The Baker

by Paul Hond

  Mickey held out his hand; their skin barely touched as the keys landed in his palm. He closed his fingers over them, dropped them in his pocket. Without thinking, he said, “So—you won’t be home tonight, when Nelson gets in?”

  “No. I have two jobs tonight. Not far from here, in fact.”

  “Jobs?”

  “Massage. I told you.”

  “Right—the Japanese massage.”

  “I have a few private clients.”

  “Uh-huh.” Mickey wasn’t sure he wanted to hear about it.

  “What do you mean, ‘Uh-huh’? What are you thinking?”

  “Nothing,” said Mickey.

  “I think somebody got the wrong idea.”

  “I have no ideas.”

  “No, no, I know what you’re thinking. Something tells me I should be offended and insulted and walk right out of here, but I won’t, and you know why? Because I’ve been around long enough to understand that some people are just a little bit, let’s say, narrow-minded.” She’d begun delivering this rebuke in a friendly, almost flirtatious way, and then, as if fearing she’d surrendered too much, made sudden, crude knives of the last two words and sank them through the butter.

  Mickey didn’t flinch: the confusion of emotions on her part allowed Mickey to settle into his old, steady, even-tempered self, a role he felt came naturally to him (as opposed to the ranting lunatic of the past few weeks), and which, at its highest expression, lent him what he secretly thought of as a British manner—a reserve, a charm, a certain wit of style. “Narrow-minded?” he said. “Maybe ‘uninformed’ is a better term.” He paused, then added boldly, “I happen to be very open-minded.”

  Donna seemed oblivious to his transformation into Richard Burton, though she may have felt its effect. She said, “Shiatsu has nothing to do with any kind of, you know, kinky sex, or anything like that.”

  “I’m sure it doesn’t,” said Mickey, noticing that the elderly couple was looking over their way. “Nonetheless, I’d be interested in trying it.” He winked at the couple.

  Donna turned serious. “You should try it,” she said, alluding, Mickey was sure, to his emotional stress, which would surely ruin his health. “It’s the best therapy in the world.”

  “Giving or receiving?”

  Donna smirked like she knew he was trying to be clever, and for a moment Mickey saw the resemblance to Nelson. “If giving was the best,” she said, “I’d be paying them!”

  Mickey laughed, but behind his back he squeezed his hands together. He’d rather give, he thought. He wanted to touch something, squeeze it, caress it, right now, wanted to grip it, bring it to life in his hands.

  To his amazement, he felt himself getting hard.

  “Speaking of receiving,” said Donna. “Did you—get our flowers?”

  “Flowers?” The conversation had shifted abruptly, and Mickey scrambled to find the suitable note, an effort complicated not only by his fear that Donna had sensed his excitement and was correcting him, but by the embarrassing fact of his negligence. “We’ve received so many flowers and cards,” he explained. “I can barely keep up with it. I apologize. There’s flowers everywhere, I haven’t even been able to—”

  “No, no,” said Donna, “I didn’t mean anything like that. I just wanted to make sure you received them, that they got there.” She placed her hand on her cheek, clearly mortified by this misunderstanding. “I didn’t mean to sound like—”

  “No,” said Mickey. “It’s fine. Really, I should have written you. But I do thank you. And Benjie does too.”

  Donna shook her head. “Please, don’t even mention it.” She seemed desperate to escape this deepening cycle of apology. “Ben,” she said, grasping at the name. “How is he?”

  “Oh,” said Mickey, “about as good as can be expected.” He scratched his head. “Of course, it’s been tough. You know. A kid that age. It’s tough enough already. You know—talking. Discussing your feelings, that sort of thing.”

  “Yes,” said Donna. “I know.” She sighed; they were back on safe ground. The boys. “I’m sure we could talk all day about that. Me and you, I mean.” She looked away. “Yes.” It seemed she might go on, confide something, but she then faded, as if her own problems must be petty by comparison, unworthy of mention. It was then that Mickey remembered—it struck him—that Donna had also lost a loved one to a gunman’s bullet. Tommy Childs had been killed when Donna was just a girl.

  Mickey was touched by her humility and fascinated by the idea that they were linked yet again, in this new and sensational way. He considered asking her if she’d like to meet for a coffee sometime, to talk.

  Another couple came in.

  “I guess I should go,” said Donna, noticing that the store was filling up.

  Mickey saw that. “Oh, this is nothing,” he said. “It’ll get much busier. Thanksgiving, the holidays; it’s the busy time of year.” Which, he reminded himself, would prevent him from taking that little trip, the getaway which everyone had been prescribing for him lately. Of course, that was always his excuse for not getting away—business. His passport was as blank as a dead man’s diary: he’d never made good on any of his promises to accompany Emi on her travels. “Say,” he ventured. “We ought to get together sometime, have a coffee. Talk.”

  “I’d like that,” said Donna. “When?”

  Again, Mickey was dumbstruck; he’d had no timetable in mind, it was just a thought, an idea. He found himself shrugging, saying, “When’s good for you?”

  “Well, let’s see. Thursday is Thanksgiving. How about Friday?”

  “Friday.”

  “Seven o’clock?”

  “Seven.” Mickey wanted to cite a conflict. He wasn’t ready for this, he felt, whatever this was. But the bakery closed at five on Fridays, and he wasn’t good at making things up off the cuff. “Seven’s fine,” he said.

  “Would you mind picking me up? Or I can meet you out here—”

  “No, that’s fine. I’ll get you.” A line had formed in front of the register; Mickey held up a finger to indicate he’d be there in a second. “Friday at seven.”

  Donna glanced over at the customers. “Yes. Call me before—wait, scratch that. Don’t call. I don’t want Nelson to pick up the phone or even catch wind of this—who knows what he’ll think. In fact, I’d better meet you. I can be here. Right out in front.”

  “What would he think?” said Mickey.

  “Oh, you know—that we’re talking about him. He doesn’t like me to meddle in his life. Thinks I’m always in his business. I tell him I’m just doing my job!”

  “Ah,” said Mickey.

  “So Friday.”

  “Friday it is.” Mickey imagined taking her to Chen’s Garden—what a scandal that would make! No, they’d have to drive to a different area altogether. He wouldn’t want to be seen.

  “Okay,” Donna said. She touched one of her braids, smiled. “See you.”

  “See you,” said Mickey. He watched her walk out. He was sweating, his heart was thumping. What had he done, what had he gotten himself into? But no, this was innocent, purely innocent. She wasn’t interested in him—she was just friendly, that was all, she wanted to talk about Nelson. Maybe she was lonely. Maybe she would ask him, as she almost had that time in the car, to become a figure in her son’s life. Ha! And even if she was interested, well, he certainly wasn’t. Oh sure, she was attractive, and about as sweet as you’d like. But for crying out loud.

  Still, he watched her cross the lot, wondering if she’d look back. That would be a sign, he felt. But what would it mean? And then it happened: she turned her head, and from across a distance of fifty yards, their eyes met. Mickey felt the long stake of doom sink through his head and burst out between his legs, nailing him fast to the floor. Donna turned away, walked briskly out of view.

  Mickey’s palms were wet as he tended to his customers. This elation was false, it was wrong. He was on the seesaw. He wasn’t in his right mind. His wife had been killed r
ight in front of his eyes, the love of his life, gone in an instant. He ought to be on the couch somewhere, grieving his heart out, and not feeling, as he had during the past few minutes, that he was on the verge of a new beginning.

  I’m sick, he decided. Too traumatized to be responsible for his actions. He put his hand in his pocket: Donna’s keys. They felt like jewels. He was in possession of something. The keys to her house. Had she really needed to come here and give them to him? Couldn’t she have left them with someone else? But now he’d have to face Nelson—Nelson, who’d stepped foot in his house just the night before. No: he couldn’t face him with the keys. Keys were intimate things, charged with possibilities. They’d been passed. Mickey did not want to involve himself in this way, did not want to feel the gold thread of the keys connect the three of them—Donna, Nelson, himself. Did not want to look at Nelson.

  Morris returned from the back. “That was Jay Rattner on the phone,” he said triumphantly.

  Mickey looked at his uncle. “What did he want?”

  Morris hesitated, protective of his pet cause, then opened up, suddenly as a child, under the rare warmth of Mickey’s attention. “He said that deliveries were late yesterday, and that when he asked Nelson what took so long—after all, he says, I got a business to run—when he said something to Nelson, Nelson made a comment under his breath that Jay didn’t care for.”

  “What comment?”

  “He didn’t say,” said Morris, betraying a small disappointment in his work, as though he should have pumped Rattner for details. “But he said that it wasn’t friendly, and was muttered under the breath. It left him with an uncomfortable feeling.”

  “It did, did it?”

  “And so I told him if it happens again, to let me know.”

  Mickey sighed. “Jay Rattner’s been a real pain in the ass lately,” he said. “First the rolls aren’t fresh enough. Now he’s getting an uncomfortable feeling.”

  “Maybe you should have a word with Nelson?”

  “Nelson’s fine,” Mickey said, the defensiveness in his voice an obvious measure of his guilt—over Nelson, yes, but also over Donna. How could he lay into Nelson, how could he even talk to him now that he’d practically made a date, for God’s sake, with his mother?

  Mickey put his hands on his head, closed his eyes. He was losing his grip, he felt; he was nearing an edge, a breakdown, like the one he would have had thirty years ago when the bakery burned, had Emi not been there to save him.

  Emi. Forgive me, baby, he called in a silent prayer. Help me.

  “So that was Nelson’s mother?” said Morris. “She should stop by more often.”

  But Mickey wasn’t listening. He was on the brink of an answer. Emi. Yes: there was only one thing to do. Of course! Crazy as it was, it made perfect sense, one might even say it was inevitable. What had merely crossed his mind once or twice before had now landed immensely like a magnificent bird.

  “Morris. Do me a favor and stay here until the boys come back and give these to Nelson. Tell him his mother dropped them off.” Mickey handed his uncle the keys. “Can you close up yourself?”

  “Where are you going?” said Morris, looking at the keys in his yellowed palm.

  “I have to take care of something. Can you do what I said?”

  Morris shrugged. “Do I have a choice?”

  “And another thing,” said Mickey. “Phone the whole staff and tell them to be here tomorrow at two. Two o’clock sharp. I want everyone here. There’ll be an announcement.”

  He then grabbed his coat and rushed out of the store amid his uncle’s questions, the great idea flaring up, iridescent and terrible, clutching him in its talons and carrying him off in frantic, squawking flight.

  11

  It was the first time in anyone’s memory that such a meeting had been called, and no one knew what to expect. Chairs and stools had been arranged in a semicircle in the bakery kitchen to seat all nine of the employees: Morris, Nelson, the six bakers and Lazarus. Ben was also present, having been told that the matter concerned him, though Mickey, who at the moment could be seen talking on the phone through the glass wall of his office, had given no details. Was the bakery being sold? Closed down?

  Ben could see the fear in the immigrant faces of the bakers—all the strides they had made in this country now seemed to hinge on a single business decision. What would become of them? Their wives and children? How would they live? As they waited for Mickey to emerge from his office they fell to examining their hands, as though they were tools that they might have to turn in.

  Nelson sat deep in his chair. Like the bakers, he too appeared worried, and hardly resembled the brazen outlaw who just days ago had revealed, as the van lurched past the gates of Seven Pines, a new handgun that struck Ben as so much deadlier than his own.

  Ben looked around the kitchen: the huge mixers, the oven, the washbasin, the long, flour-covered worktables, the sheeter, the refrigerator and freezer, the bowls, the trays, the rollers and cutters, the bags of flour and sugar, the bottles and jugs of food coloring; every item seemed to be shining with a special urgency, like children eager to be chosen for some pageant or ball game. Ben would have thought that the employees might make a similar effort to appear indispensable.

  Mickey hung up the phone and opened the office door. He appeared startled by the sight of his men all together against a backdrop of machinery, and even disturbed by their potential as a mob, but at the same time—and Ben could see this clearly—proud of the semblance of a genuine workforce at his command, and even moved to humility by his own power.

  “The reason I’ve called you all,” Mickey said, positioning himself just inside the semicircle, “is that there’s going to be some changes around here for the next couple of weeks.” He looked at the bakers to see that they understood, unaware that their English had improved vastly over the past few years, and the bakers, who could not be sure that they were being looked at for that reason, steeled themselves for the worst. “I’ll be going away on Wednesday for about two weeks,” Mickey announced. “And while I’m gone, the bakery will be managed and run by Benjamin.”

  Ben’s mouth fell open. Had he heard right?

  Mickey looked at Ben and winked, hinting at an old father-and-son prankishness in affairs.

  Ben dared to glance at Nelson, who was now looking back at him with the sidewise smile that conveyed the same odd mix of superiority and wounded pride that he showed whenever Ben burned him with a jump shot. But there was something else there too: a sly, conspiratorial nod at the prospect for anarchy. Ben shied from the smile as Mickey, hands behind his back, proclaimed that he expected everyone to treat Ben with the same respect that one would give any employer.

  The bakers did not seem to know whether to feel relieved or insulted by the new arrangement. They all turned to Ben as though in an effort to see him in a new light: he’d always been this young kid hanging around, a snotty kid sometimes, the boss’s son, a natural target of jokes in foreign tongues, of dark, sadistic, scar-faced smiles; and now it was him to whom they’d have to answer. Ben looked back at them, hoping to earn their respect in a solemn nod; these were essentially docile men, but something in his own lack of confidence brought out a glint in their eyes that seemed mutinous and even deadly.

  Lazarus, meanwhile, remained impassive; though he was a paid employee like anyone else, his unique position set him apart from the laborers, and he enjoyed a mysterious autonomy. The decision would not affect him either way; Ben knew that his mind, as usual, was lost between the pages of his black holy book, and that he was no more likely to resign in opposition than play peacemaker should there be a kind of labor uprising in Mickey’s absence.

  Morris, no doubt relieved that the burden of responsibility had not fallen, as perhaps it should have, on him, raised his hand halfway in the air. “If you don’t mind my asking,” he said, “where in the hell are you going?”

  “Away,” Mickey said. “By myself. I haven’t had a break from th
is place since I can remember.”

  “But to pick up and leave on such short notice?” said Morris, gripping the armrests of his chair.

  “I’ll be back.”

  Morris didn’t seem to hear. “You’re picking up and leaving on Thanksgiving?” he said, his eyes blinking behind his glasses.

  “You’ll get along fine,” said Mickey, eager to wrap things up. “Any questions?”

  There were none. The silence lingered, and Ben regretted that Mickey’s plan, of which Ben was the chief beneficiary, had garnered so little enthusiasm. Then Lazarus raised an imaginary glass and, in the halting oratory with which he still occasionally blessed wedded couples and thirteen-year-old boys, nodded to Mickey and said, “May you relax, enjoy and have a wonderful time.”

  “Thank you,” said Mickey. “Meeting adjourned. Benjamin, I’d like to see you in my office.”

  Ben noticed that he was Benjamin now, and despite himself he felt the weight of those syllables like medals of recognition on his breast. He knew the workers were already plotting against him; already—he could feel it—their indignation was giving way to the suppressed excitement of schoolchildren who have been presented with a substitute teacher. He would be tested, abused. Or would he? For if he were really in charge, he would have power over their lives. And yet the sudden authority at his disposal—it felt like a smooth lead pipe in his hands—had filled him with a kind of mercy; it was too easy to destroy them, and as he stood up and proceeded to his father’s office, the eyes of the room upon him, he felt in his shoes the grim dignity, the good fight, of a young, embattled leader.

  Mickey’s office was a mess. The desk, which Ben had never really considered before, was covered with papers, and still more documents—bills, consignment sheets, valuable receipts—were pinned under the telephone.

  Mickey came in and closed the door. “Don’t mind the crew,” he said as his workers filed lethargically past the office window and out through the front of the bakery. “They’re all good fellas.” He smiled; Ben might have been a stranger applying for a job. “Please,” said Mickey. “Have a seat.”