My Neighbors Are Absolutely Insane (And So Am I)

The Great Pelican Court Baking Competition

Saturday arrived with the energy of a day that had decided to be significant.

I woke at seven to a group chat notification.

FelixM: Competition begins at 2PM. Setup from 12. All entries must be presented by 1:45. I will be conducting ingredient spot checks between 11 and 12. This is not optional.

MrsP: Good morning everyone. Gerald and I are very excited.

Noah_5B: Good morning Mrs P. Hi Gerald.

MrsP: He says hello.

FelixM: The pigeon is back on the south ledge. I am monitoring.

NewResident_Zara: Good morning. My cake exists and is structurally sound. That's all I'm committing to.

Noah_5B: That's a strong position.

FelixM: What kind of cake.

NewResident_Zara: Lemon.

FelixM: Mrs Patterson also makes lemon.

NewResident_Zara: I know.

MrsP: Competition is healthy, dear. Gerald always said so.

FelixM: Gerald was a cat.

MrsP: He was very wise.

I put my phone down and looked at my cake.

It was, genuinely, structurally sound. Three layers, lemon sponge, the Swiss meringue buttercream that had taken Noah forty minutes to talk me through successfully, a lemon drizzle on top that I had applied with the focused concentration of someone who understood they were in direct competition with a woman who had been making this specific thing for decades.

It looked — good, actually. Better than I'd expected. Better than anything I'd produced in a kitchen since the banana bread incident of 2021.

"You did this," I told it.

The cake said nothing.

"Well," I said. "We did this. Technically."

The common room had been transformed.

I didn't know who had done the transforming — probably Mr. Okonkwo, who had the particular quality of someone who arranged things and then disappeared before they could be thanked — but the long table along the far wall was covered with a proper tablecloth and had been divided into labeled sections for each entry. There was a judging panel table at the front with three chairs and a small sign that said JUDGES in Felix's handwriting, capital letters, underlined twice.

"Who are the judges?" I asked Blessing from the border patrol — no, wrong story. Tunde from — I shook myself. Wrong building, wrong story.

I asked Felix, who was standing near the door with his clipboard conducting what appeared to be a preliminary security assessment.

"Mr. Okonkwo," he said, "Mrs. Patterson—"

"Mrs. Patterson is also competing."

"She recused herself from judging her own entry. She will judge all other entries." He looked at his clipboard. "And the third judge is external."

"External how?"

"I invited someone objective."

I had questions about who Felix considered objective and whether they had been briefed on the pigeon situation but Blessing — no, other Blessing, I live here now — another resident arrived and Felix pivoted to conduct their ingredient verification and I decided the third judge was a problem for future Zara.

The common room filled up.

I had not fully appreciated, until this moment, how many people actually lived in Pelican Court. I had met the fifth-floor contingent. I had not encountered the residents of floors one through four, who turned out to be:

A couple on the second floor who brought an elaborate layered chocolate torte and were clearly ringers.

A retired professor from the third floor who brought something he called a Provençal almond cake and described it in French for four minutes before anyone could stop him.

Two university students from the fourth floor who had brought brownies and were visibly nervous about the ingredient verification.

A woman named Damilola who lived on the first floor and appeared to know everyone and had brought chin-chin in a large bowl which was technically not a cake but which nobody was going to argue with because the smell was extraordinary.

And Mr. Okonkwo himself, who had brought nothing because he was judging, but who moved through the room with the particular satisfaction of someone watching something they'd built operating exactly as intended.

Felix conducted ingredient verification with the focused intensity of someone who had waited a year for this.

The university students' brownies passed. Barely.

The third judge arrived at one-fifteen.

She was approximately thirty-five, with the energy of someone who had agreed to judge a building baking competition as a favor and was prepared to take it more seriously than anyone had anticipated. Her name, Felix announced, was Dr. Adaora Mensah, and she was a food scientist.

"A food scientist," I said quietly to Noah, who had appeared at my elbow with his entry — which was, I could see, genuinely impressive, a multi-layered thing with visible technical competence that I was choosing not to be intimidated by.

"Felix went to school with her sister," Noah said. "She's judged before. She's very thorough."

"How thorough?"

"Last year she gave the chocolate torte couple a twelve-minute breakdown of the structural weaknesses in their tempering technique."

I looked at my lemon cake.

My structurally sound, Swiss meringue buttercream, lemon drizzle topped lemon cake that I had made with assistance and approximately four hours of collective effort.

"We're going to be fine," I said.

"Your cake is genuinely good," Noah said. "I watched you make it."

"You made most of the buttercream."

"I supervised the buttercream."

"That's not—"

"The cake is good, Zara." He said it simply, looking at me rather than the cake. "You did the work."

The competition began.

I will not describe every entry in detail because we would be here for some time and also because the Provençal almond cake description in French took long enough without repeating it. What I will say is:

The chin-chin was extraordinary and technically ineligible and won the room's heart anyway.

The chocolate torte couple received eleven minutes of tempering feedback from Dr. Mensah, which they accepted with the resigned grace of people who had received this before.

Felix's entry — which he had not mentioned he was making — turned out to be a technically correct but aggressively plain Victoria sponge that he described as "uncompromised by unnecessary complexity," which was the most Felix sentence I had ever heard.

Mrs. Patterson's lemon drizzle was, without question, the best thing I had ever put in my mouth.

I say this as someone who had just made a lemon cake that I was proud of. Mrs. Patterson's lemon drizzle existed in a category above competition. It existed in the category of things that make you briefly reconsider your priorities.

"How," I said, when I tried it during the tasting portion.

"Forty years of practice," she said. "And Gerald's very specific feedback during the development period."

"Gerald the cat had feedback on your baking."

"He had opinions about everything." She looked at me with those sharp eyes. "How's yours?"

"Less good than yours," I said honestly.

She smiled. "That's the right answer." She looked at my cake. "But it's very good for someone who hasn't baked in years." A pause. "Noah helped."

"He supervised."

"He stayed for three hours on a Friday evening to supervise." Her eyes were mild. Entirely too mild. "Gerald would have liked him."

"Mrs. Patterson—"

"I know things, dear," she said, and moved serenely away.

The results were announced at four.

Mrs. Patterson won, which was inevitable and correct.

I came third, which was more than I'd expected and which Noah seemed genuinely pleased about in a way that I was storing in the increasingly large folder of things about him I was trying not to think about too much.

Felix came fifth out of seven entries, which he accepted with the dignity of someone who had anticipated this outcome and had opinions about the judging criteria that he was committed to expressing in writing.

The university students' brownies came last, which Felix had predicted, and which they seemed fine with because they were eating Damilola's chin-chin and had achieved a state of contentment that competition results couldn't touch.

After the results Mr. Okonkwo stood at the front of the room in his orange dashiki — a different one today, even more vivid, apparently he had several — and said:

"This building is fortunate."

Nobody said anything because it was Mr. Okonkwo and you didn't interrupt.

"We are fortunate because we are different from each other," he continued. "And we are here, in the same place, at the same time. This is not small." He looked around the room with the deep patient eyes. "The elevator is still on its journey. But we are not waiting for it." He nodded once. "Eat the cake."

He sat down.

The room held a beat of silence.

Then Damilola passed the chin-chin and the noise started up again and the afternoon went on in the particular warm way of an afternoon that has been exactly what it needed to be.

I was eating my third piece of chin-chin when Noah appeared beside me.

"Third place," he said.

"Out of seven."

"Out of seven people who have been doing this for years." He was looking at me with the expression I was running out of ways to not-think-about. "You moved in two weeks ago."

"Technically twelve days."

"Twelve days." He paused. "You've already got the chat, the competition, Mrs. Patterson's approval—"

"Gerald's hypothetical approval."

"Gerald's hypothetical approval, which is arguably more significant." The corner of his mouth. "You're staying."

"I said I was staying."

"I know." He said it quietly. Not a repeat — a confirmation. The difference between hearing something and believing it. "I know."

Outside the window the south-ledge pigeon sat in its usual spot.

I looked at it.

It looked at me.

"Felix," I called across the room.

Felix appeared immediately with his clipboard. "Yes."

"The pigeon's been there the whole competition."

Felix looked at the window. Then at me. Then wrote something on the clipboard with great focus.

"Noted," he said, with profound satisfaction.

Noah made a sound that I recognized, after a moment, as a laugh. A real one, surprised out of him, genuine and warm and entirely worth whatever chaos this building was going to continue to put me through.

I decided, sitting in the Pelican Court common room eating my fourth piece of chin-chin while a food scientist gave someone feedback on their tempering technique, that Bimpe had been right.

These were my people.

I wasn't going to tell her that.

But they were.

To be continued...