In the Age of Love and Chocolate (2 page)

Though I have never been much of a dreamer, I had the oddest dream in which I was Scarlet’s baby. Scarlet held me in her arms, and the feeling overwhelmed me. All at once, I remembered what it was to have a mother, to be safe, and to be loved by someone more than anything else in the world. And in the dream, Scarlet somehow transformed into my mother. I could not always picture my mother’s face, but in this dream, I could see her so clearly—her intelligent gray eyes and her wavy reddish-brown hair and the hard pink line of her mouth and the delicate freckles sprinkled across her nose. I had forgotten about the freckles, and that made me even sadder. She had been beautiful, but she didn’t look like she took guff from anyone. I knew why my father had wanted her even though he should have married anyone
but
her, anyone but a cop.
Annie,
my mother whispered,
you are loved. Let yourself be loved.
In the dream, I couldn’t stop crying. And maybe that is why babies cry so much—the weight of all that love is simply too much to bear.

“Hey,” Win said. I sat up and tried to pretend I hadn’t been sleeping.
(Aside: Why do people do that? What is so embarrassing about being asleep?)
“I’m leaving now. I wanted to talk to you before I went.”

“You haven’t changed your mind, I suppose.” I did not look him in the eye. I kept my voice cool and even.

He shook his head. “You haven’t either. My dad talks about the club sometimes. Business continues, I know.”

“So what do you want, then?”

“I wondered if I could stop by your place to get a few things I left there. I’m going to my mother’s farm in Albany and then I’ll only be back in the city for a bit before I leave for college.”

My tired brain tried to make sense of this statement. “Leave?”

“Yes, I decided to go to Boston College. I don’t have a reason to stay in New York anymore.”

This was news to me. “Well, good luck, Win. Have a
fantastic
time in Boston.”

“Was I supposed to consult you?” he asked. “You certainly never consulted me about anything.”

“You’re exaggerating.”

“Be honest, Anya.”

“What would you have said if I had told you I was going to ask your father to work for me?” I asked.

“You’ll never know,” he said.

“I do! You would have told me not to do it.”

“Of course I would have. I would have told Gable Arsley not to work with my father, and I don’t even like him.”

I can’t say why, but I grabbed his hand. “What things of yours do I have?”

“You have some of my clothes and my winter coat and I think your sister might have one of my hats, but Natty can keep that. I left my copy of
To Kill a Mockingbird
in your room, and I might like to read it again someday. But mainly I need my slate back for college. It’s under your bed, I think.”

“There’s no need for you to stop by. I can put the stuff in a box. I’ll bring it to work, and your dad can take it to you.”

“If that’s what you want.”

“I think it would be easier. I’m not Scarlet. I don’t crave pointless, dramatic scenes.”

“As you like, Anya.”

“You’re always so polite. It’s irritating.”

“And you always keep everything inside. We’re a terrible match, really.”

I crossed my arms and turned away from him. I was angry. I wasn’t certain why I was angry, but I was. If I hadn’t been so tired, I feel quite sure I would have been better able to keep my emotions in check.

“Why did you even come to the launch party for the club if you weren’t going to at least
try
to forgive me?”

“I
was
trying, Anya. I wanted to see if I could get past it.”

“So?”

“It turns out I can’t.”

“You can.” I didn’t think anyone could see us, but I wouldn’t have cared anyway. I threw my arms around him. I pushed him into the side of the balcony and pressed my lips against his. It only took me a couple of seconds to notice that he was not, in fact, kissing me back.

“I can’t,” he repeated.

“So that’s it. You don’t love me anymore?”

For a moment, he didn’t reply. He shook his head. “Not enough to get past this, I guess. I don’t love you that much.”

To restate:
He had loved me, just not enough.

I couldn’t argue with that, but I tried to anyway. “You’re going to regret this,” I said. “The club is going to be a huge success, and you’re going to regret that you didn’t stand by me. Because if you love someone, you love them all the way. You love them even when they make mistakes. That’s what I think.”

“I’m meant to love you, no matter how you act, no matter what you do? I couldn’t respect myself if I felt that way.”

He was probably right.

I was tired of defending myself and of trying to convince him to see things from my point of view. I looked at Win’s shoulder, which was less than six inches from my face. It would be so easy to let my neck drop and ease my head into that cozy space between his shoulder and his chin, which seemed designed specifically for me. It would be easy to tell him the club and the business with his father were terrible mistakes and to beg him to take me back. For a second I closed my eyes and tried to imagine what my future would look like if Win were in it. I see a house somewhere outside the city—Win has a collection of antique records, and maybe I learn to cook a dish besides macaroni and frozen peas. I see our wedding—it’s on a beach and he’s wearing a blue seersucker suit and our rings are white gold. I see a dark-haired baby—I call him Leonyd after my father, if it’s a boy, and Alexa, after Win’s sister, if it’s a girl. I see everything and it is so very lovely.

It would be so easy, but I would hate myself. I had a chance to build something, and in the process, to do what my father had never been able to do. I couldn’t let that go, even for this boy. He, alone, was not enough.

So I held my tired neck erect and kept my eyes fixed forward. He was going, and I would let him.

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

“
T
HERE 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.