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"  I picked up the phone and ordered in sushi. This is how I Was Told There&amp;#039;d Be Cake ends -- I pick up the phone and order in sushi. Of course, the book&amp;#039;s a collection of essays, not a novel, so the possibilities of cheating at this analysis are endless. Or, well, generously finite: I have a total of 15 possible endings. That&amp;#039;s 14 other chances for profundity and reflection. 14 other chances to say, &amp;quot;remember me like this.&amp;quot;  Perhaps that&amp;#039;s why I have such a fondness for essays to begin with. There is no thought process, no road taken that you can&amp;#039;t turn back from. It provides a kind of freedom and indulgence that a novel cannot. It&amp;#039;s also a bit less pressure, so long as you like endings, which I do. With essays, it&amp;#039;s as if the camera is on you for a local news segment. And you&amp;#039;re reading -- I don&amp;#039;t know -- the weather. It&amp;#039;s hailing outside. So you start telling everyone about this one time when you got caught in a hailstorm with your wacky ex-con uncle. And you&amp;#039;re going on and on and it&amp;#039;s like a tangent from hell. You&amp;#039;re embarrassing yourself. But because this just a news segment, because it&amp;#039;s not a major motion picture or a 10-hour documentary film, you get the guy behind the camera mouthing &amp;quot;wrap it up!&amp;quot; Just as your essay collection must move on, so must this show. People need sports and traffic reports!! It&amp;#039;s great. Thing is, it has to stop somewhere. You can&amp;#039;t just keep writing essay after essay unless you&amp;#039;re dead and &amp;quot;collected.&amp;quot; Eventually you have to make a decision that the last line of the last essay is what some people might remember best about the book. So I had the cameras stop rolling on sushi. All of my adventures and thoughts balanced on a plate of raw fish.   &amp;quot;I picked up the phone and ordered in sushi.&amp;quot; It&amp;#039;s actually kind of awkward and a contradictory mix of words. &amp;quot;Orders&amp;quot; are things that emanate out, not go in. And there&amp;#039;s too much direction in it. The phone goes up and the order goes out. It&amp;#039;s like the sentence has epilepsy. Of course, it&amp;#039;s not actually that confusing. But it is if you think about it too hard as I am doing now. However, it does make you wonder -- with all these potential problems, why is it the very last line of the very last essay? For one thing, because it feels like less of a cliffhanger than the other essays do. For instance, the last line of the first essay is &amp;quot;From now on I would make a conscious effort to remember -- should I find myself face-to-face or pipe-to-skull with the end of my life -- that the real proof that I have tried to love and that people have tried to love me back was never going to fit in a kitchen drawer.&amp;quot; Without knowing what that particular essay is about, I think you can gleam the general tone of hope and encouragement. I want to know what love is. I want you to, you know, show me. Will I find out? Or will I just be smacked on the head with a pipe in the next essay? Big questions. They warrant further study and they get it.   &amp;quot;I picked up the phone and ordered in sushi&amp;quot; quite intentionally does not have that quality. It is pat and simple and, above all, does not leave a reader wondering who the hell I am as a human. To demonstrate, allow me to take you to the edge of the suspense bluff and push you off: After I picked up the phone, I dialed a number from a sushi take-out menu, eschewing the other menu I have for the restaurant that has faster service but offers both Chinese and Vietnamese fare. Let&amp;#039;s face it, too many selections hurt everyone. I used a credit card and ordered a shrimp tempura roll, a spicy tuna and an eel and avocado hand roll. I was going to get edemame but I changed my mind because among my many small but distinct psychological problems is that I think there&amp;#039;s something gross about having steamed vegetables delivered. Then the sushi came and I ate it, opening up the soy sauce packets and splatter painting them directly on to the rice.  As mundane as this is, I assure you it was even more mundane when it happened. And this is intentional. The essay itself is called Fever Faker and it&amp;#039;s about how I was twice nearly diagnosed as having a potentially fatal health problem. The first had to do with my brain and the second had to do with my blood. One of the major confessions I make in this essay is my desire to have actually developed these diseases. Not because I have a death wish or even it&amp;#039;s wimpy cousin: hypochondria. I just like the idea of having an awesome excuse to explain myself at all times. With the blood thing, if I had it, it would have my reason for bowing out of parties or being cranky. But I would also have to watch my iron intake, which exacerbates the blood thing. Sushi is a common source of excess iron. In fact, it&amp;#039;s the #1 most iron-laden genre of take-out. So me picking up the phone and ordering in sushi is akin to a simple shrug, a &amp;quot;what are you gonna do? Guess I have no one to blame for me but me.&amp;quot; It&amp;#039;s the young city person&amp;#039;s version of surviving a heart attack only to order a cheeseburger with a cigar in it.  Finally, I ended the book like this because, without being a real cliffhanger, there is something beyond the line itself. Like a hidden track on a CD, which the other 14 endings don&amp;#039;t have. Just before the essay ends, I am thinking about how I have to use my phone to call family and friends who are waiting to hear if I have a rare blood disease. But I have had a long day and I decide to be selfish, do the wrong thing, and make toro belly my priority. If the line works, the reader knows that after I give my credit card number over the phone and hang up, the phone is getting picked up again to fulfill my obligations and set other peoples minds at ease. Thus, the essay goes on, keeps living, keeps having minor and major incidents. It&amp;#039;s not suspense, it&amp;#039;s reality.  Personally, I don&amp;#039;t read essay collections from start to finish. I usually read the first entry and then jump around. But I wanted to put that line in there for those more logically minded and patient readers who stuck with me without wavering. To me, it is a tiny rebellion towards the overly simplified summaries so often associated with personal essays. &amp;quot;Here is what I learned about me and about you,&amp;quot; they say. &amp;quot;I am a piece of candy twisted symmetrically at the ends,&amp;quot; they say. &amp;quot;Eat me!&amp;quot; I am occasionally guilty of this myself. The thing about life is that sometimes you do learn valuable things about yourself. But most of the time you really don&amp;#039;t. In my belief, this doesn&amp;#039;t make an experience less worthwhile or worth telling.  A personality is like a filtering system. Occasionally, something gets into the system and alters it for the better and for good reason. But, for the most part, experience reinforces the structure that&amp;#039;s already there. Reinforcement is not without value. So, if the events of Fever Faker had changed my disposition DNA, the essay would have ended with something like this: &amp;quot;Craving raw fish after my weeks of prematurely paranoid deprivation, I picked up the phone and dialed the number for the sushi place. Then, thinking better of it, I stopped. I smiled to myself as I dialed home instead.&amp;quot; This would have been a totally suitable ending if the essay occurred earlier, both in real time and in the collection itself. But it didn&amp;#039;t. And it would have felt right to say if the local news cameras were still rolling. But they weren&amp;#039;t. So this is how I Was Told There&amp;#039;d Be Cake ends -- I pick up the phone and order in sushi.  About the author: Sloane Crosley&amp;#039;s debut book of humor essays, I Was Told There&amp;#039;d Be Cake, is being published this week by Riverhead Books. Her work has appeared in various publications including Playboy, Salon, The New York Times, The Village Voice, The New York Observer, and Black Book, where she was a contributing editor. She also wrote the cover story for the worst-selling issue of Maxim in that magazine&amp;#039;s history. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
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