Ellen ordered a cake for her husband Graham’s birthday. She told the baker it should be chocolate, large enough for twelve people, and absolutely free of numbers.
“He doesn’t want his age on it?” the baker asked.
“He doesn’t want anyone working it out. His brothers have been sending him cards with arithmetic problems for a week.”
The baker wrote “NO AGE” on the order. Ellen pointed at the words.
“Please don’t put that on the cake either.”
He crossed it out and wrote “plain message.” They agreed on “Happy Birthday, Graham.” Ellen paid and went to prepare the party.
Graham arrived home to discover that his brothers had hung a banner reading “Congratulations on reaching the age you claimed to reach three years ago.” He took it down. Their sister replaced it with a row of candles in separate holders. Graham counted them, stopped halfway, and announced that she had brought far too many.
“They’re for the table,” she said. “Nobody said they’re all for you.”
Ellen went to collect the cake. The bakery was busy, and a young assistant handed her a box with Graham’s name on the label. She kept it level on the drive home, placed it in the kitchen, and waited until after dinner to open it.
Inside was a magnificent chocolate cake with sugar flowers. The message said “Happy Birthday, Graham.” Along the edge were six groups of ten tiny white dots and one final cluster of four.
Ellen rang the bakery.
She tried lifting the decorations off with the tip of a knife first. The flowers were firmly fixed, and the dots were even firmer. Graham’s sister called through the door to ask whether she needed help lighting the candles. “There are no candles,” Ellen answered. “Exactly,” said the sister. “That’s why I’m asking.” Ellen told her to keep everyone in the dining room for five minutes and not to let Graham near the kitchen.
The sister kept him busy by asking him to identify old family photographs. Graham got two cousins wrong and correctly named a dog nobody else remembered. Ellen heard the laughter from the kitchen while she repaired the icing. She stopped worrying for a moment: if anyone could survive a cake with the wrong number, it was a man who had just mistaken his younger brother for their uncle.
“You promised no age.”
“There isn’t one,” said the baker. “Those are decorative dots.”
“There are sixty-four of them.”
“Oh,” he said. “I let the apprentice decorate it. He likes symmetry.”
She could not return it. Her guests were already singing in the dining room. Ellen fetched a spoon and began scraping dots from the icing. Graham’s youngest niece walked in and asked why the cake looked as though it had been caught in hail.
“Modern design,” Ellen said.
She smoothed the edge with a warm knife. By the time she carried it out, twenty-nine dots remained, scattered at random. Graham admired the flowers, read the message, and gave her a grateful smile.
Then his brothers began counting. One reached twenty-seven. Another insisted on thirty-one. They argued so loudly that Graham cut the cake before either could finish.
“For once,” he said, “you’ll have to eat before you know how old I am.”
Later, when the guests had gone, Ellen told him about the sixty-four dots and her hurried repairs. Graham laughed, then grew thoughtful.
“You know,” he said, “I wouldn’t have minded sixty-four. That’s not my age.”
Ellen stopped washing the plates. “Then how old are you?”
Graham looked at the surviving dots on the cake. “According to my brothers, anywhere from twenty-nine to thirty-one.”
“Graham.”
“I told you when we married,” he said.
“Yes,” Ellen replied. “And you’ve been the same age ever since.”