Out Of Tune

MEGAN The cake left my hands, and I watched two hundred dollars of buttercream sail toward the whitest pair of shoes I had ever seen. Let me go back a little. Thirty minutes earlier, I was fine. Mr. Dobbs set the pink box on the counter and gave me a long look. "Anniversary cake for the Marlowe Hotel. Service door, alley behind the building, ask for the kitchen. They sit down at one. Don't be late, and whatever you do, Megan, don't drop it." "I don't drop things on purpose." "That's what worries me." I took it anyway. The delivery fee was forty dollars, and we needed every one of them before Friday. Rent was due. My little brother Eli needed money for a school trip he kept saying he didn't care about, which was exactly how I knew he did. Dad had picked up night shifts, and Mom was up past midnight sorting things to sell. Everybody in my house was carrying something. That morning, mine was a cake. There was also Dobbs's rule, taped to the corkboard in the back. You break it, you buy it. Two hundred dollars would come out of my pay, and I didn't have two hundred dollars of pay. Before I left, I checked the slip twice and made sure I knew where the service entrance was. I rode the bus out of Eastgate, where the drivers skipped half the stops because nobody important lived there, and held the box on my lap the whole ride. A baby across the aisle stared at it like it owed him money. Downtown smelled like coffee and bus exhaust. That morning I'd nearly walked into a lamp post, so I got off two blocks early and walked. At a crosswalk, I did what I always do when I'm nervous. I sang, soft, the way some people chew gum. Count my coins, count my days, still I hum my way through the maze. A woman beside me turned to look. I shut my mouth. I never sang in front of people. Jess said hiding a voice like mine was a crime, but a voice didn't pay rent. The Marlowe was a big hotel with a line at the front doors. Deliveries went around the back, where people like me came and went without anyone noticing. The alley was narrow and quiet, trash bins against the walls, a stack of crates nearby, a car idling at the far end. A steel door marked KITCHEN stood a few steps ahead. I tightened my grip. Almost there. Then the door banged open. A tall man in a white suit jacket came out backward, still talking over his shoulder. "Tell them I'm not doing it. I'm leaving this way." He never saw me. I never had time to move. His back hit my shoulder, and the box went flying. So that's how I ended up here. The man spun around and stepped back, planting his shoe in the middle of my cake. A wet, awful squish. He lifted his foot. A long string of pink icing stretched from the leather to the ground before it snapped. "You have got to be kidding me," I muttered. I dropped to my knees. The cake was crushed, pink cream smeared across the cardboard and the pavement. Two hundred dollars out of my pay. Mr. Dobbs was going to ask why he'd ever trusted me. My throat tightened. Not now, I told myself. Please, not now. A second man hurried out after the first. Thin, black suit, a phone in each hand. He stopped short when he saw the cake. I looked up. The man in white was good looking, annoyingly so. Dark hair, a sharp jaw, the kind of face people forgave things for. I wasn't forgiving anything. "You stepped on my cake!" I yelled. "You walked into me!" "You came out of that door backward. Like a crab." He glanced down at his shoe. "Do you have any idea what these cost?" "Do you have any idea what that cake cost? Two hundred dollars, coming out of my paycheck. So no, I don't care about your shoes." "Watch where you're going." "Watch where you stand. You're like a lamp post. Tall, bright, and in everybody's way." Behind him, the thin man made a small noise like a hiccup and turned it into a cough. "Do you always yell at strangers?" the man in white demanded. "Only the ones who step on my cake." The thin man bent over and pretended to search his pocket. His shoulders were shaking. Was he laughing? Of course he was laughing. My day was falling apart, and I'd apparently provided the entertainment. "Do you even know who I am?" the man in white roared. "Yes. A man who owes me two hundred dollars." His face went red. "Look at you. Standing in an alley, shouting at me. You're dirt." I stopped moving. The word landed harder than I wanted it to. I knew what it looked like when someone decided you didn't count. I'd seen that look before, in Eastgate, aimed at my mother's faded coat. Usually I smiled and let it go. Nobody had ever said it to my face. I got to my feet and wiped icing off my palms. His expensive cologne cut through the smell of crushed cake. I didn't step back. "You know what you are?" I said. "A clown. And the sad part is, you think everybody's laughing with you." The thin man made a sound like a balloon losing air and turned to face the wall. "Say that again." "You heard me." I held out my hand. "Two hundred dollars." "I'm not paying you a cent. You walked into me." "You stepped on it. Somebody's anniversary lunch starts at one." "I don't carry cash," he said, like that settled it. "Then borrow some." The thin man turned around, wiped his eyes with his thumb, and took out his wallet. He counted out three hundred dollars. "For the trouble." "It was two hundred." "Please take it. Otherwise he'll want to argue with you until dinner." "I do not approve of this!" the man in white shouted at the sky. "Noted, sir," the thin man said. His face was perfectly serious. His eyes were not. I counted the money twice, just in case anyone changed their mind. Pride was nice, but it didn't keep the lights on. I checked my phone. Twelve twenty. The party sat down at one. That gave me forty minutes, three hundred dollars, and no cake. If I hurried, I could still fix this. I tucked the money away and turned to leave. "Where do you think you're going?" The man in white had pulled free of the thin man, who had been steering him toward the waiting car. He pointed at his shoe like it was a crime scene. "You got your money. Now I want mine." "Yours?" "For these." He lifted his shoe, and another string of pink icing stretched from the leather before snapping. "They're handmade. Five thousand dollars." The thin man closed his eyes, like he was watching a plate fall off a shelf, then mouthed over his boss's shoulder: I'm so sorry. I laughed. I couldn't help it. "Nobody's shoes cost five thousand dollars." "Mine do." "Then you bought the wrong ones." He didn't yell this time. His gaze dropped to the flattened box tucked against my side, and his expression changed as he read the words on the lid. DOBBS DELIVERY. The anger didn't disappear. It settled into something colder, and the back of my neck prickled. "Dobbs Delivery," he said slowly, making sure I heard every word. My stomach tightened. "Five thousand dollars," he said. "By Friday." "Or what?" He didn't answer. He got in the car.