walking off dessert before it's even eaten (lyn)

Lloyd’s is my favorite place to go for dessert.  For $2.25, you can get a piece of the most sumptuous carrot cake imaginable.  Until recently, there was only one Lloyds.  And that was near Alexander’s school in Riverdale.  So fortunately, I wasn’t there often.

But yesterday, a new Lloyd’s opens in Manhattan on Lexington and 99^th.  About 1.3 miles from my house. This morning, Shari and I decide to walk there. Within minutes of making our plan, it starts to rain, something it’s been doing now for days and days.  We don’t go.

I text Alexander and ask him to stop by Lloyd’s on his way home from school.  He calls in response.  “I’ll go there for you, but I want to come home first.  I’m carrying the five graduation mugs you ordered.  I'll drop them off, and then I’ll go back up to Lloyd’s.”  Although this sounds somewhat reasonable, I’m skeptical about the going back part.

Alexander comes home around five.  I suggest we walk to Lloyd’s together.  “Why,” he asks.  “so you can nag me about something all the way there?”  I’m getting a complex about this.  “No,” I say, "it’d just be nice to take a walk together.”  He agrees.

As we are leaving, he remembers something he has to do.  “I need to stop by Starbucks (on 87^th and Lex) and meet Rodrigo.  I have to pick up some tickets from him and he'll only be there from 4 to 6, so I need to go now.”  “Okay, you can then just catch up to me,” I respond.  That’s when he get’s a better idea.  “Why don’t you just go?  That way I can come home and finish my Spanish paper.”  This is the Spanish paper that was due two days ago.  The same one that Alexander told me this morning he finished last night.  I  say only, “Okay.”

So, this errand to buy carrot cake, which begins with Alexander agreeing to go to Lloyd’s for me, then morphs into a plan for us to go together, ends finally with my making the round trip walk alone.