David Ryan
Fiction
The old woman has forgotten to turn the Open sign to Closed. She’s muttering at ghosts and crushing greasy pink paper from a chromed wire rack at the display counter when the night baker pushes open the door. The door’s sleighbells jangle. Now she looks up and sees him.
She mutters mostly in a Greek he doesn’t speak. But they share a general understanding. They never see each other outside this moment. Early night. When she’s closing and he’s coming in for his shift.
She’s rolling her eyes. Not so much in greeting, but wordlessly directing him to the back of the snaking counter where a coat rumples up around matted, spilled hair. A sleeping man’s face on the counter, a plastic bag a few inches away. The half-white flutter of his eyes appears to send his dreams into the bag’s torn yellow smiley face. A dog curled at the man’s feet lifts its eyes and regards the night shift baker. The dog sneezes, watches.
The old Greek woman’s rolling eyes want the baker to tell this man to go. To take his dog and leave. But her rolling eyes recall to the baker the seizure she had two Saturdays ago. When she, so old and small, stumbled to the dirty linoleum and looked suddenly like a giant animated doll. Her head pounded on the floor. The baker thrust his hands under her stiff wig and let her mouth bite and snap at the space between their faces. Her eyes rolled up white with the frayed circuitry surging within. He held her until the surge weakened and stopped. She studied him with a natural, voided gaze.
Closed, the baker says.
You got to go now, the baker says.
The face does not move. The dog sighs.
The baker steps past the man and his dog. Out back, in the production room, he grabs a couple of day shift crullers from the rack.
He thinks about how anything can happen. In your life. To make you like that. He comes back through the doorway.
Hey, he says, loud now. He slaps the counter. The man seems to crack open from a shell, that’s how he moves, like he’s being born, and the smiling plastic bag exhales.
The baker sets the cruller down on the counter. He hands the other to the dog.
Closing, he says. The dog snaps the cruller and swallows.
Out front, a police cruiser whoops and flashes in the window. Traffic pulls and releases in the golden hour.
Come on.
The baker pulls the man up onto his feet and half-drags the dazed and belligerent body out. The dog follows.
The old Greek woman is polishing a chrome sugar lid daintily.
They emerge into the golden hour on the sidewalk. The baker lets the man go. But the man reaches out, suddenly quick and alert, and clasps the baker’s head. He pulls the baker’s skull and body and they swing in a slow hurricane. Cars honk and people shout and laugh. The man’s rotted shoe hitches and he trips. His grimed hands release the baker and he falls onto the sidewalk.
The dog, a few feet away, dashes his hind paw at a bare mange on his shoulder.
The old Greek woman is watching behind the glass door when the baker returns. He steps around her Greek muttering to the Bunn where burnt coffee smokes silently. He pours some into a blue, white, and gold cup from the stacked tower: We Are Happy to Serve You.
This is how his night begins.
[#]
Dayshift left the oil too low in the left fry-o-laters. He tears open a 50lb shortening from the back shelf. Peels away the blue plastic lining and eases the slippery white cube into the vat. He takes a handled tin bucket and scoops into the second tank until the oil in both tanks is about level.
Dayshift left the big mixing bowl soaking in the utility sink. The baker sloshes slimed doughy water out and rinses the bowl. He lifts and hinges it into the arms of the Vulcan. He runs Hot and Cold tap, takes the thermometer off the sink ledge and holds the spike under the run. The needle slows at 72º. He nudges Hot up until 82°. He fills the pitcher. He dumps the water into the mixing bowl, slots the paddle into the throat. He goes to the back again for a 50lb cake and carries it up to the Vulcan. He dumps half the bag into the bowl, pushes Start. The mix crumbles and washes around. When it starts to pull ribbons from itself, he hits Stop. Disengages the hook. He drags the bowl over to the cutting table. He sets a second bowl into the Vulcan’s sleeve. Heats the tap, dumps it into the big bowl.
He takes out a brick of fresh yeast from the refrigerator. Sees a jeweler’s bag with a thumb of heroin left. Beside it, a lighter, a half-sucked charms blow pop beside the other blocks of yeast.
Last week the day shift was still there when he came in. Mario, the day manager, who had trained the baker but sees him as an enemy now, was whispering darkly into the dough. A teardrop of blood suffered down the corded blue pulse of his forearm.
The baker crumbles yeast into the mixing bowl. Punches the red button above. The dough bar lunges and oscillates. He passes the fry-o-laters again to the back by the elevated fire escape window. He brings a 50lb yeast mix over his shoulder to the Vulcan where the yeast water is the color of anemic skin. He dumps the whole bag of mix into the pulsing bowl.
He smells the Greek woman’s lingering perfume, the smallest trace.
A seagull flaps in from the open fire escape window in the back. It lands on the finishing table bin of coconut sprinkles the dayshift had left open. The bird dips its head and coconut snows from its lifted beak.
Hey there, the baker says. The seagull flaps off the table as if listening to him and strolls along the floor up to the baker beside the Vulcan. The seagull flaps onto a screen rack of cold crullers and punches its beak into one. Broken cruller tumbles and the seagull flaps down to the floor, its beak dancing at it. Then the seagull flaps back up into the air, hovering like a hummingbird. It lands on the cutting table.
Last night, the baker dreamed his father visited. The father was still young, the baker’s age. How impressed his father was. The baker’s hand cut rings with such swift skill that his fist turned into a hummingbird. His father was struggling to breathe. I just need to sit down. There, that’s better. The baker woke for several seconds as a child.
He dusts a fist of white flour onto the canvas and the seagull hops back. He sets the wire screen down. He hoists the heavy bowl up. The seagull leaps and settles as the baker scrapes out dough and tosses flour onto the mound. His hands press and gather its sides and fold edges inward. He rolls the heavy pin outward into an even blanket. He takes the cutter in his fist and slams four rings onto his free hand’s thumb. He flicks these down in an even row onto the wire screen. When forty-eight rings are on the screen, he lifts the screen from the table and slots it into the stand by the fryers.
He sets another empty screen down.
Someone taps the front window. Timmy the Pimp stands behind the glass, waving. The baker washes his hands and comes out front. He unlocks the glass door.
Goon squad out, Timmy says.
The baker locks the door behind him. Timmy says he’s from Cape Verde. Though he has said other things. Timmy’s women, Lee, Tee, and Dee, hide here sometimes when the police sweep. They tell him stories of their daily lives and childhood memories and future dreams. You’re so young, what are you doing here? they say, forgetting they say this often.
Hold my gun, okay? Timmy says. Just a couple of hours.
I can’t leave it here, the baker says.
Didn’t say leaving it, Timmy says. Police street-sweeping tonight.
He takes out his lighter, it’s got a slip cover of a silver mermaid.
Not here, the baker says.
They come to the back. The seagull watches them.
Bird up, Timmy says. He passes the seagull and turns on the utility sink tap to a trickle. He fills a small glass pipe’s swelling bulb. He taps out tiny stones from a jeweler’s bag into the glass bulb. He glances over at the seagull—Yeah, okay I seen it all now.
The seagull opens his wings on the table, airs them, flaps them closed.
Every last thing.
The cake’s dying, the baker says as if to a blanket of dough on the table.
We all dying, the pimp says. He flicks the lighter, holds its exaggerated flame beneath the glass bowl. Smoke swirls, fills the glass. He carries the pipe to the baker, who takes it in his hands, lifts the mouthpiece, and inhales.
Look at Davie, Timmy whispers: kissing the chalice. The baker hands the pipe back and the pimp snaps the lighter under it, inhales. The seagull hops closer.
That’s a health violation, Timmy says, tight inside his held breath.
When even the small rocks are gone, Timmy hands the baker the small gun from his back pocket. The baker puts it inside the yeast refrigerator, sets it beside the small dime of heroin.
He locks the front door behind the pimp.
Nerve endings snap and dart in the baker’s teeth. A peristaltic slow-motion beats in his throat.
Beyond the window a police cruiser quietly back-ends a braking car out front. Two pretty college students pass nearer the glass. They are the same age as the baker, and yet they are not. How strange to live here and not be a student. What would they talk about? What would he say that wouldn’t undermine their faith. Their understanding of time and safety?
[#]
His teeth clench with each slamming cut. Two more racks, three. He must cut the remaining cake before it dies but his racing pulse so badly wants a cigarette. He goes into the back, past the stainless steel finishing counter. On it: the chocolate tank, bins of rainbow and chocolate sprinkles, the open coconut.
The seagull must have flown off.
He turns the chocolate heater on. Then he climbs onto the first stack of cake bags below the counter under the fire escape. Mice shoot out dark bitten holes. He stands on the stainless steel table and legs himself through the big open window onto the fire escape. The wrought iron teeters out in the open air. Tall parking lot lamps shine down on undulating rats on the ground. Thousands of them, chirping and rutting. He lights a cigarette and crouches and the wrought iron platform shudders. He exhales thick nerves. He recalls earlier, when he came in. He remembers now his mother holding him once when he had a fever. He seized up with fevers as an infant. She’s holding him and slips a phenobarbital into his throat. The cake will expire on the table. He finishes his cigarette and tosses the cherry. The cigarette falls twirling. The oscillating shadows lunge at the splashing sparks, mistaking them for food.
[#]
He finishes cutting the cake and slotting the screens in the rack to be fried. Timmy appears later like a genie at the front glass window. The baker unlocks the door and lets the pimp in. Timmy cooks more rocks in the glass bulb. The genie rises in the smoke. Then Timmy leaves and the baker locks the door with a pressure behind his eyes. He closes them. He’s diving in the pool as a kid. Coming up into the splashing cold sun. In the back, he hears a voice coming out of his mouth. Words he knows, but the raw throat they’re leaving is foreign.
The yeast dough in the bowl has begun to push up the cloaked dayshift apron covering it. The apron, smeared with dried cake and thin brown bloodstains. He pulls the cloth off and presses his finger into the dough and the indentation stays. He drags the bowl to the cutting table, yanks it up, spills out the dough. He carves out twelve sections with the pastry knife. Then presses the edges, sealing each parcel into a ball the size of an infant.
He tongs a screen from the rack with two handles. He carries it to the left fry-o-later, the shortening so clean from the new cube the heat coils glow in underwater coral. He plunges the screen, jiggles it. The rings release and rise like ghosts. The past blisters on his burned knuckles sing over the heat. He pulls away the tongs. Sets them aside and returns to the rack. He tongs another screen of cake rings. He drops it into the right fry-o-later and they float up, pale and bubbling in the oil.
The left rings cast a gold aura. He takes the flipping sticks in each hand. He flicks two rings at a time, flips them over. Two four six eight ten twelve. Now down the next column, until all four columns are turned over. Then he does it to the other vat.
Out front, glass taps several times, a firetruck horn flashes behind Timmy there and a stranger. Timmy peace fingers behind the glass. The stranger’s mouth laughing now. The cake in the vat hisses. The baker holds his hand up, wait. He slips the tongs back into the oil, hooks the screens and lifts both onto the drain stands.
Timmy is speaking a language with the other man when they come in.
Who is this? the baker says.
Old country, Timmy says. The other man is bigger than Timmy, thicker. The baker walks them back into the production room.
The yeast babies swell on the table. The baker must fry the rest of the cake rings and crullers soon or they will die. And the yeast will die if he doesn’t cut it soon. Timmy and the stranger stand by the cutting table. The baker tongs another raw cake screen into the left fry-o-later.
He hears grunting behind him. Mamãe, oh sim, Mamãe.
The stranger has pulled two of the yeast babies close to the edge of the table and grinds his hips into them.
Timmy murmurs, No man, no no.
The baker can fill the tin pitcher with hot oil. But thrown, it would make a mess everywhere. The baker goes to the man and shoves him away from the babies. The man stumbles back and rears a little but then laughs. He glances at Timmy to do something. The baker slides the yeast parcels gently back to the center of the table. One is deflating.
Get him out of here, the baker says. He comes back to the fry-o-laters, drops another screen into the right fryer. He flips the left side.
Arguing from behind him.
Get him out of here, the baker says. He flips rings and oil splashes onto his fingers. He’s come home from school, hasn’t seen his mom in several days. She disappears, but now she’s in the kitchen. She’s poured sugar out onto the table and pushes her finger around a mound of it. Hey kiddo, she says in his brain. It’s her new age voice. So, it’s like this, she says. You know? Bad times and good times. It’s just storm clouds. They pass, you know?
One of the men behind him grunts. A sudden heat, a pressure comes. He’s trying to finish flipping the rings two four six eight ten twelve.
A red dash sprays on his arm. Blood, the fry-o-later hisses and splatters. Some rings are streaked and dotted a browning red. The baker turns. The stranger is bleeding. He has a utility knife raised in his hand. Timmy bleeds less, another knife is in his hand.
The baker takes the heavy rolling pin from the cutting table.
It’s like this, he says. And he swings the pin into the back of the stranger’s head. A soft snap plays through the baker’s hand and the stranger twists, his dark retinas rolling up in shocked white.
Whoa whoa whoa, Timmy says.
It’s like this, and the baker swings the pin again.
[#]
The baker can coat the burned rings in white powder or rainbow sprinkles once they cool. Dip them in chocolate frosting. Timmy is gone. The baker steps around the body, whose mouth and ears have stopped pulsing the pooled blood on the floor. At the utility sink, he fills the pail with water. He brings the pail to the proof box, opens the hot tin door and pours it into the old can on the floor above the pilot flame. He closes the proof box, steps back around the body and drops the pail in the sink. He steps around the body to the cutting table. He pounds the rolling pin down onto a yeast baby, cross-hatching it flat. Faint imprints of blood from the second smash bruise the hatches. He rolls the dough flat and the red absorbs itself, blends into the dough like a softening mood.
He pounds and rolls and cuts until the entire yeast production is in the proof box. On the floor, the stranger’s blood has absorbed the flour and grease and his footprints.
He steps back onto the fire escape while the yeast rings and shells rise in the proof box. Rats chirp and undulate below. He smokes a cigarette down, then another, and sees only now that something has sobered in him.
Inside, he steps around the man on the floor and fries a screen of yeast rings. He runs them through the glaze trough, hangs them to drain on the glazing rack. He does this again and again until they’re done.
The front door jingles. Timmy, entering with two white guys. The baker had forgotten to lock the door. He scoops oil into the tin pitcher and sets it within reach. He can beat them with the rolling pin.
He can tear our their minds, eat their cold souls—
Good as my word, Timmy says.
One of the men is unfolding a large bag.
The last yeast swells in the oil. The baker flips both screens. Behind him the men have already duct taped the black bag shut.
The men slide the bag on the floor to the back of the room and lift the body up and through the window. The fire escape clangs and shudders, then screeches down. The baker glances at the floor where the stranger was. The baker’s feet are there, the mats of grease and flour but the blood could be anything now. He hears the fire escape ratchet back up.
The baker folds the yeast scrap together, makes one more small tough baby out of it, and sets it to rise on the canvas table.
He goes back, where from the fire escape window, taillights in the alley below pull and render the dark, pause where the alley opens into Hemenway Street, then vanish behind the Boylston tenements.
Inside, he brings cooled shells to the finishing station. Pumps vanilla cream into a dozen and crowns them with melted chocolate. He puts clean, pink paper in the chrome trays. He tosses cake rings in coconut. He finishes the morning production and sets these rings and shells and crullers arranged in such a way.
It looks good. It no longer matters.
The night is badly broken.
He returns to the fire escape. He lights a cigarette. The rising sun is smashing the welted indigo beyond the skyline. Most of the rats are gone. Where do they go each morning?
Hello? from inside.
The Persian man, Amir, and his kid, Afshin. They’re in there now. Amir has a key. The night porters. The boy is nine or ten. He rarely speaks, watches the baker with a jarring, exotic glare.
Amir once told the baker that in Iran, he was a meteorologist. In Tabriz, he said. Every night on television. And he made a joke then, but the baker couldn’t understand it. The Persian’s accent was thick with certain words. The baker laughed anyway because Amir was laughing. And the Persian’s son watched the baker laugh—as if studying his mouth and teeth.
Another night Amir told the baker: Tabriz is a pretty big city. Many thermal springs.
From the fire escape, the baker shouts in: I put a yeast on the table. If you want to practice.
Amir has been arriving early to learn how to bake. The money’s good. The baker has been training him because Amir asked.
Inside, Amir pounds the scrap with a pin. He’ll be a good baker. He’s still a little rough still, sure. A little slow at cutting. But he understands the basics. He takes care. Amir’s son will help his father, probably learning the trade. The future. They will be together their whole lives. They’ll have no reason to leave each other.
The baker flicks his finished cigarette tumbling down.
Amir has finished cutting a screen of yeast rings. At the proof box, he says something to his son and they strip to their shorts as they do every night.
The baker turns off the chocolate heater. He puts the lid on the coconut bin. He’s not coming back. The Persian father and son are on their knees on the floor now, scraping up the matted skin of grease and dirt with pastry knives. The boy, Afshin, is working up the blood gone brown with the dirt. The scraping curls over his blade. Amir will fry the yeast he’s cut. It will have risen by then. Then they will mop bleach over the floor.
Amir, a full shift? the baker says. You think you could do one?
Amir looks up. He stops scraping. Okay. Yes, maybe.
Something flickers over by the Vulcan. The seagull, on top of it. Had it never left?
The seagull watches the baker go by. The father and son don’t hear the baker say goodbye over their scraping. Out in the front room, he hears Amir speaking to his son. The baker glances back. He can’t see them through the dividing wall’s glass.
He locks the front door behind him. A couple of girls, maybe on ecstasy, stagger, laughing, by. They look at him and flush like he’s embarrassed them. They shriek and laugh louder and are gone.
It’s a legit morning now, with the light. He turns onto Hemenway. He imagines he’s married. That he and his wife have a kid or two; they love each other through good and bad times.
Had the seagull been there all along?
The way the Persian man’s son stared at him sometimes. The way those two girls laughed when they passed. As badly as he wants to know what is in that gaze, that laughter, he understands he will not ever know.
He tries to put it out of his mind and think about what is next.
Because this seems more important to think about, though he’s not entirely sure why.
David Ryan
Photo Credit: Roger Camp is the author of three photography books including the award winning Butterflies in Flight, Thames & Hudson, 2002. His documentary photography has been awarded Europe’s prestigious Leica Medal of Excellence and published in numerous journals including The New England Review, New York Quarterly, and North American Review.
