Page 12

TWELVE

E ddie rounds the corner onto Cornelia Street—which is nowhere near as easy to find as Val’s or CVS, because it’s down here in the mishmash streets of the Village—and spots Patisserie Gaston just as a young man wearing a flour-dusted apron grasps the OPEN sign hanging in the window and turns it around to CLOSED .

Eddie’s shoulders sink. It’s two o’clock.

How is he going to explain to Cookie that he missed the opera cake window? He imagines just picking up the Fig Newtons (Cookie’s plan D) and telling her that the opera cakes were all sold out. And the eclairs and the apricot tarts. But then he remembers what she said about lying. She’ll know.

He draws a deep breath and approaches the door and taps on the glass.

The flour-dusted young man looks to be about Eddie’s age, so maybe we should call him a boy. He is a half-head taller and probably forty pounds heavier, with the kind of messy curls that look honestly earned after a long shift at work, not carefully cultivated in a mirror. The dark circles under his eyes suggest a sleeplessness Eddie, still recovering from the bus trip, can relate to. He shakes his head and points at the CLOSED sign.

Eddie shouts through the glass. “Opera cake?”

The boy cups his ear, dusting it with flour, too, but it looks to Eddie like the gesture, punctuated by a scowl, is only for show. He’s not really listening. Eddie tucks the paper towels under his arm again and struggles to make a little prayer sign with his hands. He crinkles his forehead, hoping he looks something like desperate. “Please?” he mouths.

The boy sighs and unbolts the door. He opens it, just a crack. “What?”

“I just need two pieces of opera cake,” Eddie says, conjuring his most pleading expression.

The boy crosses his arms over his apron. “We close at two.”

“I know, but—” Eddie drops the paper towels and stoops to pick them up. When he stands, he sees that the boy is smirking. But not in a snarky way. Look at the way the skin around his eyes is crinkling. Like he’s suppressing a smile. Eddie knows you can’t fake that. He smiles in return, as guilelessly as he can. “I need them for someone. And”—he points at the clock on the wall behind the baker, a digital readout that says 2:01—“Please?” he says again.

The boy looks back into the shop, considers a moment, then opens the door, tripping a little bell that tinkles when Eddie steps through. An angry male voice from somewhere in the back shouts, “Theo! What did I tell you about closing time? When we’re closed, we’re closed!” The voice has a vaguely European accent, adding to its urgency.

“Oui, monsieur!” The boy puts a finger up against his mouth, warning Eddie to be quiet. He speaks softly, his voice tinged with a rasp that matches his tired eyes. “Opera cake, you said?”

Eddie holds up two fingers.

“You’re lucky,” says the boy, who Eddie now knows is named Theo, thanks to the angry voice in the back. Theo crouches down behind the counter and pulls out a tray with two pieces of multilayered cake. “These are the last.”

Eddie has never seen opera cakes before. Each rectangle has nine layers, stacked carefully atop one another. A half-inch base of pale yellow cake, then a slightly thinner layer of buttercream, then chocolate, then another layer of cake, then buttercream, and so on to the shiny chocolate ganache top. Eddie is amazed by how perfect and clean the layers are. The sides and corners are perfectly sharp and flush, making each piece look like a miniature building, like architecture. “Wow,” he whispers.

A quiet smile speeds across Theo’s face, a look of pride as he swiftly folds together a cardboard bakery box, tucking the tabs into the slots and securing them with a snap. Eddie notices a small songbird tattoo on the inside of each flour-flecked forearm, and as Theo carefully places the cakes in the box, the birds flutter like they’re in flight. Theo works quickly, confidently, securing the box with red-and-white twine. His movements are so much more delicate and nimble than his thick, heavy hands would suggest. Eddie watches them closely, his stomach stirring.

“Opera cake is such a huge pain to make,” Theo is saying, still quietly, almost conspiratorially. “I keep thinking one day Gaston will take it off the menu, but he refuses to let it go. Something about the bakery he grew up in back in France or something. I don’t know. He’s attached to it and doesn’t really care how much work it is because he’s not the one who has to come in and do it. I am. Me. The underpaid apprentice. Gaston comes up with the ideas, then sleeps in while I’m up making the sponge, the buttercream, the syrup, the ganache. It takes all night.”

“All night?”

“Yep.” Theo snaps the twine with a quick jerking motion, then ties it into a delicate, perfect bow. He taps the top of the box with two fingers. “I started this cake at two. And then I had to make the eclairs, the tarts, the petit-fours, all of it. If I don’t get going by two or three, I’d never have stuff ready for the morning rush. And those rich cats in their shiny shoes and designer clothes need their brioche hot and fresh first thing in the morning or else we hear about it. You should have seen them when we raised the price of a croissant by fifty cents last month. They lost their minds. As if they can’t afford an extra fifty cents. They have no idea what it takes to make this stuff, let alone spend an hour each way on the subway just to get here. ‘Why don’t you live closer to work?’ they ask. I mean, do they even know how much they pay in rent to live in this neighborhood? Are they so loaded they don’t even pay attention?”

Eddie hears Theo talking, but his mind has begun to wander. With those tattoos and that scowling expression, Theo looks like he should be in a punk band, not a bakery. He should be on a stage, belting out angsty hardcore lyrics over a mosh pit of frantic fans. He should be peeling off his shirt mid-set, tossing it into the crowd. Eddie envisions the first glimpse of Theo’s body as he pulls the shirt up over his stomach. Eddie presses his hands onto the counter to balance himself.

“You wanna know the worst part?” Theo is asking.

But Eddie doesn’t hear him. He’s stuck on Theo’s slick skin, pulsing veins, sharp breath as he comes off the stage at the end of the song. Theo’s grateful, exhausted, exhilarated smile as he sees Eddie there waiting for him. The feel of Theo’s sweat against Eddie’s neck as Theo embraces him, and whispers something dirty in his ear. Eddie pictures himself whispering something dirty back. Imagine! The image sparks a rush of blood through him. All the way through.

“Hello?”

Eddie snaps back, remembering where he is. “Sorry,” he says.

Theo shrugs. “The worst part is, I’ve never even been to the opera. Not once. I make opera cakes all night and couldn’t even tell you the name of a single opera. Can you believe it?”

“Wow,” Eddie says, still shaking off the mist of his punk-rock reverie. “Well. Thank you for opening the door for me. My great-aunt Cookie will be so—”

Theo holds up his hand. “Wait a second. Did you say Cookie? You mean Cookie over on Bedford Street?”

Eddie, suddenly wary, doesn’t answer. He remembers this is New York City, not Mesa Springs. He doesn’t know this Theo. Maybe Theo hates Cookie. He shouldn’t have said her name.

Theo pushes the box across the counter. “Don’t worry,” he says, reading Eddie’s discomfort. “Everyone knows Cookie around here. And she’s one of our most loyal customers. I’ve never met her because she always sends that mean guy to pick up her orders. What’s his name? Alfred or something? Anyway I wasn’t even sure she was real until last winter when she sent Christmas cards to me and Gaston. There was twenty bucks folded into mine. I don’t know how she would possibly know my name. But it was really cool. Even Gaston liked getting that card, and he hates everything.”

“Everything?”

“Bakers are supposed to be grouchy,” Theo says, raising an eyebrow. “Didn’t you know that? It’s part of the training.”

“That’s weird,” Eddie says, conjuring the Eddie from his vision a moment ago, the Eddie bold enough to whisper in Theo’s rock-star ear. “With all this sugar around, you’d think they’d be sweet.”

Theo freezes, and for a moment, a tiny but eternal moment, stares blankly at Eddie.

Ugh, Eddie. Was that flirting? Oh no. Cringe.

But Theo smiles. Really smiles, like he means it, and a new vision sweeps across Eddie’s brain, a vision of them together, living in a little apartment a few blocks over from the bakery, waking up late on Theo’s day off to read the paper and drink coffee and spend the whole morning in bed before going out to stroll lazily through the Village, holding hands, making silly plans, living happy forever after. New Yorkers in love.

“Well,” Theo says, breaking the spell. “I’m glad to meet a relative of Cookie’s. She’s the best, so you must be okay, too. Carry the box carefully so the cakes don’t smush.”

A shout slices the moment in two. “Theo!” It’s the angry voice from the back of the bakery again.

Theo’s face collapses back into a scowl. The change is swift, like a filter removed, and Eddie feels an icy burst of air. Theo punches at the register. “Nine dollars,” he says, the exhausted rasp back in his voice. Whatever they just shared, or whatever Eddie imagines they just shared, has passed.

Eddie hands over one of Cookie’s twenty-dollar bills and accepts his change. “Thank you again,” he says on his way out the door.

“Okay,” Theo says dully. He locks up behind Eddie and turns back in to the shop.

Eddie, laden now with a tote bag of flowers, a two-pack of paper towels, and a box of opera cakes, heads toward Bedford Street. He walks slowly, careful to keep the precious cakes balanced, but his mind is already back at Theo’s punk-rock show.