“No. Youthoughtyou saw me put it in my mouth. You know I don’t trust any cake that doesn’t come out of a BettyCrockerbox.”
“Jake, we really need to cultivate you. That will be my pet project in ourcominglife.”
“Good luck with that. Anyway, you’d better get started. Gabriel is expecting a half-eaten cake by first thing tomorrowmorning.”
“Me? I hate German chocolate cake,” Casey said, wrinklinghernose.
No way had I heard her correctly. “You don’t hateanykind of cake. You’ve made that very clear over theyears.”
“I make an exception for this one. You know I despise coconut unless I’m spreading its lotion overmyskin.”
“Why didn’t you tell Gabrielthat,then?”
“For the same reason you’ve been shoving food into napkins for days,” she answered, her voice raised inamusement.
“Well, what are we going to do?” I asked. “You saw him – if we don’t eat this cake, he’ll need a forty-eight hour hold in the nearest psychiatricfacility.”
“We’ll tell him we were justtoofull.”
“Great idea. And then a new one will show up tomorrow night, and the night after that. At some point, you’re going to have to eatthecake.”
“When did this becomemeandnotwe?”
“When you became emotionally involved. You called him Gabe, Casey. Now he thinks he’s part of thefamily.”
“Well, no way am I eating it, so what do you suggest we do – wrap it in paper towels and stuff it down yourpants?”
“Sadly, there’s just not enough room in there,” I answered, pleasing myself with the big dick reference yet slightly offended when it garnered noresponse.
“All right, so we throwitaway.”
“I tried that on night one, but Gabriel took out the trash and I swear he took a quick look at the contents and saw the snail I tossed in there. No, unless we take it to a dumpster ourselves, he’llfindit.”
“Yeah, you’re probably right. Okay, I have an idea. Why don’t we flush a couple of slices down the toilet? There will be no trace of it, and he’ll still think we ate some of it. Problemsolved.”
I thought about her suggestion for a moment then nodded. That wasn’t a half-bad solution. Reaching over, I tousled her hair. “Look at you using that fancy degree ofyours.”
“I knew it would come in handyoneday.”
Caseyand I cut realistic pieces from the body of the cake and fed a small, sample-sized chunk into the toilet to test her theory and, just as predicted, the chocolaty mass broke apart in a vile display before swirling and whirling and disappearing completely fromsight.
“Yes!” I exclaimed as we high-fived our good decision-making abilities. We were totally going to rock the communication part of a solidmarriage. “Next.”
She dumped a similar-sized piece into the water and flushed. Once again it spun aggressively in the bowl before vanishing. This was the smartest idea we’d ever come up with as a cohesive unit. We cheered our goodfortune.
But with success came a feeling of invincibility, and simply put, we got cocky. The following slice, bulkier in size, seemed to go down without problem at first, but a hollow burping sound emanating from the innards of the toilet soon put a damper on the fun, and before we knew it, the toilet was hemorrhaging German chocolate cake. Casey and I watched in horror as our good idea becameanythingbut.
The thing about flushing food down the toilet, I have since learned, is that it doesn’t look the same going down as it does coming up. Going down it still looked strangely like a hedgehog; but coming back from the bowels of hell, Gabriel’s dead mother’s cake was nothing more than a pleasant smelling pile of excrement… and it wasrising.
“It’s gonna blow!” I shouted, jumping back as I looked for thenearestexit.
“Can you plunge it?” Casey screamed, in a swirl ofpanic.
“With what?” I yelled back. “Myhands?”
So much for our communication skills. As it became evident that we were going to have more on our hands than just a depressed chef, Casey and I clung to each other as we helplessly watched the poo-nami of German chocolate cake crest in the rapidly shrinking toilet bowl. Just as the first bits and pieces began to drain over the sides, the water miraculously stopped flowing. Holding my breath throughout the entire ordeal, I allowed myself to breathe only when I felt our situation hadstabilized.
“What do we do?” Casey whispered, as if she instinctively knew we weren’t in the clear just yet. The rising waters might not have breached the levee, but that didn’t mean we weren’t still in imminent threat offlooding.
