In the Details

by H. Claire Taylor

  Beep-beep beep-beep.

  The oven timer pulled Jess out of her bored stupor. “Sorry,” she said. “My mind was wandering. You wanna have sex or …?”

  Chris shrugged. “We can, or you can tell me about your day.”

  Not a terribly difficult choice.

  “We ran out of croissants about halfway into the lunch rush, and I had to put an SOS out to my mom to come bake more on her day off. Of course she did it without complaining. Rex helped too, since it’s still his summer. Then another woman came forward about Jimmy’s doomsday cult.”

  “Have you talked to God about that? Like, is it true?”

  “Oh, I figure it is. God’s shown me enough about Jimmy’s past for me to know he’s capable of it. And I believe the women. Being duped by a man you trusted is humiliating. I don’t know why anyone would claim it if it hadn’t actually happened.”

  “How many women does that bring it to?”

  “Six? Ten? I can’t keep track.”

  “Doesn’t matter, does it? If even one went through that, Jimmy should have to answer for it.”

  She grinned, rolling onto her side toward Chris. “You’re right.”

  “He should have to— Aw shit.” Chris sat up quickly, pulling a shotgun from beside the mattress and taking aim at the giant jersey-ed man charging toward them, cutting through the dense ferns of the woods.

  Jessica covered her ears to protect from the echoing blast of the gunfire. Boom. The man dropped like a bag of bricks.

  Chris set down the gun and reclined again. “He should have to answer for what he’s done to you, too, Jess. And I think he will, someday.”

  “I hope you’re not talking about when he dies and faces judgment. That’s too long to wait.”

  “I imagine God will have a word with him, though.”

  Jess chuckled. “Jimmy’s been wishing he could actually speak to God his whole life. I don’t think he’ll like what God has to say when that day comes.”

  They lay there in the silence, which was peaceful. The lush canopy obscured the sky overhead, and the trees around them began to fade as the sun went down and the glow of the forest dimmed.

  It would be a shame to ruin the peacefulness with our grunting.

  “So,” Chris cut in, “You wanna do it? If you don’t, that’s okay. But if you do, I’m down. You know I am.”

  “Maybe tomorrow,” Jessica said.

  “Good,” said Chris. “That’s what I would have picked.”

  “I have a long day tomorrow.”

  “Me too.”

  “And you know once we get started, it tends to go on for a while.”

  “I need some deep sleep if I’m going to step it up in practice tomorrow.”

  “Same. I’m training the new hires tomorrow. I have no clue who they are or what I need to teach them.”

  Beep-beep beep-beep. Beep-beep beep-beep.

  Chris’s head rotated as he scanned the surroundings again. “Good choice on the location. Much better than the Dead Sea or, where were we last time?”

  Jessica cringed. “A tomb. I don’t know why I thought that was a good idea.”

  “It’s my turn to pick a place next time, I guess. I’ll think of something good.”

  “Sure. When’s next time?”

  “End of the week? We’ll be able to focus better if we don’t have work.”

  “I work on the weekends, Chris.”

  “Damn. Me too.”

  “I still like Fridays, though. Just in general.”

  “Yeah, they have a good feel to them, don’t they? Even when you have to work on Saturday.”

  She nodded, and he rolled over and held himself above her. He was shirtless—hard nipples weren’t an issue for him—and she took in the sight of his chest and arms, growing stronger by the week as he bulked up for the job. She liked this new version of Chris. She hoped to one day rediscover the well of energy for having sex with him.

  He kissed her softly on the lips, only breaking it to grab his shotgun and take out another charging linebacker. “See you Friday. Love you.”

  “Love you, too.”

  When Chris powdered his way out of there, Jessica let herself stick around for a while longer, listening to the silence. The pure, beautiful si—

  Beep-beep beep-beep. Beep-beep beep-beep…

  Chapter Nine

  Jessica glanced across the bakery at her mom, who threw back the rest of her coffee like it was a shot of tequila. Grabbing the bus bin from beside the trash, Jessica snaked through the tables of breakfasters and dropped it off at the back (she would deal with it later, like she did with everything) before washing her hands. For months now, her skin had been a dry, brittle mess from all the washing, and no amount of moisturizer could offset it. She’d considered sleeping in lotion-filled gloves but wasn’t ready to go there just yet; that seemed like a whole lifestyle.

  “Tough night?” Jess asked her mother as they passed behind the display case.

  Destinee yawned as if on cue. “Couldn’t sleep. Dunno if it’s hormones or Rex’s libido. Or maybe I was just worried about today.”

  “Worried? Why are you worried?” Jessica’s sleep had been fitful at best.

  “The new hires. I want to make a good first impression.”

  “Again, why? I mean, beyond the usual reasons. If you don’t get along with one, I’ll just fire him.”

  “Oh, I don’t want to cause any problems, baby. Besides, Dolores has gone to all the trouble of vetting. I can’t stand the thought that I might run one off and it’d get back to her.”

  At least Destinee was warming to the idea. When she’d first heard that Jessica had left the scouting and hiring completely to Mrs. Thomas, she’d lost it, stopping just short of calling her daughter a moron. In the years since Jessica had moved away from Mooretown, she’d forgotten just how much mistrust existed between her mother and her former teacher, mostly from Destinee’s end. Jess could understand it well enough, though. Mrs. Thomas was like a second mother to her, and Destinee obviously didn’t appreciate the competition.

  In the end, her mother had resigned herself to the fact that what was done was done. And perhaps the daily grind had started to wear her down, too, and the notion of having someone else handle a big responsibility seemed as enticing to her as it had to Jessica.

  “How you feeling about it?” Destinee asked. “You ready to be a serious boss?”

  “Nope. Not ready in the least.”

  “Eh, that’s okay. Most folks aren’t. Hard work comes natural to us McClouds. Leadership doesn’t. But it’s the right thing to do. Who’s first?”

  “Sampson Gauner.”

  “He the marketing guy?”

  “No, he’s the bookkeeper.” He was also the one Jessica had been most nervous and most excited about bringing on. If she could get someone else to handle the finances, it would easily save her two hours of misery and frustration every night. That was two hours she could spend sleeping or—dare she say it?—doing non-work things.

  I could make new friends.

  Whoa, one thing at a time. She had to train Sampson before getting ahead of herself.

  When he arrived two minutes ahead of schedule for his training, she took that as a good omen.

  Granted, she was running behind herself and asked Destinee to bring him over a coffee and pastry while he waited, but still, it was nice to know someone might be punctual around there.

  Sampson was pale-skinned, appeared to be somewhere in his forties with a short crown of bristly blond hair on his otherwise bald head. She couldn’t tell if it were just his thick, frameless glasses or not that made his eyes appear uncomfortably close together on his face as he peered up at her from a small cafe table by the window when she approached.

  “Sampson, I’m Jessica.”

  He stood and offered her his hand. As he shook, crushing her hand with unnecessary force, she wondered briefly why he was frowning. “Nice to meet you, Jessica. You’re the owner?”

&n
bsp; Ah. Right. Twenty-one-year-old business owner didn’t sit right with some people. Sampson certainly wasn’t the first to show surprise, and he wouldn’t be the last. “Yep. That’s me. Let’s have a seat and I can walk you through some of the basics.”

  “I assume I’ll already know the basics.”

  She paused, her ass hovering a foot above the chair as she stared at him. “Right. That’s why Mrs. Thom— Dolores recommended you, I’m sure.” Once she settled into her seat, she pulled out the file folder she’d tucked under her left armpit and opened it up. “I printed out some of the ledgers I’ve been using so you can take a look.”

  “I’ll be doing it the proper way, of course,” Sampson said, only briefly glancing down at the pages she’d stayed up late the night before perfecting and printing.

  “Of course. I’m just showing you what I have so that if you have any trouble, I don’t know, understanding what data is where, you can—”

  “Did you study finance in college?”

  Jessica blinked, stunned. “No. Why?”

  “Oh, just that if you didn’t, I’m sure whatever you came up with will be simple enough for me to understand without assistance. I’ve been a certified bookkeeper for twenty years, managing major political campaigns for the vast majority of it. I can save you the trouble of training and simply say that I can handle whatever you have going on in this”—he leaned back, surveying the bakery, his eyes sticking for a moment to the large tree of life mural on the wall—“little establishment of yours.”

  For the first time, Jessica realized that she’d never specified a budget with Mrs. Thomas. She’d assumed the woman would know to factor in affordability to the decision, but maybe she shouldn’t have assumed. After all, in the last conversation they’d had in the bakery, where they’d discussed this harebrained arrangement, Jessica had mentioned how much money Chris had and how she wanted to pay Mrs. Thomas back in full.

  Fuck. Sampson was going to cost a pretty penny, wasn’t he? He’d better be worth it, or else.

  OR ELSE WHAT?

  Or else I’m screwed.

  That tended to be the “or else” of her scenarios.

  With Sampson’s bold claims still lingering in the air, she said, “How about I email you what records I have, the logins and passwords so you can pay the bills, and then I get out of your way?” Yes, he was a bit rude, but it would be worth it if she could set it and forget it with him.

  Sampson seemed pleased for the first time since he’d entered It is Risen. Well, not pleased, but not outright annoyed. “That works. Mind if I set up here to get started?”

  Standing and pushing in her chair, Jessica smiled politely. “Not at all.”

  “And mind getting me a refill on the coffee and two more of those cheese danishes?”

  She took the coffee mug he thrust at her. “Of course.”

  “On the house,” he added, opening up his laptop.

  “Was already planning on it,” she mumbled.

  She passed her mother on the way to the coffee dispenser and Destinee whispered eagerly, “How’s it going?”

  “Fantastic,” Jessica lied.

  Kumal Darinda was scheduled for his training right after Sampson’s, but because Sampson’s had been cut so short, it was another hour before Kumal arrived.

  He approached the counter, and Destinee greeted him and began taking his order before Jessica noticed him, saw his confused expression, and realized he was not here to order a kosher pig in a blanket.

  “Kumal Darinda?” she asked. He nodded.

  Dressed in well-fitting dark jeans and a tangerine button down with a laptop bag slung over his shoulder, Kumal would have blended in easily on the streets of downtown Austin. If only he had gone with bright sneakers instead of dress shoes, he would have been virtually invisible walking down Sixth Street on a weekday.

  But as it was, just ten minutes outside of the epicenter of town, Kumal in his jail-orange shirt stuck out.

  “Nice to meet you,” she said, and after a quick introduction to Destinee, she led her new marketing specialist over to a table in the corner, far enough away from Sampson that the accountant wouldn’t be able to listen in.

  He seemed like the type.

  While Jessica already had a team managing her social media presence, that was quite different from the online marketing she knew the bakery needed.

  After a few minutes of polite conversation, Kumal pulled out his laptop, popping it open, and as he typed in his password, he asked, “Let’s see what your website looks like so far.”

  She cleared her throat. “It’s more of just a landing page with the hours and phone number, but okay.”

  She provided the address, and a moment after he hit enter with some flourish, his eyebrows pinched together. Sitting opposite, she couldn’t see his screen, and she wondered if maybe he’d typed the address in incorrectly and ended up with a 404 page or, if his expression was any indication, a website for animal husbandry.

  Then he spun the laptop just enough for her to see. “This is your website?”

  Shit. Yes. Yes, it was. “I know it’s not much.”

  “It’s nothing,” he said plainly. “If I stumbled on this, I wouldn’t even know you were the daughter of God. Where are all the crosses?”

  “That’s not really my thing,” she said. Her sudden and intense dislike of Kumal reflected back onto the person who had selected him. What was Mrs. Thomas thinking? Was this really the right person for the job? Could Jessica’s judgment really be this off? Because, at the moment, she wasn’t sure she wanted to hand over her passwords to him.

  She had a reason for hiring him. You trusted her over yourself. Give him a chance.

  “What is your thing?” he asked. “Are you, like, a goddess? Oh, is it the chalice? I could make a kick-ass graphic where a priest is holding up the communion cup and then slowly it morphs into, well, you know.” He chuckled, spinning the screen back toward him.

  She blinked. “No, I don’t know.”

  “The female chalice.”

  Jessica choked on her spit trying to say twelve different words at once. “You want to turn a communion cup into a vagina? On my website?”

  “Hey, listen, the female anatomy is a beautiful thing. No reason to get all hung-up on it.”

  “That’s not what I’m hung up on.”

  Wendy had always insisted Jessica play up the messiah thing a bit more, but what Kumal proposed seemed especially disrespectful. Also, not bakery related in the least.

  “I’m just brainstorming here. Just spitballing,” he said, not looking up from his screen as he typed and clicked rapidly. “You got a lot of potential. And if there’s one thing I’ve learned, working in politics, it’s that you have to go big. Subtlety is for the educated. But most people aren’t educated, and if you want to run a successful business you can’t discriminate against them.”

  “I also probably shouldn’t offend the largest religion in the country.”

  He chuckled. “Too late for that, don’t you think? Might as well stir up some controversy.”

  “I beg to differ.”

  His hands froze over the keyboard and he leaned his head back and groaned. “Okay, fine. You’re not ready for that. Whatever. Just know that the longer you wait to pull the trigger on my ideas, the longer you’ll wait to hit big-time success. I’m fine playing it your way. But we for sure need to update this website. Add a menu, maybe post some cool pictures of the place—we’ll need to hire a photographer for that—get some testimonials, type up a sweet bio for you and a story of how this place got started.”

  Jessica’s shoulders relaxed. “That sounds much closer to what I imagined.”

  “How cool is this?” Kumal asked to no one in particular. “I get to write the bio for God’s daughter.”

  While Jessica was always intrigued when random people referred to her that way, her desire to dive into just how much they believed it had lessened over the years as she realized it didn’t matter. Peopl
e believed it as strongly as they needed to for the world to work out the way they wanted in that moment. Kumal’s belief in her probably began the moment he’d been hired, because working for God’s daughter looked great on a resume. And if she ever fired him, she assumed his belief would immediately cease, and he would either say she was a fraud or really commit to protecting his pride and jump on the antichrist bandwagon.

  “Any expenses you incur for, I don’t know, web hosting or whatever, run it by me if it’s over a hundred dollars, and be sure to send all your receipts to Sampson.” She motioned over her shoulder at the friar-haired accountant. “That work?”

  “Yuh-huh,” he said, hunched over his computer.

  She narrowed her eyes at him. That sounded like an autopilot answer if she ever heard one. Should she call him on it?

  “And tell me when you’re ready to launch so I can take a look at it first, okay?”

  “Yep.”

  He definitely wasn’t listening. “Sorry, but did you hear what I said?”

  Finally, he tore his eyes from the screen and narrowed them scornfully at her. “Of course I heard you. I said yep, didn’t I?”

  She jerked her head back and resisted the impulse to fire him before he’d even signed the employment paperwork.

  He must be some kind of savant. That was surely it. Mrs. Thomas would have known that when it came to Jessica’s precious business, she cared more about results than whether everyone got along hunky-dory in the process.

  “When do you think you can start on the website?”

  “Huh?” He blinked and looked at her. “Oh, I’m already starting on it. I should have it ready to launch in a couple weeks.”

  “Oh. Um, okay. Just remember to let me review it before you launch.”

  “Yeah, I heard you the first time,” he said without breaking from the screen.

  She managed not to snap at him in her tired state, but only just. Then she made a note to keep Kumal away from Destinee as much as possible. Her mother wouldn’t show such restraint. “Do you need anything else from me to get started?”