"You Can't Stay a Saint in This City"

“Three sticks of butter,” I read unsure of whether or not this is exactly the best option for someone starting the preseason in a week. I found one of those Philosophy body washes with the recipe printed on the bottle in my car. So I decided to blindly trust a novelty recipe from something I bought at Sephora to try and get Mike Richards to like me better. I found the butter and put it into my wire cart. I loved supermarkets there was so much to see, so much to buy. I really am just a consumer at heart. My cart slowly began to fill with goods as I passed through the aisles. It also began to get harder to push, especially with ten pounds of flour and sugar.

I was doing the whole incognito thing with the sunglasses-indoors thing so no one was stopping me and asking for pictures/autographs. In fact I think they were more likely to think I was blind than famous since housekeepers usually did the pantry stocking.

I found myself in the magazine section. I picked up my usual quartet: Cosmopolitan, Glamour, Lucky, and InStyle. I also found a familiar face on the cover of several magazines. For once it wasn’t mine, it was Milan’s. He was on the cover of The Hockey News’ Fully Loaded. When did he get such an awful haircut? I put Milan’s magazine into my cart and proceeded to the checkout. Everyone working here seems so depressed in their green uniform smocks. The old lady in front of me in the line has two boxes of cat litter and several bags of dried fruit from the bulk section in her basket. You can tell a lot about a person by what they buy.

When I finish paying I carry the bags to my car and drive along to get home. I walk in through my doors. From my foyer I can see right through to the backyard and the pool. I drop my groceries onto the counter and begin pulling out what I need for my cake. Eggs, butter, sugar, flour, raspberries, and vanilla. Laying out all these ingredients in front of me makes me feel like I’m on some sort of cooking show.

“Cream the butter and sugar until fluffy” I say reading the bottle of raspberry scented translucent pink liquid. I gingerly unwrap the three sticks of butter and drop them into the stainless steel bowl of the stand mixer. When I turn it on the mixer starts making this noise that a car makes before it breaks down. I lower the speed and everything seems fine. The butter looks pretty fluffy, about as fluffy as butter gets. I pour in some sugar and continue the process described on the label.

“Did you know that Serbia produces 2/3 of the world’s raspberries?” I ask Coco who looks more interested in getting a dog treat out of the jar. I wonder what Milan is doing. Maybe I’ll bake a cake for him when he comes to Los Angeles in March. Let’s not get ahead of ourselves. I don’t even know how this cake is going to turn out. I just hope it’s edible.

After baking for about the length of an episode of Project Runway I take out two pans of perfectly golden raspberry cake. While the cakes cool I make the whipping cream filling. I iced the cake between flipping through the pages of Fully Loaded. There were pictures of other people in there too. I assume they’re other players from the team but I wouldn’t know. How could I love someone with a life I didn’t even know? It was like meeting this guy on an online dating site and deciding you love him before you even got to know him. For all you knew he could moonlight as a Chippendale dancer. Of course I wasn’t exactly suspicious of Milan being a male stripper but the concept was the same.

I tear my eyes away from the magazine, when did the sun set? I call Dolce and Coco in before locking the French doors behind me. As I walk into the street and notice that his BMW isn’t in the driveway nor are the lights on in his house. Maybe he parked in the garage, I tell myself as I walk up the concrete driveway. I press the doorbell and hear a faint dinging noise echoed into the house. I wait patiently before ringing two more times. He must be out. On a Monday night.

As I walk home I’m tempted to devourer the cake but I’m not really that hungry besides I’m
sure the cake will taste just as good tomorrow.
_____

I see Mike’s car as I drive home from work, I guess I can finally deliver his cake in an effort to bribe him to not talk to the media about me. But from what I’ve read on Wikipedia, he doesn’t like to talk to the press much anyway.

I knock “Door’s open!” he yells from the other side of the oak door so I let myself in. I’ve been in the Henderson’s house before during several of their dinner parties. It looks pretty much the same. Except that a shirtless Mike looks borderline passed out on their Louis XVI revival couch in the living room.

“Hi,” I say trying not to look, anywhere “I bought you a cake.” I say hoping he’ll tell me where to put it and then I can skedaddle home.

“Great,” He says getting up. “I haven’t eaten all day.” It’s 5:30 in the evening. What the hell happened to his day?

I follow Mike into his kitchen and place the cake onto the cool marble counter tops and turn in an effort to leave him to each his cake in private. For some reason my eyes don’t want to witness something that will probably look a lot like that video of David Hasselhoff eating the hamburger.

“Do you want a slice?” Mike asks as he cuts himself a quarter of the cake with a meat cleaver.

I don’t exactly have dinner waiting for me at home… “Sure,” I say hopping onto a barstool.

He cuts me my own equally large slice and hands me a fork. I wonder if eating your entire daily calorie allowance in cake is a good idea. Especially the day before your first preseason game. Then again getting wasted two days before isn’t such a good idea either.
But what would I know? I’m not exactly a fellow professional athlete. Maybe that’s what Milan is doing at this exact moment.

“Are you trying to sabotage my campaign for the Victoria Secret Fashion show?” I joke as I stick my fork into the cake.

“Clearly. I’ve been hired to try to get you to balloon to a size two.” He replies sarcastically.

I laugh, “I hope you realize most of those girls have better curves than me.”

“I guess you won’t freeze your ass off walking down a runway in lingerie then.”

“Nope” My cake is actually pretty good. Bonus marks for me since neither one of us have bitten into an eggshell yet.

“Honestly what do you do?” Mike asks looking at me.

“If you read my column in Maxim you’d know”

Mike scoffs “No one actually reads the articles in those things.”

I roll my eyes “I’m an interior designer”

“Well that’s kind of boring.” He says bluntly.

I’m kind of offended. Plenty of people find me entertaining. At least I think they do. That’s why I’m on TV right? “Well it wasn’t like I was going to say that I act in soft core pornography”

“I guy can dream, right?” He says finishing the last bite of his cake.

“Not unless you’re in The Girl Next Door with Elisa Cuthbert.” I say mentioning the box office flop that everyone has probably forgotten about.

Mike smiles, I’m actually kind of surprised he got the reference. Leave it to a fellow Canadian. “I baked the cake. Just so you know.”

“It’s very good Ambrosia” It’s kind of weird that he calls me Ambrosia I can’t remember the last time I let someone call me Ambrosia that many times before telling them that they could call me Amber. Oh well.

“Do you cook?” I ask him as I admire the copper pots hanging above us.

“I grill,” he offers. What is it with guys and barbecuing meat?

“Great.” I say encouragingly that better than Greg who thinks a Slim Fast shake and a Cliff bar is a proper meal. “I’d better go. I’ll see you tomorrow Mike.” I say, not even remembering if he’s on the roaster for that game.

“I’ll see you tomorrow. Section 101 Row 3 Seat 11.” He recites for me “I’ll know if you skipped out Ambrosia.” He adds as I leave his house feeling slightly more uneasy than I did walking in. I also feel an oddly familiar rush of excitement.

"Fuck," I say uncharacteristically as I unlock my door.

I finally recognize the feeling. I have butterflies.