In the Age of Love and Chocolate

“What do you get out of it?”

“I supply you with cacao and offer my services in exchange for 10 percent of the business. Also, I want to be a part of this. I want to build something with my own two hands. It is exciting here. My heart beats like a madman’s!” He grabbed my citrus-coated hand and held it over his heart. “Feel, Anya. Feel how it beats. Last night, I am so tired but I cannot even sleep. I have waited to be a part of something like this my whole life.”

His proposal did not seem unreasonable. Cacao was one of our larger expenses, and Theo had been indispensable since his arrival yesterday. (Had it only been yesterday?) If I had a hesitation, it was probably that I considered very few people to truly be my friends, and Theo was one of them. “I don’t want this to spoil our friendship if the business doesn’t work out,” I said.

“Anya, we are the same. No matter what happens, I know the risk I take and I will not blame you. Besides, we will always be friends. I could just as soon hate you as I could my sister. My sister Luna, I mean. Not Isabelle. Isabelle, I could hate. You know how she gets.”

He held out his rough farmer’s hand, and I shook it. “I’ll have Mr. Delacroix draw up the papers,” I said.

It was only right. Theo Marquez had taught me everything I knew about cacao, and without him, there probably wouldn’t have been a Dark Room.

IV I GO FROM INFAMOUS TO FAMOUS; CONSEQUENTLY, ENEMIES BECOME FRIENDS

THE NIGHT BEFORE MY BIRTHDAY, I had been sternly warned by Mr. Kipling not to expect the club to be a success right away—or ever. “Bars are tricky,” Mr. Kipling had said. “Nightclubs are worse. In this economy, do you know what the rate of failure for nightclubs is?”

Hadn’t Chai Pinter said it was 99 percent? But that figure seemed high. “I’m not sure,” I said.

“And that’s precisely what worries me, Annie,” Mr. Kipling had said. “You have no idea what you’re getting into. The rate of failure is 87 percent, by the way. And most people aren’t foolish enough to open a nightclub in the first place.”

However, Mr. Kipling had been wrong about the Dark Room. For whatever reason, the idea had instantly caught fire. From the first night we opened, every table was filled, and the lines got longer every night. People I hadn’t heard from in years contacted me trying to get tables. Mrs. Cobrawick, formerly of Liberty, was turning fifty and wanted to spend her birthday at the Dark Room. She was an awful woman, but she had once done me a good turn. I gave her a table by the window and even sent her a round of Theobromas on the house. District Attorney Bertha Sinclair wanted to bring her mistress but needed to arrange to come in through the back door to avoid the press, who were always posted out front. Bertha Sinclair was not my favorite person either, but it was good to have powerful friends. I hooked her up with our most secluded table. I heard from kids I’d gone to school with, teachers (a few of whom had voted to expel me), friends of my father’s, and even the cops who had investigated me for poisoning Gable Arsley in 2082. I said yes to everyone. My father used to say, Generosity, Anya. It’s always a good investment.

I had been written about my whole life because of who my father was, but now for the first time, I became the story. Instead of being identified as a “mafiya princess,” they called me a “nightclub darling,” a “raven-haired impresario,” and even a “cacao wunderkind.” People wanted to know what I was wearing, who cut my hair, who I was dating. (I wasn’t dating anyone, by the way.) When I walked down the street, people sometimes recognized me, waving to me and calling my name.

During this period, the Family remained silent. I had braced myself for more disturbances like the destruction of the cacao supply, but none came.

At the end of October, Fats contacted me. He asked if he might come to the club for a sit-down, and I agreed.

Fats arrived at our meeting with only one other person in tow, and that person was Mouse, the girl who had been my bunk mate at Liberty. “Mouse,” I said. “How are you?”

“Very well,” she said. “Thanks for recommending me to Fats.”

“She’s become indispensable,” Fats said. “I trust Mouse here with everything. Best hire I ever made, if you want to know the truth. You got good instincts, Annie.”

They sat on the love seat in my office, and Noriko brought in drinks. I asked what I could do for them.

“Well,” Fats said, “I’ve had a change of heart, and I don’t want there to be bad blood between us anymore. You’ve obviously made a real success of it here, and I’m the kind of person who can admit when he was wrong.”

I sat back in my father’s chair. I did not feel the need to address the ruined cacao supply. I knew it had been him, and he knew I knew. Best to move on. “Thank you,” I said.

“From this point in time forward, you got my 100 percent backing. But there’s something you need to know.”

“What’s that?”

“The Balanchiadze, the Balanchines in Russia, are furious with you.”

“Why?”

“Because they see your business as a threat. If people go to your club to get cacao, maybe they lose their taste for black market chocolate. That you, the daughter of Leonyd Balanchine, are the face of this new way of business threatens them even more.

“They keep pressuring me to sabotage you, but I won’t. I did it once, but you probably know that.”

I nodded.

“Since then, I’ve done everything in my power to keep the heat off you. Me and Mouse both. And I’ll keep on this way until I’m dead or someone else becomes the head of this Family. Also, I wanted to say that I’m proud of you, kid. I’m sorry I was slow to see the light. I hope this won’t sound presumptuous but maybe you learned a little from me about how to run a club. You and your friends used to spend so much time in my speakeasy.”

“Maybe so,” I said. I clasped my hands and set them on the table. “What do you need from me?”

“Nothing, Anya. I only wanted you to know what was happening and that you didn’t have anything more to fear from me.”

He stood, and then he kissed me on both sides of my face. “You done good, kid.”

V I PREVENT HISTORY FROM REPEATING; EXPERIMENT WITH OLDER FORMS OF TECHNOLOGY

IT IS A TRUTH universally acknowledged that when something goes well in one part of your life, something else will just as certainly fall apart.

I was in a meeting with Lucy and Theo when my cell phone whistled. I hadn’t had one for very long—you weren’t allowed to have one until you turned eighteen—and I was always forgetting to turn the ringer off. I glanced at the caller identification: HT School. For a moment, I wondered what I had done wrong. I turned to the group. “Apologies. This is so rude, but my sister’s school is calling.”

I walked over to the window to take the call. “We need you to come get Natty. She’s being suspended,” Mr. Rose, the secretary from Holy Trinity, said.

I excused myself, dashed out to the street, and then took a cab down to Holy Trinity. As I walked the familiar path to Headmaster’s office, I paused in the doorway of the lobby to consider my sister. Natty was still wearing her fencing whites, though a single drop of blood on her sleeve spoiled their pristine look. She was not sitting in a particularly ladylike position either. Her legs were spread aggressively and wide, as if to create a boundary between her and everyone else. She was hunched over—that chip on her shoulder was palpable and probably weighed her down. A scratch was slashed jauntily across her cheek. Her eyes were proud and murderous. I think you can guess who she reminded me of.