This Cake is for the Party (7 page)

Why are we here? Carolyn asks Bruno quietly. How much did we pay for this?

Bruno slides his fork under a wedge of roasted potato and attempts to bring it to his mouth. What's the story with Larissa? he asks.

His potato falls off his fork and back onto his plate. Carolyn resists the urge to take his fork in her own hand.
Stab it,
she thinks.
Stab the potato.

There is no story with Larissa, she says. Was it over a hundred dollars each?

Bruno slices the potato in half with the side of his fork and then slides the tines under it. Guess again, he says. So where did you work in Ottawa?

We didn't work together, Carolyn tells him. I haven't seen her in ten years. God, fifteen years.

So what was she talking about? Bruno slips the potato piece into his mouth and looks at her, chewing.

Carolyn moves her food around her plate. The salmon looks unhealthy. There's no natural spice that colour— the tandoori paste is probably loaded with artificial dyes. She remembers that Bruno's quiz score—thirty-nine— was uncomfortably close to the red zone.

Bruno, she asks, why couldn't you go back to sleep last night?

You're changing the subject, Bruno says.

No, I want to know what kept you awake.

I don't know, he shrugs. I just couldn't sleep. I thought about work. I kept thinking about Grand & Toy's ugly new logo.

But why wouldn't you wake me up? she asks. You could have tried—
you know
.

Bruno looks at her.

I would have been into it, she says. I would love it if you woke me up like that.

Bruno exhales. I'm sorry, Caro. I thought you would rather sleep. You looked so peaceful. I didn't want to bother you.

Carolyn stabs one of her own potatoes. So now you think it's a bother, she says.

Excuse me, says the author, who is finally able to wave down a server. We need more wine here, please.

The last time Carolyn saw Larissa, they were in an industrial park in Nepean, Ontario, with ten other test subjects. The NuPres headquarters were located in a short concrete slab of a building that was ribbed with black tinted windows, making it resemble an awkward sedan. Two coffin-sized concrete planters embedded with pink and grey pebbles sat on either side of the front doors. They were stuffed with green and purple ornamental cabbage plants. A freshly painted picnic table sat hopefully on the lawn adjacent to the parking lot.

Carolyn and Larissa and the others had all signed a waiver, of course, before submitting to the tests—three pages of dense legal jargon that had made no sense to any of them—understanding that they were signing away their right to complain if something went wrong. Also, they were promising not to tell anyone what they were doing.

After the orientation meeting, the test subjects were shown to the common room and left alone. There were refreshments: a bar fridge stocked with bottled fruit drinks and cans of no-name soda. Larissa pointed out that the testing was simply unethical rather than illegal.

There are organizations that might not approve of what NuPres is doing, she said. But they're not the police. Nobody's going to come after NuPres for this, she added.

Unless something happens, said Pike. He wore blue and white striped overalls and a yellow T-shirt. He had just graduated from high school. He wanted to be an actor.

If something happens? said Carolyn.

Um, what's in these painkillers that makes them so
experimental
? asked Pike.

Carolyn had called the number on the NuPres ad because she needed the money. She'd lost her job when the owner of the bakery went bankrupt; she'd shown up for work one day and there was a sign on the door saying the place had been repossessed. Her rent was due the following week, and her student loan hadn't arrived. The advertisement on the back page of the weekly paper was tiny, but the figure stood out: $
1
,
400
.
00.
For one week of work.

The work involved swallowing a yellow capsule three times a day for seven days, sleeping on a cot in a small private room with no window, making conversation with eleven other test subjects, and allowing herself to be videotaped as she went about her limited activities during the day. When she called NuPres to register for the study, they asked her about her favourite food. She told them it was sushi. This is what they fed her for dinner for seven days straight.

Larissa had also requested sushi—maybe it was this taste in common that had cemented their friendship. Pike had asked for Thai food. But the other people had straightforward tastes. The room was consistently overpowered by the ropy smell of pepperoni pizza.

On the first day, they were given their capsules with breakfast. The numbers
009
were printed in black on the outside of the capsule. Carolyn swallowed hers with orange juice. She showered and dressed. She'd brought
One Hundred Years of Solitude
to read, a journal, her Spanish textbook and some Post-it Notes for vocabulary, and her Canon SLR.

On the second day, just after lunch, four of the other subjects began crying wordlessly. Pike and Larissa were sitting on Carolyn's bed and she sat on the floor, her back against the dresser. The three of them listened to the sobbing in the room beside them.

I guess they're homesick, said Larissa.

Has Dr. Brown talked to them? Carolyn asked.

No, said Pike. Nobody's come around all day.

I feel a little sad, to be honest, said Larissa.

Me too, said Pike.

Carolyn had a stiff feeling in her stomach, like she'd eaten too much white rice. I'm just constipated, she said.

Carolyn! Pike said. Too much information!

After dinner that night, Pike and Larissa both dumped their plastic takeout boxes into the green trash can in the hallway and went to their rooms without even saying good night. Carolyn stayed in the common room to watch television. An advertisement for a cellphone company appeared: a woman surprised by a phone call from her faraway lover.
Oh my love,
the woman said. The music swelled, fat violins rising. Carolyn's eyes heated up and stung. She was surprised to feel the tears trip over her cheeks. Something crawled up through her stomach and over her heart, deep blue and miserable.

The next morning Carolyn received a small cup of prune juice with her breakfast tray. Everything else—the box of Cheerios, the banana, the plastic orange spoon—was the way it had been every other day.

Larissa confessed to Carolyn and Pike that afternoon. She'd been a test subject before. Two times before this, she admitted. And you know what? she said. All of them had been for painkillers too.

Sure they have, said Pike.

We can't be so paranoid, said Carolyn. They're just painkillers.

Oh, I don't care what pills I pop, said Pike. If I cared, would I be here?

On the afternoon of the fourth day, a raw and unbound sense of agitation shot out of Carolyn's appendages with the force of magma. She pointed her lens at the dusty ficus tree that was faltering in the flimsy light of the common room and couldn't get her hands to work. Her fingers, nothing but stumpy carrots, were hot with blood. She heard it in her ears, the rushing sound of pumping and beating. A door slammed in the hallway.

You know what your problem is? one of the subjects shouted down the hall. You take everything I say negatively! You make it into a problem!

A door opened. That's not what I said! someone yelled back. Then the door slammed again.

That night, Pike asked the girls, Have you felt more emotional than usual?

Well, I expect so, said Larissa. Her hair had so much static, fine strands on the back of her head raised themselves up against the wall behind her. We're basically being kept prisoners here, she said. Of course we're emotional.

I have been feeling strange, said Carolyn.

Oh no, please don't share! said Pike. We've heard about your strange feelings!

I need some fresh air, said Carolyn. Why can't we take a walk?

Hello? said Pike, staring at the ceiling. He twisted around so he faced each corner and every wall as he called out. We'd like to take a walk! Please!

On the fifth day, Larissa said that Pike had come to her room early in the morning, wearing only his white boxer shorts. He told her that he'd been thinking about her since the first day, and that time was running out. He had to tell her how he felt. Larissa said that she'd felt the same way.

He's only nineteen years old, Carolyn said.

That's only five years, Larissa said. When I'm thirty-five, he'll be thirty!

Carolyn thought of Pike's wide lips and the way his hands held his chopsticks as he ate his green curry. Strong, but delicate. Hmm, she said.

You know, said Larissa, I caught Mark S. watching your ass this morning.

Which one is Mark S.? Carolyn asked.

He's the tall one in 8A. With the five o'clock shadow.

Carolyn felt it then. Her body responded with an even heat, like a convection oven, and this peppery warmth seeped into her appendages. Her lips fattened. Her scalp prickled.

That night, Mark S. showed up at her door dressed only in his towel. He was so tall, his head grazed the light fixture that hung from the hall ceiling. He brought two bottles of grape drink and two bendable straws. Carolyn reached up to take the bottle he offered her.

Thank you, she said politely. His naked chest was the size of a warehouse, but it was smooth and delicately glazed with sweat. He used his free hand to adjust the fold of his towel. The shape of his fingernails reminded her of butterscotch candies.

Do you feel it? asked Mark S.

A deep pulse slithered down Carolyn's throat and detonated in her stomach. I feel it, said Carolyn.

She let him inside her room. Mark S. lifted the single mattress off the bed frame and placed it on the floor. As he bent down to smooth the duvet below, Carolyn saw, with a specific and inexplicable flash of intuition, what they were going to do to each other next. She saw her naked hips in his large hands. Mark S. stripped Carolyn's clothing from her body slowly, and he draped each piece onto the bed frame. In his fingers, her pink blouse looked like a creased strip of sushi ginger. He placed his palms on her hips, just as she'd envisioned. Her sexual premonitions escalated as they moved together, and the montage in her head made her nerve endings thick and hot. She slid into the collapse between present and future. Her skin cells widened to absorb more from his touch. She felt Mark S. in her thymus and her eardrums, in the arches of her feet and through her spinal fluid. When he left her room, only a few hours before breakfast would be served, she tried to say good night to him, but her words were only compressed air.

On Friday evening, six days into the study, while the group was watching an episode of
The X Files
, Larissa told them that she thought her heart was beating too fast. What she'd actually said:
My heart is beating super fast.
The NuPres doctors would have heard her say it, of course. But they didn't come until it was too late. When Larissa collapsed, her head hit the arm of the sofa and knocked the remote control onto the floor. The plastic panel broke off and two AA batteries rolled out in opposite directions. Dr. Brown had two interns carry Larissa out of the room, and that was the last anyone heard of her. The next day, the final day of the study, Carolyn and the others walked up to the television to turn it on and off manually; nobody bothered to look for those lost batteries.

None of the other test subjects experienced any severe heart palpitations.

They confiscated Carolyn's film at the end of the week and developed it in the NuPres lab, but they wouldn't let her see the pictures. Dr. Brown told her that it was a breach of privacy for the project, as well as for the other test subjects. That if she'd read her waiver carefully, it would have been clear: no media was allowed to know about the project.

But why did you wait until this morning to take it away from me? Carolyn asked. You must have known I was shooting film all week.

Dr. Brown wore large glasses with bright red frames that were out of fashion. The white lab coat was also too big for her. She rolled her cuffs several times to keep the sleeves from flopping over her hands. I'm sorry, she said. But we wanted to see how you would react to the stimuli. As a photographer.

I think I took a few good ones, said Carolyn.

They're out of focus, said Dr. Brown.

Carolyn received her cheque on Saturday afternoon and took the public transit back to her apartment. She deposited the cheque, paid her landlord, found a job at the campus bookstore, and finished her degree. Some of her landscape shots were published alongside an article about RRSP contributions in a local magazine, which made her think of pursuing a career in photojournalism. Eventually, after a few months of unpaid work and rejection letters, Carolyn applied for a year of teacher's college instead. She accepted a job in Toronto teaching grade ones. She joined a volleyball team and played on Wednesday evenings, to keep active. This is where she met Bruno.

Every so often, Carolyn tried to find NuPres on the Internet. She was unsuccessful. She found out that Pike was living in Vancouver, running a queer-positive film production company. Mark S.—the S was for Stratton— owned and operated a fishing lodge in northern Ontario. But Larissa Levinson seemed to have disappeared.

A slice of warm chocolate cake with a wet, slick pudding centre is served in a wide dish dusted with icing sugar. A sliver of a strawberry and two blueberries roll beside it. Their dessert forks are small and highly polished. When it is set in front of him, Bruno eyes the chocolate with longing. The candlelight makes his eyes look shiny and liquefied, and Carolyn wonders briefly if the cake has made him cry. Then Bruno pinches a blueberry from the side of the dish with his fingers and puts it in his mouth. He closes his eyes and chews at length, appreciating it.