-Eleven-

No one thought to pick up any cake or candles for our mildly autistic coworker's birthday, so I dashed out into the street at eleven A.M. in a desperate attempt to find some. It would really be a coup, I decided, if I could avoid putting the purchase on a card. But I only had two fives and a one in my wallet, so it wasn't looking good.

The first stop was Beverly’s pastries. Beverly hasn’t operated the Bakery in some time; she turned the reins over to the Kwan family in the early nineties. Luke Kwan was at the counter that day, his arm in a sling. Marjory Kwan was nowhere to be found.

My boss had suggested cupcakes. I thought that might be a good idea, too, since we’d have to use plastic cutlery on any dessert large enough for division. I’d also talked my boss down to eight cupcakes, since the college runs on a skeleton crew during the January intermission.

The only problem was that Luke didn’t have eight cupcakes. There were only four cupcakes under the glass, two chocolate, two vanilla, a jumble of danishes, and six brownies, half with crushed walnuts on top, and half without. Minus the danishes, I took two of everything.

For a total of $6.26.

But I wasn’t finished. I passed the pleading vagrants outside the free health clinic and picked up the sodas I wouldn’t be drinking. It was three liters in all, two of them Pepsi, one diet.

For a total of $4.74.

Odd, I thought, as I made the trip back to the office. Eleven dollars even.

Which is odd.