The Ambient Cake Market Place

Lots of writers I know tend to keep their projects a secret, as if someone will steal the idea right out from under them. I understand not wanting to let certain cats out of certain containers, but I have had lots of luck doing just the opposite. Everywhere I go, I tell people I'm writing a book about cake.

And so it happened in a bar. At a friend's suggestion, I take a seat at Desmond's, an Irish pub on Park Avenue at 29th Street. Brian, the bartender, is celebrating his 42nd birthday without beer, cigarettes, or cake. I order a Smithwicks (properly: Smiddicks) and take out my notebook. A few guys want to buy Brian a drink, but he has just quit smoking, and drinking would weaken his resolve. He moves from one customer to the next, switching places with an empty, used pint glass, setting it on the bar ledge in front of me while he talks with the guy next to me, putting it in front of that guy while he talks to me. He does this several times before I ask. "It's an idiosyncrasy," he tells me, blaming it on the lack of cigarettes. He looks a little older than 42 and a lot like a movie star. He's smart. He has a good vocabulary and knows more about politics and history than the group of twenty-something business people he corrects at the bar. I don't know why it surprises me. Bartenders often know more.

A few people sit at the bar, and at least two of them are English, one on a Christmas-shopping holiday. He is in his forties, it seems, and wears a knit cap pulled down to his eyebrows; I have no idea if he has hair. He's just finished describing how his forklift flipped over while he was driving it, how he got back into the seat, how he was subsequently ejected, how the forklift kept going, and how it ran over three of his toes, which had to be amputated. He's having trouble getting around and complains about the cab drivers.

Since I asked him, he asks me what I'm doing in New York, and I tell him about Simon & Schuster and the book. In order for this story to work, you have to hear the bloke with Billy Bragg's voice.

"About what?"

"Cake," I say.

"Cake?" he asks.

"Cake," I say again.

"C-A-K-E cake?"

"Yes, cake!"

"About making it?"

"No, about eating it!"

"Well, all right then!" And with that, he offers to buy me a beer. I decline (the first time), but both he and a gentleman at the end of the bar start laughing about "Mr. Kipling." By way of explanation, they say, in unison, "Exceedingly good cakes!"

"Are they?" I ask.

It's the company's tag line (and, I discover, the name of a now-defunct band). They agree that the cakes are pretty good, but the pie! I confess that I'm a sucker for those mincemeat pies, the little ones that look like cookies.

My seven-toed English friend and I move on to other subjects, amputation among them. I show him where I chopped off my thumb tip a few years ago with an X-acto knife, and he shows me a similarly damaged finger.

When he offers a beer this time, I take it.

Today, I wrote to Mr. Kipling. I'm now getting paid to feed my perpetual hankering. I hope the folks at the London snack cake factory return my query and offer me a French fancy.

P.S. The seven-toed Brit gave me a peck on the cheek both times he left the bar. Is that typical in an Irish pub in New York?