Icing on the Cake

It had been a long night. He’d only just fallen asleep, the QVC spokesman droning in the background, when before the birds were tweeting, a blasted band had started playing “Happy Birthday” like a broken record. Adrian rubbed his eyes with the back of a veined hand and wondered how he had pulled the short straw. Whose birthday was it anyway?

Adrian flinched as the song began yet again. A jazz band complete with barbershop quartet had set up on his front lawn in the wee hours. Tubas, trumpets, saxophones, piccolos – everything blaring at double fortissimo, banging around in his head, making his dentures rattle and clack with each boom, bang and tooting vibration. If Agatha was still with him, he would’ve sent her to run them off. He smiled thinking how fun it could’ve been to see her do that. She’d say she’d have to wear her hair rollers, and she’d make sure she had on the sky blue eye shadow and dark red lipstick – because she’d always thought it was funny to see people react to a walking cliché, especially one who spoke her mind so clearly.

At exactly 8am, while Adrian was pouring cheerios into a bowl, the neighborhood went silent. No more “Happy Birthday” song blaring on his front lawn? He put the cereal box down and went to peek out of a window. There were even more people in the yard, one of which seemed to be walking towards Adrian’s front door. Cringing, he fumbled to lock the deadbolt and went back to the kitchen. Bracing for the inevitable knock, he finished pouring cereal and put the box away. Opening the fridge, his hand hesitated on the milk jug wondering if he should wait for the knock. After all the fanfare, he’d not be able to ignore if they knocked. No one could sleep through all of that.

Two minutes passed, then three, then another four, but there was no knock. The whole time, Adrian had been sitting at the table, looking at his dry cereal and the clock, grumbling about being interrupted, then about why no one had actually knocked yet. A whole 13 minutes passed since he’d come back into the kitchen. The band hadn’t started playing again, but he knew that wouldn’t last long, so with a grunt, he pushed away from the table and went back to the window.

Cars lined the street and filled driveways for as far as he could see. Were they about to have a press conference in his front yard? There were two local news crews and people everywhere stomping around on his grass. He felt his blood pressure rise and started looking for his pills. It was hard to cut grass at his age, but he managed and took great pride in that yard. To have eighty people clomping around on his lawn made him want to call the police. Had the police chief not been standing near the band stand, Adrian would’ve called for a deputy or two to clear them out. They were having a party on his lawn without his permission. It was trespassing wasn’t it? He paused in his thought process and looked at the phone, maybe he would call.

He lifted the phone and looked around for his spectacles. Once those were on his head, he started to dial the number that would give him the local department. Before he could complete dialing, there was a boisterous banging at the front door. It startled Adrian so much that the phone slipped from his hand and landed on his foot. Had he been a younger man, he would’ve hopped around holding the foot up, but instead he fell back into a recliner, which instantly flattened into a horizontal. He grumbled at the worn out chair and fought his way out of it to go peek out the window again.

From the other side of the door he heard someone say, “Don’t think he’s died in his sleep?”

Surprised to see the governor and a woman with a blazing cake standing on the stoop, Adrian pulled the curtain back a little too far. “Mr. Jones? Mr. Jones, please come out here if you don’t mind.”

“I do mind! Go away; get off my lawn!”

“Please, come out, Mr. Jones. We would like to wish you a Happy Birthday.”

As soon as he opened the door, the band struck up again, blaring strains of “Happy Birthday” as everyone sang. Adrian scowled at them all. He didn’t know why they were wishing him a Happy Birthday, it wasn’t his birthday – anyone who cared about his birthday were planted in a line at the Oak Street cemetery.

When they were finally done, Adrian muttered that it wasn’t his birthday to the governor.

The man seemed surprised. “But, Sir, we discussed this last week. You said it would be alright to have a celebration. The oldest person in the state deserves a party and this personal note from the president.”

“I agreed to this?” Adrian rubbed the back of his neck trying to remember.

The woman holding the flaming cake stepped closer. “113 candles, Mr. Jones. Do you want us to help you blow them out?”

Adrian could feel the heat radiating from the cake and wondered how it was possible that she hadn’t caught her hair on fire. He shrugged and took a step towards her.

At just that moment, a 13 year old girl ran up saying, “It’s my birthday too!” She tripped on the step, bumped the governor who bumped the cake woman who teetered into Adrian, who had already leaned in to puff on the candles.

Adrian was so surprised that he blew his dentures into the azaleas before his shirt caught fire. The governor, being a former fire fighter, was the first to realize where the extra smoke was coming from and yanked the little girl’s cola from her and sprayed him with it.

That was the icing on the cake.



Word Count: 1,000

Character Count (with spaces): 5,426