seem the most rational.”
“Most of the time.”
“Hi, Max,” the kid said, now standing near them.
“Heya, Kyle.”
“Zé won’t pose nude for me. I think he’s worried it will put his sexuality into question. Would you please convince him that he is a very virile heterosexual male and that as a woman, you would love to have sex with him, so he can feel confident in his straightness and see this as the artistic request that it is?”
“Sure!” Max said, nodding and smiling and walking. Walking right over to the back door of the house, opening the screen, and yelling into the house in a singsongy voice, “Char-lieeee! Kyle keeps asking Zé to pose nude for him and making the poor guy uncomfortable!”
Charlie’s voice, however, was not singsongy when she barked, “Goddammit, Kyle! Stop doing that! Or no cupcakes for you!”
Kyle blinked and was extremely calm when he asked Max, “Your sister is making cupcakes?”
“Yes, she is.”
“Fine. In honor of your sister’s cupcakes, I’ll let it go. But,” he added, “I consider what you just did a hate crime against art.”
“Of course you do.”
Kyle nodded at Zé. “Zé,” he said.
“Child,” Zé said back.
Zé watched Kyle walk to the garage and disappear inside, closing the door behind him.
“Why did he go into the garage? I’m worried what that implies.”
“Don’t. He turned it into an art studio.”
“So he really is an artist?”
“Yes. And a very good one. He’s also a little nuts.”
“Honestly, your entire house is kind of a freak show.”
“I know. Isn’t it great?” She pointed at Zé. “Did you ever get in touch with your girlfriend?”
“I don’t have a girlfriend.”
“The Japanese chick. At least I’m assuming she’s Japanese.”
“You mean Kamatsu? She’s not my girlfriend . . . and I completely forgot to track down her number. I need a laptop so I can get to my online storage.”
“I’ll get you a laptop. You wait here.” She looked at the back door but started to go around the house.
“Where are you going?”
“Charlie is anger-baking,” she said, stopping by one of the windows that looked out over the side yard. “And the last thing you want to do is walk into the middle of that.”
“Why?”
“Because she starts ranting. And when she starts, she doesn’t stop . . . for a long time. She has a lot of rage-stamina.”
“Do you and Stevie make up a lot of terms that involve your sister doing mundane things and anger?”
“Yes!” she replied. She pushed the window open and snuck her way into her own rental home so that she could avoid her sister . . . baking.
Zé let out a breath. “Utter freak show.”
“Hey! Cat!” a voice called out from behind Zé. He looked over his shoulder and saw an obscenely large man across the big yard on the other side of the chain-link fence. He motioned Zé over with several waves of his hand. With nothing else to do and a little curious about what the large man could want, Zé walked across the yard and around an in-ground pool he hadn’t noticed before.
“Yes?” he asked when he stood before the large man who had to be at least seven feet tall. Freak show!
The man lowered himself and whispered, “Is Charlie baking?”
“Why are you whispering?”
“Shhhhhh! Fucking cat! Just answer the question!”
“Yes. She’s baking. Should I alert the media?”
“What’s she making?”
Zé remembered what Charlie had threatened Kyle with. “Cupcakes, I believe.”
“Cupcakes . . .” And the man said that word as if he was talking about something sacred. Like the Lost Arc of the Covenant or the Shroud of Turin.
“Thanks, cat,” the man said before he jogged away, again moving with an ease that Zé would expect of a shorter, leaner man.
As he stood there, wondering, Max came to stand beside him with a thin laptop in hand.
“What are you doing over here?”
“Talking to what I believe was some freakishly sized bear.”
“That’s pretty much the entire street, dude. What did he want?”
“To know if your sister was baking.”
“What did you tell him?”
“I said she was.”
Max’s eyes grew wide. “You didn’t tell him what she’s baking, did you?”
“Cupcakes, right?”
“Oh, God. They know about the cupcakes.” Her gaze scanned the street. “They know about the cupcakes . . .”
* * *
Charlie placed another two trays of cupcakes on the dining table to cool and returned to the kitchen. She reached into the cabinet above the fridge and took out several jars of honey. She placed them on the kitchen table with all the other items she needed to make the