In the Age of Love and Chocolate Read online

“Theo,” I said, “I don’t want to marry you. I don’t want to marry anyone. Look at my parents. Look at Win’s parents.”

  “We won’t be like them. I can see you as a little old woman and me as a little old man. We cook and we tease each other all day long. And we are happy, Anya. I promise you that we are happy.”

  I could tell he wasn’t listening to me. I didn’t know how to make him understand. I felt trapped, tricked, and fooled by him. But I also didn’t want to lose the little traitor either. I looked at him. What was wrong with me anyway that this handsome, funny boy was not enough? “Theo, let’s give it time,” I said.

  “Do you mean an engagement before the wedding?”

  “I’m still very young. I need time to think.”

  “You are not young,” he said. “You have never been young. You were born old and you have known your own mind as long as I have known you.”

  “Theo,” I said, “even if I did love you, I don’t believe love is enough of a reason to get married.”

  Theo laughed at me. “What is enough of a reason then? Tell me.”

  I tried to think of one. “I don’t know.” The ring, with its too-tight band, had started to hurt my finger. When I pulled it off, it flew from my hand, landing somewhere in the dirt. I got on my hands and knees and began combing through the soil, looking for it. “Theo, forgive me. I think I lost your ring!”

  “Calm down,” he said. “I see it.” He had sharp eyes from years of tending cacao. In a second, he had located the ring. “Not hard to find a pearl in the dirt,” he said.

  He tried to hand it back to me, but I would not accept it this time. I kept my fists closed. “Theo, please,” I said. “I’m begging you. Ask me some other time.”

  “Admit that you love me. I know that you love me.”

  “Theo, I don’t love you.”

  “Then what have we been doing for the past year?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “It was a terrible mistake. I like you so much. I like kissing you, and I couldn’t be more grateful to you. But I know I don’t love you.”

  “How do you know?”

  “Because I … I have been in love. And it is not what I feel for you.”

  “Do you mean with Win? Why are you not still with him if you love him so much?”

  “I wanted other things, Theo. Maybe love is enough for some girls, but it isn’t enough for me.”

  “You leave Win, the boy you claim to love, because you say that love is not enough. You have friendship and work and fun with me, but that is not enough for you either. You don’t want love, but then you do. Has it occurred to you that nothing will ever satisfy you?”

  “Theo, I’m only nineteen. I don’t have to know what I want.”

  Theo set the ring on the palm of his hand and contemplated it for a moment. “Maybe we break up? Is that what you want?”

  “No. I’m saying … What I’m saying is I can’t marry you right now. That’s all I’m saying.” It was selfish and weak, but I didn’t want to lose him. “Let’s forget this ever happened. Let’s go back to New York and back to the way we were.”

  Theo stared at me and then he nodded and put the ring in his pocket. “Someday, Anya, you will be old, old like your nana and my bisabuela. You will be sick and you will need to rely on someone other than yourself. And you may find yourself sorry that you sent everyone who tried to love you away.” He offered me his hand, helped me up off the ground. I brushed the dirt from my dress, but because the ground was damp, most of it would not come off.

  XI

  I ALMOST FOLLOW IN MY FATHER’S FOOTSTEPS

  WHEN I WAS TWELVE, I had discussed with Scarlet what would happen if a boy (perhaps a prince) proposed marriage and you were put in the awkward position of having to reject him. “He’ll probably disappear the next day,” Scarlet had said. In any case, the discussion had given me the false idea that a no might convey the power of magical banishment. And wouldn’t that be for the best? Because how could a boy be expected to stick around after he’d offered you his heart and you’d said, Thanks for your heart, but I’d prefer a different heart. Actually, I’d rather not have a heart at all.

  When we returned to New York, I half expected Theo, who I had always known to be proud, to move out or even leave the country. Of course, that was impractical—he lived in my apartment, and we ran a business together. Instead, we both went on as if nothing had changed, and that was awful. He did not bring up the proposal, though I felt it hanging in the air above us like a rain cloud in August. Maybe he was being patient. Maybe he thought I would change my mind. I wanted to say to him, Please, my friend. Go and be free. I release you. I owe you so much and I don’t want to cause you unhappiness. You deserve more love than I can give you. But I was too cowardly, I guess.

  Occasionally, his insults felt less playful and more pointed than they had in the past. Once, when we’d been arguing over the minimum amount of cacao a certain drink required, he told me that I had “an ugly heart to match my hair.” In moments like this, I felt we were on the verge of having the argument that would lead to the final act.

  * * *

  By March, the first of the new wave of Dark Rooms was ready to open. The location was in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, and it had been quite easy for us to get the place going once we had the money—the laws and many of the logistics were the same as those for the Manhattan club, and travel by the L train, though it only ran once every other hour, was not difficult. The new club was in a building that had once been a Russian Orthodox cathedral. Though my cousin Fats had run a speakeasy out of a church for years, this was my first “holy” location. Perhaps I should have paid greater consideration to the spiritual issues, but I didn’t—it was not my faith, and as I have already mentioned, I had more or less given up on organized religion during that period of my life. In its favor, the site was central and picturesque, with yellow brick walls and copper-helmeted domes in the Russian style. In truth, the Russian part gave me pause more than the cathedral part, as I still did not wish to associate the club with my Russian crime family. But the Dark Room was so popular in Manhattan that I thought the potential association wouldn’t be much of a hit. Plus, the price was right.

  I was getting dressed for the opening of the new club when my cell phone rang. It was Jones. “Ms. Balanchine, there’s a body outside the Manhattan club. The police have already been called, but I think you should come down, too.”

  * * *

  The police were slow in those days, so I was not surprised to find that the body had not been attended to by the time I arrived. An overweight man lay facedown on the steps. I could not see any obvious trauma to the body. Even from behind, he looked familiar. I knew you weren’t supposed to touch a body at a crime scene, but I couldn’t help myself. I bent down and I lifted the big onion-shaped pate, which reminded me of the domes of the Brooklyn club. The head was still unnaturally warm in my hands.

  It was my cousin Fats, the boss of the Family.

  I was not an observant Catholic anymore, but I crossed myself.

  I instructed Jones to cover Fats and then to erect velvet ropes, routing our customers around my cousin’s body. While I waited for the police to arrive, I went inside to call Mouse, who in a relatively short time had managed to become Fats’s second-in-command. “Mouse, Fats is dead.”

  Mouse, like me, was not a crier. She was silent for several moments, which I knew to be her way of coping with hardship.

  “Are you still there?” I asked.

  “Yes, I was thinking,” she said in a voice that sounded as calm as milk. “It must have been the Balanchiadze. Look at the timing. They knew you were opening the second Dark Room location, and they must have decided to make a statement by killing Fats. It’s only a theory, but Fats had been fighting with them for months. He was trying to protect your business.”

  “Why didn’t he come to me?”

  “He wanted to keep you out of it, Annie,” she said. “There will be a scramble to see who l
eads the Family now that Fats is gone. I wonder…”

  “Yes?”

  “Maybe it should be you? Everyone in the semya respects you so much.”

  “I can’t do that, Mouse. I have a job and I have no interest in running the Family.”

  “No, you wouldn’t. Why would you?”

  “I know you and Fats were close,” I said. “Will you be okay?”

  “I’m always okay,” she said.

  * * *

  The police didn’t arrive to claim Fats’s body until eight p.m., a full three hours after Jones had reported the death. They tossed Fats into a black bag, and I was told that that concluded the investigation.

  “Do you want to look for evidence?” I said to one of the police officers. “Maybe ask me a couple of questions?”

  “You telling me how to do my job now, missy?” the police officer said. “Look, Fats Medovukha was a high-level gangster. There’s no crime here. It was only a matter of time before he ended up with three bullet holes in his chest. We’ve got real situations, and a force that’s about forty percent of the size required to deal with all of them.”

  I felt angry. I knew the same sentiments had been expressed when my father had died. My cousin couldn’t help that he’d been born a Balanchine any more than I could. “He was my cousin,” I said. “People cared about this man.”

  “Oh, so you knew the deceased, did you? Maybe you want us to investigate you?” the police officer said. “The victim is usually close to the perpetrator.”

  “I’ve got friends, you know. Bertha Sinclair comes to my club every week.”

  The police officer laughed. “You think she isn’t aware that your cousin was killed? She’s the one who told us to bring the body to the morgue and consider this matter closed.”

  * * *

  I was four hours late for the Brooklyn launch. When I finally arrived, the party was in its denouement. It looked like it had been a good party, but I was in no mood for partying anyway.

  “What happened?” Theo asked me.

  I shook my head and told him I would tell him later.

  I went to get myself a drink from the bar. I needed to clear my head. Mr. Delacroix sat down next to me.

  “Where were you?” he said.

  I related my evening. At the end, I asked, “If this had happened when you were DA, would you have acted as Bertha Sinclair has? Would you have tossed Fats’s body in a bag and told me there wouldn’t be an investigation because my cousin was a bad guy from a bad family?”

  “I’d like to tell you that I definitely would have investigated, but that isn’t true,” Mr. Delacroix said after a beat. “The decision would have depended on what else was happening in the city at the time.”

  “What about me? If I died, would anyone bother to investigate?”

  “Anya, you’re important now. You own a business and you bring a lot of money into this city. Your death would not go unnoticed.”

  I felt a little better.

  “For the city, the problem is not your cousin’s death, but who will succeed him. We like to know with whom we’ll be dealing. Did your friend have any thoughts about that?”

  I shrugged.

  “Well, someone will run the Family and it would probably be wise of you to take an interest. You don’t want them to choose someone whose interests run counter to your own.”

  I hadn’t thought of it that way.

  “Anya,” Mr. Delacroix said, “if Mouse is right and the attack was meant as a warning to you, perhaps you should reconsider getting personal security—”

  “Mr. Delacroix, we have discussed this matter before, and my position hasn’t changed. I would rather die and know I walked this city and this planet as a free person. I have nothing to hide, and I don’t require security.”

  Mr. Delacroix smiled at me. “This seems noble but wrongheaded to me. You are indeed a free person, as you say. I certainly cannot control what you do. I can only offer you my advice. I don’t think hiring security would take anything away from you or your accomplishments. But let’s not discuss it any further.” He clinked his glass to mine. “Brooklyn came out rather well, don’t you think?”

  * * *

  The next day, I was summoned to a meeting at the Pool, which was the Balanchine Family’s headquarters. I knew it was a sign of respect that I had been asked as I was not technically Family anymore. I had tried to avoid interacting with the Family in the years since I had opened my club. However, this would no longer be an option with Fats dead. Mr. Delacroix was right when he said I should take an interest in the person who would be installed as the head of the Balanchine Family.

  When I got to the Pool, Mouse was waiting in the lobby. “Everyone’s downstairs.”

  “Am I late?” I asked. “Your message said four.”

  “No. You’re right on time,” she said. “Let’s go.”

  The place seemed unnaturally quiet to me, and I began to wonder if I should have brought security. In the past, Mr. Kipling had usually accompanied me to important Family meetings. Maybe it had been foolhardy to go alone, and without telling anyone where I would be either. I stopped at the top of the flight of stairs.

  “Mouse, I’m not about to be ambushed, am I?” I asked.

  She shook her head. “Don’t you think I have your back?”

  In the swimming pool, the Balanchines were seated around the table. I recognized perhaps half of them. There were always new faces, though. Turnover was high among the Balanchines—someone was always dying or going to prison.

  Everyone stood when I walked in, and I noticed that the only place left was at the head of the table. I looked at the empty chair and wondered what was meant by it.

  What else was there to do? I sat down.

  A third or fourth cousin of mine named Pip Balanchine was designated the Family’s spokesperson. (I had many cousins, but I remembered Pip because he was the one with the mustache.) “Thank you for coming, Anya. Two years ago, you gave your approval to Fats Medovukha to run the Family. At that time, many of us felt you should be made head of the Family. As you may remember, I was one of those people.”

  “Yes,” I said.

  “We are deeply saddened by Fats’s passing. At the time of his death, he was having an argument with Ivan Balanchiadze. We believe this is why he was killed. The dispute involved the Dark Room.”

  “I’m sorry to hear that.”

  “Fats Medovukha believed in you and your cause, and he was willing to die for both. Since Fats’s murder, we’ve been discussing the situation. What we believe is that Ivan Balanchiadze and the Russian side of the Family is the past. You, Anya, are our future. We believe that nothing short of legalization is the key to our survival.”

  A man in a purple suit spoke: “Many of us have wives and children, and we’re tired of having to look over our shoulders and of wondering when the law is going to catch up with us.”

  Pip Balanchine continued. “We ask you today what we should have asked you two years ago. Anya, will you lead the Balanchine Family into the twenty-second century?”

  I did not want to lead this Family.

  And yet …

  As I looked down the long stone table at the pasty complexions and light eyes that recalled my father’s, my brother’s, and my own, an unfamiliar feeling began to stir within me.

  Obligation.

  I felt an obligation to these men (and women, though mainly there were men). That I had been born a Balanchine had been the defining circumstance of my life. The name Balanchine had attached to me and defined me as violent, wild, bad, lazy, angry, and difficult. These Family men were as blameless as I had been in the face of this birthright. I knew I had to help them. If it was within my power to help them, I could not say no.

  I looked over my shoulder at Mouse, who stood behind me like a loyal consigliere. Her eyes looked hopeful and expectant.

  “I cannot officially run the Family and run my business,” I said. “I wish I could, but I can’t.

&
nbsp; “However, I want to do everything I can to help you. Your words, Pip, have moved me, and I will not abandon you. I want to give even more Balanchines jobs, working for the clubs. I want to cut off our dependence on the Balanchiadze chocolate supply altogether. We can leave the black market chocolate business to some other family, and together, we can channel our efforts into legal revenue sources like cacao and medicinal chocolate.”

  The Balanchines were nodding.

  “But who will run the Family?” the man in the purple suit asked. “Who will ensure your plans are executed?”

  “Perhaps one of you,” I began, but, as I was saying this, I had a better idea. Why not the slim-shouldered, resilient girl standing behind me? Mouse had been my only confidante at Liberty, and, at significant personal cost, she had even helped me escape. She had been mute, bullied, homeless, and cast out by her family. No one had overcome more or complained less than she had. No one had been more loyal to me. I trusted her like a sister. Of course it should be Mouse. I only had to convince the Family to my way of thinking. “Though I wonder if you would consider appointing Mouse to run the Family in my absence. I could consult with her on every decision. I know she isn’t a Balanchine, but she was Fats’s right hand and my loyal friend from prison, and I trust her to be my eyes and ears. Believe me when I say—no person has been a better listener or a more reliable friend to me than Mouse.”

  I turned to look at Mouse. Her eyes were bright. “Is this all right?” I mouthed.

  She reached for the notepad that used to hang around her neck. Back in the day, that notepad had been the only way she could communicate. “Yes,” she said.

  “This is an intriguing proposition,” Pip said. “We will need to vote.”

  “I assumed as much,” I said. “But whatever the outcome, I will do what I can to help you. I am a Balanchine and my father’s daughter.”

  I stood, and the Family stood with me.

  The following day, Mouse came to the Manhattan club, trailed by Pip Balanchine and a woman I did not know. Mouse informed me that the vote had been unanimous. As improbable as it was, a once-mute girl from Long Island had become the head of the Balanchine crime family. She bowed her head when she entered my office. “I await your instruction,” she said.