Rachel Cohn - Cupcake

Cupcake

Rachel Cohn

To Real Danny & Anna

(who's really a cupcake)

acknowledgments

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With deep, deep thanks to: Patricia McCormick (this book's fairy godmother and this author's cherished friend); Seora Sandi Merrill (gracias for the espaol); Sharon Brown at Oren's Daily Roast on Waverly (who doses the love into the caffeine); David Levithan (way more a Jimmy Stewart than a Thelma Ritter); Cecil Castellucci (the Queen of Cool, and of Los Feliz); the many fine and dedicated folk at S&S and WMA who have made these books possible--in particular David Gale, Alexandra Cooper, Jennifer Rudolph Walsh, and Alicia Gordon; my friends and family (for the ongoing love and support); and last but certainly not least, all the lovely readers who wrote asking for more, more, more.

vi

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ONE

A cappuccino cost me my life.

I have only myself to blame, thinking myself even capable of starting a new life.

Also, I blame my mother. She lured me to my doom.

"Cyd Charisse, how many times do I have to ask you?" my mother had said into my cell phone as I traipsed down the stairs of my new apartment building in my new life in New York City. "Have you registered for a culinary school class yet or not?" Just like my mother, to send me off into the world on my own and then let barely a week pass before attempting to micromanage my every move from a coast away in San Francisco.

"Soon, my little pretty," I promised. "I have more important business to take care of first." Like, go out for a coffee--then figure out how to execute the Plan for my new life. No civilized person

should be expected to go about the routine of their daily lives until they are properly caffeinated in the morning. It should be written into the Bill of Rights.

Proving miracles do indeed happen, I'd passed through the first stage of the Plan for the new life by graduating high school. (Pause for moment of shock and a giant sigh of relief from my parents.) That mission accomplished, my Plan laid out that I would then celebrate liberation from my parents' college dreams for me by (1) moving into the empty bedroom in my half brother Danny's apartment in Greenwich Village (done); (2) possibly enrolling in some culinary school classes (working up to it), where I'd definitely win all the important awards like Student with Most Potential to Perfect the Art of the Peanut Butter Cookie, or the coveted So Culinarily (shut up, it is too a word) Blessed She Can Jump Right into Building Her Own Sweets Empire After Only One Class; and (3) the linchpin of the whole Plan--I would not obsess over turning down the marriage proposal from Shrimp, the love of my former high school life, so he could move to New Zealand like he wanted and I could move to Manhattan like I wanted (not there yet with achieving the non-obsession part of the goal). Of course, let's not forget (4)--find the perfect cappuccino in my new city (I was on my way).

And besides, why would I--hello again, (3)--bother mourning the end of my relationship with my beauty surfer boy when I'd be

too busy scamming all the hot guys in NYC, right? The Plan had wiggle room to allow for the probability that almost immediately upon embarking on my new Manhattan existence, I would jump into some sexual experimentation, not with the usual same-sex relationship or the even more unusual longing for androids, but like experiment-fling with a really old and sophisticated guy, like maybe thirty years old. He'd own some anti-hip music club, not one of those chic clubs with VIP rooms for supermodels and underfed movie starlets, but like some raging punk thrasher club. The club would probably be called something like Che or Trotsky, and it would be the choice dive venue, where starving artist musicians wailed from grimy floors and a snarly ambience of hot punk guys with crazy hair and tattoos lit the room and wait a minute, why am I going for the older owner guy when all these gorgeous young indie boys with spiked hair and fully kissable lips on stubble mouths are right in front of me?

SHRIMP!!!!!!!!!!! WHY DID I LET YOU GO?!?!?!?

"CC," my mother stated, for a refreshing change acknowledging my preferred letter name over that movie star name she'd stuck me with, "Are you still there? I said which class are you planning to take first? I looked through the catalog, and it looks to me like if you intend to pursue the pastry rather than the cooking curriculum, you need to start with Introduction to Baking Techniques and Ingredients. And have you looked through the home decorating

catalog I sent you? I flagged the pages with window treatments I thought you'd like in your new bedroom."

"Caffeine," I muttered into the phone. I needed caffeine before I could think about following through with the culinary school part of the Plan. I'd need a whole new identity before I'd let my mother choose bedroom window treatments for my new room.

The caffeine quest beckoned me out of doors. I craved a reminder taste of Shrimp and our espresso-and-fog-hued old life together in San Francisco. So I wanted to cheat a little on the Plan. What choice did I have? My new bedroom in my new life in New York City lacked the vibe only Shrimp would have brought it--his paintings on the walls, his surfboard parked at the door, his weird art of smashed pieces from cell phones and pagers melded into crucifix sculptures, his rap songs whispered into my ear as I fell asleep spooned inside his body. No catalog could deliver me Shrimps fundamental Him.

Damn. Shoulda been part of the Plan--Shrimp. Me and my ignorant aspirations for self-actualization. What drug had I been on? I had to be so mature about letting Shrimp go. Big mistake number one.

I tuned my mother out and repeated a mantra inside my head-- stupid CC, stupid CC, stupid CC --as I banged down the stairwell of my new apartment building. Five freakin' flights down, five freakin' flights to ponder the Shrimpless fate and the questionable

Java awaiting me once I reached ground level and flung myself out onto the streets of New York City.

The strange, unspoken truth about Manhattan: It is very hard to get a good coffee here. Believe it. Here in one of the most bohemian neighborhoods in the world, finding a quality espresso is about as easy as finding an available straight man at the Whole Foods store in Chelsea. No, it doesn't make sense.

I'd already spent my first week here hunting through the Village in search of that perfect espresso shot: dark, thick, and rich, a tan layer of crema on top, at just the right temperature, in just the right properly warmed espresso cup, as Shrimp taught me to appreciate. A dozen different cafs, and zero luck. It's not that the espressos I consumed on my quest were terrible. They were worse. They were mediocre. Flat and too watery, made with beans ground too coarsely, using machines clearly not maintained with the proper measure of reverence and affection, brewed without love or any discernible sense of quality control. Don't get me started on the cappuccinos I sampled. Foaming milk is an art form, but no place I went seemed to care. The baristas were all about moving the customers through the line and shouting back "TALL SKIM VANILLA SOY LATTE" orders like they were working the drive-through window at Burger King. Posers.

I had expected more from New York.

I had expected the top-secret alternate Plan to have kicked in

and for Shrimp to have voluntarily given up on New Zealand and found me here by now.

At least I could count on my brother Danny to get me through, no matter what the Plan. He'd sent me bounding out of our apartment with tales of a place on a Village alleyway somewhere near Gay Street (bless him), where some man-god barista called Dante made the perfect espresso shot. Dante was a true coffee legacy, descended from a long line of Corsican baristas, according to Danny. The trick with Dante was you had to catch him. He'd be there for days or weeks, and word would spread of his greatness, and soon the caf would be packed with the obsessive espresso lovers who could find their way to the secret alleyway. Then Dante would disappear for months or years, with no warning.