100 Days of Cake Page 11

  “Hey, Mol, I thought I was opening today,” Alex says, reaching for the schedule behind the counter.

  “You were; you are. I just wanted to get a head start.”

  Looking from me to the much cleaner store, to the cans of paint, Alex appears utterly baffled. “A head start on what exactly?”

  “We’re going to save FishTopia!” I announce.

  “Save it from what? Chuck’s selling the place,” Alex says, and it’s a little frustrating that he doesn’t seem at all excited about my plans.

  “Well, it’s like you said the other day, Charlie is probably unloading the building because he’s losing money here. So all we have to do is show him how much FishTopia can bring in, and then he’ll see that he’d be crazy to let us—I mean it—go!”

  “How do you plan on doing that? Creepy Dude and your mom’s boyfriend can only buy so many fish.”

  Pinch of guilt again about ruining Mom’s relationship with Toupee Thom, but I don’t have time to dwell on that. I’ll fix all that other stuff once I fix FishTopia.

  I explain my idea to make a deal with Charlie. If we can generate enough money in the next six weeks to cover mortgage payments and operating costs for the store, then he has to hold off on the sale. We can make flyers to try to get people in the doors, and we can start offering informational sessions where we teach people all about the joys of owning saltwater fish. Plus, the tanks and the fish really are beautiful, so if we rearrange the space, we could rent it for parties or events in the evening as another way to make money I tack on for good measure. Maybe there’s no Mrs. Charlie . . . yet. “We could even have ‘Under the Sea’ themed dance nights!”

  Alex looks really skeptical, and keeps repeating the phrase “I don’t know, Mol” every time I slow down long enough for him to get a word in edgewise.

  “We have to make it a place where people want to be—like my mom did with her salon.”

  “People need to get their hair cut. No one except Creepy Dude really needs fish.”

  “Don’t you see? Yes, everyone needs a haircut, but no one needs to spend sixty bucks on it. No one needs a pedicure or massage or Mom’s special shampoo, but my mom convinced people that they do. That’s what we have to do.”

  “I don’t know, Mol,” he says again.

  “That couple from Kansas isn’t even coming back for another six weeks,” I insist. “We can at least try.”

  “I guess.”

  “Great! I asked Charlie to come in, and he said he could stop by for a few minutes on the way to his kickboxing class.”

  “Charlie does kickboxing?” Alex smiles. This is what he took away from my whole spiel?

  “Alex, focus. We have to get this place in order before one, so he can see the potential.”

  He picks up a roll of paper towels and the bottle of Formula 409. “Whatever’s clever.”

  “Thanks.” I’m touched. “It’ll be great. You’ll see.”

  “What happened to my store?” Charlie asks when he comes through the door two hours later, in boxing trunks and a stained wife-beater shirt.

  “What do you mean?” I ask innocently. “We just cleaned it up a bit.”

  Cautiously he looks around like he’s legitimately expecting a camera crew to jump out and announce he’s been punked or something. “In the two years you guys have worked here, you’ve never done that.”

  “I know, I know, but that was before. Everything is going to be different now.” Realizing I sound kind of manic, I slow down and tell him how we can turn it all around for FishTopia. I get to the part about having themed party nights to try to lure people in, when he cuts me off.

  “Forget it, girl. I’m selling this joint.”

  Sensing that I’m losing him, I go in another direction. “Charlie, you’re a businessman, a great one—a visionary, almost.” The flattery sounds ridiculously kooky, but Charlie stands a little straighter and he nods. Clearly I’m on to something. “You’ve always had a knack for finding diamonds in the rough and turning them around. You’re like the next Jimmy Buffett.”

  “ ‘Wasted away in Margaritaville’?”

  “I think she means Warren Buffett,” Alex offers.

  “Him, too!” I agree enthusiastically.

  “Well, that is true.” Charlie nods again. Alex is fighting back a laugh, so he turns to finish cleaning the sea horse tank.

  “Now, here’s the thing: you were definitely on to something with FishTopia, but it just hasn’t panned out yet. But it can. And it will, if you let us help you! This could end up being your biggest moneymaker yet!”

  If Charlie were a cartoon character, his eyes would be replaced with throbbing dollar signs.

  I explain my plan about him giving us six weeks to get things turned around. “Please, all I’m asking for is a chance to show you how lucrative this place can be. To prove how genius it was for you to go after the untapped saltwater fish market in central Florida.”

  Charlie presses his lips together and bunches his shoulders up to his neck. “I don’t know—”

  “You did say that the couple from Kansas wasn’t coming back for six weeks, right?” Alex pipes in, and I feel my heart expand in my chest. “So really you’re not risking anything. Worst-case scenario, we don’t make the money and nothing changes for you. You sell to them, and we’re all eating home-style meatloaf in the fall. No skin off your back at all.”

  “So what’s in it for you two? Why do you care so much?”

  “It’s just a really great place!” I say. “And we all really like working here together.”

  Charlie wrinkles his nose, scoffs, “I must be paying too much.”

  “Anyway.” I cut off that line of thought. “Like Alex said, there’s really nothing for you to lose.”

  “I guess that’s true,” Charlie says.

  I’m so excited, I give Charlie this really awkward hug, while he just kind of stands there and doesn’t bend his giant lumberjack body into it. Eventually I feel his arms pat my back.

  “You’re not going to be sorry,” I gush. “We’re gonna make this place a gold mine.”

  “All I said was that if you make enough money, I’ll think about it. I’m not promising anything.”

  Then Charlie heads out to his kickboxing class, and I turn to Alex. I’m grinning so hard that my cheeks hurt.

  Smiling back, he shakes his head. “I guess we’ve got our work cut out for us.”

  “You’re the best.” I literally have to bite my tongue so I don’t gush even more.

  Maybe I should have gone out with him? Maybe we are a good fit? Maybe he’s not immature, or maybe I’m equally immature, so it would work out. I push the thought aside when I remember him at the mall with V and Meredith Hoffman. Anyway, we’ve got a fish store to save! Once we get things squared away here, everything else will fall into place.

  I just know it.

  DAY 41

  S’mores Explosion Cake

  Even though it still feels like a million degrees in the store and we’re probably high off paint fumes, it’s definitely the best day I’ve had in a while.

  Alex and I are painting FishTopia. At a hardware store a few strip malls away, we picked out this gorgeous aquamarine color that kind of looks like the ocean, and we got all the supplies. Charlie even said we could use money from the petty cash drawer. (Alex and I had no idea that this drawer even existed, which is probably a good thing, since I’m sure we would both have tried to justify lo mein as a legitimate operating expense.) Now we’re back at the store, and Alex is doing broad stokes with the roller, while I’m coming in behind him with the brush to touch up any missed spots.

  He brought a speaker for his iPhone, and we’ve got his music on shuffle. It’s mostly fun stuff, like the White Stripes and Mumford and Sons, that you can sing along to.

  We’re joking around, and it feels like things used to.

  “I’ve got to hand it to you, Mol. Changing the color makes this place look a million times better,” Alex
says. He’s wearing ripped jeans and an old Killers T-shirt, everything now completely peppered with paint. It’s even in his hair.

  Shit, he does look good.

  “Yeah, I think we’re really gonna pull this off.” I want to say more about how much it means to me that he’s helping with everything, how I’m super-grateful, but I’m not so good with earnest stuff like that.

  One of Alex’s band’s songs comes on, and I recognize his voice right away even though I’ve never heard the song before. It must not be one of the things that he’s tinkered around with on the roof.

  “Is this the new Justin Bieber?” I ask.

  Face turning adorably crimson, Alex mumbles that he didn’t realize this song was on the playlist.

  “Oh, you knew what you were doing.” I giggle and point my paintbrush at him. “I can see right through you, mister.”

  “Well, what was I supposed to do? You won’t come to any of our shows.”

  “I guess I’m a captive audience now, so show me what you got. And there had better be booty shaking.”

  “Mol . . .”

  “Come on, please.”

  Finally he starts singing along.

  His voice is so good—rich and kind of rough in this soulful way, a little like Eddie Vedder but with less word-swallowing—and the song is really great too. It’s about a guy who can’t get this girl he knows out of his head, so he keeps doing all this weird stuff to distract himself. He joins a Skee-Ball league and goes on a safari—but of course none of it works, and he starts seeing the girl’s face on all the Skee-Balls, or the lion’s mane reminds him of her hair. For a brief second I wonder if the song might be about me, since Chris said I was “Alex’s Molly,” but then I remember Meredith Hoffman and all the Hot Topic girls, and I realize I’m probably being ridiculous.

  The chorus is really dorky but super-catchy, and I start singing along into my paintbrush like it’s a microphone.

  “I know that you don’t care, but I see you everywhere.

  In a boat or with a goat,

  Flying high while eating pie,

  On a train with my aunt Jane,

  Just no way to escape, the beauty of your face.”

  I’m shaking my hair like a girl in an eighties rock video and belting out the words into my brush. Taking my right hand in his, Alex puts his other arm around my waist, and we start this kind of silly two-step somewhere between a slow dance and a square dance, where he’s jostling me up and down.

  When he tries to twirl me, my stupid feet get caught up in the tarp we put down to protect the floors. I tumble over backward and manage to pull Alex down on top of me.

  It hurts, but we’re both laughing so hard that I hardly notice. For a couple of seconds we stay like that, him on top of me on the floor. The whole situation is ripped from the reels of a sitcom, but not an old rerun, more like it’s a new show, our show in high def.

  “You’ve got paint on your face.” Alex touches this spot on my check with his thumb. “I love this color; it totally matches your eyes.”

  All of a sudden we’re not laughing anymore. Everything is quiet and feels important. His stomach rises and falls against my ribs as he breathes, and his breath smells a little like today’s house special lo mein—ginger, garlic, and snow peas. This is the moment where he’s probably going to kiss me. It might be our sitcom, but there’s still a formula to these things. And I want him to, want to know once and for all how our lips would fit together. I’m starting to close my eyes in anticipation.

  An image of Dr. B. and me listening to Pearl Jam in his office pops into my mind. At once everything is on a spin cycle in my head, and I’m confused and embarrassed.

  As quickly as possible, I slide myself out from under Alex and try to stand up. My feet are still tangled in the tarp, so it takes a few minutes. Still on the floor, perched on his elbow, Alex stares up at me, this half smile on his face like he’s extremely entertained by the whole thing.

  “Come on, get back to work,” I say in this strangely croaked voice.

  Alex doesn’t seem to mind that I’m ordering him around. He just picks up his roller and starts on another wall, humming under his breath the whole time.

  Still flushed and sweaty, I go to the restroom and wash the paint off my face.

  Shake my head to clear it.

  I remember Dr. Brooks’s cell number in my wallet and think about giving him a call. Whatever, he’s my therapist. It’s only natural that I’ve come to rely on him. He’s helping me, and that’s his job. He’s got a fiancée anyway.

  Calming inhale.

  Exhale.

  Probably best not to call; I have an appointment tomorrow, anyway. I can’t wait to tell him about my plan to save FishTopia. Thinking about how proud of me Dr. B. is going to be, I actually feel a little giddy.

  When I come out, JoJo is there for the evening shift, a bent look on her face as she takes in all our hard work.

  “Looks amazeballs, right?” I ask.

  JoJo shakes her head at Alex and me. “Why are you two A-hats messing with a good thing? We’ll make a shitload more in tips if this place becomes a diner.”

  DAY 45

  Old-Fashioned Carnival Funnel Cake

  Sometimes Elle can be a lot to take, with all the yelling at total strangers and making you feel horrifically guilty for taking a shower that lasts longer than ninety seconds, but when I ask her to help hand out FishTopia flyers, she agrees in a heartbeat, even though she does still consider the place a prison for marine life.

  As sweet as that was, I’m really wishing that I hadn’t asked. She and I have been outside the store for twenty minutes, and all she’s done is complain about how many trees died to make the flyers and how most of them are going to end up being thrown away, probably in the wrong recycling bin.

  “And you couldn’t have used the white paper?” she laments. “You had to do the extra environmental damage by using colored? It has to be separated because of the inks they use . . .”

  Also, her mom is at work, and Elle couldn’t find a babysitter for her brother, so Jimmy is scaring away any potential customers by repeatedly riding his bike into the side of Wang’s Palace. People walking by keep giving us these looks of either raised-eyebrow horror or curled-lip disgust; it seems only a matter of time before someone puts a call in to Child Protective Services and we’re all carted off.

  A middle-aged woman comes out of the dry cleaner next to Wang’s with multiple plastic bags of clothes draped over her forearm, and Elle swoops in, trying to hand her a FishTopia flyer.

  “Once you get past the fact that the fish are being held against their will, the store really does have a lovely selection,” she says.

  The woman looks terrified.

  Spinning around, she hurriedly clicks her key fob, and then practically dives into a Toyota minivan. Without even bothering to hang her dry cleaning on the hooks in the back, she speeds away.

  Alex was supposed to be here half an hour ago, but there’s no sign of him. When I check my cell phone again, there aren’t any messages. I thought he wanted to save FishTopia too, so it stings that he’s apparently blowing us off. And I can feel the downward cycling starting. Maybe I should call Dr. B.

  “What the—” Elle’s mouth drops open, and Jimmy briefly stops ramming into brick walls.

  I follow their stares to a guy in a full-body blue-and-silver fish costume with metallic scales that shimmer in the sun. Through the window in the fish’s fat-lipped mouth, Alex is flashing this huge smile. I start laughing harder than I can ever remember, and when he sees me in hysterics, it makes his grin even bigger.

  With one flippered arm he waves at me. In the other one he’s got a hundred-piece box of deep-fried fish nuggets. He holds them out to me, and I take one, even though greasy breading is the last thing in the world that I want to eat in this heat.

  Vegetarian Elle of course brushes away his offer, but even she’s grinning. “Don’t you think that kind of sends the wrong message to
potential customers,” she quips. “You don’t want them eating all the merchandise.”

  “How did you . . . Where?” I ask.

  “On my way over I drove by Captain Snack’s on Sunflower, and there was this guy standing on the side of the road in this getup, offering samples of their new extra crunchy. I’m a sucker for anything fried, so I stop, and I see the poor dude is literally dripping with sweat.”

  “Yeah, I can smell,” says Elle, and I shoot her a look.

  “He looked so miserable that I jokingly offered to buy the suit from him for twenty bucks.” Alex is having trouble keeping a straight face. “And he just starts stripping, right there in the middle of the parking lot. The only thing he had on underneath was a pair of tightie whities!”

  “Gross,” says Elle, but I can’t stop laughing.

  “Ohmygod, I love it so much.”

  “He even threw in the samples.” Alex holds up the box, and Jimmy comes by and takes a fistful. “Not gonna lie, I kinda understand; this thing is a freaking sauna.”

  I want to throw my arms around him, but my nerves and the grimy costume help keep my composure. Patting his right flipper, I volunteer to get him a soda from Wang’s.

  The three of us spend all day in front of FishTopia trying to lure people into the store and making sure Jimmy doesn’t kill himself or anybody else. By six o’clock we haven’t sold a single fish.

  “It’s because Alex smells like ass.” Elle swats Alex’s dorsal fin out of her face. “Who in their right mind would come here when you reek of fried death?”