As I was walking back to the table I almost ran into the waiter who had served us. He stopped and looked at me with a stupid look on his face. Then he remembered he had a job to do, walked on and knocked down a table with some cake on it.
When I finally reached the table, Mr. Amos was looking embarrassed, as lf he didn't want to be seen with me. I could see he was trying to hide it but he couldn't. Suddenly a strange thing happened: he opened his mouth, as if he was going to speak, then stopped. He had smelled the perfume – the fruitcake special – that I was wearing, and the change that came over him was immediate. He look of embarrassment just disappeared. Instead, he looked like a dog who has just found a bone; his eyes shone and he smiled until I thought his face would break in two. He stood up
‘At last you’re back - I missed you, Anna,’ he said. ‘I’ve been in a terrible dream and I’ve just woken up.’
‘A dream Mr. Amos ? ’ I asked. I didn't understand what he was taking about.
‘Call me David, darling ...’ he said.
Darling? What did he mean? What was happening?
‘Yes ...’ he continued. ‘I dreamt that I was being awful to you, treating you as if you were just someone who worked for me. The truth is that you mean so much more than that to me ...’
I wondered what he meant. Was he going to raise my pay?
He went on. ‘You must realise that I’m crazy about you, darling.’
He was calling me darling again. He was being serious.
I have to say that at this point I was feeling very confused. Five minutes ago my boss didn't want to be seen with me. Now he was saying he was crazy about me! What could be making him behave like this? Then, all at once, I realised it was the fruitcake special! Intrigue might smell great, but it didn't make a girl attractive to men. But my fruitcake perfume did.
‘I feel my heart growing with love for you, Anna,’ said Mr. Amos. He was looking at my body through the black dress.
Just then a waitress came to the table. She told me that I had a telephone call and asked me to answer it in the lounge.
I wondered what it was about.
‘Excuse me, David - I won’t be long,’ I said.
‘A minute is a long time when you're gone, Anna,’ he said. His words were like conversation from a bad movie. But I kept quiet about it - he was my boss, after all, even if he had gone crazy.
When I got to the lounge I took the phone. I noticed someone waving their arms at me from another phone across the large room. I could see it was that waiter again - there were bits of cake all over his trousers.
Now what could be want?
I soon found out.
‘Miss ...’ his voice was excited at the other end of the line. ‘... I know I am only a poor waiter but love makes me brave ...’
Why did everybody sound like bad movies tonight?
‘When I saw you just now,’ said the waiter, ‘I couldn't stop myself from falling in love with you. You are so beautiful. Please tell me you will see me ... I know I can offer you more than that rich fool you're sitting with. I may not have his money or his looks, but I love you far more than he ever could. Please be mine!’
‘Wait a minute Romio’ I said. ‘Why don't you just calm down and serve the lobster, like a good little waiter?’
It was the perfume, my fruitcake special again. The waiter had a good smell of it when he had passed by earlier and now he thought he was in love with me, the poor man. It wasn’t his fault. I told him that if he loved me he would not talk loudly about it.
‘Of course my love. I will not embarrass you ... darling!’ the waiter said.
So far I’d had two men call me darling in one evening. Aunt Mini would be pleased.
But it the perfume had worked in that way on the waiter, I had better take care not to pass by any other males too closely. I could end up with a group of men following me home, all saying they loved me. And wouldn't that be awful? Well, wouldn't it? Well, maybe not but it wouldn't be easy to explain to Momma. And I wouldn't even mention it to Aunt Mimi!
Thank goodness the place was quiet that night. I walked back to the table, trying my best to keep away from other men who were in the restaurant. I was lucky; it seemed that they would have to get close to the perfume to get the effects.
When I got back to the table I saw that David had been joined by Sabina, a beautiful young model who was his latest girlfriend – their pictures had been in all the papers recently.
‘So, you’re Anna, I haven’t seen you before, Anna.’ Sabina said my name as if it were a dirty word. ‘Don’t you work for David making perfume or something? terribly exciting.
She held out her hand to me as if I were expected to kiss it. I didn’t.
‘Sabina,’ said David. ‘Anna is the woman I love.’
I could hardly believe my ears. David Amos was telling me he loved he right under the nose of his beautiful girlfriend, Sabina. all because of my fruitcake. I had to say something. This was getting to be silly.
‘David, I really think …’ I began.
But at that moment our waiter made another appearance. He was playing a guitar and singing ‘O Sole Mio’ to me at the top of his voice. Well, he did say he wouldn’t take loudly – I didn’t say anything about singing loudly. I must remember next time.
As for Sabina, she didn’t know whether to laugh or cry at the sight of two men both saying how much they loved me at the same time – and while she was there.
So she hit David in the face.
The waiter sang even louder than before. David hit him on the chin. As I moved away from the table, a fight developed between Sabina, David, the singing waiter and several more waiters who were trying to calm things down.
Soon the place was a loud, confused mess of cake, pieces of lobster, pools of wine and bits of broken guitar.
Time to go, I thought.
I ran downstairs and caught a taxi home. Thank goodness the taxi driver was a woman
* * *
When I got home, Aunt Mini had gone and Momma was asleep – she never could stay awake when she was excited. I had some quite moments to think about what had happened. Why had my perfume had such an effect on men who would not normally take any notice of me? Nothing had been put in that was any different. Nothing, that is, except Aunt Mini’s fruitcake.
What a fruitcake!
Then I had a thought. What if I, as a chemist, could find out what it was in that fruitcake that caused men to go mad with love? People would pay a lot to know a thing like that. I could make a lot of money! There was no reason, come to thing of it, why I should let Amos Cosmetics know about it. After all, it wasn’t their fruitcake. But I couldn’t do a thing unless I knew what was in the cake – and only Aunt Mimi knew that.
I decided to miss work the next day – I would say I had a cold or something. I also wanted to avoid David Amos who might still be affected by the fruitcake special, or the fight that had followed.
* * *
Aunt Mimi lived in a nice little apartment on the other side of town. I had gone out before Momma got up. I didn’t want to be questioned about my ‘new young man’. It took an hour to get there on the bus.
When at last I arrived Aunt Mimi gave me a warm welcome. Soon we were sitting in her kitchen, talking about this and that. We both knew what Aunt Mimi was going to ask me about in the end, so neither of us minded talking about other things first. Aunt Mimi was good company when she wasn’t talking about husbands.
I mentioned the fruitcake.
‘Anna,’ said Aunt Mimi, ‘I’ve known you since were born and you’ve never baked a cake in your life. Now you want to know how to bake a fruitcake. What’s going on?’
‘Nothing, Aunt Mimi, I just thought the cake was delicious and wondered if I could bake one too. There’s no harm in that, is there?’ Of course, I was lying. We both knew it.
‘So,’ Aunt Mimi said. ‘This new man of yours – he wants you to bake him a cake. Who does he think you are, his mother? Just what were you two doing last night, having a cookery class?’
‘Oh, please, Aunt Mimi,’ I begged. ‘I really need to know. I promise that as soon as you tell me I’ll tell you everything about last night.’
Aunt Mimi was interested. ‘Everything?’
‘Everything,’ I said. ‘No secrets.’
Aunt Mimi smiled. ‘Well, my dear, I hate to tell you this but I didn’t make the cake. I bought it.’
‘You bought it?’ I said, unable to hide the surprise in my voice. ‘Where did you buy it?’
‘From a little place in the market the open-air one that takes place twice a week in the park. There’s an old lady there who said she used to bake them for her husbands. She had seven of them, would you believe? And they all ate her fruitcake.’
Somehow I wasn’t surprised that she had had seven husbands. Not with those fruitcake.
‘Did she say what she put in them?’ I asked, hopefully.
‘Only that she put in a “special something” that she grew herself,’ said Aunt Mimi. ‘She wouldn’t say what. She told me that she only baked that kind of cake a few times. As a matter of fact, she knew that I was thinking about finding a husband for you. I don’t know how she knew but she did.
Anyway, this woman who made the cake told me to give it to you and your problems would be over. I didn’t believe what she said, but I used to buy the fruitcake because they were delicious.’
I noticed that Aunt Mimi was talking about this old lady as if she wasn’t around any more. I feared the worst. Was she dead?
‘Can we see this old lady to ask her about it?’ I asked.
Aunt Mimi looked at me sadly. ‘I’m afraid she died last week – I went to her funeral. They say she was over a hundred years old. There were a lot of strangers there, not from around here, all speaking in some kind of strange way. They seemed to think she was important, though nobody ever took much notice of her around here.’
‘Except you, Aunt Mimi,’ I said.
Aunt Mimi smiled. ‘Well, you know how I can’t mind my own business.’
I knew.
‘Speaking of which,’ she said, moving closer to me, ‘it’s your turn.’
‘My turn?’ I asked