She took her glass of scotch into the bathroom, set it on the vanity, and locked the door behind her. She looked in the mirror and ran one hand over her jawline, seeing for the first time how her teeth grinding had bulked and hardened her jaw muscles. She caressed the nascent sags of skin under her eyes, trailed her nail along a crease across her forehead that she didn’t remember being so deep. She lifted a hand up to her perfectly bobbed chestnut hair, took hold of a single strand, and yanked. It stung, although not as much as she’d expected. She held the hair up to the light. The root was white and oily-looking. Disgusting. She let go and watched the hair flutter into the sink. She plucked out another, and then another, and then a few more. Why on earth would April do this?
The house was still. Cool, contracting metal ticked somewhere inside the ventilation system. And aside from that, nothing. Silence. As if there were nothing else in the world, nothing beyond her standing alone in this bathroom with a spent drink and a sink littered with her hair. With a blast of water, she rinsed the hair away.
The front door banged open and Kenny unleashed his little-boy war whoop. She heard him chase Mooch down the hallway and up the stairs. She just couldn’t take it, all the thumping and screeching, not today. “Kenny!” she shouted at the ceiling. “Goddamnit to hell, not now!” Above her, the footfalls stopped dead.
***
Kacy and Roger spent New Year’s Eve at the Johnson Library at a black-tie benefit for leukemia research. They both drank heavily, and Roger draped himself all over the chesty girl who was serving champagne. After the obviously repulsed girl pried him off, Kacy told him he disgusted her, and they’d stopped speaking. When Kacy awoke the next morning, she could taste cigarettes and alcohol in her mouth, but she felt surprisingly clearheaded. She was alone in the bed; Roger was sleeping it off elsewhere in the house.
A new year. Clean slates, new hopes. She picked up the phone on her nightstand and called Dinaburg at home, humming as her fingers danced over the buttons.
He answered. “Kacy,” he said. “Happy new year!”
“Happy new year to you, too. How’s your kitchen?”
“Great,” he said, “though I don’t get to use it as much as I’d like. It’s funny—I was just thinking that I’d like to talk shop with you. The other night I made a Prinze Tom torte that came out aces. My wife’s sick of hearing about it. She sure loved eating it, though.”
She asked him how the plans for the wedding were going.
“The groom hasn’t run away to Mexico or anything. So I guess we’re in good shape.”
“You know, Joel,” she purred, “you never told me about the cake you’re getting. The Rona Silverman.”
“We designed it together. Nine tiers, white and dark chocolate—El Rey and Scharffen Berger, of course—with chocolate-dipped strawberries on top and decorations that’ll knock your socks off. And it’s going to taste incredible.”
“The water.”
“Like I said, it’s magic.”
“When does the plane get in? I could pick it up. I could assemble it for you, help with the decorations.”
“No need. One of Rona’s assistants flies in with the cake.”
“Still,” Kacy said, “I have to taste it. I mean, I’d like to. Or see it. Could I see it?”
“I don’t see why not. Professional courtesy, right? It’s coming in on Friday, the day before the wedding. Let me check the time. Hang on.” Then, in the background, Kacy heard a woman’s angry voice ask him what in hell he thought he was doing. The voice demanded that he hand over the phone.
“We have no need for your services,” the voice said to Kacy. “My husband should have made that clear ages ago. And you’ve kept calling him—”
“I have not,” Kacy said.
“Don’t lie to me. You’ve been all over our caller ID. Know what I think? I think you’re stalking our cake.”
“That’s ridiculous.”
“It’s freakish, is what it is. I promise you, if you come anywhere near us, I’ll have you hauled off to jail. This is my only daughter’s wedding, and it will not—repeat, will not—be fucked with. Not by you. Not by anyone.”
What was her problem? Kacy wasn’t going to do anything wrong. She just wanted to see this cake that everyone thought was the best goddamned cake ever in the whole wide world. She opened her date book to look at the days that she’d blocked out for the Dinaburg wedding. When she got to the right page, she saw that her notes had been obliterated by huge, childish, purple-crayon letters: Kennys Birday! I am 6! She had forgotten. Good Lord, she was a freak.
***
That week Roger finally won a trial, and he and Kacy slept together. It was passionate and dramatic, celebratory and desperate, with lots of twisting and licking and shoving and clutching and sweat. When they rolled apart from each other, Kacy felt herself melting away with a warm, dreamy clarity she hadn’t felt in ages.
