All for a Story

by Allison Pittman

  “This is it.”

  She turned to him with a dazzling smile of breathless triumph more fitting of having led him safely to a mountain summit than to a modest bakery. She reached for the door handle, forcing him to make a heroic leap to open the door for her.

  “Why, thank you, sir,” she said before swooping inside.

  They were instantly engulfed in warmth both from the ovens filling the air with heat and yeast and sugar, and from the effusive welcome from the soft, stocky woman behind the counter.

  “Monica!” Even the word was warm, the vowel sounds rounder and an extra syllable tacked on, making the greeting more like Moni-ka-la. The woman reached her hands over the counter, simulating an embrace that Monica returned by blowing a kiss—both women seeming to understand that flour-dusted hands on a mink-collared coat would be a disaster.

  “Mrs. Sobek, this is my new boss, Max Moore.”

  Mrs. Sobek made a clucking sound deep in her throat and gave him a sidelong glance. “Much more handsome than the old one, isn’t he, ptáček?”

  Monica looked at him with a gaze parallel to Mrs. Sobek’s. “Oh, I dunno. I’m sure he thinks so, but I haven’t decided yet.”

  “Well, until you’ve decided,” he said, “I guess the coffee’s on you.”

  Her expression changed immediately into one of mock indignation as she twirled back to the counter.

  “Two coffees and two kolache. And not on account.” She opened her purse and took out a crisp one-dollar bill. “I actually have money today.”

  Mrs. Sobek looked doubtful. Not at the money, but at Max.

  “You’re going to give this big guy one kolache? That won’t fill up his little toe.”

  “All right,” Monica conceded. “One more, and a fruit Danish for me. And before you say anything, it’s February. I have two more months to wrap up in a coat before I have to worry about my figure.”

  Mrs. Sobek gave an admonishing waggle of a finger before turning to an enormous tank and dispensing coffee into two large mugs. In the meantime, Monica took off her coat, revealing a column of soft gray material dissected by a pink ruffle, hugging her frame in such a way that left Max to worry about her figure—or at least about his reaction to it.

  He busied himself pouring cream and spooning sugar into the rich, dark coffee, then walking with it carefully back to a small two-top table where Monica was already sitting and sipping.

  “You don’t take anything?” he asked, pulling out his chair.

  “Delays the time between the pouring and the drinking,” she said, preparing once again to wrap her lips around the cup’s rim.

  Mrs. Sobek arrived with a coffeepot and a white plate covered in waxed paper. She set the plate on the table and replenished the inch of missing coffee in Monica’s cup. Then, after softly touching Monica’s cheek with the back of her knuckle, she slipped away.

  “She seems like a lovely woman,” Max said, reaching for the warm pastry.

  “She’s wonderful,” Monica said. “Like what I think a mother should be. As in, nothing like mine.”

  He remained silent, mesmerized by the interplay of her emotional display. She delivered the word mine with her hand to her heart and a smirk on her face, but she held both the gesture and the expression a bit too long to pass off its exaggerated humor.

  He opted to be deliberately obtuse in order to preserve her dignity. “I take it your mother wasn’t much of a baker?”

  “Ha-ha.” She wrapped her hand around the mug. “My mother cared about two things: herself, and what others thought about her. And by others, I don’t mean me.”

  Cared. Past tense, and she spoke with the bitterness of one dealing with not only a loss, but a loss tinged with disharmony and regret.

  “I’m sorry,” he said, softening his tone from that of banter. “When did you lose your mother?”

  She scrunched her nose, thinking. “Almost a year ago? It’s hard to remember, sometimes, because I barely ever saw her for the two years before she died. We did not get along.”

  Not for a minute did he believe her cavalier routine, even less as she transformed into some other creature right before his eyes. Darker, colder—something no amount of Mrs. Sobek’s hot, strong coffee would resuscitate, much less his own weak words, so he simply repeated, “I’m sorry,” and sipped his own sweetened, weakened drink.

  It must have been the right thing to say, because she softened behind the ribbon of steam rising from her coffee, and a genuine, warm smile mirrored its curve.

  “We used to be rat-poor, and she hated it. Always harped that she’d ‘married down’ when she married my dad. Also dead. He owned a little sewing shop back home—Baltimore—and never aspired for anything bigger. Until the war came.” She picked up one of the kolache, took a bite, and chewed thoughtfully before proceeding. “He won a government contract to make uniforms for the Navy. Made him a lot of money, and he worked himself to death filling it. Ended up dying on Armistice Day. All that cheering in the streets.”

  “That must have been difficult for you.” He wanted to reach over to her in some way, to warm her hand with his own, or even something as gentle as Mrs. Sobek’s featherish touch, but she seemed too brittle.

  “Not as difficult as seeing the relief on my mother’s face. Dad never let us spend any of the government money, always talking about feast and famine and such. When he died, Mom packed us up and moved us here, found a house in Georgetown nobody wanted on account of it was fresh from a murder-suicide. We couldn’t even get a neighbor to say hello to us for a year.”

  He said, “I can’t imagine anyone ignoring you for that long,” and was rewarded with a bit of the girl he knew.

  “She enrolled me at the Visitation; never mind that we hadn’t been to Mass since before the war. I almost forgot we were Catholic. The girls hated me. I didn’t have a single friend. But the university boys?” She winked. “There’s a different story.”

  A different story, indeed. He could imagine the acceptance Monica found with the university boys. He knew too well the wild nature of a young man granted independence and access. It was bad enough in his day, before the entire country seemed to lose its mind with peace.

  “You see,” she said, “boys don’t care how old your money is as long as you don’t want to marry them. Mom couldn’t decide if she should be scandalized by my behavior or proud of my ambition. She settled on scandalized when I couldn’t get us invited to a family dinner. I tried to tell her that she should send me to college, but she wouldn’t. Too much hassle, she said. And when I cut off my hair and said I was going anyway, she threw me out.”

  She signaled for Mrs. Sobek to bring more coffee and tore off a corner of the fruit Danish, pushing the plate across the table, encouraging him to try a bite.

  “We okay here, ptáček?”

  Monica nodded, seemingly restored by the woman’s touch, and Max found himself sending God a silent thanks for this nurturing woman and for the love he carried with him from his own mother. Fond as his memories were, he found himself drawn to Mrs. Sobek’s enfolding warmth; he could only imagine the strange, unfamiliar lifeline it must have been for Monica.

  “My mother was sick for ages,” she continued after Mrs. Sobek walked away. She leaned forward on her elbows, holding the steaming coffee just in front of her chin. “When she died, she left a will that mandated the sale of the house and everything in it. All that money—and really, it isn’t so much—sits in the bank. I get an allowance. One hundred dollars on the second Wednesday of every month.”

  The timing seemed odd, and he said so.

  “You don’t know the old nursery rhyme? ‘Wednesday’s child is full of woe.’ I’m her little Wednesday child, until the money runs out.”

  There she was, floundering in a sadness deep enough that he could taste it, beyond the rescue of a substitutionary maternal touch. Instinct kicked in. “So,” he said, reaching out and wrapping her up with nonchalance, “I’m having breakfast with an heiress? That’s a
first for me. Now I feel much less guilty for letting you pay for it.”

  She indulged him with a small laugh, and to prolong the moment of lightness, he grabbed the second kolache and finished half of it in one bite.

  “People will think we’re lovers,” she said at a whisper. “Why else would we be together at this hour?”

  Thankfully, he’d swallowed his bite, or the brazenness of her comment might have induced a choke.

  “Do you always say exactly what’s on your mind?”

  Her thin, arched brows answered first. “Always.”

  “You don’t worry that you might get yourself into trouble?”

  “Always.”

  Her grin was catlike, deceptive and dangerous, and he felt himself on the edge of being snapped up in it.

  “We should go,” he said before gulping the rest of his coffee.

  “Sure.” Her tone was unmistakably patronizing, and she settled back in her chair with no visible sign of budging. “I just want to finish this.”

  “As you wish.” He backed his chair away, ignoring her protests as he crossed to gather his overcoat and hat from the rack by the door.

  “All right, all right.” There was nothing even faintly feminine about her now as she folded the remaining Danish in half and dunked it into the coffee, shoving the soggy mass into her mouth and wiping her chin with the back of her hand. Mrs. Sobek sighed at the sight.

  She was still swallowing when Max helped her into her coat.

  “Very nice to have met you,” he said to Mrs. Sobek with a tip of his hat.

  “Come back again,” the woman said. “Talk of happier things.”

  At the moment, there was nothing he’d rather do, but he couldn’t very well devote his days to sharing breakfast with Monica Bisbaine. It wasn’t professional or, really, prudent in any way. Moreover, Monica herself hardly chimed in agreement.

  They spoke very little as they retraced their steps to the bank; for this leg of the trip, she walked beside him, no matter how unhurried his pace.

  “You don’t have to accompany me if you don’t want,” he said finally, wondering if her silence wasn’t the product of sullenness.

  “Nothing much better to do. After all, I don’t even know if I have a job or not.”

  “You’ll know by this time Monday.”

  She looked up, squinting into the sunlight. “No chance of a hint right now?”

  “No chance.”

  “Come on. You can make it my Valentine’s Day present.”

  He looked at her closely, wondering whether the request that left him completely nonplussed was meant seriously or in jest. “Sorry. Then I’d have to do the same for everybody, and I’m not about to give Tony a Valentine’s gift. Besides, I’ll bet you have a dozen boyfriends leaving cards at your door. Am I right?”

  She tucked her arm in his. “You don’t care if I have a dozen sweethearts. You only want to know if I have one.”

  He wouldn’t have thought so until she said it, but once she had, he wanted an answer. Not any answer, but the truth. What he would do with such confirmation he had no idea, and she certainly didn’t act like her affections had been claimed by any man, but he felt unable to leap to the next thought without knowing.

  “Do you?”

  “Maybe I’ll tell you Monday. Who knows? If I don’t have a job, I might need a new boyfriend.”

  Check and mate. She conversed like a game of chess, three moves ahead, anticipating his strategy. Now they’d reset the board for a new match, but neither seemed in a hurry to begin. At some point their pace slowed to a stroll, and as they came to the final block, Max was beginning to question the wisdom of his invitation.

  “I don’t have to go inside with you if you don’t want me to,” she said, answering a move he hadn’t made.

  “I have no idea what to expect.”

  “But aren’t you curious?”

  “Of course I am. He was my uncle. The last of my family. I guess part of me is hoping I’ll find something . . .”

  “Monumental? Valuable? Scandalous?”

  “Interesting,” he said simply. “Something that tells me more about him.”

  They were at the door of the bank, and she dropped her arm, ostensibly so he could open it for them, but the resulting separation left him immediately and illogically lonely. Without thinking, he placed his hand at the small of her back as she crossed the threshold, leaving no doubt in either one’s mind that he wanted her by his side.

  The details were dispatched with quickly enough. With all the paperwork signed, it was merely a matter of recording their names in the ledger book—both of them—and being led into a small, windowless, paneled room. The bank officer backed out, closing the door behind him, leaving Max and Monica alone with the metal box perched on the tall, felt-covered table. It was larger than he’d expected—taller, anyway—with a hinged lid on top.

  “Here goes,” Max said, slipping the key into the lock and twisting it. Immediately, Monica’s hand was on his.

  “Would you rather I didn’t look? I mean, do you want me to go stand in the corner or something, so you can have the first few minutes alone? Just in case it’s—”

  “Scandalous? Valuable?”

  “You know. Private.”

  “You’ll never be a journalist if you give up on your curiosity so easily.”

  “Then I guess here goes.”

  “What’s the worst that could be in there?”

  “My cousin Pandora said the exact same thing.”

  It was the perfect thing to say to slice the tension of the moment, and after a ceremonial count to three, they lifted the lid to gaze inside.

  His first reaction was one of confusion, but not Monica’s. Hard to believe this was the same woman who, just minutes ago, had offered to step away from the contents to let him discover them in private. Before he could say a word, she’d reached inside the box with an enthusiastic “ooooh” spilling from her pretty lips and pulled out one of three glass bottles, bringing with it a few stray sticks of straw.

  “This is the real stuff,” she said, her voice filled with awe as if she held a brick of pure gold rather than a glass bottle filled with pale liquid. “I mean, I think it is. Why bother going to these extremes to hide a bunch of hooch?”

  “It’s whiskey?”

  “Better.” She was already working the cork. “Scotch.”

  “Are you nuts?” He took the bottle from her hand and set it on the table beside the box.

  She pouted for about half a second, then peered inside. “You’re right. There’s already an open bottle.” She pulled it out, revealing no more than three inches of liquid remaining.

  “Isn’t this illegal?”

  “This stuff was beginning its life in bonny Scotland when Volstead was in short pants. Look at this. 1898. We could take this to Doc King and get a thousand bucks. Or . . .” She dug back into the box and emerged holding a shot glass. “We can drink a toast to the man who knew enough to ferret this away for better times.”

  There was no stopping her. The glass was on the table, the cork out of the bottle, and two fingers of the drink poured out.

  “To Edward Moore,” she said, offering the drink in salute. “May he rest in peace as his legacy lives.”

  Then the same lips that had earlier thoughtfully sipped hot coffee, that had sent him smiles and puckered in a way that made him think of kisses, touched themselves to the rim of the glass and, with barely a tilt of her head, took a slow, satisfying swallow, leaving an imprint of her lipstick. The look she had on her face afterward was nothing short of rapturous, and he was seized with a sudden, illogical desire to find and do anything that would give her that look again. Something that didn’t involve his dead uncle’s liquor stash.

  “Now you,” she said, poised to repeat the ritual of pouring.

  “No, thank you.” His head was foggy enough.

  She arched her brow in a way that was more enticing than anything in any bottle ever could be. �
�‘Lips that touch liquor will never touch mine’?”

  “No,” he said, feeling hollowed out like a schoolboy. “It’s just—there’s more in here. Look, actual papers.”

  With a rush of relief for the distraction, he lifted them from the box, brushing off the straw. The first item to draw his attention was a bundle of four—no, five—sheets of paper, carelessly folded. The first few pages were typed, but midway through the third page, the information was recorded in a harshly precise hand. Max’s eyes scanned the material quickly, recognizing right away its content.

  Monica had moved around to peer at it alongside him. “What is it? Some kind of list?”

  “These are his books. The titles of all the books in his house.”

  “Oh my.” Her enthusiasm didn’t quite reach the level it had when she found the Scotch, but she seemed nonetheless appreciative.

  He flipped to the last page and read aloud. “Babbitt and The Enchanted April. Probably the last books he bought. Or at least the last he recorded.”

  She snatched the paper from his hand. “The Enchanted April? I’ve been dying to read that.”

  “If I can find it, I’ll lend it to you.” He’d said it before thinking of the consequences. Loaning a book meant waiting around for its return. Otherwise, it was a gift, and he wasn’t ready to give Monica Bisbaine a gift. But she smiled, sealing the deal, and he knew right then he would spend his evening searching the disorganized shelves for the title.

  “What else is there?” she prompted.

  There was a brown envelope made of thin cardboard, bound with a winding string. Suddenly his fingers felt too clumsy to open it, and he wondered if maybe he should have had a shot of whiskey to calm his nerves. After a few bumbling attempts, he gratefully handed the whole thing over to Monica and watched her nimble hands make short work of it. Once the envelope was opened, she handed over the first photograph, never taking her eyes off of his, allowing him to be the first to see the image.

  It was Uncle Edward and Max’s father when they were both young men. Probably younger than Max was now. They wore dark slacks and shirtsleeves, and they stood without any hint of motion or expression on the familiar front porch.