Having Cake

At dinner, Clyde perks up and asks everyone at the table, “Have you had the desserts at the Books-a-Million coffee shop?”

None of us has. I’ve seen them — tall pillars of cake, slathered with frosting … fat muffins topped with cream cheese … thick cookies bursting with chips and nuts. My concern? That these goodies, like so many on display in bookstore coffee shops across the nation, would look far better than they taste.

“That’s a place we should stop after dinner, then,” Clyde says.

I feel as though I’m in the Twilight Zone. Clyde never cares about dessert. Clyde never mentions a coffee shop. Despite having packed myself to the bursting point with chicken pad thai, I agree the whole group should stop at Books-a-Million to see these desserts … mostly because I want to see what kind of dessert draws Clyde’s attention.

We arrive. Sharronda, the employee assigned to the coffee counter, putters around, shutting things down. She greets us less than enthusiastically, but perks up when I pop a dollar in the tip jar.

Dan and Wayne ask Sharronda to wrap up two cookies and a slab of the chocolate chocolate cake. The cake itself is four stories tall, with a generous layer of icing. Sharronda carves out an eye-popping wedge and plops it into a styrofoam container made to hold Big Macs. She then turns to me to take my order.

I turn to Clyde. “What’ll you have?”

He shakes his head. “Nothing, thanks.”

I’m stunned. “Nothing? No dessert? You’re the reason we’re here in the first place!”

He shrugs and points to the counter, where Sharronda has not yet collected a small plate littered with free sample bites of caramel cake. “I had one of those. That’s all I wanted.”

Sharronda clears her throat and checks her watch.

“A piece of chocolate cake,” I say. “And two cookies.”

Back home, I work my way, slowly and steadily, through the monstrous slice of cake. Consuming all of it is more of a chore than a joy, but I am unable to stop myself, despite the fact I’m already full. Already obscene in its dimensions, the remaining cake becomes larger and thicker and stickier by the minute.

Clyde sits on the couch beside me, watching Survivor. He has no cake, completely happy having had only one small bite.

I, on the other hand, am increasingly unhappy, having had my cake and eaten it, too.

It occurs to me that this difference between us — his happiness with little, and my unhappiness with much — says a great deal about us both.