The Sixty-Eighth Cake

The vampire bakes the sixty-eighth cake with more care than he’s ever done anything in his long life. He pulls the old recipe card from a worn, leather-bound book with delicate gold lettering on the side reading “Pierre’s Finest”. The book had been bound specifically for him and his many recipes. His chocolate cake rests comfortably on the first page. It is, after all, the most important piece of his arsenal.

He knows the exact number of times he’s made this recipe (sixty-seven), and he knows this will be his last. There’s something sweet in the air. Pierre hasn’t been human in the traditional sense for a long time, but even he can sense it.

The last cake. Well, it better be his absolute best.

The week leading up to the bake he’d flown 12 hours to his home country of France to collect a specific type of chocolate. The chocolatier was not one he’d recognized (this was disappointing considering Jeanne had been a pleasure to work with for the past 7 years), but the fellow was happy enough to sell such a large quantity of their most expensive stock. The chocolate was based on an original recipe developed in 1782. It’s incomparable to anything else in the world.

After procuring the chocolate, he took to the streets which were laden with the burdens of his past lives. When he was young, he’d been orphaned and homeless at a young age. A beautiful young woman took him in. That woman became his mistress and eventually, his maker. She didn’t survive a 16th century witch hunt leaving Pierre entirely on his own. This suited him just fine, for a while. He passed the time with his many cats; caring for them, reading to them, and exploring the city that came alive for them all. It was during one of these midnight jaunts that he met Dorothy.

The vampire had already finished counting the years by the time Dorothy entered his life. She was tall and tan, wearing a yellow dress that swiveled around her delicate ankles while she bounced from foot to foot. Her chin-length, brown hair left the length of her neck exposed. It was odd, he’d admit later, that he noticed the ankles first.

She had been waiting in line for a popular jazz club to admit her. There were other people around, Pierre knew that, but for the life of him he didn’t care to remember a single one. When he saw her, smiling like the world would smile back, he found the closest ally to hide in. As his very nature claimed him to do, he stalked the girl (though he’d never put it in those words). He found that she was a book binder visiting a distant cousin for the summer.

He attended her window night after night until one humid evening she called down to him, “Dark stranger! If you must lurk, at least bring me a cake.”

So, he brought a cake.

It wasn’t the best tasting, nor was it the most beautiful, but he brought it.

The aforementioned day was February 10, 1953. This is important because he’s made a chocolate cake every year since, on the same day, for the same woman.

Back in the kitchen, the bake begins. It starts with the dry ingredients: flour, sugar, cocoa, baking powder, baking soda, salt, and a touch of espresso powder (which she’s never noted but enhances the chocolate). He whisks them by hand, forgoing a mixer. Then slowly, more so than a human could manage, he adds the milk, oil, eggs, and vanilla. In thick, glossy, folds the batter unfurls into two round pans, each coated in a layer of butter. Then it’s to the oven, a massive black thing which has only ever known the aroma of chocolate.

Once the cake is cooling, he starts on the star of the show: the ganache. With a newly sharpened knife, the Parisian chocolate is finely chopped, then placed into a metal bowl. Separately, he heats heavy cream over the stove until it simmers slightly. It’s then poured directly over the waiting chocolate and mixed until it shines a deep brown.

Perhaps the most important part is what comes next; Pierre paints espresso syrup on the bottom layer of cake to retain moisture, then carefully lays thinly cut strawberries down until it’s completely covered. The top of the cake is placed on the fruit. The ganache (still warm) is poured directly on top of the cake until it runs over the edges. If he played his cards right, it won’t thin at the top and he won’t need to use a spatula at all.

The ganache sets perfectly.

The cake is left to sit for an hour. Just one hour until sunset.

Vampires don’t pass the time like humans do, so when Pierre stands stick-straight in an old kitchen staring at the mortar space between two bricks on the wall for a full hour, he’s just doing what is in his nature. For him, time isn’t measured in breaths, but in the moments between moving.

The timer stirs him to action.

The night is cool and white from a recent snowfall. The streets are silent, peaceful even. He walks for a while clutching the tray with hands that shake slightly, though vampires don’t feel cold.

Much too quickly, he comes to a brick house. It has a green door with a half-moon window. He can see down the front hallway when he approaches. The front porch light is on revealing a row of empty pots, and two old lawn chairs discolored and chipped. He remembers when she first got those chairs, how she had awaited his arrival with crossed ankles.

“Hello, dark stranger,” she’d say in jest. This is how she greeted him every time.

The empty chair causes his hands to shake more violently. Lifting one, he rings the doorbell. It echoes throughout the house. A moment later, a young woman answers the door.

“Hello! You must be the dark stranger,” the woman looks a bit like Dorothy in the sharp angles of her face and the wideness of her eyes.

“I suppose you may call me that,” he replies.

“Come in, come in. Can I take your coat? Here, let me have that.” She grabs the cake as he removes his coat and hangs it on a rack. He takes the cake back, perhaps a bit too quickly.

“She’s just down the hall,” the girl says, “I’m Elizabeth by the way. You can call me Beth, but if you did, I’d have to kill you.” At that, she flashes a crooked smile. The vampire does not laugh.

Beth leads Pierre down the hallway to the last room on the right. A pale gold light filters through a crack under the door.

“Go ahead. I’ll be right back,” Beth leaves him standing there with a cake, staring hard at a white door while trying to ignore the smell that emanates from it, like overripe fruit and powder.

“Oh, get in here. I’m not getting any younger,” croaks a voice from inside.

Obeying, he turns the knob and steps into a warm room. Inside is a single bed, a white vanity, and a small stand with a television. An empty wineglass rests on the nightstand. He raises a brow at it.

“Should you be drinking?” he asks the slight figure on the bed.

“Should you be judging?” she snaps, then softer says, “It’s Lizzie’s. She likes to sit in with me and watch the News.”

“I see,” he crosses the room and takes the chair by her bed, “How are you, Dorothy?”

“How do I look?” she gazes at the ceiling.

“Stunning as always.”

“Hah!” she laughs.

The door opens and Beth comes in bearing plates and silverware.

“I found it!” she announces. The silverware is authentic with small scratches from years of use. The plates are a fine china with blue flowers painted on the edges. Pierre had given them to Dorothy for her thirtieth birthday.

Unfolding a table, Beth takes the cake from the vampire. She cuts two thin pieces, places them on the plates, then hands them with napkins and forks to Dorothy and Pierre. She stands to go, but Dorothy stops her.

“Take the rest in the kitchen, dear. You’ll be wanting a piece of this,” she winks at Beth who takes the cake tray with her as she leaves.

Pierre straightens at the compliment.

“Let’s none go to waste,” Dorothy says, taking the first bite. Her eyes close slowly as the cake melts in her mouth. The rest is gone shortly after. She then reaches over and takes Pierre’s slice, finishing that too. He watches her greedily.

A while later, the vampire says, “This is the last cake. You know that, right? Sixty-eight. You don’t have much time, Dot.”

“I figured,” she stares at the empty plate in her lap. Then motioning to the door says, “she doesn’t know.”

“You haven’t told your granddaughter? She will be devastated.”

“Rather later than now.”

The vampire stands. Dorothy jumps at the quick motion.

“It’s time,” he says.

He leans down and, grabbing a soft wrinkled hand, brings it to his cold lips. “May we meet again on another beautiful night, sweet Dorothy,” then he is gone from the room.

He has time only to perceive a light sob from the bed before the door closes behind him. Looking down, he finds Beth sitting on the floor of the hallway, face buried in her hands. Pierre glides past.

“You could be wrong,” she says, stopping him.

“Maybe,” he concedes, though he knows he’s not.

He strides to the front door. Dawn is not far off, and he does not want to miss it. The first one in centuries that he alone will witness. What does it look like? He tries to remember.

“The cake was good,” Beth calls out.

“You enjoyed it then?” he quirks a brow back at her.

“Obviously.” She chuckles, “Will you make me one next year?”

He pauses under the frame of the door, the weight of the morning pressing in on him.

“We’ll see,” then the night swallows the vampire.