TheBanyanTree: The Chocolate Bakery

[Monique Colver]

An obvious work of fiction.

Deanna's Chocolate Bakery had the best chocolate in town. Everyone
knew that, and people came from all over the state and stood in line
for hours for an opportunity to buy chocolate cake, cookies, pies,
scones, brownies, chocolate this and chocolate that, chocolate inside
and chocolate outside, and business was good for Deanna and Monique's
Chocolate Bakery. (Did I say this was Deanna and Monique's Chocolate
Bakery before? This is a story in progress, so don't expect too much
in the way of continuity.) Scott was their business partner and Chief
Enforcer, and in his spare time he kept the place tidy. When the lines
were long and unwieldy he would sort them out, and those who did not
display the proper respect when visiting such an important
establishment would be sent to the end of the line, where they'd have
to start all over again and hopefully learn better manners in the
process.

Neither Scott nor Deanna nor Monique did any sort of accounting nor
bookkeeping, and the only numbers they dealt with had to do with
measurements for the recipes. They couldn't be bothered, and what good
was an escape from their previous lives if one were to take along part
of it? It was a good chocolate bakery and all was well in the kingdom.

One day a new customer showed up at the door, at the end of the line,
hat in hand. An actual hat, not a figurative hat. A porkpie hat, which
isn't very common these days because no one really knows what a
porkpie hat is. The porkpie hat has become a victim of our vegetarian
society, and it is no longer considered cool to wear porkpie on one's
head. But there stood Jimmy D, porkpie hat in hand, waiting his turn
to see the Chocolate Queen herself. That would be Deanna, because she
liked to wear the crown.

Three hours later, Jimmy D found himself at the front of the line, in
the presence of the Chocolate Queen, and he said, "Madame, I am a
caterer, and I am in need of six of your finest chocolate desserts for
six different events." Madame looked him over carefully, evaluating
his suitability, and stifled a giggle. She took his order for six
double chocolate cakes, and told him to return on Tuesday at two.

Tuesday at two Jimmy D was not there, but the cakes were ready. They
were exceptional cakes, as all of Deanna and Monique's Chocolate
Bakery cakes were, and they were each decorated as Jimmy D had asked,
and signed by the artist. This gives them even more value, but Deanna
and Monique do not charge extra for this additional service.

Tuesday at five, just as Scott was preparing to lock the doors and
throw the last people waiting in line out the door, doomed to not have
nor eat their cake this day, Jimmy D showed up at the door, porkpie
hat in head, looking for his cakes.

"We're closed," Scott said, slamming the door on Jimmy D's foot.

Not to be dissuaded, Jimmy D kept his foot in the door, though wincing
as he felt his toe break, and said, "But I must have my cakes! Please
let me have my cakes!"

Scott relented, unable to bear the puppy dog eyes of the caterer, and
Jimmy D left with his cakes.

Three hours later Jimmy D called Scott at home. "I have a problem with
this cake," he started to say, before Scott interrupted him.

"How did you get my phone number?"

"I have a problem with this cake. The caramel frosting doesn't taste
like caramel."

"That's because you didn't ask for caramel, you asked for chocolate."

"I need caramel. You should have known that."

Scott couldn't quite follow this logic, but since Jimmy D was a new
customer, and the customer is always right, he agreed to take back the
cake in the morning, and refrost it with caramel. In actuality, cakes
can't be refrosted because one would have to take off the old frosting
first, and that's a very time consuming task, involving multiple forks
and people who love to eat frosting, so a new cake would be baked and
frosted. But since Jimmy D had ordered so many cakes at once, it
seemed okay.

The next day the chocolate cake came back to the bakery and was
replaced with one that looked just the same, except for the caramel
frosting instead of chocolate. "I'm not sure this is what I had in
mind," said Jimmy D, but he took the cake anyway.

At noon Jimmy D called the Chocolate Bakery and said, "This chocolate
cake wasn't put together like I wanted."

Monique, who'd had the misfortune of answering the phone, asked, "Is
this the same chocolate cake we gave you this morning or a different
one?"

"A different chocolate cake. It has cake, buttercream frosting, more
cake, more buttercream frosting, and then more cake on top of that,
but it's not what I want."

"What do you want? It's a standard cake. It's how we make them."

"I need a cake with a layer of cake, frosting, cake and cake, and then
frosting. There are too many layers of buttercream frosting here."

This made no sense, but the customer is always right, so the cake was
returned to the bakery and a cake with no frosting between the last
two layers was given to Jimmy D instead. The lack of frosting between
the layers, also known in the cake industry as "glue," meant the top
layer kept sliding off, so Deanna had invented a new process to keep
the top layer anchored to the next layer. It was revolutionary, this
idea, and could change the face of cake making, but at the time the
Chocolate Bakery people just wanted Jimmy D to go away and be happy
with his cakes.

At two o'clock Jimmy D called and said, "This cake is missing sprinkles."

"Sprinkles?" Deanna asked.

"Sprinkles."

"You didn't ask for sprinkles."

"We need sprinkles. This isn't a cake at all without sprinkles."

"Bring it in. We'll put sprinkles on it."

By this time the operators of the Chocolate Bakery were thinking it
was time to reexamine the process by which they let customers into
their shop. Perhaps a more thorough background check was required, or
a mental health evaluation?

At five o'clock Jimmy D called again. "This cake is chocolate."

"Yes. It's a chocolate cake."

"We need a white cake. This isn't quite what we had in mind."

"Then why didn't you ask for a white cake?"

"I thought you knew."

Deanna suppressed a sound that could have been a sigh of impatience,
or it could have been a scream, and managed to say in a relatively
calm tone of voice, "Bring it in, and we'll give you a white cake."

White cakes weren't a specialty of the Chocolate Bakery, unless they
were covered in chocolate, but they could be provided. It does help,
however, if customers state which type of cake they want.

At seven o'clock Jimmy D left a voicemail. "Where's the seventh cake?
I need seven cakes, and I only have six here. And this one is a very
important client who's having an event tomorrow morning. I must have
this cake now."

It was seven o'clock though, and the Chocolate Bakery was closed for
the day. First thing Thursday morning when the Chocolate Bakery opened
Jimmy D was at the door, porkpie hat in hand, looking for a chocolate
cake. He left with a cake off the shelf, though he decried the lack of
frosting roses on it.

Three days passed before Jimmy D called again. He was livid, if by
livid I mean he was enraged, which I do. "I lost a client because of
you," he screamed at the first person to answer the phone.

"Just a minute," the bookkeeper said, and she put him on hold,
guessing, correctly, that this was something she did not wish to be
involved in.

"What's the problem, Jimmy D?" Scott asked, when he'd been fetched
from his line sorting duties.

"My client fired me because he didn't get his cake for his event on Saturday!"

"And this is our fault why?"

"You didn't deliver the cake!"

"We gave you the cakes Jimmy D, how could we deliver them if you had them?"

"I don't know, but now I've lost a client and it's your fault!" Jimmy
D's lividity was not decreasing, despite the obvious insanity of his
reasoning.

Scott was momentarily speechless, which is saying something indeed,
and then he said, "You're crazy."

Jimmy D continued to rant in his native tongue of gibberish. The
conversation ended when Scott quietly hung up the phone, without
saying goodbye. Jimmy D never noticed he was ranting at a dial tone.

Monique felt as if it were all her fault, as she's likely to do, being
self-centered that way, Deanna pondered how to rid themselves of Jimmy
D for good without alienating him, and Scott considered ways to Make
This Relationship Work.

The Chocolate Bakery changed its phone number and moved a block away.
It was a good move, for now there was more sidewalk space for the
lines to form on, and the new space was bigger with more light.

And Jimmy D couldn't find them again.

Sometimes these things just come to an abrupt end.


-- 
Monique