Piece of Cake

From Candypedia
Piece of Cake
Chapter70 of 129 (list of chapters)
PublishedApril 23, 2012 (2012-04-23)
Page count17
Major charactersPaulo, Lucy, Jordan, Jasmine, Lily
Minor charactersYashy, Chirpy, Rodrigo
LocationsLucy’s house, Paulo’s house, Roseville neighborhood
Collected inVolume Four
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Paulo sets out to deliver a slice of cake to Lucy, strictly as a friend. Between his own runaway daydreams, two door-slammings courtesy of Jordan, and one late-night phone call, “friend” stops being quite the right word.

Synopsis

Paulo trudges through the snow carrying a small pink present, a slice of cake from Tess’ party saved for Lucy, who never showed up.[1][2] He rehearses a “totally platonic” delivery the whole way there, but keeps drifting first into a bubble-bath fantasy and then into a daydream of a vulnerable Lucy asking him to stick around. That one ends with him clutching his head in the street, screaming “NO REMEMBER WHAT HAPPENED LAST TIME”.[3]

At Lucy’s front door, Lily tells him Lucy is busy and can’t come down, and offers to pass the gift along herself.[4] Then Yashy opens fire with snowballs, and while Lily storms off after her, Paulo slips through the open door and heads upstairs.[5]

Behind a half-open door, he finds Lucy sitting alone in the dark, her back to him. He barely gets a word out before the door slams and Jordan is shoving him down the stairs. The present ends up squished on the hallway floor, where Lucy quietly cracks her door open to look at it. Jordan won’t explain anything beyond “One of you did something!”[6][7]

Paulo broods over the visit for the rest of the day. Building a snowman with Jasmine, he’s distracted enough to suggest dressing it in “Ribbons” before hastily correcting himself to scarves.[8]

A second run at Lucy’s door goes even worse. Jordan answers with a flat “Yeahhhhhhhhhhno”, recites Lucy’s less-than-flattering descriptions of Paulo back at him, and slams the door.[9] Paulo storms off yelling that he’d be the best friend Lucy ever had, then goes red at his own phrasing. At home, he asks his dad whether meaning “friend” in a boyfriend kind of way counts as cheating. From behind the newspaper, Rodrigo answers, “Sure, why not”.[10]

That evening, Jasmine calls, anxious about confessing that she’ll be away at her gramma’s in the country for Christmas week. The call turns warm and teasing, and she promises she begged for permission to stay past midnight at Tess’ New Year’s party.[11]

Later in the night the phone rings again, and Paulo picks up expecting Jasmine. It’s Lucy. She thanks him for the cake, apologizes for Jordan, and admits she ate what was left in the box. “I didn’t want to waste your visit,” she tells him. “It was nice.”[12][13] She hangs up on him mid-sentence. Paulo gazes fondly at the phone with hearts in the air around him — and then his face falls. “Goddammit.”[14]

Character dynamics

Paulo stands in a doorway looking into a dark room where Lucy sits hunched on the edge of her bed, her back to him.
Paulo finds Lucy sitting alone in the dark.
  • Paulo and Lucy: Paulo and Lucy haven’t spoken for a week when the chapter opens. Lucy has shut everyone out since Mike’s rejection in December,[15][6] and Paulo’s insistence on keeping things “totally platonic” goes back to the night she kissed him in Another Shoulder.[16][3] Lucy brings them back into contact on her terms by calling to thank Paulo for the cake. She also decides when the call is over. Paulo ends the chapter knowing full well that what he feels isn’t friendship, and hating himself a little for it.[14]
  • Paulo and Jasmine: On the surface, they’re still the same easy, teasing couple, building snowmen together and flirting over the phone. Only Paulo shows any strain, from the “Ribbons” slip to his flicker of disappointment when the girl on the line turns out to be Jasmine rather than Lucy.[8][17] She leaves for the week having begged permission to stay out late at Tess’ party for his sake, with no idea anything is wrong.[11]
  • Paulo and Jordan: Their first face-to-face clash, and Jordan arrives with his mind already made up. He has despised Paulo by reputation since the family dinner in Dinner Time,[18] and here he throws Paulo out of the house himself.[7] Lucy’s verdict on her brother’s gatekeeping is brief: “Jordan’s an idiot.”[13]
  • Paulo and Lily: By Lily’s own coy account, the two have “never been properly acquainted”, and their doorstep negotiation is the closest thing to an introduction they’ve ever had. She might regret leaving that door open behind her.[4][5]

Trivia & observations

Veronica’s watercolour tests, done before the chapter’s pages were painted.[19]
  • This is the first BCB chapter painted traditionally, in ink and watercolours. Veronica’s commentary under the first page put the new style to a reader vote.[1]
  • It’s also the first chapter whose original pages were sold to readers. The authors ran a fundraiser during the run to replace their dying scanner, and a bonus page added for the occasion grew the chapter from a planned 16 pages to 17.[2] Per commentary, the whole chapter was later rescanned and colour-corrected once the new scanner arrived.[5]
  • Daydream-Paulo’s shirt changes with every panel, running from “I love my GF” through “Jazzie 4eva” to a last-ditch “MONOGAMY”.[3]
  • Jordan’s insults draw on the family dinner in Dinner Time, where he was the one ranting about the “MANWHORE” who “slept with two of your friends”.[18] As Veronica’s commentary puts it, “Guess all that gossip during Dinner Time has come to bite you in the ass, Paulo!”[9]
  • The bubble-bath fantasy places Lucy somewhere the real one would never willingly go. She has been terrified of water since nearly drowning as a kid in Troubled Waters.[2][20]
  • The one-word “Ribbons” slip points straight at Lucy, whose pink ribbon has been part of her look since the comic’s very first pages.[8][21]
  • Rodrigo announces “Girl on the line” without a name. Per Veronica’s commentary, he most likely fields calls from assorted girls asking for Paulo, and is quietly proud (and a little concerned) about it.[17]

Related chapters

Paulo smiles at the phone in his hand while hearts fill the background around him.
A lot of hearts for a call from a girl who isn’t his girlfriend.
  • Another Shoulder: The night Paulo is screaming at himself about on the walk over. Lucy broke down at his house one evening, kissed him, and he stopped things before they went further. In his panicked daydream here, Paulo imagines almost exactly the same bedroom scene.
  • December: Mike’s rejection of Lucy is what put her in that dark room. She cuts off the entire group afterwards, and Jordan knows only that “One of you did something!”
  • At Loose Ends: Tess’ Christmas party, the one Lucy never showed up to. The slice of cake Paulo carries across town is a leftover from it.
  • Ten Seconds to Midnight: Tess’ New Year’s party, the one Jasmine begged permission to stay late at. Paulo breaks up with her there over the very feelings he discovers on this chapter’s final page.

References

  1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 Chapter 70: Piece of Cake, page 1
  2. ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 Chapter 70: Piece of Cake, page 2
  3. ↑ 3.0 3.1 3.2 Chapter 70: Piece of Cake, page 3
  4. ↑ 4.0 4.1 Chapter 70: Piece of Cake, page 4
  5. ↑ 5.0 5.1 5.2 Chapter 70: Piece of Cake, page 5
  6. ↑ 6.0 6.1 Chapter 70: Piece of Cake, page 6
  7. ↑ 7.0 7.1 Chapter 70: Piece of Cake, page 7
  8. ↑ 8.0 8.1 8.2 Chapter 70: Piece of Cake, page 9
  9. ↑ 9.0 9.1 Chapter 70: Piece of Cake, page 11
  10. ↑ Chapter 70: Piece of Cake, page 12
  11. ↑ 11.0 11.1 Chapter 70: Piece of Cake, page 14
  12. ↑ Chapter 70: Piece of Cake, page 15
  13. ↑ 13.0 13.1 Chapter 70: Piece of Cake, page 16
  14. ↑ 14.0 14.1 Chapter 70: Piece of Cake, page 17
  15. ↑ Chapter 68: December, page 31
  16. ↑ Chapter 52: Another Shoulder, page 10
  17. ↑ 17.0 17.1 Chapter 70: Piece of Cake, page 13
  18. ↑ 18.0 18.1 Chapter 65: Dinner Time, page 11
  19. ↑ “Watercolour tests before “Piece of Cake””. 2014-09-11.
  20. ↑ Chapter 30: Troubled Waters, page 10
  21. ↑ Chapter 1: Simple Pleasures, page 2
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