In the Age of Love and Chocolate

  From the balcony, I heard the baby start to cry. My former schoolmates took Felix’s tears as a sign that the party was over. Through the glass door, I watched them as they filed out. I don’t know why, but I tried to make a joke. “Looks like the worst prom ever,” I said. “Maybe the second worst if you count junior year.” I lightly touched Win’s thigh where my cousin had shot him at the worst prom ever. For a second he looked like he might laugh, but then he repositioned his leg so that my hand was no longer on it.

  Win pulled me to his chest. “Goodbye,” he whispered in a gentler tone than I’d heard from him in a while. “I hope life gives you everything you want.”

  I knew it was over. In contrast with the other times we’d quarreled, he did not sound angry. He sounded resigned. He sounded as if he were already somewhere faraway.

  A second later, he released me and then he really did leave.

  I turned my back and watched the city as the sun went down. Though I had made my choices, I could not bear to know what he looked like when he was walking away.

  * * *

  I waited about fifteen minutes before I went back into the apartment. By that time, the only people left were Scarlet and Felix. “I love parties,” Scarlet said, “but this was miserable. Don’t say it wasn’t, Annie. You can lie to the priest, but it’s too late for you to start lying to me.”

  “I’ll help you clean up,” I said. “Where’s Gable?”

  “Out with his brother,” she said. “Then he has to go to work.” Gable had a truly wretched-sounding job as a hospital orderly, which involved changing bedpans and cleaning floors. It was the only work he could find, and I suppose it was noble of him to have taken it. “Do you think it was a mistake to invite the kids from Trinity?”

  “I think it was fine,” I said.

  “I saw you talking to Win.”

  “Nothing has changed.”

  “I’m sad to hear that,” she said. We cleaned up the apartment in silence. Scarlet started to vacuum, which is why I didn’t notice right away that she had begun to cry.

  I walked over to the vacuum and turned it off. “What is it?”

  “I wonder what chance any of the rest of us have if you and Win can’t make it work.”

  “Scarlet, it was a high school romance. They aren’t meant to last forever.”

  “Unless you’re stupid and get yourself knocked up,” Scarlet said.

  “That’s not what I meant.”

  “I know.” Scarlet sighed. “And I know why you’re opening the club, but you’re certain Charles Delacroix is worth the trouble?”

  “I am. I’ve explained this to you before.” I turned the vacuum cleaner back on and vacuumed. I was pushing the vacuum in long, mad strokes across the rug: angry-vacuuming. I turned the vacuum off again. “You know, it’s not easy to do what I’m doing. I don’t have any help. No one is supporting me. Not Mr. Kipling. Not my parents or my nana, because they’re dead. Not Natty, because she is a child. Not Leo, because he is in jail. Not the Balanchine family, because they think I’m threatening their business. Certainly not Win. No one. I am alone, Scarlet. I am more alone than I have ever been in my entire life. And I know I chose this. But it hurts my feelings when you take Win’s side over mine. I’m using Mr. Delacroix because he is the connection I have to the city. I need him, Scarlet. He has been part of my plan from the beginning. There is no one else who could replace him. Win is asking me for the one thing I can’t give him. Don’t you think I wish I could?”

  “I’m sorry,” she said.

  “And I can’t be with Win Delacroix just so my best friend doesn’t give up on romance.”

  Scarlet’s eyes were tear-filled. “Let’s not argue. I’m an idiot. Ignore me.”

  “I hate when you call yourself an idiot. No one thinks that of you.”

  “I think it of myself,” Scarlet said. “Look at me. What am I going to do?”

  “Well for one, we’re going to finish cleaning this apartment.”

  “After that, I meant.”

  “Then we’re going to take Felix and go to my club. Lucy, the mixologist, is working late and she has a bunch of cacao drinks for us to sample.”

  “And then?”

  “I don’t know. You’ll come up with something. But it’s the only way I know how to move forward. You make a list and then you go and do the things on it.”

  * * *

  “Still bitter,” I said to my recently hired mixologist as I handed her the last in a series of shot glasses. Lucy had white-blond hair cropped short, light blue eyes, pale skin, a big bow of a mouth, and a long, athletic body. When she was in her chef’s coat and hat, I thought she looked like a bar of Balanchine White. I always knew when she was working in the kitchen because even from my office down the hall, I could hear her muttering and cursing. The dirty words seemed to be part of her creative process. I liked her very much, by the way. If she hadn’t been my employee, maybe she would have been my friend.

  “Do you think it needs more sugar?” Lucy said.

  “I think it needs … something. It’s even more bitter than the last one.”

  “That’s what cacao tastes like, Anya. I’m starting to think you don’t like the taste of cacao. Scarlet, what do you think?”

  Scarlet sipped. “It’s not obviously sweet, but I definitely detect sweetness,” she said.

  “Thank you,” Lucy said.

  “That’s Scarlet,” I said. “You’re always looking for the sweet.”

  “And maybe you’re always looking for the bitter,” Scarlet joked.

  “Pretty, smart, and optimistic. I wish you were my boss,” Lucy said.

  “She isn’t as sunny as she seems,” I told Lucy. “An hour ago, I found her crying and vacuuming.”

  “Everyone cries when they vacuum,” Lucy said.

  “I know, right?” Scarlet agreed. “Those vibrations make you emotional.”

  “I’m serious, though,” I said. “In Mexico, the drinks weren’t this dark.”

  “Maybe you should hire your friend from Mexico to come make them, then?” My mixologist had trained at the Culinary Institute of America and at Le Cordon Bleu, and she could be touchy when it came to criticism.

  “Oh Lucy, you know I respect you enormously. But the drinks need to be perfect.”

  “Let’s ask the heartbreaker,” Lucy said. “With your permission, Scarlet.”

  “I don’t see why not,” Scarlet said. She dipped her pinky into the pot and then held it out for Felix to lick. He tasted tentatively. At first he smiled. Lucy began to look intolerably smug.

  “He smiles at everything,” I said.

  Suddenly, his mouth crumpled into the shape of a dried-out rose.

  “Oh, I’m sorry, baby!” Scarlet said. “I’m a terrible mother.”

  “See?” I said.

  “I suppose cacao is too sophisticated a flavor for a baby’s palate,” Lucy said. She sighed and dumped the contents of the pot into the sink. “Tomorrow,” she said, “we try again. We fail again. We do better.”

  II

  I OFFICIALLY BECOME AN ADULT; HAVE A SERIES OF UNKIND THOUGHTS ABOUT MY FRIENDS AND FAMILY; AM COMPARED UNFAVORABLY TO THE ELEMENT ARGON

  “THERE ARE A MILLION perfectly good reasons a venture fails, Anya,” Charles Delacroix lectured. He had proven himself to be a decent enough business partner, but he did like to hear himself talk. “The failure is the only part people remember. For instance, no one remembers that the man who was to be the district attorney of New York City was taken down by a seventeen-year-old.”

  “Is that what happened?” I asked. “As I recall, the man who did not become district attorney had an unwise obsession with his son’s love life, and his opponents preyed on it.”

  Mr. Delacroix shook his head.

  “Like a lion felled by a tiny burr,” I said. “Also, I’m not seventeen anymore.”

  “I was waiting for you to object to that.” He held his fingers to his mouth and whistled like he was hailing a
cab. The sound echoed across the club, which still didn’t have much furniture in it. Several members of my newly hired staff came out with a birthday cake. HAPPY BIRTHDAY, ANYA was spelled in pink icing.

  “You remembered,” I said.

  “August 12, 2066. As if I could forget your eighteenth. No more trips to Liberty Children’s.”

  The staff sang and clapped for me. We didn’t know one another very well yet, but I was the boss so it wasn’t like they had a choice. I was glad when the compulsory merriment was over and everyone returned to work. I did not relish being the center of attention, and there was so much to do before we opened in a month. I had already hired (and fired) contractors, waitstaff, designers, chefs, publicists, doctors, security, and event planners. There was a never-ending series of permits to get from the city, though most of that was Mr. Delacroix’s responsibility. I had tried (unsuccessfully) to broker a peace with my cousin Fats and the Family, and had (successfully) negotiated a great deal on cacao from my friend Theo Marquez at Granja Mañana. There were tiles, linens, and paint colors to be selected; ovens to be leased; menus and press releases to be written. There were glamorous jobs like arranging for garbage pickup and choosing toilet paper for the bathrooms.

  “Vanilla,” I noted, looking at the sliced cake. “Not chocolate.”

  “We can’t have you brought down by minor indiscretions,” he said. “You’re an adult now. The next time you’re in trouble, it’s off to Rikers. I’m headed home. Jane and I have plans. Promise me you’ll settle on a name before tomorrow. We have to start getting the word out.”

  Naming the club had proven difficult. I couldn’t use my name because that would have associated the business with organized crime. Cacao or chocolate couldn’t be in it, though it was necessary for people to know that they could get chocolate here. The name needed to sound fun and exciting, but not illegal in any way. I still clung to the probably foolish idea that it should evoke good health.

  “Honestly, I’m not even close,” I said.

  “That won’t do.” He looked at his watch. “I still have a little time before Jane will murder me.” He sat back down. “Let’s have your top five then.”

  “Number one, Theobroma’s.”

  “No. Hard to pronounce. Hard to spell. Ridiculous.”

  “Number two, Prohibition.”

  He shook his head. “Nobody wants a history lesson. Plus, it seems political. We don’t want to seem explicitly political.”

  “Three, the Medicinal Cacao Company.”

  “These are getting worse. I’ve already told you, you cannot have medicinal in the name of a nightclub. Sounds like sick people and hospitals and bacterial outbreaks.” He shuddered.

  “If you’re going to shoot down everything, I don’t know why I should go on.”

  “Because you have to. Something has to be painted on the sign, Anya.”

  “Fine. Four, Hearts of Darkness.”

  “Is that a reference? It’s a bit pretentious. But I like ‘dark’—‘dark’ is better.”

  “Five, Nibs.”

  “Nibs. Are you kidding?”

  “That’s what they process the cacao into,” I explained.

  “It sounds dirty and weird. Trust me. No one will ever go to a club called Nibs.”

  “That’s what I’ve got, Mr. Delacroix.”

  “Anya, I think we can go by our given names now.”

  “I’m used to Mr. Delacroix,” I said. “Frankly, I think it’s rather presumptuous of you to call me Anya.”

  “You want I should call you Ms. Balanchine?”

  “Or ma’am. Either one. I’m your boss, aren’t I?” After what he had put me through in 2083 (prison, poison), I felt entitled to josh.

  “Partner, I’d say. Or legal counsel to unnamed Manhattan club.” He paused. “Mrs. Cobrawick was a formidable woman. When you were at Liberty didn’t she teach you anything about respecting your elders?”

  “No.”

  “That institution is a waste of the land it sits on. Returning to the discussion at hand. How about the Dark Room?”

  I considered it. “Could be worse.”

  “There’s the unavoidable photography reference of course. But it’s a little bit evil. It references what we’re selling. And, at this point, we have to choose a name. Don’t you know how publicity works, Anya? You repeat the same message over and over again in as loud a voice as possible. To do this, though, we need to have something to say.”

  “The Dark Room,” I said. “Let’s do it.”

  “Good. I’m off for the night, then. Happy Birthday, ma’am. Big plans for later?”

  “I’m going to a play with my best friend, Scarlet, and Noriko.” Noriko was my brother’s wife and she was also working as my assistant.

  “What are you seeing?”

  “Scarlet bought the tickets. A comedy, I hope. I hate crying in public.”

  “It’s a good policy. I try never to do it myself,” he said.

  “Unless it served your interests somehow, I imagine. How’s your son?” I asked casually. We never talked about Win. It was a tiny present to myself to even ask the question.

  “Yes, him. Change of plans. The boy has decided to go to college in Boston,” Mr. Delacroix reported.

  “He mentioned that.” I’d boxed up his possessions, but I still hadn’t managed to bring them to work.

  “He’ll be back for holidays and summers, I imagine,” Mr. Delacroix said. “Jane and I will miss him, of course, but Boston isn’t very far.”

  “Well, give him my regards, will you?”

  “You could always come give them yourself. His father won’t object.”

  “I think that’s done, Mr. Delacroix,” I said. “He doesn’t understand about the business.”

  Mr. Delacroix nodded. “No, I can’t imagine that he would. He’s prideful and he’s been too sheltered.”

  I wanted to know if Win ever asked about me, but the question was too humiliating. “Relationships aren’t always meant to last forever,” I said, trying to sound wise. If I said this enough times, maybe I would start to believe it. “Isn’t that what you’ve always told me?”

  “Life is not easy for the ambitious, Anya.”

  “I’m not ambitious,” I said.

  “Sure you are.” His mouth was amused, but his eyes were annoyingly certain. “I should know.”

  “Thanks for the cake,” I said.

  He held out his hand for me to shake. “Happy birthday.”

  Not long after Mr. Delacroix departed, I took a bus back to my apartment.

  The truth was, I did not miss that boy.

  Maybe I missed the idea of that boy.

  * * *

  (NB: No, it wasn’t just the idea. It was him. I missed that stupid boy, but what was the point of that? I had no right to miss him. I’d made my choice. Forgive me the honeyed lies I told myself—I was still so young. And when we are young, we don’t even know completely what we are giving up.)

  * * *

  (NB: What I mean to say is that you can make a choice, be reasonably satisfied with it, and still regret that which you did not choose. Maybe it’s like ordering dessert. You have it narrowed down to either a warm peanut butter torte or strawberries jubilee. You choose the torte, and it’s delicious. But you still wonder about those strawberries…)

  * * *

  (NB: So yes, from time to time, I thought about the strawberries.)

  * * *

  Noriko and I had been waiting outside the theater for a half hour. “Should we go inside without her?” Noriko’s English had improved a remarkable amount since she’d arrived in America four and a half months ago.

  “I’ll go call her from the pay phone,” I said. I hadn’t had time to procure my, as of today, perfectly legal cell phone.

  Scarlet picked up on the fifth ring. “Where are you?” I asked.

  “Gable was supposed to watch Felix, but he never showed up. I can’t make it. You guys should go to the play without me. I’m rea
lly sorry, Annie,” Scarlet said.

  “Don’t worry about it,” I said.

  “I am worried about it. It’s your birthday, and I wanted to see the play. Can I come meet you later? We’ll dance or have drinks.”

  “Honestly, I’ve been working since six in the morning. I’ll probably go home and go to bed.”

  “Happy birthday, my love,” Scarlet said.

  The play Scarlet had chosen was about an old man and a young woman who switch bodies with each other at a wedding. The young woman’s husband has to learn to love the young woman, even though she’s in the old man’s body. And in the end, everyone learns a lot of lessons about love and acceptance and how it doesn’t matter what body you’re in. It was romantic, and I was not in the mood for a romance, which you’d think Scarlet could have guessed.

  When the actors took their bows, they were given a standing ovation, but I stayed in my seat. Romance was a lie. It was so much of a lie that it made me angry. Romance was hormones and fiction. “Boo,” I whispered. “Boo to this whole stupid play.” No one heard me. There was too much applause. I could boo all I wanted and I found this liberating.

  And the worst part was I didn’t even like the theater. Scarlet liked the theater and she hadn’t bothered to show up. And it wasn’t the first time she’d missed an appointment with me either. I honestly didn’t know why I bothered making plans with her anymore. “Boo to Scarlet. Boo to the theater.”

  Noriko was weeping and clapping like a crazy person. “I miss Leo,” she said. “I miss Leo so much.”

  Maybe Noriko did miss Leo, but in that moment, I was skeptical. They barely spoke the same language. They had known each other a little over a month when they decided to marry. And we were talking about my brother. He was a nice person, but … I’d been working with Noriko the whole summer. She was smart and, not to be mean, Leo was not.

  * * *

  I defrosted some peas and was about to close the chapter on my unmemorable eighteenth birthday when the phone rang.

  “Anya, this is Miss Bellevoir.” Kathleen Bellevoir was Natty’s math teacher at Holy Trinity, but in the summer she worked at genius camp. “There’s some trouble with Natty up here, and I wanted to let you know that she’s going to be home tomorrow.”