In the Age of Love and Chocolate (7 page)

“We are not talking about that. Pretend you know nothing about me. Pretend we are strangers. But no, they do not miss me. I will make a bucket of money supplying our cacao to you, and Luna takes care of much on the farm since I was sick last year.” He looked at me. “Listen, Anya, you need me. And not because I am the most handsome boy you know. But I look around last night. Delacroix, he raises money for you. He talks to the press. He takes care of the law. But you do some of that and everything else, too. I am not criticizing you, but you are a young business and you need someone else to help you with the kitchen and supply aspects. I make sure everything we serve is delicious, safe, and of highest quality. It would have been certain disaster last night if not for me—”

“You’re always so modest.”

“I want to organize your club so that you never again experience a supply shortfall. No matter what happens—
la plaga, el apocalipsis, la guerra
—the Dark Room will keep serving drinks.”

“What do you get out of it?”

“I supply you with cacao and offer my services in exchange for 10 percent of the business. Also, I want to be a part of this. I want to build something with my own two hands. It is exciting here. My heart beats like a madman’s!” He grabbed my citrus-coated hand and held it over his heart. “Feel, Anya. Feel how it beats. Last night, I am so tired but I cannot even sleep. I have waited to be a part of something like this my whole life.”

His proposal did not seem unreasonable. Cacao was one of our larger expenses, and Theo had been indispensable since his arrival yesterday. (Had it only been yesterday?) If I had a hesitation, it was probably that I considered very few people to truly be my friends, and Theo was one of them. “I don’t want this to spoil our friendship if the business doesn’t work out,” I said.

“Anya, we are the same. No matter what happens, I know the risk I take and I will not blame you. Besides, we will always be friends. I could just as soon hate you as I could my sister. My sister Luna, I mean. Not Isabelle. Isabelle, I could hate. You know how she gets.”

He held out his rough farmer’s hand, and I shook it. “I’ll have Mr. Delacroix draw up the papers,” I said.

It was only right. Theo Marquez had taught me everything I knew about cacao, and without him, there probably wouldn’t have been a Dark Room.

IV

I GO FROM INFAMOUS TO FAMOUS; CONSEQUENTLY, ENEMIES BECOME FRIENDS

T
HE NIGHT BEFORE MY BIRTHDAY,
I had been sternly warned by Mr. Kipling not to expect the club to be a success right away—or ever. “Bars are tricky,” Mr. Kipling had said. “Nightclubs are worse. In this economy, do you know what the rate of failure for nightclubs is?”

Hadn’t Chai Pinter said it was 99 percent? But that figure seemed high. “I’m not sure,” I said.

“And that’s precisely what worries me, Annie,” Mr. Kipling had said. “You have no idea what you’re getting into. The rate of failure is 87 percent, by the way. And most people aren’t foolish enough to open a nightclub in the first place.”

However, Mr. Kipling had been wrong about the Dark Room. For whatever reason, the idea had instantly caught fire. From the first night we opened, every table was filled, and the lines got longer every night. People I hadn’t heard from in years contacted me trying to get tables. Mrs. Cobrawick, formerly of Liberty, was turning fifty and wanted to spend her birthday at the Dark Room. She was an awful woman, but she had once done me a good turn. I gave her a table by the window and even sent her a round of Theobromas on the house. District Attorney Bertha Sinclair wanted to bring her mistress but needed to arrange to come in through the back door to avoid the press, who were always posted out front. Bertha Sinclair was not my favorite person either, but it was good to have powerful friends. I hooked her up with our most secluded table. I heard from kids I’d gone to school with, teachers (a few of whom had voted to expel me), friends of my father’s, and even the cops who had investigated me for poisoning Gable Arsley in 2082. I said yes to everyone. My father used to say,
Generosity, Anya. It’s always a good investment.

I had been written about my whole life because of who my father was, but now for the first time, I became the story. Instead of being identified as a “
mafiya
princess,” they called me a “nightclub darling,” a “raven-haired impresario,” and even a “cacao wunderkind.” People wanted to know what I was wearing, who cut my hair, who I was dating. (I wasn’t dating anyone, by the way.) When I walked down the street, people sometimes recognized me, waving to me and calling my name.

During this period, the Family remained silent. I had braced myself for more disturbances like the destruction of the cacao supply, but none came.

At the end of October, Fats contacted me. He asked if he might come to the club for a sit-down, and I agreed.

Fats arrived at our meeting with only one other person in tow, and that person was Mouse, the girl who had been my bunk mate at Liberty. “Mouse,” I said. “How are you?”

“Very well,” she said. “Thanks for recommending me to Fats.”

“She’s become indispensable,” Fats said. “I trust Mouse here with everything. Best hire I ever made, if you want to know the truth. You got good instincts, Annie.”

They sat on the love seat in my office, and Noriko brought in drinks. I asked what I could do for them.

“Well,” Fats said, “I’ve had a change of heart, and I don’t want there to be bad blood between us anymore. You’ve obviously made a real success of it here, and I’m the kind of person who can admit when he was wrong.”

I sat back in my father’s chair. I did not feel the need to address the ruined cacao supply. I knew it had been him, and he knew I knew. Best to move on. “Thank you,” I said.

“From this point in time forward, you got my 100 percent backing. But there’s something you need to know.”

“What’s that?”

“The Balanchiadze, the Balanchines in Russia, are furious with you.”

“Why?”

“Because they see your business as a threat. If people go to your club to get cacao, maybe they lose their taste for black market chocolate. That you, the daughter of Leonyd Balanchine, are the face of this new way of business threatens them even more.

“They keep pressuring me to sabotage you, but I won’t. I did it once, but you probably know that.”

I nodded.

“Since then, I’ve done everything in my power to keep the heat off you. Me and Mouse both. And I’ll keep on this way until I’m dead or someone else becomes the head of this Family. Also, I wanted to say that I’m proud of you, kid. I’m sorry I was slow to see the light. I hope this won’t sound presumptuous but maybe you learned a little from me about how to run a club. You and your friends used to spend so much time in my speakeasy.”

“Maybe so,” I said. I clasped my hands and set them on the table. “What do you need from me?”

“Nothing, Anya. I only wanted you to know what was happening and that you didn’t have anything more to fear from me.”

He stood, and then he kissed me on both sides of my face. “You done good, kid.”

V

I PREVENT HISTORY FROM REPEATING; EXPERIMENT WITH OLDER FORMS OF TECHNOLOGY

I
T IS A TRUTH
universally acknowledged that when something goes well in one part of your life, something else will just as certainly fall apart.

I was in a meeting with Lucy and Theo when my cell phone whistled. I hadn’t had one for very long—you weren’t allowed to have one until you turned eighteen—and I was always forgetting to turn the ringer off. I glanced at the caller identification: HT School. For a moment, I wondered what I had done wrong. I turned to the group. “Apologies. This is so rude, but my sister’s school is calling.”

I walked over to the window to take the call. “We need you to come get Natty. She’s being suspended,” Mr. Rose, the secretary from Holy Trinity, said.

I excused myself, dashed out to the street, and then took a cab down to Holy Trinity. As I walked the familiar path to Headmaster’s office, I paused in the doorway of the lobby to consider my sister. Natty was still wearing her fencing whites, though a single drop of blood on her sleeve spoiled their pristine look. She was not sitting in a particularly ladylike position either. Her legs were spread aggressively and wide, as if to create a boundary between her and everyone else. She was hunched over—that chip on her shoulder was palpable and probably weighed her down. A scratch was slashed jauntily across her cheek. Her eyes were proud and murderous. I think you can guess who she reminded me of.

Another girl was exiting the office with a red nose and dried blood around her nostrils. Her mother had her arm around her shoulders.

“Your sister is an animal,” the mother said to me.

I didn’t know what had happened, but I wasn’t about to let that woman insult Natty. “That’s not called for,” I said. “It looks like they both got hurt.”

“Everyone knows what type of people you come from,” the mother said.

She was leaving. I should have let her leave, but at the last minute I called out, “Oh yeah, what type of people?”

“Scum,” she said.

I began to ball my hand into a fist, and then I reminded myself I was a prominent business owner and an adult and above such violent shenanigans. I let my fist unfurl. While I was busy taking the high road, Natty charged at the woman. I was barely able to hold Natty back.

“Just go,” I said to the woman. “Go.”

“Before you even say anything,” Natty said, “that girl came at me first.”

“What happened?”

“So I’m in Mr. Beery’s class, and we’re studying Prohibition.”

God, I could already see where this was going.

“And then he says, ‘The best criminals are the ones that decide to use the law to their advantage. Take Natty’s sister…’ And then I’m screaming in Mr. Beery’s face about how you’re the opposite of a criminal. And he sends me to Headmaster’s office.”

Why hadn’t the school fired this man? “Natty,” I said, “you can’t fight with everyone who decides to call me a name.”

She rolled her dark green eyes at me. “
I know
, Anya.”

“I don’t understand. How did the other girl get involved?”

“I have lunch after Beery, and then Beginners’ Fencing. And all through Fencing, the girl is making cracks about how I’m too much of a baby to control myself and how Pierce must like babies. She’s his ex, so she has it in for me. And then we’re sparring with each other, and she keeps talking crap, and I pull her mask off and punch her in the face. And she pulls mine off, and that’s how I got scratched.”

The secretary poked his head out of his office. “Balanchines. Headmaster will see you now.”

The scene with Headmaster was one I’d starred in many times before. Natty was suspended for a week. If her grades hadn’t been so stellar, her punishment probably would have been worse.

I dropped Natty off at home. “I have to go back to work. We’ll talk about this later. I don’t want you to go anywhere. Understood?”

“Whatever.”

“I’m on your side, Natty, and more than that, I can relate. Remember the first day of my junior year?”

“You dumped an entire tray of lasagna over Gable Arsley’s head.” She laughed a little. “He deserved it, too.”

“He did, but I still shouldn’t have done it. I should have gone to him or his parents or Nana or Mr. Kipling with my grievance. Please, Natty, look at me. Nothing in my life or anyone else’s has ever been improved by violence or fighting.”

“I need a speech from you right now like I need a hole in my head.” Natty sighed. “Why are we like this? Why are we so out of control?”

“Because terrible things happened to us when we were young. But it gets easier, Natty, I swear to God. And it will get even easier for you because you’re so much smarter than me. Not to mention, your hair is naturally straight.”

“What does that have to do with anything?”

“Do you have any idea how much work it is to get my hair straight? I’m in a constant battle with frizz. It’s a wonder I haven’t murdered someone.” I kissed her on the cheek. “Everything’s going to be fine, you’ll see.”

“I’m tired, Annie. I think I’m going to take a nap, if that’s okay.” I didn’t feel superconfident that my talk had done much for her, but I figured I could improve on it later.

*   *   *

When I got home that night (or I should say
morning
—it was nearly three a.m.), Natty wasn’t there. She had left a message on my slate, which she knew I never brought with me anymore:
Out with Pierce
. It was way past city curfew, and she had explicitly ignored my instructions.

I paced around the foyer and tried to decide what to do. As a minor, Natty didn’t have a cell phone, and if I called the police, she’d be in trouble with the law. I looked around her room for Pierce’s number. I found a pack of condoms in her nightstand—was my baby sister having sex with this boy? On some level, I didn’t even want to know. And then I did finally locate Pierce’s phone number in her desk drawer.

He answered sleepily. “Pierce.”

“Hello, Pierce. Is my sister with you?”

“Yeah, she’s here. I’m handing her the phone right now.”

“What?” Natty said.

“Are you kidding me? Where are you? Do you have any idea what time it is?” I wasn’t even trying not to yell.

“Relax, Anya. I’m with Pierce—”

“Obviously.”

“I fell asleep here. It isn’t a big deal. Nothing happened. I’ll be home in the morning.”

“Are you kidding me? You are fourteen years old! You can’t up and spend the night at your boyfriend’s house.”

She hung up on me. I walked into the living room and threw my phone at the couch, not realizing that someone was lying on it.

“Ow!” Theo yelled. “What is wrong with you?”

“None of your business.” I didn’t want to go into it with him. “When are you getting a place of your own?”

“When my mean boss gives me some time off,” Theo said.

“Why are you even here? No date tonight?” Theo was popular in New York, to say the least. I didn’t know how he found the time, but he was with a different girl every night.