Unloaded

by Eric Beetner

  Pregnant mom pushing a stroller, arguing she couldn’t wait because her precious little thing had toddler yoga in fifteen minutes?

  Back of the line.

  Tourist on his last day in New York City, and he’ll never be visiting again, and this is his last chance to try a creamelé?

  Back of the line.

  A man diagnosed with cancer, a week to live, and a creamelé was his final wish?

  Creampuff offered to let him cut if he presented a doctor’s note. The guy never came back.

  The line was sacrosanct to Creampuff. The way he figured it, the people who dragged themselves out of bed in the middle of the night to wait for a pastry—they were idiots. They had some gaping chasm inside their souls that they tried to fill with food, and honestly, the whole thing was a little sad.

  But they made the effort. Creampuff had to at least respect that much, and not let anyone who didn’t make that effort cut in front of them.

  In a city where chaos is the accepted norm, a line has to mean something.

  Creampuff had a memory for faces, too. More than once a line-cutter would come back, a day or a week or a month later, and when they finally made it to the front, Creampuff would shake his head. He didn’t even have to say anything. They knew what they had done. And each one of them shuffled off, cradling their shame.

  Same thing with the non-creamelé line. The store had a separate line that led to another counter for people who didn’t want a creamelé. Some people thought they were being clever, sneaking around to that side. They also found themselves blacklisted.

  This is the new face of New York City. Living here used to be a game of survival. Now it’s about conning your way into frozen treats.

  Creampuff was a product of the way things used to be. He rarely spoke. When he did, he never raised his voice. The only time he ever smiled was when there was a child waiting with a parent, and for a fleeting moment, he would soften. For the most part, he would nod, or shrug, or point toward the back of the line. And people listened. The kind of people who on a different day you’d expect them to be a problem, they fell in lockstep.

  Creampuff carried with him that aura of not-to-be-messed-with. He was one of the people this city couldn’t manage to chew up and spit out.

  It got to be where Creampuff became part of the creamelé story, like a member of the Royal Guard in front of Buckingham Palace. People would want to take pictures with him. They would tell him jokes to try and get him to laugh. Girls would flirt with him to try and make him blush, but he never did.

  One guy said with a name like Creampuff he must be a homo. That was the only time anyone can remember Creampuff laying a hand on someone. He grabbed the guy by the back of the neck, pulled him close, whispered something into his ear, and the guy took off at a full sprint, blanched white as a field of snow.

  It was around this time, that Creampuff’s legend was growing, that the first break-in happened.

  Rival bakers had been trying to replicate the creamelé without success. Either the crust would be soggy, or the ice cream would melt, or they would burst during the cooking process. It was one of the most sought-after recipes in the city, and some people even offered to buy it, but the owners of Patiserie wouldn’t entertain offers.

  They had gone from just another bakery into one of the hottest destinations in New York City. The prime minister of Mozambique queued up on three separate occasions until he was finally able to get a creamelé. Why sell off the keys to that kingdom?

  The morning of the first break-in, Creampuff arrived to find that the front door had been pried open. The register hadn’t been touched, but the door to the creamelé kitchen was ajar. Luckily the chef always brought the custom bake pieces home with him, so all the perpetrator found were a few standard ovens and raw ingredients—nothing that couldn’t have been guessed at already.

  This is when Creampuff began sleeping in the store.

  No one asked him to. Just one day there was a cot. Once the evening shift had been cleared out, he would show up, lock the front door, and disappear into the back. People began to speculate, about whether he had a place to go, or even had a home. Some people thought he might have been homeless. He only seemed to own a few shirts, a few pairs of pants. He never spoke of life outside the bakery, and no one ever came by who seemed to know him.

  For a while, with Creampuff living in the bakery, things were calm. Business continued to boom. The owners made so much money they were able to buy the building the store was housed in, ensuring that future generations of the family would be secure. They even thought of expanding to another storefront, in the West Village. The creamelés were the star attraction, and the chef was their most valuable player, but still, Creampuff was given a share of the credit, for maintaining order and appearances.

  For being part of the story.

  Then came the day they found his body.

  No money had been taken. The creamelé room hadn’t been touched. There was just his body, sprawled out on the white tile, blood cutting geometric trails through the grout.

  There were some theories about who had done it. Maybe one of the rival bakeries, in a robbery gone bad. There was also a multi-national dessert corporation that waved a seven figure check in front of the owners, and were told to bug off. A corporation certainly would seem capable of murder in the pursuit of profit.

  Some wondered if it was revenge. Someone who wanted a creamelé and didn’t get it, come back to make Creampuff pay for the slight. Or something else from his life, catching up with him. Rumors began to circulate that he was in witness protection, and the fame achieved by the bakery had blown his cover.

  How else to explain the savagery of a murder like that, in a town where people have forgotten what it means to be savage?

  After the crime scene had been processed, the owners learned that Creampuff’s body had been unclaimed. Having paid him in cash, there was no address for him on file. He had become another anonymous death in an anonymous city.

  So the owners and the employees put together a collection for the funeral. The costs were eventually completely covered by an anonymous donation. Some person of means who had stood on that line, and decided the man who maintained it deserved a bit of dignity in death.

  The funeral was a quiet affair, around the corner from the bakery, at St. Mark’s in-the-Bowery. A few dozen people showed up. Mostly employees, though some loyal customers, too. In the back of the church was a frail black woman, a shroud around her face, weeping softly into a yellow handkerchief, and many assumed she was family, though she left before anyone could ask.

  When it came time for the eulogy, the owner of Patiserie, a slight old man, was helped to the dais. He stood there for a long time, looking down at his hands resting on the podium. Then he looked up and told a story.

  One day Creampuff had finished his shift and was getting ready to leave, when he saw a woman across the street, struggling to carry groceries into her apartment building. He didn’t know her. But he walked across the street and said something to her and then took the bags from her hands and disappeared inside. He came back out and walked away and went home.

  It was a small moment in the immensity of this man’s life, but it was a measure of the kind of person Creampuff was. Someone who did the right thing when the right thing was required. He didn’t seek thanks or reward. He did it and he moved on.

  After the funeral, things slowly returned to normal.

  The owners of Patiserie hired a new bouncer. This one not as reliable, not as steadfast. If someone handed him a hundred, he would allow that person to cut the line. He was prone to anger and berated people for not walking inside fast enough. He was high on the allowances of his power.

  He was no Creampuff.

  Occasionally someone would ask about Creampuff, not having heard the news, and would be disappointed for a moment, before returning to their quest for a creamelé.

  Something no one was able to p
rove was that after he was gone, the line got a little shorter. Patiserie always sold out of the day’s allotment of creamelés, and the offers to buy the recipe never stopped, but it seemed like there were less people waiting.

  And, eventually, people forgot.

  In New York City, the space left by a memory is a vacuum. It won’t be long before something fills that space.

  But even then, there are people who fight against the vacuum.

  On the one-year anniversary of Creampuff’s body being found, early in the morning, the employees opening the store found a gift-wrapped package leaning against the closed door of the bakery. Inside was a framed photo of Creampuff. It was a candid shot, taken with a cell phone camera in the early morning hours, when the sun wasn’t yet strong enough to push away the shadows.

  Creampuff, staring off toward the end of the line, his arms crossed, like they were always crossed. A statue, solemn and unmoving, with the hint of a smile spreading across the boundary of his lips. His face a portrait of contentment.

  That’s the story of the photo hanging behind the register at Patiserie. The owner thought it important that the photo hang there. It means you can’t buy a creamelé without seeing it.

  You might not know the significance, but at least you will see it.

  Back to TOC

  THE ESCAPE

  Kelli Stanley

  She could hear the dogs barking, behind her with the other guards. Three cavernous, slobbering jaws, lifting up in the darkness, baying at the light, the light so far ahead. She rushed through the darkness hurriedly now, can’t let the dogs find her, can’t go back.

  How long had she been running? How long since she’d been seized with rough hands and pushed quickly into the fisherman’s boat?

  Hours, minutes, days…

  The hull was black, blacker than the water and redolent of river bottom, and her fingers clutched at the bottom planks. Then a sudden lurch and moan of the moldered wood, and she was picked up and thrown on the ground, spongy damp clinging to her until she shook herself free. The old man watched her, jagged grin the only light in the dark.

  Dogs snarled and barked in the distance, not yet across, a gelid sound that crackled against the brackish, lapping water.

  They were on the other side of the river. They would not be alone for long.

  The girl was confused, uncertain, pain and cold an unfamiliar memory. Was she leaving? But there was comfort in the confinement. Safety in the routine. And no one ever escaped.

  The fisherman’s eyes devoured her body. She wrapped her arms around her breasts, thin linen stiff and frozen to the touch.

  “He’s waitin’ for you.” The rot of his breath made her flinch. “Your lover—run along, he’s up ahead. The dogs’ll be here soon.”

  She left him then, backing into the darkness, legs no longer held prisoner. The woods bent their roots around her ankles, ivy vines clawing at her sheath. His cackle echoed through the stillness, punctuated by barking. Closer now. She turned to the black of the forest. She did not look back.

  The mossy ground was damp, unforgiving. Tendrils tripped her and she fell, surprised at the blood on her skin.

  Keep going. Don’t look back, the dogs will find you. Keep going. If the fisherman wasn’t lying—and why would he?—she knew who was ahead, waiting for her.

  He’d arranged this, planned the escape. The only man she ever loved.

  The dogs howled again. She shivered, and started to run.

  Springtime is the season for lovers, and it belonged to them. They left the city often, finding each other reflected in the countryside. Hyacinths danced along the river’s edge, fragrance making their heads as light as their feet. Daffodils trailed and leaned over the small pond, mourning their reflections. He’d sing to her, songs for her alone, and it seemed like the birds stopped their own song to listen.

  They were far away from the city, the noise, the constant arguments.

  “When can we get away?”

  “After you speak to my father.”

  “I don’t need to speak to him to do this.”

  And then he would kiss her, stroke her breasts beneath her dress, and they would roll the wine down their throats, luxuriating in the sense of secrecy that enveloped them.

  On a bright, cloudless day in May, she escaped the confines of the house. The girl could feel the eyes of the servants, knew the housemaid had seen who it was she met. Had seen him, had wanted him, because one was the other.

  That day they made love. So many times before he had held back, though she’d begged him to take her, to brand her as his own. Even then, when their bodies came together, and they lay on the grass with the sun shining on them, for the girl, it was still too much of a barrier.

  “I love you. Don’t ever, ever leave me…I want to be with you, in you, all the time.”

  He’d laughed and stroked her hair, surprised at the ferocity in her face.

  “I’ll talk to your father.”

  They drank more wine and made love again, blending, merging into one. They didn’t see the man on the hilltop, watching them.

  The black was ceding to a dull iron grey, metallic color of worn armor and sharp knives, grasp of ivy giving way to coarse grass and thin trees with white trunks, landscape a monotone palette. The grass cut her feet and she was cold, the damp of the river still clinging to the linen that wrapped her, and occasionally tripped her, as she willed her legs to move faster along the path.

  Feeling again. And memory. They rushed through her, propelled her forward. A nearby bark made her jump. Too close. She ran again.

  The trail was hard to follow; seemed to constantly switch back, and it was only through careful watching that she was able to make out the right direction.

  He was up there, somewhere, safe at the border. Waiting for her. She couldn’t see him—not yet. But he was ahead and she would find him. Before the dogs found her.

  She fell as she climbed over a fallen branch, the path slippery beneath her feet, breath in shuddered gasps. She didn’t touch the cut on her cheek or the blood on her left leg, ankle bruised and swollen, limp already slowing her down.

  He was waiting!

  She froze against a tree, bark clawing her skin. Harsh, quick panting, a yap and a whine, as one dog bit another. The one with the guttural growl began to bay. The others joined him, voices triumphant. She picked up a sharp rock.

  They were nearly upon her.

  “But, Father, I love him!”

  The words poured out of her along with anger, and the old man looked surprised at the shock on her face. Was she really that young?

  “It’s out of the question.” He was late to the courts, and glanced along the street to make sure no one could hear them. He seized her arm, and led her into a small, dark alcove, where they were less likely to be overheard.

  “Go back home to your mother.”

  The girl was usually obedient, but he’d missed the flush of womanhood in her cheeks.

  “No, Father. I won’t.”

  The old man breathed hard, wondering what he’d done to deserve such a child. He had a case to hear this afternoon.

  “I’ve told you, and I won’t tell you again. He is unsuitable in every way. A musician, a traveler, a…a preacher. He’s not the kind of husband I want for my only daughter.”

  “And what about what I want, Father? Or is that not important?”

  He slapped her across the face. The thing in her eyes grew stronger, and he looked down, then toward the bustling street and the court in the distance.

  “Go home to your mother.”

  She watched him walk down the pavement, an old man struggling to stand upright. Her eyes never left his back.

  She pressed herself tight against the spiny wood, hoping the trickle down her arm was sweat. No blood, not now, not this close.

  The rock in her hand wasn’t heavy enough. No reason to hold it. Nothing could make a difference. She tremb
led. Their teeth, the iron jaws. How many times had she been told there was no escape?

  She shut her eyes. They were just on the other side of the tree. The large paws clawed the ground, the panting tongues licking the air for her scent. She prayed for her lover. Prayed it would be quick.

  The guards murmured something unintelligible. A language of their own, one even the Matron never understood. She strained forward. Frantic, confused yapping. Heavy feet crushed the dead leaves, rustling and ripping. The head closest to her whimpered, then howled in frustration.

  They were leaving. As if they didn’t want to find her. At least not yet.

  She counted heartbeats, waiting until the barks and growls were distant and behind her again, muted by the wind. Then she dropped, slid to the ground, her back still braced against the tree. One escape already.

  She laughed aloud, tears on her cheeks, a strange sound in the forgotten wood.

  Her mother was beaming. The servants were serving dinner, and even her father looked impressed, despite himself.

  Her lover was singing.

  It was a voice so sweet in sound that the maid froze to watch with a dish in her hand, forgetting her life-long training, forgetting everything but his voice, his hair, his face. Even the cook drifted out of the kitchen, mesmerized.

  After the song, he spoke with her father, serious subjects, related to worship and law and other things that meant nothing to her but everything to her father. She watched from the other room, conspiring with her mother, and they both hugged each other when the old man smiled and nodded.

  The housemaid’s face fell, and grim lines of age formed around her lips and eyes. She muttered words, soft syllables of hate and revenge, curses worse than death itself…

  At the end of the evening, smiling broadly, her father counted the money. Then he held out his hands, and she ran to him, throwing herself into his arms like a little girl. He held her tight, relinquishing her to the charismatic young man with the beautiful voice. And the generous bride-price.