the way he thinks you’re single. After all, you have yourself. You feel like telling him that if you were going to have a threesome with anyone, it’d be with earthy, fault-forgiving people like Mia and Ryan. You feel like telling him he has an oily blob of dressing on his chin that emphasizes the round wad of flesh at the root of his face. He shakes when he speaks, like a bowl full of Jell-O shots. You feel like telling him, “You know what, Trevor? No one here particularly likes you.”

  Out of nowhere, Trevor opens a tin canister of mustard with his thumb and shoves it in Justine’s face.

  “Smell this,” he instructs, “it smells gross.”

  You have had enough.

  “Have you ever seen lesbian sex, Trevor? Life-sized, unpixelated lesbian sex?”

  “Why? Have you?”

  “Because,” you reason with him as he chews his cud, “I would imagine it’s not all strippers with whorish tan lines in a pool somewhere.”

  “I get it.” He sits back in his chair.

  “What is it that you get?”

  “You’re Justine’s ‘arty’ friend.”

  This actually isn’t even true. Justine is Justine’s arty friend. She knows more about art and art history than you do about pretty much anything. Even if she wasn’t—what about Mia? The woman makes hand-painted lockets and three-dimensional paper dolls and sends them to tsunami victims. You couldn’t even make a paper airplane to get them there.

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “That you’re a feminist.”

  “Trevor,” Justine pipes in, “a feminist is someone who believes in the equality of the sexes. Men are feminists.”

  “Whatever.” He makes a face and digs into his linguini.

  Perhaps it is the majority of your childhood spent at an all-girls sleep-away camp—bonding over campfires and head lice—that brings out your fierce loyalty to the lesbians. You spent your summers with more than one Mazzy Star–listening, celestial-ankle-tattoo-sporting, guitar-playing lady of sport. These were some of the deepest friendships you have ever known and, sure, some of that was before you grew up and learned about the oddly unique brand of friendship that occurs between gay women and straight women. But it doesn’t detract from their value in your life. They say there is
no such thing as gay or straight and that we all fall somewhere on the sexuality spectrum, as connected as kindergartners holding the same rope. You can get onboard with this. In fact, you are so onboard that you react with disproportionate malice to anyone who lets go of the rope—religious zealots, bigots, Red Sox fanatics, and small-dog owners. At that point, your personal beliefs are beside the point. Extremists and their supporters cause you to align yourself with something you’re not in order to get as far away as possible from the something that you’re really not. And right now you are Queen of the Lesbians.

  “Why do you have to be such a fuckface, Trevor?”

  You didn’t debate the consequences of saying this beforehand but even if you had, you would have come to the sturdy conclusion that you will never see Trevor again. You see Justine twice a year as it is. Trevor stares at you. You think about excusing yourself to go to the restroom and instead sneaking out to buy a packaged Danish wheel from the Food Emporium. Trevor is officially no longer tart-worthy.

  Someone at the table giggles the situation into tolerable. Trevor is the worst kind of asshole they make—the kind who is completely oblivious to how he sounds, the kind who is impossible to argue with because he doesn’t allow for a worldview outside of his own. Normally, this wouldn’t be a problem. Mean people happen. But with Ryan and Mia snuggling all hippie-like at the end of the table, you are left with Trevor “The Da Vinci Code RULES!” Shithead. After you get the check, Mia and Justine go to the ladies’ room and you and Trevor walk out of the restaurant first. He walks ahead of you, tripping on some stairs and landing palms down on the pavement. He lurches to a standing position and wipes his hands on the back of his golf shorts. “Smooth move, Ex-Lax,” he says to himself. You say nothing and walk past him. On the stroll back, Mia and Ryan link arms and laugh loudly. She makes monkey noises and he pretends to eat bugs out of her hair.

  At home, as you pull out the dessert plates, you joke about college, telling stories about the catwalklike dining hall, stumbling drunk into the wrong room and innocently crawling into bed with people, European escapades involving cheap hostels and a stolen Peugeot. You are beginning to get the hang of these friendships again. They feel familiar, like riding a bike. This social ease could atrophy before the night is through. But for now, you’re enjoying yourself. Justine watches over Trevor like he’s her wolf cub.

  The tart is too chocolatey. Not enough sugar. Flakes of crust huddle together where they were supposed to break apart. But it’s edible. Justine takes a second slice.

  During the course of the dessert each one of them gets up and goes to the bathroom. You do not recollect in what order, but none of them spends a memorable amount of time in there. It’s getting late. You hug them all good-bye and walk them to the door, which was actually never out of sight in your apartment, but you walk them there anyway. After they leave you start scrubbing rings of chocolate and flour from the insides of bowls. You feel an abrupt pressure on your bladder and you head for the bathroom.

  Now, living by oneself in a studio apartment, one becomes highly attuned to any minor changes. What would normally be pinned on a roommate becomes the work of the paranormal. You are the only culprit, the only one there to break things, leave underwear on the floor, forget to turn the lights out. The alternatives are unthinkable:

  a. Burglar/rapists (an even worse prospect than model/actresses)

  b. Still-in-the-closet heterosexual murderers

  c. Vengeful spirits who hanged themselves from a light fixture in your apartment at the turn of the last century and who are back in the form of inconsiderate poltergeists that live in your IKEA couch cushions and finish off your cereal and then put the nearly empty box back without curling up the plastic inside.

  For these reasons, your senses are heightened. You can immediately detect when something is out of whack. Nothing escapes the single-gal gaze. For instance: a perfect, cherry-sized turd on your bathroom carpet.

  Stage 1: Denial

  Who shits on someone’s carpet? Who does that? It’s probably not even shit. Think of how immature you’re being, assuming a chunk of unsweetened chocolate is shit. Think of how the other day you had a cab driver with the first name “Butt” and found it funny. Chastise your inner twelve-year-old, who is only supposed to rear her head in the face of kittens and swing sets. Be ashamed of yourself. It’s chocolate or dirt, okay, but not feces. Apply this same kind of insta-denial a few months from now when you see a small roach scamper beneath your fridge. Think how you could just as easily have not seen the roach and gone on bragging about your hygiene, the way one does in New York. Who, me? I’ve never had a single bug, not one. The problem with the situation at foot is this turd ain’t got no legs. It’s just sitting there, staring at you, imprinting its image on your pupils. Or perhaps it’s mooning you. Hard to say. But impossible to deny.

  Stage 2: Scientific Identification

  Because in this moment you still carry in your head the possibility of the turd being something less unholy—something you could point out to a toddler and say, “Look, a——!”—because denial is dying but still has a pulse, you lean down to get a closer look. You must confirm that it is, in fact, chocolate. Or maybe raisins. The fact that the tart didn’t include raisins is no concern of yours. In fact, there isn’t a single raisin in the house but this does not deter you from getting on your hands and knees. You lean in closer to the carpet. (The carpet! Maybe if it was the tile, but the carpet!) Surely this is some type of cluster that fell out of a box or a canister, but not someone’s digestive system. Despite your best efforts not to, you use your nose. It’s not chocolate.

  Stage 3: Suspicion of Origin

  After rising at lightning speed to your feet so that you might have some personal space to shut your eyes and gag, you let your mind race through possible culprits. Your mind alights quickly on Trevor but keeps moving, deciding that this is the work of someone profoundly comfortable—perhaps too comfortable?—in your home. Because you have a fundamental like for your other guests, because they are among your oldest friends, you entertain the possibility that a stray animal, such as a feral squirrel, has broken into your house, shat on your carpet, and left. In which case you have a bigger problem. Humans, you can simply not let in the front door again. A feral squirrel infestation is another matter. Then the idea of this being on purpose crosses your mind. How well do we ever really know our friends? And lately you’ve been a less than stellar one. You think back to July and Mia’s birthday dinner you missed. You think of a long e-mail from Ryan so witty and detailed it deserved more than a two-line response. So you saved it for when your creativity was more flowy-like, but…did you ever actually reply? You don’t think you did. Isn’t this how domesticated animals act out when they’re neglected? They piss on the carpet or gnaw at a favorite shoe? Perhaps these people have a point. Maybe that e-mail is still in your Drafts folder. Either way, you can’t bake away the fact that you’re a delinquent.

  Stage 4: Honing of Suspicion

  You remember that all four parties had spent the day outdoors, at parks and at golf courses. You are a shit detective. A regular Carmen Turdiego. You think of the nonhippie hippies, frolicking in the grass, rolling around like golden retrievers or burn victims, something getting stuck to the strap of a backpack or the bottom of a Reef flip-flop. You think of Justine and her boyfriend, their golf bags being dragged across what looked like mud.

  You think perhaps you moved on too quickly from your first instinct. Part of you would like to think it was Trevor. Let’s face it, most of you would. The possibility of there being physical evidence of his awfulness beyond a few mildly irritating comments excites you. But would he really do this? You called him a name, yes, but wouldn’t a little punitive tinkle on the toilet seat suffice? But if it was not Trevor, and not one of the other guests, than who? In a flash, you entertain the prospect that the shit doesn’t fall far from the tree and, for dramatic effect, check your own shoes. Nothing, you’re barefoot. Qui
ck, go and put on some socks.

  Sadly, none of it seems plausible. First of all, the turd is far too intact and shapely to have been crushed, taken out to dinner, walked home on pavement, and neatly deposited on your carpet. Second of all, you already established, back in Stage 2, that it would emit aroma if it were ground into a guest’s clothes. Third of all, we are not wildebeests. The hairy mammoth is extinct. Fecal balls don’t just “get stuck” to us and go unnoticed and unattended. You think of the word “dingle berry” and then again of the cab driver, Butt. You are riddled with shame and curious about whatever became of your swing set. Remember to call your mother when this thing blows over.

  Stage 5: Revirginization

  You wish the turd would vanish. You can already feel the association building between the turd and pear and chocolate tarts. Using no less than six sheets of paper towel folded on top of each other, you swiftly pick the shit up and flush it down the toilet. You throw the paper towel in the trash and get the trash bag out of the house. You then Lysol and vacuum up the memory of the shit. You think, if you do this fast enough, it will be like it never happened. But all the spraying and all the vacuuming can’t put everything right again. Days later, when you are still sidestepping the general region of the floor where the shit once was, you decide you can’t live like this. It’s time to launch Stage 6.