Is it titled? (Daily Planet email #938)

I’m being pursued by a bear. She is a small bear, as bears go, but the intensity and focus of her anger evens things out. I run up the ridge, through the thicket, down a slope, stumble for dramatic effect, etc. I approach the ranger’s house, shouting shouting but no answer. At the last moment and the outermost edge of my energy, I scramble up the porch reach the entrance please let it be unlocked and grab for the doorknob. It is cake.

Then there was the summer I spent with extended family in Tunis. My goodness, it was hotter than Satan’s armpit, but I was just a boy and then who cares from hot? There is a neighbor girl, I am nine and she is eleven maybe, and we spend our long bright days bothering the marketplace, playing in the ruins, and counting the airplanes by the lake. By now she must be at least sixty, and suddenly there she is, somehow it’s clearly her, crossing the terminal at Dulles. I literally drop my bags and run toward her, calling “Laila! Laila!!” I am mistaken. She is cake.

The French have 112 words for nudity, 86 words for indignance, and 53 words for cake. Gateau Chateau: House of Cake. Glacteau: chilled cake. Oiseaux Gateau: flying cake. Portgateau: a word that looks like cake. There is, at present, no word for something that is supposed to be real, but it’s cake. The Académie, the governing body for the regulation of the French language, convenes an emergency meeting on Saturday. But watch where you sit, madames et messieurs! …Might be cake.

You may kiss the groom. Sorry, he is cake. Are you in need of a life preserver? Ha ha it is cake! Here is a real one — Ha again! — fondant! Yanny, Laurel, or cake? If I knew you were coming, I’d’ve fashioned a shiv out of baked and garlanded sweet batter. Chuck Testa? Nope, cake. The retreating shape of the retiring Maury Povich? YOU ARE THE CAKE! Behind the barely budded branches, the golden sunset at the dimming of the day? Well, that’s pie. Why dontcha have a slice? It’s good.