little cupcake

(originally from 27 July 2008)

It was perhaps a mark of living in a city for too long that I didn’t find $3.50 exorbitant for a cupcake.

Every morning my bus flies past a bakery with prim lines of intricately frosted cupcakes and every morning I think how wonderful one would be. One morning I went in and requested a little cupcake with green frosting. The girl told me it was peppermint, and I forked over the dough without a second thought, which was how Little Cupcake and I found ourselves standing at a bus stop one Friday morning.

Little cupcakes aren’t supposed to ride city buses because they are Food, but Little Cupcake came equipped for such nuisances of societal life with a lovely white paper bag, highly convenient for concealing its Foodness. Most food doesn’t fit – much less conceal itself – in a white paper bag (pineapples spring to mind, as do ice cream, sloppy joes or even, good heavens, soup), but Little Cupcake fit very nicely and discreetly.

We hopped gingerly on the bus, Little Cupcake and I, and carefully made our way to the back. We took two seats together and rode daintily down George Street, alighting at World Square to the unforeseen distress of Rain! Was ever a little cupcake so put upon as this? For while bus journeys are a force to be reckoned with, rain is much more serious. Rain can melt frosting.

We did what any reasonable duo would do. We sought shelter and reconsidered: yes, it was raining, but there was still the lovely White Paper Bag of Protection and our walk wasn’t particularly far. Besides, it would be much nicer for Little Cupcake to be nibbled nicely in the warmth than scarfed down in the dampness of World Square’s concrete open-air shopping center. Some places are simply not conducive to the well-eating of Little Cupcakes.

I peeked to check on its frosting. The problem, of course, is that even a lovely White Paper Bag of Protection can offend a little cupcake’s icing, particularly when it is peppermint green. I was most distressed that Little Cupcake’s icing would hit side, much as I constantly fear a thoughtlessly placed lid will disturb the whipped cream on my hot chocolate. Fortunately, except where the fold of the bag poked into it, Little Cupcake was an amazingly well-balanced cupcake, if not in the altogether dietary sense. I was much impressed.

We forged through the rain together and all went remarkably well in spite of the rain, except for the Elizabeth Street traffic signal, which had evidently not been preset with the crossing of Little Cupcakes in mind, but which eventually deigned to allow us to pass.

And then there was but one barrier between us.

There is a well-known concept in the world today, one that I approve of and like and generally publicly support, though one that doesn’t often come naturally to me. There are, however, times and places when Sharing is simply not meant to happen.

Anyone with any sense recognizes these times. Little Cupcake and I had just arrived at work and summoned the lift, finished our wait as it finished its five-floor descent and very nearly stepped blissfully in when one of my friends joined us. It was Friday, but she didn’t ask about our weekend plans.

"What’ve you got in the little bag?" she asked.

Caught off guard, I confessed.

"What kind?"

I hesitated. It isn’t polite to discuss such details in front of little cupcakes, but I didn’t expect her to understand this. "Chocolate with peppermint frosting."

"The best. You can’t beat choco with mint."

We nodded solemnly together. Suddenly she pressed level four. Five minutes later she emerged next to me with a warm chocolate croissant.

"Calories don’t count on Fridays," she said.

The time had almost come. I carefully extracted Little Cupcake from its haven of white, then paused to fold up White Paper Bag of Protection. It had served us well, and I’d grown rather fond of it.

Usually cupcakes are fully disrobed for proper gulping, but Little Cupcake did not invite such immodesty, and certainly not gulping. We compromised at removing half the wrapper and one of us went in for the icing.

It was the sort of icing that should probably have been gracefully ingested, but grace does not always align itself with reality. In the end, there was little left of Little Cupcake, save its delicate outer garment, which in normal circumstances would have been harvested for every possible trace of chocolate before being spit out in a little heap of saliva-ridden wrap, but Little Cupcake was not a normal cupcake. Though I daresay it would have been more fitting to burn the wrapper and scatter the ashes at sea, this would prove difficult to explain to others. At least the trash can had not yet been much used this morning.

It is very hard to proceed forward in life from a Friday morning spent with a little cupcake, but I was forced to forge ahead and sought a consolation prize in the form of a cup of tea. Which was when I suddenly wondered where my last five-dollar bill had gone.