Cattails, Cake and Hugh's Big Toe

          For his birthday, I send Hugh a woman to jump out of a cake, but since he isn’t home, she waits on the porch all day. The cream slides from her hair, the sweat stains her sequin outfit, the frosting tips to one side. By the time Hugh comes home, flies hover near the lemon chiffon and a trail of industrious ants lead to one of those swollen red roses.

          The woman, beautiful as could be, took seriously those directions “wait inside until he gets there.” She had fallen asleep inside the cake. Or, maybe passed out. The heat took an almighty toll and Hugh opens the top to find a gorgeous female curled inside. A woman without a pulse.

          So, he calls me, after all I’m his best friend and ex-sister-in-law—twenty years ago we were both married to a pair of Irish siblings we’ve both since divorced. When I arrive he has already tried mouth-to-mouth and comments “Dang city. Too bad she isn’t still alive; must have been quite a looker.”

          I agree and cover up her mesh stockings with a plaid flannel sheet.

          “Hell of a birthday gift,” he says, running his finger through the chocolate swirly “H” and placing it in his mouth.

          We eat the cake with our hands, throw gobs and smash whole pieces into each other’s faces.

          Our veins are zipping along with sugar when Hugh hugs me hard. “You got me a cake with a chick in it, nobody ever did that before.” His eyes are teary and we hang on each other, stumbling off the porch and wandering through the night singing happy birthday to Hugh, me, the neighbors, the dearly departed cakechick, and anyone else we think of.

          Near the pond our blood sugar drops. We get a little confused and argue a bit about how long we should keep the cakewoman and since it’s almost winter and the nights are cold, we figure she can hack it on the porch for the night.

          Hugh gets the shakes. I throw up in the cattails.

          We rest in the lawn by the pond, listening to the bullfrogs, me with my head across Hugh’s ankle, Hugh twitching in his sleep. He wakes when I say “Hand me a blanket.”

          Hugh groans. “A thick comforter makes my feet look smaller.”

          “Not possible. I’ve seen those big feet.”

          Hugh pushes my head off his ankle. “My first girlfriend after the divorce said my big toes keep getting larger. I’d see her looking at my toes with a ‘I’m scared of them’ look. But, then she’d smile the ‘I’m not really scared of them’ look when she’d catch me catching her studying my big toe.”

          “I’ve never eaten so much cake in my life.” I move Hugh’s leg to prop up my head. “I’m not afraid of your feet.”

          Hugh doesn’t push me off this time. “So I suggested more covers on the bed. I even pretended to like shopping. What a collection of baskets! I said.”

          Just before sunrise it’s Hugh’s turn to vomit at the edge of the pond-algae, dropping white chunks in vibrant green. He’s still on his knees when he says “I can’t face her. Why’d she have to be so beautiful?”

          Having only seen one fresh body in my life, her, the beautiful, and no one-day-old cadavers, I don’t want to view any more death either. We call from my cell and wait under the tree like morning-lovers for the police to trail by, the neighborhood to gawk, the sun to peer over the birches.

          When the morning quiets to a tone of bird-chirping normalcy, we walk back to my car in our stiff clothes and check into a hotel, where we get two rooms across the hall from each other.

          We order food and when it arrives, we sit in our hotel robes in the hallway, eating our sandwiches, naked feet on clean carpet, neither of us speaking about anything other than the cheese.

Stefanie Freele's short story collection, Feeding Strays, will be released by Lost Horse Press in September 2009. Recent and forthcoming work can be found in Glimmer Train, American Literary Review, Night Train, and Dogplotz. She has an MFA from the Northwest Institute of Literary Arts: Whidbey Writers Workshop. Stefanie is the Fiction Editor for the Los Angeles Review and an editor with SmokeLong Quarterly.