as graceful as a dancer. “What I was going to say was, ‘next time, maybe you could take your tie off.’”
I HAD A VERY NICE time, the e-mail said. Perhaps we could do it again sometime.
Karen stared at the words and felt ridiculously guilty. She didn’t owe Ron anything. All they’d shared was coffee, but the fact that she’d shared completely inappropriate desktop sex with Dexter only a day after her date with the CPA filled her with remorse and that translated into an odd feeling of guilt where Ron was concerned.
Not knowing how to answer or what to say, she closed her computer and did what she too often did in times of stress. She walked over to Chelsea’s place.
But it turned out she wasn’t the only one acting un-characteristically crazy. When she got there, before she could open her mouth and wail out her troubles, her caterer and friend put a finger over her lips and beckoned her to follow.
Wondering if her complete lunacy was perhaps catching, she warily followed Chelsea who crept toward the industrial kitchen she shared with Laurel, the cake designer. Stealthily opening the door, she quietly beckoned Karen into the kitchen ahead of her.
And then Karen realized why she’d acted so secretive.
Laurel was in the throes of creation.
Laurel wasn’t a woman who worked in a normal way. In fact there was little about Laurel that was exactly mainstream. She was a wraithlike creature who tended to wear gauzy clothes and Indian cottons. She practiced yoga and had spent more time than was probably good for her in an ashram.
She was as insubstantial as gossamer, as unworldly as a nun, as hard to pin down as a cloud.
But her cakes were pure magic.
An artist whose media were devil’s food and fondant and royal icing and marzipan and heaven knew what else, she was a joy to watch, though easily distracted, so both women stood quietly watching as she painted food coloring onto whimsical flowers. The cake itself was a child’s fantasy of fairies and strangely shaped trees, animals and a pair of dainty children.
They left the kitchen as quietly as they’d entered it. “What’s the occasion?” Karen asked.
“It’s a fundraiser for a children’s shelter. She volunteered the cake.”
Karen shook her head fondly. “It’s a good thing she has us or she’d never make any money.”
“I know. She truly is the most airy-fairy person I’ve ever met. Can you imagine how she could clean up in New York or L.A. if she had any ambition?”
“I do have ambition,” a soft voice said behind them. Laurel moved as quietly as the fairies she loved to create and seemed neither surprised nor offended to find them talking about her. “I want every cake to tell a story.” She removed the scarf she’d wrapped around her multicolored hair and shrugged out of the plain white apron that always seemed much too big and heavy for her slight frame. “I’m just not into material success.”
“I know, honey,” Karen said. “We weren’t criticizing you. We love you.”
“I know.” She turned suddenly, her waifish look vanishing in a mischievous grin. “And it’s a lot easier to pay my rent since you two took over my billings.” She rolled her neck and then did a few shoulder exercises. “Would you like to see my sketches for the circus wedding cake?”
“Love to.”
Laurel dug a well-worn sketchbook from her hand-woven bag. She flipped through the book and showed them a watercolor drawing of the cake.
“This is why you are a genius,” Chelsea exclaimed when they looked at the drawing. “I’d have gone with a circus tent probably, or tightrope walkers or something to suggest a circus.”
Karen nodded.
“Too mundane,” the young woman replied.
What she’d created was difficult to describe. She’d drawn a tower of diminishing-sized cake layers that grew narrower as the cake grew taller, so it felt as though the cake might disappear into the clouds. From the top she’d drawn an explosion of multicolored ribbons cascading like fireworks.
“Will these be ribbons?” Karen asked, wondering how she’d get ribbon to contort into those shapes and stay there.
“No. Gum paste. That’s sugar with natural gum that feels like Play-Doh but dries hard. It holds its shape so I can get icing ribbons to curl and dance.”
“Amazing. And I know that’s fondant, right?” Karen added, having worked with Laurel long enough to know how much she liked to cover her cake with the smooth icing which she could paint, often using a special airbrush tool. The cake design was like an abstract painting, with reds and purples, blues and greens, and bright splotches of yellow all clashing and intermingling. Somehow she suggested movement through color. Without including a single circus element, she’d caught the energy of Cirque du Soleil. “It’s brilliant,” Karen agreed.
“Glad you like it. I’ll probably add a few elements, but this is the basic idea.” She stuffed the book into her bag. “Well, I’ve got to go to my Vinyasa flow class. See you later.” And she was gone.
“Sometimes I wonder if she’s real or a figment of my imagination,” Karen said after the door closed silently.
“I know. Nobody should be that quiet. Or serene. It’s kind of creepy.”
“What’s creepy is that she weighs ninety pounds soaking wet and works with cake all day. It’s not fair.” She stared at the door broodingly. “What is Vinyasa flow anyway?”
“Some kind of yoga, I think.”
“Maybe I should take up yoga. Maybe I’d end up as thin as Laurel.”
Chelsea shook her head. “Are you back to that again?”
“Did I ever leave it?”
“Someday you will meet a man who adores your curves.”
“I should have been born in the era of Mae West and all those tiny, chubby pin-up girls.” She put her hands on her ample hips. “Instead, I come of age when the ideal is a ten-foot-tall anorexic. It’s not fair.”
“I would think a lot of men would prefer a curvy woman to an elongated skeleton.”
Karen thought of her and Dex on her desk and felt heat suffuse her face.
Chelsea was quick to pick up on it. “Oh, no. Look at you blushing and staring at the floor. Have you met such a man?”
“No. Not exactly.” And she realized that her feelings about Dex were far too confusing to share with anyone. Instead she said, “That CPA e-mailed me. He said he enjoyed our coffee date.”
“That’s great, right?”
“Yes, I suppose. I didn’t think it was a very exciting date though.”
