On a searing weekend afternoon Ingrid’s apartment was clean and everything
thoughtfully arranged, knickknacks curated and pristine. As it should be,
thought Ingrid, for a birthday party. She vacuumed rugs, the couch, and
washed the air conditioner vent. People and acquaintances showed up and
seemed comfortable in the space, eager to talk. There was a muted merriment
overall and most wished her a happy birthday, which reminded Ingrid about
the chocolate ganache cake that was being kept chilled in the refrigerator.

In icing it said, Happy Birthday, Ingrid, without an exclamation
point. She’d bought it from a bakery that also made a Sachertorte. Ingrid
had mulled over her options for a considerably long time, wringing her
hands tenderly like a little lamb. Finally, she decided on the ganache
cake. Ingrid was wary that a Sachertorte would make her seem ostentatious
and knowledgeable about worldly cuisine. Would the guests enjoy the apricot
jam? She feared not. She feared it would all disintegrate with the wrong
cake. She told the baker that this time she would take the ganache, but she
would come back another time, her own time, not for any occasion, just for
the Sachertorte.

She placed the chocolate ganache on the kitchen island. Guests surrounded
it in a circle, marveling at it like a sugary newborn creature. They want
to digest it, thought Ingrid. She was pleased with the reaction, people
licking their lips and widening their eyes, on the verge of shoving. Her
brother Tim set twenty-nine candles on the cake without any pattern and lit
a match. Everyone looked around unsure if they were going to sing the song,
but they sang it anyway. Moments after the ganache was served, guests
waiting patiently for a slice, barely a fraction of the ganache cut into,
smoke from the candles still being batted away from people’s faces,
Ingrid’s brother Tim stabbed her in the right eye with his fork.

It was undoubtedly a gruesome accident. The mood soured. A party guest
threw up, hand cupped over mouth, bits of fluid projecting through her
fingers. Fork in eye, shocked, Ingrid passed out and landed supine on the
kitchen tile. She knocked a bowl of pretzels off a counter on her way down,
making a mess. Drinks were dropped, plates tossed aside. No one else threw
up, but some people hid in the bathroom. Tim heard them lock the door and
pull forward the shower curtain, which had a whimsical sea pod design. He
hoped their shoes were clean, knowing Ingrid would be perturbed by scuff
marks in the tub. Someone on the outside jostled the bathroom doorknob
begging to be let in. Another yelled, “God! Call someone. Seriously,
someone call someone. There’s blood all over her face and the floor.”

A different party guest called the emergency line. Her hands were shaking,
one holding a cigarette, the other snapping, delegating tasks. She kneeled
on the ground beside Ingrid. Such a fussy person, she thought, and now
she’s deformed. This guest remembered a time when she had eaten lunch with
Ingrid at a restaurant that served only noodle bowls with various protein
and vegetable additions. Ingrid asked the cashier what kind of tofu they
used, such as was it hard or soft. I can’t eat soft tofu, Ingrid said, if
it’s too mushy I will throw up, so can you please ask the chef what kind of
tofu they use. The cashier hesitantly left her post to ask the chef about
tofu. The chef brought out a block of tofu, lazily holding it up for
inspection, as though it weighed a considerable amount and required
extraordinary effort on the chef’s part. Ingrid briefly glanced at the
block of tofu before saying she would order it, it met her standards.
Someone like that was not equipped to deal with an actual problem.

“Hello, yes there’s an emergency. The prongs of a fork went into my
friend’s eye on accident. It’s still in there. No, it’s just a table fork.
It’s not a special fork, it’s not a serving fork. I don’t think a serving
fork would fit in an eye.”

She lightly brushed Ingrid’s hair out of her face, careful not to upset the
fork, and flicked off some crumbs that had started sticking from the blood.
“How do I tell if she’s okay otherwise? She looks like she’s sleeping, but
a fork is sticking out of her eye.”

From the background, Tim asked if they should remove the fork, which was
relayed to the emergency operator. “Should we remove the fork? No, none of
us are doctors. Does it take a medical degree to pull a fork out of an eye?
Okay, we won’t. Yes, we’ll stay calm.”

When the paramedics arrived, one of them shuddered. In wide-eyed disbelief
he said, “Lordy.” It was unprofessional and earned a tsk-tsk from the
senior medic, who was secretly grossed out. He had never seen anything so
revolting and tried not to look directly at the fork. They placed Ingrid on
a stretcher and strapped her in for the ambulance ride. The party guests
lingered, shuffling around in confusion. “I feel like I’m rubbernecking.
What should we do?” No one really knew. Some took the initiative to clean
up plates and cups and sweep the floor of food debris. A few people bagged
their own presents, suspicious of other guests stealing them. Most people
left in a daze wondering if what they saw really happened.

Tim rode in the ambulance. He apologized repeatedly, speaking mostly to
himself. Never had he ruined a party or disfigured a person.

“I think I stumbled over my own feet and there was a fork in my hand. We
were getting ready to eat cake. I’m not a bad person. I swear. I don’t do
anything bad on purpose. I’m sorry. Does it seem like this couldn’t have
been an accident? How does it look?” The paramedic shook his head and
shrugged his shoulders while fussing about with medical equipment. Tim
looked at Ingrid. She seemed peaceful except for the fork and all the
blood.

“I have to tell our parents. I’m not sure what to say because I don’t
really know how this happened.”

“Maybe you should just be honest and say that. I bet they will just be
happy she’s okay. That’s most of what I see in the job. Horrific accidents
and then joy that a person still has their life.”

#

Such an injury required a substantial amount of time, weeks and weeks into
months, in the hospital. During this stretch, Tim sublimated his guilt into
productive chores to preserve their bond. He went to Ingrid’s apartment to
water plants and found a dead cockroach. He vacuumed up the corpse and
threw out the vacuum bag, fearing Ingrid would inspect it once healed and
reproach him for not letting her know he found a bug. He put bills in the
mail with corresponding checks. Every Sunday he cooked a batch of soup for
the week, which he brought to the hospital for Ingrid. He moved her car on
street cleaning days. He walked her dog. Still, Tim sensed, Ingrid remained
displeased, even prickly. He wondered how long it would take for her to
move past it.

After a series of operations, the defunct eye went behind a glass façade
that bulged slightly from her eye socket. Naked, it looked like a raisin,
in texture, if a raisin could be foggy like a blind dog’s eye. Ingrid found
the whole thing bizarre. Not only because she was unintentionally stabbed
in the eye with a fork, but because she couldn’t have seen any of this
coming as part of an ordinary day. When Ingrid woke up the Saturday of her
birthday party she knew roughly how the day would proceed. The party would
most likely be an okay time. People would participate in the habitual,
polite gesture of catching up. They would say things about work and their
home. People would eat cake and then they would leave.

Luckily, the incident happened after she blew out the candles. How
incomplete it would have been otherwise. Everyone, as far as she could
remember, had already eaten cake. According to a surgeon, she kept
mentioning her luck after she woke up in recovery.

Ingrid didn’t remember talking about cake in the recovery room. She
remembered waking up and shaking, nearly convulsing from feeling cold and
from the various medications in her system. Her hospital bed was directly
across from the nurses’ desk in the recovery room, one in a line of beds
against a wall. She opened her remaining eye and saw people going about a
day of work. Many of the nurses wore mint green pants. Doctors floated
around as well. Ingrid called out for help. “I’m shaking, I’m shaking. I
can feel my body shaking.”

A swarm of attendants started hovering near Ingrid’s bed, including a
doctor wearing a low bun that covered her ears, but not the earlobes.
Ingrid saw little diamonds sticking out. Her face was smooth with angular
features. It seemed like the doctor was conscious of this, taking extra
measures to soften herself and appease the patients as a caregiver, like by
wearing too much blush. The doctor shooed the other people away and placed
folded blankets on Ingrid’s bed but didn’t unfold them as her attention was
directed elsewhere almost immediately. Somewhere in the line of beds a
patient expressed discomfort, yelling about the pain being like a machete
in their gut. No one asked Ingrid if she was thirsty or if she wanted
anything to eat.

“Miss, I’m thirsty,” Ingrid called out. A nurse brought her a Styrofoam cup
with water and a straw. She plopped it down on the tray next to Ingrid’s
bed. It wasn’t a bendy straw. Ingrid spilled some water on herself.

“Where is my family? Do they know I’m here?” asked Ingrid, but the doctor
was talking to someone else behind a curtain, paying little attention to
Ingrid.

“Miss, I’m hungry,” and then the doctor brought Ingrid a packet of two
graham crackers. Were they from her purse, Ingrid wondered.

“My lip is twitching. I don’t have the right balance of nutrients so that
my lips don’t twitch.”

Ingrid could feel in her good eye that she was crying. Each time she went
to dab at her good eye, the doctor with the low bun that covered her ears
passed by and said, “Don’t touch your eye. It’s important that you don’t
touch it. Even the good eye must not be touched. Do you understand? Think
of them as under quarantine.” The doctor didn’t explain why this was the
case, but Ingrid listened. She suspected both of her eyes were
exceptionally raw. One, damaged and mutilated, the other, overworked and
unprepared for the responsibility. Groggy and drugged, Ingrid said, “Treat
me like a person, too. I was born in the desert, but it’s cold in here. I’m
still shaking,” but the doctor didn’t hear her. A patient hidden behind a
curtain next to Ingrid was having a worse time, calling out, agonizing
about the pain in their head feeling like a pressure cooker about to
explode.

The surgeon who removed the fork visited Ingrid at her bedside. “Ingrid,
you’re lucky your other eye is strong. Now that eye will do all the work.”
The surgeon then introduced the doctor with the low bun as someone Ingrid
could count on in recovery.

“This is Dr. Lynch. She helped me remove the fork from your eye and will
help it heal.”

Dr. Lynch, acting like she had never yelled at Ingrid before said, “You’ll
need to learn how to use just one eye. Think of it as a dog that needs
walking.” She then unfolded one of the blankets and with quick, darting
motions of her hands tucked in Ingrid’s legs and feet.

“I have a dog and it always needs walking,” Ingrid said.

“Right, so you understand. Just like a dog.”

“Just like a dog.”

“Ingrid, I want you to know that I’m invested in my patients. Their
recovery is paramount. It’s how I measure my personal success in life. We
will aggressively treat your condition until you are the best you can be.”

“That’s reassuring, Dr. Lynch. Sometimes I feel like doctors don’t care.
They just hoard information and look at us like we’re stupid for not
knowing how bodies work.”

Dr. Lynch pondered this for a moment. Wrinkles around her mouth, there from
decades of frowning, contorted aggressively into a new upward direction,
like a smile. “That’s not me.”

The surgeon started to leave, but then remembered something important to
tell Ingrid.

“Oh, and the anesthesiologist wanted me to tell you that he used the
smallest needle possible to put you to sleep. He said he found it in the
pediatric ward. He said you were crying about the needle because you’re
scared of them, so he thought it would make you feel better to know just a
little one was used,” and the surgeon turned away. Dr. Lynch followed.

#

Sometimes in the morning when Ingrid opened her eyes in the hospital and
couldn’t see the entire scope of her room she thought life would be easier,
hurdles more surmountable, if only this one thing had never happened.
Although she believed not complaining was a virtue. It’s not as if the more
she complained the more likely it was her vision would be restored and her
eye would miraculously regain its correct shape. Round, supple, but not too
round. Eyes could naturally be the incorrect shape. Like astigmatism, but
that’s not a deformity. Ingrid was disfigured.

Dr. Lynch said that referring to the eye as if it were the enemy served
little purpose in recovery, but what did this doctor know beyond how eyes
worked. She was not a therapist and a doctor, she was just a doctor. A
short, slender doctor with a weasel laugh and compulsion to crack knuckles.
Ingrid noticed Dr. Lynch cringe slightly each time Ingrid removed the glass
eye. She clenched her jaw, out of pity for Ingrid perhaps. A cherubic face
gone rancid. Maybe she was squeamish.

One day Ingrid asked Dr. Lynch if she believed in God. She asked languidly,
as if the two were old fishing buddies and the question was appropriate,
almost inevitable.

“That’s personal, Ingrid,” Dr. Lynch replied.

“I know, but I won’t tell anyone what you say.”

“Why does it matter?”

“I just want to know if the same thing happened to you, and you believed in
God, would you think you were being put through a test? Would you think it
was a test of faith or would you think you were being punished for a sin?”

“Oh, Ingrid.”

After Ingrid asked Dr. Lynch that question, she had a hard time getting Dr.
Lynch’s attention. The doctor claimed to be booked with off-site physical
therapy appointments, months in advance, when before that was not the case.
Ingrid asked a hospital receptionist why there was a sudden uptick in the
amount of people making appointments for eye exams with Dr. Lynch. The
receptionist pretended not to understand the complaint and eventually
stopped taking down Ingrid’s requests. Ingrid left a review for Dr. Lynch
online. She said that while the doctor was certified from a prodigious
university, and clearly skilled in her field, she upheld a firm barrier
between doctor and patient relations. If someone were looking for a doctor
that might tell them a personal story, this was not the doctor. If you just
wanted to get better, she was fine.

Ingrid was assigned to a new doctor, Dr. Jean Aubrey, who she refrained
from asking questions about God for the meantime, although didn’t entirely
table the idea. The new doctor, while also certified in medicine with
university degrees displayed on the office wall, had an interest in the
mystical. There was an oil painting of a coyote in the desert behind her
desk. She also had a small nose ring, which made Ingrid wonder how much the
doctor paid attention in medical school. Dr. Jean Aubrey, rebel and
caregiver.

At their introductory meeting, the new doctor gifted Ingrid a smooth black
rock with a slight sheen when light hit the stone correctly. It fit
perfectly in the center of her hand.

“The rock is intended as a device to keep you grounded, Ingrid. Touch it
for a sense of calm.”

“I’ve never been gifted a rock. I didn’t know I needed one,” said Ingrid.

“You definitely need this rock. And it isn’t any ordinary rock. Try
meditating with it in your hand for the next week. Caress it when you feel
like your brain is looping. Squeeze it to ground your mind.”

“Where did you get this rock?”

“It’s from my personal rock collection, of which I’ve been building for the
past ten years from various international vacations.”

“Wow, so where overseas did you get this?”

Dr. Aubrey squinted her eyes and reached out for the rock, inspecting it
closer. She handed it back to Ingrid.

“You know what? I was confusing this rock for another rock. This one I
found outside of a post office on Vermont Ave. I don’t even remember what I
was doing there—probably mailing something, but maybe picking something
up—when I saw this most splendid rock on the ground.”

“Oh. It’s a landscape rock.”

“More or less. I think we’ll see results, spiritual results, at our next
appointment. Medical ones, too. Your good eye must stay strong. We will
exercise the good eye, but the bad eye needs spiritual attention. It all
needs work.”

“Do I pay for this rock on my way out?”

“Ingrid, it’s a gift. It’s part of your treatment, but it’s a gift.”

At the end of her next appointment, Dr. Jean Aubrey asked, with vexation,
if Ingrid had meditated holding the rock.

“I think so, but I didn’t know what I was doing. I’ve never meditated.”

“But you’ve held a rock before, haven’t you?” The doctor rolled her chair
closer to Ingrid as if proximity would reveal anything.

“I can’t be sure, but I don’t think I’ve ever held a rock with any
intention.”

“Ingrid, have you ever done anything in your life with any intention?”

“That feels harsh. Like something Dr. Lynch would say.”

“Dr. Lynch only cares about chemical medicine, she can’t expand her
knowledge. I have a sense about these things. Let me give you another rock.
This one helps with intention.”

Ingrid left the appointment with a clear quartz stone. Dr. Aubrey also
encouraged Ingrid to join a support group that she spearheaded for other
patients recovering from traumatic eye injuries.

Ingrid went. Each Saturday afternoon they met in the cafeteria of the
hospital. Everyone brought their own snack, which often came from a vending
machine in the hallway. From afar it looked like a large group of friends
out for lunch, except everyone had eye patch or medical-grade sunglasses or
a glass eye or only one eye open. No one was terminally ill, but they all
gave off the impression of being nearly dead anyway.

By the third meeting, Ingrid noticed a handful of regulars. Some of them
she came to remember by name and some of them she didn’t. This was never a
strength of hers. She often remembered people instead by obvious physical
traits, a sure way to quickly diminish people into nothing. That person
with the large forehead, I remember them, thought Ingrid. This was only the
second meeting Ingrid had attended, so people were still getting to know
her. A regular who lost an eye to a dog attack tried to make Ingrid feel
welcomed. Ingrid remembered her because she had yellow teeth.

“What do you do for work, Ingrid?”

“I teach the third grade at a private elementary school. Or, I taught third
grade. I’m not sure if I will get my job back. Anyway, there are three
teachers per grade. They divide the students up by emotional intelligence—a
polite way of grouping together the ones who cry a lot; advanced
intelligence—the students bound for exceptional incomes; and those in the
middle, the children so average it’s a genuine mystery where to place
them.”

“Which one do you teach?”

“I teach the first group because, and this isn’t just in my mind, my
reserved personality comes across as a little soft, something the
administration believed would connect with the crying children. In the end,
it doesn’t matter because at recess all the children play with pill bugs.”

Dr. Aubrey finished peeling an apple into one long spiral of skin and asked
if anyone wanted something to drink. She always brought a pitcher of
homemade lemonade, which Ingrid always declined because it was nothing more
than sugar and water.

Ingrid turned back to her conversation. “See, the thing is that I don’t
think anyone likes me at work.”

“Why not?” the young woman with the yellow teeth asked.

“No one sent a card or flowers while I was out. One teacher apologized and
said no one knew my address, but I know they know they could have gotten my
address from the administration office because when Elaine—this lady I work
with named Elaine—was out just for a sprained ankle there were three, maybe
four cards heading her way and I remember pitching in a few dollars for
flowers. How do you think they know where she lived? The administration
office. That’s where the records are kept.”

“Maybe they forgot about that option,” the young woman with the yellow
teeth said. “It’s hard to remember the process for doing everything when
you don’t do the things very often.”

Ingrid shut down. She couldn’t seriously consider the opinion of someone
with yellow teeth as it was a clear lack of personal hygiene and self-care.
The truth was, Ingrid didn’t have many friends. She never understood the
type of people who knew a lot of people. It always seemed like a
generational trait that could only be gifted. If your grandparents knew a
lot of people and were well-connected, they just passed that technique down
the line. The new doctor chimed in.

“Ingrid, you must have friends if you had a birthday party where your
accident happened or were those all strangers?”

“A few people were my friends, but a lot of people invited were Tim’s
friends. I’ve never been one for big parties. I had a pool party once in
elementary school and a friend of mine told me she couldn’t make it and
then she showed up anyway, like her presence would be the thing to
celebrate, and since then I’ve really just soured on the whole idea of
parties, but Tim convinced me to have one because it’s the last of my
twenties.”

Dr. Jean Aubrey then clapped her hands to get the attention of everyone,
like they were all little show dogs responding to a cue. It was time for
the group session check-in where everyone went around and said something
good that happened to them in life even though they were all without at
least one eye, some of them without two. Life could go on, was the point of
this exercise. Good memories could overpower the negative ones. The new
doctor preferred if people shared positive experiences that happened after
their eye traumas, but she accepted any memory that brought people joy. The
girl with the large forehead went first.

“This week I successfully navigated the tumultuous waters of applying for a
job. Since I lost my eye it’s been hard to convince myself that I deserve
to be in public, but I applied for a job at a retail store and I think it
will go well. I think I will get the job even though they asked me to wear
an eye patch to the interview.”

“That’s wonderful,” said Dr. Jean Aubrey. “Does anyone have a reply to
that?”

No one had a reply and most people just stretched out in chairs and amused
themselves by staring off in the distance or picking at dried crusts of
food on the tables until it was their turn to talk.

Ingrid said, “If you wear an eye patch, are they really accepting you? It
sounds like that will just draw more attention to your problem and invite
jokes at your expense.”

The girl with the large forehead looked to the new doctor for reassurance
that the positive memory she shared was in fact the right thing and Ingrid
was just antagonizing out of boredom. Dr. Jean Aubrey encouraged Ingrid to
share instead of criticizing.

“Okay. I often think back fondly on the perfect cake at my birthday party.
It was a chocolate ganache and everyone enjoyed it just before I was
stabbed in the eye by my brother on accident. Everything was in order and
even.”

The girl with the large forehead said, “How do you know everyone enjoyed
it?” She didn’t intentionally antagonize Ingrid, but felt no contrition
after realizing she poked a sore subject. Ingrid was her least favorite
person in the group. She often complained about the amount of added sugar
in the vending machine selections, saying there were no appropriate snacks
available, but that she was still hungry, she just couldn’t eat anything
with more than the recommended percentage of sugar for the entire day in a
single snack.

“How would I not know? I saw them.”

“Well, at last week’s meeting you told the story about how the accident
happened and it sounded like most people didn’t eat cake.”

Ingrid started scratching repeatedly at her neck as she thought back on
what had happened. The surgeon said she talked about cake, she remembered
blowing out the candles, she remembered a complete party despite the
accident. She bought the chocolate ganache specifically so that people
would enjoy themselves at the birthday party. Without the cake, without any
of the guests indulging in the chocolate ganache it was nothing more than
just an assemblage of acquaintances who witnessed the most horrific
accident of her life. Ingrid thought her throat was melting and started
compulsively swallowing to save herself from choking, a familiar sensation,
usually felt when she knew something was amiss but couldn’t yet articulate
the full reasoning.

“You weren’t there, so you really don’t know. Why would you do that? Why
would you place doubt in something you don’t know anything about?
Something’s wrong with you and your forehead.”

“Okay, Ingrid,” said Dr. Jean Aubrey to her troubled little dog and broke
out a plate of homemade cookies and instructed everyone to get out their
rocks for group mediation.

#

Several months later Ingrid was released from the hospital. She would
continue her treatment with Dr. Jean Aubrey at a rehab facility and could
still stop by the hospital for group if she felt like it. That night at
dinner Ingrid pushed around large slices of potatoes in her soup bowl while
Tim slurped his food across from her. They ate at Ingrid’s apartment in
front of the television because Ingrid couldn’t stand the sound of chewing.
They watched a home renovation show that fixed up outdated homes for
couples in nowhere America.

“It’s essentially just the same episode on an endless cycle. Even the
decorations look the same at the end. Open floor plan, large kitchen,
hardwood floors, not linoleum. That’s the key. And I didn’t know what
shiplap was before all of this became public knowledge.” Tim genuinely
enjoyed renovation shows.

“Someone at group therapy once asked me if people at the party actually ate
the cake.”

“That’s a weird question to ask.”

“Did they?”

“That one girl I work with who threw up had a bite, I think, but the cake
had barely made it to a handful of plates before it happened.”

“Right, before you stabbed me.”

Ingrid said, “I’m done,” and waited for Tim to clear her dishes. She was
perfectly capable of washing her own dish, but she refused.

“So, no one had cake. Not only did the party completely implode, but it was
also incomplete. Cake means there was a party that celebrated a birthday,
my birthday at my party with a cake that I bought, but no one ate cake, so
it’s like people just came over to watch me get stabbed in the eye for no
reason.”

Tim, older and less severe in personality, lacked the energy required to
engage with Ingrid’s temperament and often didn’t challenge anything she
said, but went immediately to finding a resolution.

“Should we get another cake?”

“And you and I just eat it? We shove it in our faces? Like a couple of
people eating our feelings with no other way to cope? No, we invite
everyone back to the apartment and recreate the party and provide a new
cake, a better cake that people will eat and then the party will be
complete.”

“Ingrid, what am I supposed to tell everyone? That you’re having a second
birthday party?”

She wouldn’t turn her strong eye from the television where walls were being
demolished in quick succession.

“Yes, exactly,” she said. “No one will be surprised. The first party was
completely ruined.”

#

Ingrid returned to the bakery shop where she first bought the chocolate
ganache. The same baker was behind the counter, shielded by a fortress of
batter and butter and icing. She waited her turn impatiently and idly
perused the selection of treats.

“You bought the chocolate ganache. Haven’t seen you since, but . . . oh, my
goodness.” As with most people who abruptly noticed her glass eye, the
baker became uncomfortable, worried that his calling Ingrid out for not
being in the shop was insensitive to whatever had happened to her during
that absence.

“Don’t worry about it,” Ingrid said, “my brother stabbed me on my birthday,
but it was an accident, so he’s not in jail or anything. I’ve come back
because I’m having a second party. It’s a continuation of the first one,
but this time it will end. Last time it never ended, it just stopped.”

The baker might normally crack a joke like, “Oh, you want to lose the other
eye, too,” but Ingrid seemed like the type of person who would call the
Better Business Bureau to file a complaint, but with a tender voice like
she was protecting the neighborhood and not just lodging a grievance with
agitation in her tone, so instead he said that was a lovely idea and what
could he help her with.

“I see you still sell Sachertorte cakes.”

“Yes, that’s right.”

“And where did you learn to bake this?”

“Seriously?”

“I’m curious.”

“From someone else who knew how to bake a Sachertorte.”

“That makes sense.” Ingrid, like the first time she went to the shop,
continued wringing her hands until they were red, like little burned paws.
She felt a reflexive twitch in her face. She leaned in close to the display
case, enough so that her nose left a tiny smudge. For the first party, she
had concerned herself with what the guests would think of the apricot jam,
what they would think of the way her house was decorated, the art she
liked, and the type of frames she chose for the art, like if the colors
complemented the image or competed with it. She had passed on the
Sachertorte because she couldn’t accurately say who liked apricot jam. It
was safer to assume that everyone, or almost everyone liked chocolate. The
baker, without other customers in the shop, stared at Ingrid so she would
decide.

“Well? Do you want the Sachertorte?”

“No, let’s go with the chocolate ganache.”

As the baker walked into the back, Ingrid swore she heard him mutter
something.

From the back he called, “What do you want the cake to say? Same as last
time?”

“Yes, the same as last time. No exclamation point.”

Ingrid waited in the shop for the cake to be ready.