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  Suddenly, all the employees who are supposed to be cooking and baking are working crowd control. That’s no way to run a business. Especially since three people needed to be assigned to the Creamelés, which were made in a back room with blacked-out windows, which no one but the chef and his helpers were allowed inside.

  Enter Creampuff.

  Nobody knows where he came from. He just showed up one day, arms crossed over his chest, his eyes cold and unmoving like blocks of chipped ice. Some people thought he was the embodiment of order, attracted by the gravity of chaos, here to bring order to an entropic universe. Truth is, it was probably a job posting on Craigslist.

  Patiserie only had the capacity to make two hundred Creamelés a day, and you could only buy one at a time. There was no calling ahead to reserve them. You had to wait in line. And they were a ten-foot treat, meaning you had to eat them within ten feet of the bakery. Wait too long, and the ice cream would melt.

  Every single day, people who wanted ice cream for breakfast would line up as early as 4 a.m., when the first shift of bakers would arrive.

  Doors opened at 7 a.m.

  By 9 a.m., that day’s allotment of Creamelés was gone.

  So you’ve got a line to control. There are people running outside the bakery to eat their Creamelé. And then, there are all the people trying to game the system and get in without waiting in line.

  This is what Creampuff faced every single day—because he worked seven days a week. But he had a system.

  If you were there for a Creamelé, you got in the Creamelé line. Five people were allowed inside the store at a time, and only five people. One person in, and one person out. Even if you were with a group of people, even if you were with your husband or wife, you got split up to go inside. Creampuff only made an exception when parents had their kids with them—not that kids could have a Creamelé, because there was alcohol in it.

  In front of the store, on the sidewalk, there was a sign on a pedestal explaining how the line worked. Plus a lengthy explanation on Patiserie’s website. Not that it helped much. Because people in New York think they are the center of their own little universe, a lot of Creampuff’s job consisted of dealing with people who didn’t want to wait.

  There were the richie riches who would stride up to him and wave a bill under his nose. Usually a twenty, sometimes a hundred. Creampuff would take it, stick it in a pouch on his belt that read “Donations for Charity,” and cross his arms.

  No one ever asked for their money back.

  Two celebrities and the chief of staff for the mayor walked to the front of the line like it wasn’t even there. Creampuff surely had no idea who they were, but it wouldn’t have mattered. Even after they pitched a fit, invoking the don’t-you-know-who-I-am? protocol, Creampuff shrugged, put his hand up, and waved them toward the back.

  Pregnant mom pushing a stroller, arguing she couldn’t wait because her precious little darling had toddler yoga in fifteen minutes?

  Back of the line.

  Tourist on his last day in New York City, and he’ll never be visiting again, and this is his last chance to try a Creamelé?

  Back of the line.

  A man diagnosed with cancer, a week to live, and a Creamelé was his final wish?

  Creampuff offered to let him cut if he presented a doctor’s note. The guy never came back.

  The line was sacrosanct to Creampuff. The way he figured it, the people who dragged themselves out of bed in the middle of the night to wait for a pastry—they were crazy. They had some gaping chasm inside their souls that they tried to fill with food, and honestly, the whole thing was a little sad.

  But they made the effort. Creampuff had to at least respect that much, and not let anyone who didn’t make that effort cut in front of them. In a city where chaos is the accepted norm, a line has to mean something.

  Creampuff had a memory for faces, too. More than once a line-cutter would come back, a day or a week or a month later, and when they finally made it to the front, Creampuff would shake his head. He didn’t even have to say anything. They knew what they had done. And each one of them shuffled off, cradling their shame.

  Same thing with the non-Creamelé line. The store had a separate line that led to another counter for people who didn’t want a Creamelé. Some people thought they were being clever, sneaking around to that side. They also found themselves blacklisted.

  This is the new face of New York City. Living here used to be a game of survival. Now it’s about conning your way into frozen treats. Creampuff was a product of the way things used to be. He rarely spoke. When he did, he never raised his voice. The only time he ever smiled was when there was a child waiting with a parent, and for a fleeting moment, he would soften. For the most part, he would nod, or shrug, or point toward the back of the line. And people listened. The kind of people who on a different day you’d expect to be a problem, they fell in lockstep.

  Creampuff carried with him that aura of not-to-be-fucked-with. He was one of the people this city couldn’t chew up and spit out.

  It got to be where Creampuff became part of the Creamelé story, like a member of the Royal Guard in front of Buckingham Palace. People would want to take pictures with him. They would tell him jokes to try to get him to laugh. Girls would flirt with him to try to make him blush, but he never did.

  One guy said with a name like Creampuff he must be a homo. That was the only time anyone can remember Creampuff laying a hand on someone. He grabbed the guy by the back of the neck, pulled him close, whispered something into his ear, and the guy took off at a full sprint, blanched white as a field of snow.

  It was around this time, that Creampuff’s legend was growing, that the first break-in happened.

  Rival bakers had been trying to replicate the Creamelé without success. Either the crust would be soggy, or the ice cream would melt, or they would burst during the cooking process. It was one of the most sought-after recipes in the city, and some people even offered to buy it, but the owners of Patiserie wouldn’t entertain offers.

  They had gone from just another bakery to one of the hottest destinations in New York City. The prime minister of Mozambique queued up on three separate occasions until he was finally able to get a Creamelé. Why sell off the keys to that kingdom?

  The morning of the first break-in, Creampuff arrived to find that the front door had been pried open. The register hadn’t been touched, but the door to the Creamelé kitchen was ajar. Luckily, the chef always brought the custom bake pieces home with him, so all the perpetrator found were a few standard ovens and raw ingredients—nothing that couldn’t have been guessed at already.

  This is when Creampuff began sleeping in the store.

  No one asked him to. Just one day there was a cot. Once the evening shift had been cleared out, he would show up, lock the front door, and disappear into the back. People began to speculate, about whether he had a place to go, or even had a home. He only seemed to own a few shirts, a few pairs of pants. He never spoke of life outside the bakery, and no one ever came by who seemed to know him.

  For a while, with Creampuff living in the bakery, things were calm. Business continued to boom. The owners made so much money they were able to buy the building the store was housed in, ensuring that future generations of the family would be secure. They even thought of expanding to another storefront, in the West Village. The Creamelés were the star attraction, and the chef was their most valuable player, but still, Creampuff was given a share of the credit, for maintaining order and appearances.

  For being part of the story.

  Then came the day they found his body.

  No money had been taken. The Creamelé room hadn’t been touched. There was just his body, sprawled out on the white tile, blood cutting geometric trails through the grout.

  There were some theories about who had done it. Maybe one of the rival bakeries, in a robbery gone bad. There was also a multinational dessert corporation that waved a seven figure check in front of th
e owners, and were told to bug off. A corporation certainly would seem capable of murder in the pursuit of profit.

  Some wondered if it was revenge. Someone who wanted a Creamelé and didn’t get it, come back to make Creampuff pay for the slight. Or something else from his life catching up with him. Rumors began to circulate that he was in witness protection, and the fame achieved by the bakery had blown his cover.

  How else to explain the savagery of a murder like that, in a town where people have forgotten what it means to be savage?

  After the crime scene had been processed, the owners learned that Creampuff’s body had been unclaimed. Having paid him in cash, there was no address for him on file. He had become another anonymous death in an anonymous city.

  So the owners and the employees put together a collection for the funeral. The costs were eventually completely covered by an anonymous donation. Some person of means who had stood in that line, and decided the man who maintained it deserved a bit of dignity in death.

  The funeral was a quiet affair, held around the corner from the bakery, at St. Mark’s in-the-Bowery. A few dozen people showed up. Mostly employees, though some loyal customers, too. In the back of the church was a frail black woman, a shroud around her face, weeping softly into a yellow handkerchief, and many assumed she was family, though she left before anyone could ask.

  When it came time for the eulogy, the owner of Patiserie, a slight old man, was helped to the dais. He stood there for a long time, looking down at his hands resting on the podium. Then he looked up and told a story.

  One day, Creampuff had finished his shift and was getting ready to leave, when he saw a woman across the street, struggling to carry groceries into her apartment building. He didn’t know her. But he walked across the street and said something to her and then took the bags from her hands and disappeared inside. He came back out and walked away and went home.

  It was a small moment in the immensity of this man’s life, but it was a measure of the kind of person Creampuff was. Someone who did the right thing when the right thing was required. He didn’t seek thanks or reward. He did it and he moved on.

  After the funeral, things slowly returned to normal.

  The owners of Patiserie hired a new bouncer. This one not as reliable, not as steadfast. If someone handed him a hundred, he would allow that person to cut the line. He was prone to anger and berated people for not walking inside fast enough. He was high on the allowances of his power.

  He was no Creampuff.

  Occasionally, someone would ask about Creampuff, not having heard the news, and would be disappointed for a moment, before returning to their quest for a Creamelé.

  Something no one was able to prove was that after he was gone, the line got a little shorter. Patiserie always sold out of the day’s allotment of Creamelés, and the offers to buy the recipe never stopped, but it seemed like there were less people waiting.

  And, eventually, people forgot.

  In New York City, the space left by a memory is a vacuum. It won’t be long before something fills that space.

  But even then, there are people who fight against the vacuum.

  On the one-year anniversary of Creampuff’s body being found, early in the morning, the employees opening the store found a gift-wrapped package leaning against the closed door of the bakery. Inside was a framed photo of Creampuff. It was a candid shot, taken with a cell phone camera in the early morning hours, when the sun wasn’t yet strong enough to push away the shadows.

  Creampuff, staring off toward the end of the line, his arms crossed, like they were always crossed. A statue, solemn and unmoving, with the hint of a smile spreading across the boundary of his lips. His face a portrait of contentment.

  That’s the story of the photo hanging behind the register at Patiserie. The owner thought it important that the photo hang there. It means you can’t buy a Creamelé without seeing it.

  You might not know the significance, but at least you will see it.

  When you visit Google and type in “world’s hottest pepper” you find there are a lot of contenders vying for the crown.

  There’s the Bhut Jolokia, cultivated in Indian states like Assam and Nagaland.

  The Trinidad Moruga Scorpion from, you guessed it, Trinidad.

  The Red Savina, which was engineered in California.

  The important thing to look for is Scoville units. That’s the measure of concentration of capsaicin, the active component in peppers that makes them spicy. According to Google, the Bhut Jolokia measures in at 1.5 million Scoville units. For the sake of comparison, a jalapeno rates about 3,500.

  Bhut Jolokia it is.

  You order four from a specialty food website and wait for the mailman. You purchase a pair of goggles and some heavy-duty rubber gloves from the hardware store, because you will be playing with the culinary equivalent of fire.

  You imagine the look on Scott Olson’s stupid fucking face when he takes a big bite of your lunch.

  That heavy-breathing, flop-sweated pervert.

  Scott has stolen your lunch fourteen times now. Never when it’s something boring, like PB&J. Only when it’s good, like leftover meatball parm from the place down the block, or when you summon the commitment to make a big batch of short rib stew.

  Every day around 11:30—just before the lunch rush—Scott cruises the refrigerator and makes his selection. If it’s not you, it’s someone else who goes hungry. You can’t complain. No one can. The last person who did got canned. That’s what happens when your daddy owns the company, and is also a prick.

  Then there are all those times he’s openly stared at your tits while discussing shipping quotas or delivery reports. You stopped counting how many times he’s done that.

  When the box arrives, you cut it open and upend it onto the counter. Four shriveled peppers fall out, dark red like bruised lips, wrapped in crinkly cellophane. After slicing them lengthwise, you dispose of the seeds, because it’s a myth that the seeds store capsaicin. All the heat is in the flesh.

  Thank you, Google.

  You turn the Julienned strips sideways and do a brunoise cut, dicing them into tiny cubes. The gloves make it a little tough to maneuver the knife. You wish you had a mask, because you feel a sharp tickle in your sinus cavity, like inhaling dry air on a cold day.

  The diced peppers go into the cauldron of tomato sauce and cheap ground meat and spices bubbling on the stove. When the chili is done it’s deep brown and thick. You forget to put the goggles on, so when you take the lid off, steam billows out and your eyes instantly burn and fill with tears. You wash your face with a gallon of milk over the sink. Milk contains casein, a compound that binds with and washes away capsaicin.

  Again, thank you, Google.

  Your eyes sting a little for the rest of the night, but the pain is worth it, because when you arrive at work the next day, you are dizzy with excitement. You know Scott likes chili. You know he won’t be able to resist. You used a clear plastic storage container and even wrote ‘Chili’ on top in black felt marker, just to be sure.

  This will be a win for every office worker who has ever been treated like a gear in a machine or a stat on a spreadsheet. You wonder how long you’ll have to wait before you can admit to your co-workers that, yes, you are the one.

  The new office hero.

  You fantasize about them carrying you aloft on your desk chair, marching among the cubicles as interns throw shredded ribbons of expense reports into the air.

  This makes you smile.

  You don’t stay in the kitchen because you don’t want to be present at the scene of the crime, so you tuck into your office with your PB&J and you wait.

  And wait.

  Come noontime, you walk down the hall and find nearly the entire office crowded around the door leading into the kitchen. Laughing at that asshole’s misfortune, no doubt.

  Except, no one’s laughing.

  No one is moving, either.

  Hands are held at mouths, eyes stre
tched wide in horror. Dread so palpable your stomach twists into a knot, putting undue pressure on both ends of your digestive tract.

  The crowd parts. A stretcher rolls out, guided by two paramedics. Scott is lying on top with his shirt ripped open, an oxygen mask clamped on his face, his skin shiny and slick with sweat.

  He’s not moving either.

  You hear someone in the crowd say the words “heart condition.”

  You are dizzy, again, but not with excitement.

  To your right is the sound of shoes scraping against carpet. You turn and find a handsome police officer. Strong jaw and white teeth and blue, blue eyes.

  He is not smiling.

  “Ma’am, if you could just come to the conference room in a little bit. We have to speak to everyone who was here today.”

  Money is money. It doesn’t matter where it comes from. It only matters that you have it, and you can pay the rent, or the electric, or the grocery bill.

  This is my mantra. It’s what I repeat as the temperature inside the Almo costume reaches somewhere around two hundred degrees Fahrenheit, and some prepubescent goblin is driving his tiny fist into my balls.

  Before you ask, yes, Almo, with an A. It’s a knock-off, supposedly Mexican. Ultimately, who cares? The kids see what they want to see—an anthropomorphic red monster they know from television. I would never refer to myself as anything but Almo, lest I find a lawyer attached to my neck.

  Back to my balls. You would think the fuzzy padding of the suit would offer a little protection. And maybe a decade ago, when it was new, it would have. But after a dozen owners and a hundred appearances and every bodily fluid imaginable, it’s not up to the task.

  Last week, I had to throw some red felt pens into the wash, just to re-dye the parts of the fur that were fading. Related to that, I am no longer welcome at my local laundromat.

  The tourist couple—the ones responsible for the goblin trying to bludgeon me into castration—they’re smiling and laughing. They must assume the padding is intact. Or at least I hope they do, because if not, that would make them really terrible people.