Page 3 of Leo and His Love Bunny
The salesman in me comes out. “I can’t guarantee that there are going to be more later, so if you want them, you better get them now.”
“Don’t sell them all! I want some,” a lady in the back says.
“Just give me a dozen and a half, then. That’s a compromise.” Navy’s grin widens, and I smile back, although I just remembered about the ladies in my apartment building.
They upholster furniture in the common room downstairs, and I walk by them every day on my way to the elevator.
They are going to hear about this, and there is no other way up to my apartment, because even the entrance to the steps is right beside the elevator.
I want to die. I really want to die. Everyone in my life is going to be horrified. But the cupcakes are selling so well, and I’m charging an outrageous amount, and... I just can’t stop.
“We’re on the air in five minutes,” Ryan says, and I see that Stephanie has already given him a cupcake. He’s taken a bite out of it, which makes it look slightly less like a human breast, but it’s still obvious what it had been.
What am Ithinking?
I shake my head as though to get the thought out of it. It is not a breast. It is a cupcake that went horribly, horribly wrong.
I’m not going to be able to serve all these people in the next five minutes, but I do the very best that I can. Stephanie bustles around the tables, and now that the folks who were sitting eating their scones or sticky buns and drinking their coffees know that there are human breast cupcakes available, they all want one.
I should be happy about this. My shop is going to more than quadruple the money I put out for the radio station, especially once word gets out about these, but this is not what I wanted to be famous for. I wanted to be famous for the taste of mycupcakes, the deliciousness, my creative recipes, for Stephanie’s artistic abilities, but not my wild—and heretofore unknown—ability to make icing the color of flesh and nipples and create cupcakes that look like breasts.
“Nora, I am surprised. I wasn’t expectingthistoday.”
I want to groan. The next person in line is Cordelia Higginbotham, the pianist at the Baplicodist Freewill Community church here in Whisker Hollow. Her church is across the street from my church. A nondenominational one I really enjoy going to. I’ve been to the Baplicodist church for special occasions, and it’s nice, but I’m feeling judged right now.
“You and me both,” I say, pasting my smile on and determining that I’m going to continue to smile until or unless my lips fall off.
Or until the floor opens up and I fall into the dungeon which is most assuredly beneath. That’s pretty much the only way my day can get worse, and considering how it’s been going, I actually think it might be an improvement. Particularly if there are alligators down there. Alligators and a dungeon would be far preferable to facing Cordelia Higginbotham with my human breast cupcakes on a platter between us.
“I can’t believe you’re being so...casual about this. This is...terrible. The state of the world is already so bad, but here in Whisker Hollow, we have values and morals and we represent everything that is good in society. Except...you shocked me. I did not expect to come into a Christian woman’s cupcake shop and be presented with R-rated cupcakes!”
Her voice had been gradually increasing in volume until when she said “R-rated cupcakes,” she basically shrieked it, her words echoing across the entire store, which had suddenly gone silent, the way things do when people hear loud voices and look around trying to see if someone’s about ready to get into a fistfight, because there’s just something in the human psychethat loves to see conflict and loves even more to see someone be deeply and irrevocably embarrassed.
I know my cheeks are flaming, and I might be just a little angry. Because after all, they’re cupcakes. No matter how much they look like breasts. Even I got confused, so I can’t be mad at her.
“We’re going on the air in 30 seconds,” Ryan says, and I truly hope he didn’t hear the R-rated cupcake thing, because if I were doing a live-action broadcast from someone’s cupcake shop, and they had cupcakes that were R-rated, I might consider it a selling point.
However, I do not consider this a selling point formycupcake shop, just the rest of the world. Because no one else in the world has my mother, my town, and my apartment building, with ladies who...are very sweet, and I love them, but I know this is not going to go over well. Not with anyone.
And this is not me. I’ve been a line-walker all my life. I’ve never even worn a shirt that shows cleavage, let alone made cupcakes that belong in a porno movie.
“I’m sorry, Mrs. Higginbotham.” I open my mouth to tell her this is not what I intended, but I don’t want that to be the story either. I don’t know how to spin this so that people know that this is not what I intended, but they still come in and buy them anyway. Because it’s what I have to sell. And as far as I know, we have thousands of them made.
I don’t want to be stuck with one thousand cupcakes that look like human breasts, because I can’t donate them to the local schools or senior center like I normally would if I had overstocked and my baked goods were going to go stale.
There aren’t any adult film studios in the area—or the state as far as I know (but how would I know? It’s not like this is something I know anything about.)—that would (probably) welcome such cupcakes.
And I can’t exactly afford a trip to California, since my bank account has $2.72 in it.
Of course, there are all the cupcakes that I just sold, so today’s deposit should be pretty good.
But it won’t be enough to pay my bills, unless I go along with this.
“Ten seconds until we’re on the air,” Ryan says as I desperately look around, trying to think of something to say that will distract Mrs. Higginbotham from my R-rated cupcakes. Something that won’t get me kicked out of my church, my apartment building, or my community.
Just then, my bell jingles overhead, and if the cupcakes hadn’t almost done me in, this most certainly would have. Since hockey superstar, and Whisker Hollow resident, Leo Lipinski walks in my door.
He’s been in my shop before, and I have seen him on the streets of Whisker Hollow at times. We’re not far from Stowe Town, which houses the illustrious Icebreakers hockey team for which Leo plays.
