Cupcake by Rachel Cohn Page A

fire. Oh, and the cook doesn't always show up for work, so sometimes we don't serve hot food, we just serve whatever's available in the case or in the fridge, and the usual drinks and stuff."
    "Sounds like a great business plan, Mold."
    It's funny, but as Johnny explained the surroundings, I didn't see dilapidated fixtures. I saw potential. A fixer-upper. And that's funny and totally scary ... because that's how my mother would envision the place too.
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    Johnny said, "What's it matter? The business will die out once my old man passes on, so I'm just gonna keep it running as long as he holds out. If he doesn't mind a business that makes no money, why should I? But if you're looking for job stability or something, you're in the wrong place."
    "Job stability," I said. "Yawn."
    "I think you and me are going to get on just fine."
    Since there were no customers around to serve, I sat down at the counter next to Johnny. I like getting to know a new person by starting out with the big questions.
    "What are you gonna do with your life once you don't have this place to run?" I asked him.
    "I don't know. I guess if I ever truly thought about it, I'd say I kinda wanna be an architect."
    "Every boy at some point says he wants to be an architect. What's up with that?"
    It's true. It's like some biological boy imperative. No matter what level of talent or intelligence or whatever he might possess, at some stage of his life, a boy dreams of becoming an architect.
    Sigh. Missing the Ocean Beach castles-in-the-cold-sand that Shrimp used to build me on lame waves, wanna-be-architect days.
    Johnny said, "The first major accomplishment of my life was building the entire Death Star out of LEGOs. I was seven. That shit affects you, dude. Inspires you to want to keep building, I guess."
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    "Clarify. Makes you want to keep building fortresses of doom, or keep building ... buildings generally?"
    "Either/or. So long as the building doesn't get in the way of band practice."
    "Good luck with that."
    I might not need good luck wishes with this new job. It feels blessed already.
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    ***
    NINETEEN
    I finally had to come out of the closet to somebody in my family, so I chose my dad.
    "It's like this," I told Sid-dad over the phone. "I feel like culinary school was everybody else's dream for me, but I don't want that kind of structure in my life right now. I'm not saying later I might not want to go, but right now? No. I lasted one class."
    "Cupcake," he responded, "it's your life to live as you choose. You're right, I think culinary school would have provided a good structure for your transition to living on your own, but you're also right that if it's not what you want to do, you shouldn't be doing it. That does leave a remaining question, however: What are you doing?"
    What I am doing, Dad, is wondering what Shrimp is doing this very second. Is he staring at the moon in the New Zealand sky, wondering
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    if I am watching it too, even with the time difference and probably it's the wrong time of day here to find it in the same place in the sky, but whatever, you get the point. What I am doing is planning to distract myself with Luis for a while and hope that heals the hurt of letting Shrimp go. I know you and Mom thought I was too young to be in a committed relationship, and you know L am proud to be an independent female and all that, but I totally think I would be handling this giantropolis transition better if Shrimp and I were sharing this new New York life together.
    "I got a barista-waitress job at a place down the street from our apartment," I told Sid-dad. "I hope you're not disappointed."
    At the moment that the urgent need had come upon me to call my father and then tell his secretary to interrupt his business meeting because I couldn't wait another minute to talk with him, what I was doing was sitting on a bench in a small park in the West Village near the obnoxiously popular cupcake bakery. Spying. The bakery is unfathomably one of the