The Twelve Days of Dash & Lily(19)
“Might be an all-nighter,” said Miss.
“No problem,” I said. Jahna was a starving student and could use the day’s work for her train trip back home to Vermont for the holidays. Jahna was definitely from Vermont. But she might have done a junior year abroad in France, which is why she could be so effortlessly casual and sophisticated when she wasn’t squealing like an idiot tween girl who just went to Disneyland for the first time. (Lily did that, and continues to do it every time she rewatches the video of her first time entering the Magic Kingdom.) Lily didn’t have to worry about staying for the late night Jahna promised, because surely the real Pratt student would show up and relieve Jahna of duty, and they’d all have a laugh about missed communication, and ohmygod, I didn’t realize you signed up for the job. Go ahead, you finish up, I’ll just head home now.
Miss said, “Love your outfit, bee-tee-double-u.” It took me a second to realize she meant “btw.” “Is it vintage?”
I looked down at my school uniform. Fudgsicles. “Tee-why,” said Jahna, for “ty.” “And why-ee-ess yes!”
After that, I discovered Miss was not much of a talker. She was a doer. A frosting-spreading, gumdrop-placing, gingerbread house–making work machine. The most I got out of her was that she was a freelance baker who’d gotten in over her head this year with custom gingerbread house orders. That was fine. I felt very Dash-reading-a-book about the whole experience, enjoying the feeling of aloneness while doing something I loved. An afternoon of decorating gingerbread houses was about as perfect a day as I could imagine.
The real Pratt student still hadn’t shown up by dinnertime, and I was hungry. I excused myself to get more Joe & Pat’s pizza, and considered just skipping out on the rest of the job, because my family was probably starting to wonder where I was. I finished my pizza and bought some extra slices to bring back to Miss. The pizza would help cushion the blow when Jahna announced she had to quit for the night.
Miss was sitting slumped on the floor when I returned, exhausted. I handed her the pizza box. “You’re an angel, Jahna,” she said. “You literally saved me today.” She wolfed down a slice and then said, “Wanna see the back room? That’s where I really need the help. The real moneymakers are back there.”
“Oui!” Jahna said. “J’adore les moneymakers.” Lily really needed to get home, but Jahna was extremely curious to know what was back there. Maybe Jahna should minor in French. It would open her up to so many diverse career opportunities after she graduated Pratt. She could study at Le Cordon Bleu. Oui, oui, oui!
Miss said, “You did such a beautiful job on the churches. You’re not religious or anything, are you? Because I don’t want you to be offended by what’s in the back. The gingerbread cookies back there are, you know, rated X. Full-frontal men, if you know what I’m saying.”
“No problem,” I said. “It’s not like I’m a virgin, ha-ha!” Lily was the virgin. Jahna had had a mad love affair with her eighteenth-century French lit professor during her junior year abroad. It was all very secret, and Jahna regretted it now because he was two decades older than her, but, wow, the sex had been le amazing. And the champagne and chocolate-dipped strawberries après l’amour.
Jahna may have been le whatever about what she saw in the back room, but Lily was wide-eyed shocked. “Rated X” was no exaggeration. My eyes had never, ever wanted to see gingerbread men and women in such various acts of…
“They’re Kama Sutra cookies,” said Miss. “All the major positions.”
“I knew that,” Jahna said, too quickly.
“They even have their own orgy den!” said Miss, laughing. She pointed to a completed gingerbread house decorated to look like a naughty gentlemen’s club, with the words LIVE NUDES spelled out in white frosting on the roof, and Red Hots candies lining the sides to look like red lights.
Lily gulped, but Jahna said, “Awesome. Great work on the cutouts.” I’m not going to lie. The gingerbread couples seemed very much in love, and they made me wish to experience the kind of passionate pleasure that was on their faces. Someday.
I couldn’t wait to go home and find my phone, call Dash, and forget all the awkwardness lately. See him. Touch him. Sprinkle him in ginger and cinnamon and sugar, then smell him, and kiss him.
“Right?” said Miss. “It took me weeks to weld the cookie cutouts to just the right degrees of positions.”
“You make it look so easy,” said Jahna.
“Thank you! You’ve worked so hard all day. You deserve the truly fun task now.” She handed me a bag of blue frosting, and then pointed to several trays of undecorated gingerbread females. “Are these the girls who work in the gentlemen’s club?” Jahna asked Miss knowingly.
“Hardly!” said Miss. “These girls are royalty.” She lifted a piece of paper covering a drawing tacked to the wall behind the trays, showing voluptuous girls with long, braided hair doing unspeakable things. “Make ’em look like this. Princesses.”
“Not Elsa and Anna!” Lily cried out. Lily wanted to go home so badly right now and never, ever watch Frozen again until these drawings had been obliterated from her memory.
“Right?” said Miss again. “I know, bestsellers!”