Gabrielle Zevin - In the Age of Love and Chocolate

“Who else was involved?”

“Yuji Ono, obviously.” Mickey coughed so hard I worried he might choke. I thought I saw drops of blood on the towel I had given him. “They were in love, you know.”

There had been rumors, but all I knew for certain was that Yuji and Sophia had been schoolmates. “Anyone else?”

“No. Not that I know of. No one important.”

“Simon Green?”

“The lawyer?”

My father’s bastard, I wanted to say.

“So many lawyers,” Mickey said. “Simon’s not the worst.” He coughed yet again and it sounded like his lungs were filled with marbles.

“What’s wrong with you?” I asked.

“I think I caught something when I was overseas.”

“Something contagious?” Jones asked. My head of security rarely felt the need to add commentary.

“I don’t know,” Mickey said.

Jones scooted as far away from Mickey as the love seat would allow.

“Why are you looking for Sophia? If someone kidnapped her, you should leave well enough alone. Let her be gone,” I said.

“I have unfinished business with her. I need to see her.”

“Care to say what that business is?”

“If she hasn’t been kidnapped, I think she set me up. She got me out of New York City so that Fats could take over. Maybe she thought you would take over, I don’t know. I don’t understand any of it.” Despite the fact that rain had cooled the late-summer night, Mickey was covered in sweat. “She—” He coughed again, but this time he expectorated an enormous clot of bloody sputum that bounced across my desk like a rubber ball.

“Mickey, you’re not well,” I said, though that was more than evident. “Would you like a drink of water?”

Mickey did not, or I should say could not , reply. His eyes rolled toward the back of his head, and his body convulsed.

Jones looked at me without emotion. “Take him to the hospital, Ms. Balanchine?”

“I don’t see what choice we have.” I had no particular love for my cousin, but I did not want him to die in my office either.

Three days later, Mickey Balanchine was dead. He had outlived his father by less than a year. The official cause of death was an incredibly rare strain of malaria, but official causes of death are wrong all the time.

(NB: For many reasons, I suspect poison.)

“ THE DOCTORS’ CREDO IS DO NO HARM,”Dr. Param said. “Well, a bit of chocolate never hurt a soul, and I’ll sign my name to that on as many prescriptions as you want.” He was sixty-two years old and losing his eyesight, which left him unable to perform surgery and thus willing to accept a position at the Dark Room. The seven other doctors I had hired had their reasons for working at my club, too—the most important reason and the one that they collectively shared was that they needed the money. Cacao could be used to treat everything from fatigue to headaches, from anxiety to dull skin. However, the unofficial policy of our club was to give prescriptions to everyone who was over eighteen and wanted one. For this service, we paid our doctors well and expected them not to scruple very much. I told Dr. Param he was hired. “This is a baffling world we live in, Miss Balanchine.” He shook his head. “I remember when chocolate became illegal—”

“I’m sorry, Dr. Param. I’d be superinterested in discussing this with you some other time.” The club was opening tomorrow and I had so much to do before then. I stood and shook his hand. “Please give your uniform size to Noriko.”

I went down to the newly constructed bar and then passed through it to the immaculate kitchen. I had never seen such a resplendent kitchen anywhere in Manhattan. It was like a place out of an early twenty-first-century advertisement. Lucy, the mixologist, and Brita, the Parisian chocolatier I had hired, were frowning over a bubbling pot. “Anya, taste this,” Lucy said.

I licked her spoon. “Still too bitter,” I said.

Lucy swore and emptied the contents of the pot into the double sink. They were working on our signature drink. We had mostly finished the menu, but I felt we should have a house beverage. I hoped it would be as distinctive as the drinks I’d had in Mexico. “Keep trying. You’re getting closer, I think.”

Behind them, I could see into the pantry where the shelves were stocked with weeks’ worth of supply from Granja Mañana, the cacao farm where I had spent the previous winter. In retrospect, I probably should have had the abuelas or at least Theo come out to teach my chefs how this was done.

I went back to the bar, where Mr. Delacroix waited for me. “Would you like to read the interview in the Daily Interrogator ?” he asked.

“Not particularly.” Mr. Delacroix had insisted that we hire a publicist and a media strategist. I had given endless interviews over the past two weeks, and in that time I’d learned that Argon the Unaffected was not suited to talking about herself. “Is it bad?”

“Listen, it takes a while to be good at giving interviews.”

“You should have done all of them,” I said. He had given his share, but he had insisted that I be the face of the business. “I feel dumb talking about myself.”

“You can’t think of it that way. You aren’t talking about yourself. You’re letting people know that you’re involved with this great project.”

“But they dredge up parts of my life that I’m not comfortable discussing.” The difficulty was this: they felt that nothing was off limits while I, who was reserved by nature, felt that everything was. I did not wish to speak of my past—this included my mother’s murder, my father’s murder, my relatives in general, the time I’d spent at Liberty, the reason I’d been thrown out of school, the fact that my brother was in prison, the fact that my ex-boyfriend had been poisoned, and the fact that my other ex-boyfriend had been shot. “Mr. Delacroix, they want to unearth ancient history that has nothing to do with the club.”

“Ignore the questions. Discuss what you do want to discuss. That’s the secret, Anya.”

“Do you think the club’s going to flop because I’m awful at interviews?”

“No. It’s too good to flop. People are going to come. I believe in this enterprise. I do.”

I wanted to run my fingers through my hair but then remembered that I had no hair. The media strategist had thought it would be a good idea if I got a new look before the launch of the club. Gone were my curls, which I was told made me look like an unkempt preteen and not like the owner of—her words—“the hottest new nightclub in New York City!” Instead, I had a sleek, choppy bob, chemically relaxed and flat-ironed within an inch of its life. I did not mean to sigh, but I did.

“You miss your hair, poor thing.”

“You are mocking me, Mr. Delacroix,” I said. “Anyway I’ve worn it short before. It’s only hair.” It was only hair, but I had cried after it was cut. The hairdresser had spun around the chair for the big reveal. I regarded an alien in the mirror, who looked as if it might have trouble surviving life on the hostile planet where its spaceship had crashed. I looked vulnerable, which was my least favorite way to look. Who was that girl? She certainly couldn’t be Anya Balanchine. She certainly couldn’t be me. In a display that I considered so unlike myself as to be disturbing, I had buried my shorn head in my hands and wept. How embarrassing. One wept at funerals; one did not weep over hair.

“You hate it,” the poor hairdresser had said.