by Cleo Coyle
The bell over the front door jingled again, but this time it wasn’t a patron departing. An attractive Filipina woman entered our shop: Lilly Beth Tanga, my new business associate.
In her late thirties, Lilly was built much like me: petite but with a mature, shapely figure that nicely filled out her jeans. She was a hard worker, too, with a constant surplus of energy and ideas, and from the sparkling look in her beautiful, almond-shaped eyes, I could tell she was brimming with more.
“Kaylie Crimini again!” Lilly cried, approaching our table with a grin. “Diyos Ko! I think the Kupcake Kween is stalking me. She and that diabetic coma on wheels!”
After a quick, warm hug for me and another for Madame, she pulled up a chair to join us—and I was very glad that she did. Earlier today, I’d asked her to stop by and help me convince Matt to get on board the Muffin Muse truck (so to speak). With the sugar queen’s arrival, I could use all the help I could get.
“So good to see you again, Lilly,” Madame said. “How is little Paz?”
“Up to his tricks, as usual. He’s barely done with fifth grade, and he’s ready to program network television. He actually got his friends to help him organize a weekly recess variety show.”
“What do they call it?” I asked. “Playground Idol?”
“Close!” Lilly laughed. “P.S. 11’s Got Talent.”
Matt actually cracked a smile. “And you are?” he said, his mood obviously improving with the arrival of an attractive female.
“Lilly Beth Tanga,” I jumped in, “meet my business partner, Matt Allegro. Lilly is—”
“Filipino, right?” Matt extended a hand. “Magandang araw, Ms. Tanga.”
Lilly Beth took Matt’s hand. “Sandali lang, Mr. Allegro. But honestly, you’ll make more points speaking with my mom. I was born in Jackson Heights and my Tagalog is very rusty.”
“No problem,” Matt said. “My own’s pretty rusty these days—although I do remember sarap nito.”
“Sarap nito? Then you must enjoy Filipino food, oo?” Lilly Beth cocked her head and her sweet smile turned slyly flirtatious. “Or are you maybe referring to something else?”
I raised an eyebrow. Lilly once told me that sarap nito, the Tagalog word for “delicious,” had a literal translation of “that feels good,” which meant it also described sensory delights beyond the dining room.
Either my new friend wasn’t listening when I warned her about Matt’s open marriage and womanizing ways, or, with one look at my muscular, attractive, albeit overly-hairy ex, Lilly decided the best way to persuade the man was with a little flirtation.
I cleared my throat. “Lilly Beth is an expert on delicious things. Her mother, Amina, runs a popular Filipino eatery in Queens. Lilly is also a registered dietician. That’s why I hired her. She’s consulting with me and our baker on cutting some of the fat and calories out of our popular pastries.”
“And I brought some new samples for you and Madame to taste tonight… and Matt, too, since he’s here…”
She smiled at him again, very sweetly, which, I had to concede, wasn’t exactly hurting the Sway Matt campaign.
“Do me a favor, Matteo,” she said, pulling a small bakery box out of her tote. “Take a taste of these donut bites. They come in two flavors: cinnamon sugar and pumpkin spice. I’ve got a low-fat mocha muffin, too, with dreamy chocolate cream cheese filling and chocolate fooge frosting…” She threw a wink my way.
We all dug in, sampling in silence and glancing at each other with wonder.
“These are really low fat?” I asked, mouth still full.
Lilly Beth nodded. “The donut bites are baked, not fried, and I’ve cut the fat in the mocha muffins by using skim milk ricotta. The filling is low-fat cream cheese and high-quality cocoa powder.”
“What about this chocolate fudge buttercream?” I asked.
Lilly Beth smiled. “No butter.”
“You’re kidding.”
“Melted semisweet chocolate blended with thick, Greek-style yogurt, a little vanilla and a pinch of salt for balanced flavor.”
“Okay, these are good,” Matt admitted, reaching for another donut bite, “but will this ‘healthier’ stuff sell?”
I nodded emphatically. “Our Cakelet-and-Cream Sandwiches and ‘Healthified’ Blueberry Pie Bars are the talk of the foodie blog world. Our truck can’t keep them in stock.”
“The Nutella-Swirled Banana Muffins and low-fat Strawberry Shortcakes are winners, too,” Lilly added. “The customers will enjoy these new donut bites even more. Consider all those moms, Mr. Moms, and nannies out there, pushing strollers on sidewalks, hanging out with their kids in parks and playgrounds. Treats like these are just the right portion size for little ones—without a crazy amount of fat and calories from copious amounts of butter or shortening.”
“Be careful, Clare,” Matt warned. “You don’t want to be labeled the diet food truck.”
“You’ve been in the bush too long, Matt. By law, New York City requires its restaurants to post calorie counts. With federal regulations on their way, much of the food world is paying attention. Almost everyone is searching for ways to add nutritious to delicious—”
“Well, maybe not everyone.” Lilly Beth jerked a thumb toward the circus outside. “That woman parked in front of my son’s school today. She’s actually peddling that slow-death monstrosity she calls the Three Little Piggies to children!”
“Three Little Piggies? What? It’s got bacon in it?”
“No, that’s her Maple-Bacon Cupcake, in which she whips solid bacon grease into butter at the start of the recipe. The Piggies is a giant coconut cupcake stuffed with a mini cheesecake topped by a chocolate-fudge cupcake with whipped cream and a little pink plastic pig on top.” Lilly Beth threw up her hands. “There should be a law!”
Matt crossed his arms. “I’m not a big fan of laws, Lilly—not that I’m happy this cupcake truck has planted itself beside our café, but all this woman’s peddling is a boatload of sugar and butter, right? As for her bacon grease pastry, I routinely visit parts of the world that use lard in their traditional cooking… I mean, it’s not like she’s lacing her stuff with LSD.”
“I’m not suggesting we outlaw guilty pleasures,” Lilly clarified. “You and I are adults, and we can make our own informed decisions. But Kaylie’s favorite marketing targets are grade schools, and her Three Little Piggies cupcake is deceptive. It looks like an innocent snack, but the thing packs more fat and calories than a double cheeseburger with extra-large fries.”
Matt glanced at me. “We aren’t selling anything like that, are we?”
“Our portions are standard. We do have decadent pastries but the calories are always posted on our menu, and on our truck, too.”
“I said something to Kaylie today,” Lilly went on, “caused a big scene in front of Paz’s school. I didn’t care. I’m on the mayor’s Council for Nutrition Awareness now, and I let her know that and my feelings about her tactics, loud and clear.”
Matt’s gaze swept across me and Lilly Beth. “So now the Kupcake Kween has a hate on for both the Bobbsey Twins?”
Bobbsey Twins? The remark confused me for a second. But then I realized, sitting side by side, we could have been fraternal twins, if you weren’t looking too closely.
For one thing, we were dressed nearly identically this evening—in blue jeans and sleeveless yellow cotton blouses, although mine was a pale polenta and Lilly’s more of a lemon curd. We wore our shoulder-length hair in ponytails, too, and from a distance you could say the color was dark, even though Lilly’s was more of a Spanish roast while mine was closer to Viennese with cinnamon highlights.
True, both of us had complexions on the dusky side, but Lilly’s face was nearly a perfect oval while mine was more heart-shaped. Our eyes were different, too: Years ago (many of them), Matt once sang about my bright, green “Guinevere” eyes, but Lilly’s were much more exotic, it seemed to me, with their liquid dark hue and almond shape.
“Twin
s…” Lilly Beth repeated, glancing at me before winking at Matt. “Is he trying to be a bad boy?”
Matt’s expression lit up at that. He opened his mouth for a reply, but what he said, I’ll never know because his words were swallowed by the sudden surging of Kaylie’s fake French menu—
“Fla-vours for vous! Chocolat fooge! Chocolat ship…”
The volume vibrated our windowpanes and rattled our demitasses. What upset me the most, however, was seeing the reaction of my former mother-in-law.
Through half a century of turbulence and change, Madame had struggled to keep this shop’s doors open. She’d sheltered starving artists, sobered up drunken playwrights, and propped up penniless poets. She’d survived a world war and the loss of a beloved husband—the man who’s family had birthed this business at the turn of the nineteenth century.
Now she stared with distress at our sidewalk, watching our customers casually leave our café tables to purchase goodies from that preening little vulture.
“Do you want me to go out there and put a stop to this?” Matt asked, beginning to rise.
“No,” I said, finding my feet. With a gentle but firm hand, I pressed him back. “Stay.”
For nearly two weeks, I had ignored this situation, hoping it would resolve itself, but my conversation with Madame had woken me up to an important aspect of my business partnership with Matteo Allegro.
“This coffeehouse is my responsibility. I’ll deal with it.”
And her, I silently added. Then I bolted the remains of my espresso and strode toward the door.
THREE
CUTTING the line, I planted myself in front of the Kupcake Kart’s service window. “Shut off those speakers.”
For more than four decades, my West Village neighborhood—an amalgam of twisting lanes, secluded gardens, quaint bistros, and Federal-style town houses—existed under an umbrella of laws protecting its historical integrity. Generally speaking it was a neon-free zone, a picturesque respite from the city’s flash and zoom.
Not tonight.
The kaleidoscopic bulbs encircling Kaylie’s truck lit our tranquil café sidewalk with all the subtlety of a pole dancer’s stage. Even her front bumper blinked with the glittering LED message: Squee! I Won! (This was a reference to the previous year’s Vendy Awards, an annual event to honor the street chefs of the city. For that achievement, I couldn’t fault her. She took home both the Dessert and Rookie of the Year Cups.)
But the lights were only part of it. Her truck’s awful rendition of “La Vie en Rose,” punctuated by—“Pea-nut Butt-tair! Car-a-mel! Va-nil-la-la!”—made me want to dig out my eardrums with a latte spoon.
A bit of jostling occurred inside the truck with my arrival, then Kaylie Crimini’s smirking face was in mine. From previous encounters, I put the girl in her late twenties. Tonight, her tight lips and squinty glare more resembled someone entering a bitter and angry middle age. Leaning forward, she gave her head a prissy little shake. Then she made like Marcel Marceau, mutely cupping one ear to indicate she couldn’t hear me.
I’d met Kaylie many times in this town. She was a sweetly perfumed, strawberry-glossed shark with a toxic competitive streak. Back in high school, she would have thought herself the most charitable, generous, virtuous person in the entire world—and would have laughed like a hyena when one of her BFFs tripped some awkward, unpopular “weird” kid in the cafeteria.
I, on the other hand, was that quiet “nobody” girl who’d commit social suicide by helping the poor picked-on kid clean up her ruined lunch—while suggesting we hurl the sloppier bits in the general direction of the catty hyenas.
“I said, turn that jingle off!”
Now I was resorting to pantomime, slashing my right hand across my throat in the universal signal for Kill it! And, yes, I couldn’t stop myself from imagining Kaylie’s throat in convenient proximity of stainless steel cutlery.
In response to my demand, Kaylie aloofly reached up to adjust the Paris pink paper tiara pinned to her hair, a honey-blond sculpture that resembled a double-dip ice cream cone—or the Mostly Frosting cupcake gracing her sugarcoated menu. The paper tiara was (apparently) her cupcake queen crown. How did I know? It literally read Kupcake Kween.
This indifferent act of Kaylie’s didn’t last, however. The saccharine monarch turned petulant, snapping her fingers at a member of her haughty staff.
A wiry Asian kid with a pink paper hat and Chinese dragon tattoo snaking around his leanly muscled arm glared at me and threw a switch. The jingle ended, bringing down silence like a heavy curtain.
“Can I help you?” Kaylie asked, her pistachio eyes gleaming with superiority. “Perhaps you’d like to sample our new espresso cupcake? We use the very finest coffee beans, roasted by Jerry Wang at the Gotham Beanery.”
“This parking space is reserved. Move your truck.”
Touching a plastic gloved finger to her dimpled chin, she playacted consideration of my demand. “Nah. I don’t think so. Not when I have sooo many customers. Next!” she called to the man behind me.
“No.” I said, straight-arming him back. “It’s quitting time, Kaylie. I want you and your truck gone. Now.”
Before she could answer, a familiar honk startled us all—and I was very glad to hear it.
The Muffin Muse had rolled home. The Blend’s boxy food truck was trying to pull into its reserved parking place beside our sidewalk tables, the spot Kaylie had usurped.
From behind the wheel of the diesel-fueled bus, Dante Silva frowned. The shaved-headed, tattooed-armed, fine-art painter was one of the nicest guys you could ever meet—and the crema on his espressos was just as sweet as his disposition (as every swooning college coed in the neighborhood could tell you).
Next to Dante sat my Rubenesque goth girl Esther Best (shortened by her grandfather from Bestovasky). A locally renowned slam poetess, Esther was an NYU grad student whose latte art skills were close to national competitive level. I’d promoted her to second assistant manager (partly on the principle that she drew legions of fans to our shop), and she’d proven herself with hard work and bright ideas. More offbeat than Dante, she was far less sweet—a hitch in character that often proved an asset in New York retail.
As horns blared on the wide lanes of Hudson Street, Esther shook a fist. “Get out of our spot!”
Kaylie calmly examined her fingernails. “They’re blocking the intersection. That’s very dangerous. You’d better tell your people to move along.”
Okay, I’m done.
“Listen up, Crimini, unless you want a Three Little Piggies thousand-dollar repeat-offender summons for playing your jingle while stationary, you’d better move along. Pronto!”
“Don’t threaten me—”
“I don’t have to threaten,” I said, leaning into the precious, rainbow-framed window. “I have a shop full of witnesses to your stupid, childish, repeated stunts…”
As one of New York’s five thousand food-truck vendors, I had received the same consumer affairs paperwork that she had about EPA codes. “So be warned,” I said. “The next time I see you in front of my store, I’m not calling 311; I’m walking straight up to the officers of the Sixth Precinct and demanding they send a city tow to confiscate your sorry showboat for multiple noise violations.”
“You tell her, boss!” Hands on her ample hips, Esther was now standing behind me, providing useful backup (mostly by herding sidewalk customers into our shop).
“Stick it in your demitasse, Cosi,” Kaylie shot back. “If your stupid old coffeehouse can’t take the heat, then maybe you’d better get off the street.” The woman’s insufferable smirk returned. “See? Your chubby goth barista isn’t the only one who can rhyme. So why don’t you leave, before you make my customers heave?”
I was about to answer back, but Esther stopped me.
“I got this,” she said, stepping forward. (I almost felt sorry for the Kupcake Kween.)
A small gang of spectators closed in. A lean kid in aquamarine spandex
stepped out of the pack. I’d seen this young cycling enthusiast in the Blend a few times. He said he practically lived on the Hudson River Greenway, the most heavily used bikeway in the country, with entry points only a few blocks from our Blend.
In a whip-fast move, Cycle Boy pulled out his smart phone camera and hit record. When my “chubby” barista motioned him closer, I knew a worldwide Internet audience was about to be treated to slam poetry, Esther style.
Adjusting her black-framed glasses, she cleared her throat and let it rip—
“Listen up, bouffant brain! Are you listening? Good! ’Cause you’re not in Kansas. You’re in my ’hood…”
“Woooo!” The crowd cheered.
“Your cupcakes are mealy, your élan is fake, and your infantile jingle gives the world an earache!”
