Page 23

ONE

T hey say that New York never sleeps, and tonight, neither does Eddie. He can’t shake the vision from the Algonquin, can’t make sense of how different it is from the fantasies he’s created and controlled before, can’t understand how it felt so detailed and physical and real. He’s always been able to spark and grow and sculpt and buff and tweak his fantasies, then tuck them safely away when he’s finished. But not this one. This one he can’t contain. It churns through his chest, insistent and relentless and stubborn.

No, sleep is not in the cards for Eddie tonight. Lying there staring at the disco ball, both of them spinning, spinning, trying to make sense of what he saw, or thought he saw—it’s unsettling, unbearable. He has to do something to stop the spin. So, he ties on his sneakers and slips out into the night.

Soon he is standing on the empty Cornelia Street sidewalk at four o’clock in the morning, a funny hour in New York. It’s less sinister than, say, two thirty, because the earliest of the early morning workers have started to stir. The garbage trucks begin to roll, the delivery vans start to make rounds, the extra-eager go-getters start pulling on their workout clothes for a pre-office visit to the gym. And of course, the bakers have been at it for hours. Dawn is still an hour or more away, but the darkest part of the night has passed.

Theo is standing here, too. He’s in the doorway of Patisserie Gaston, his rolling pin at his side. His face is smudged with flour, and his whole body—arms, shoulders, neck, everything—is tense with incomprehension and suspicion. Eddie wonders what he’d do with that rolling pin if Eddie were a threat—a burglar or some other kind of menace. He wonders if Theo would have whacked him. The way he grips the rolling pin suggests he’s used it before.

“What are you doing here?” Theo asks in a voice that’s half perplexed, half suspicious.

“Sorry,” Eddie says, holding out his hands, palms up. “I couldn’t sleep, and went out for a walk and then, I don’t know. I just ended up here.”

“And you pressed your face up against the window and scared the shit out of me at four o’clock in the morning,” Theo says. He lowers the rolling pin.

Embarrassment sinks through Eddie. “I’m sorry. I’ll go.”

“No,” Theo says. “I can’t allow that. You’ll just press your face up against the dry cleaner window at the end of the block, and then the bodega, and before you know it someone calls the cops and you’re hauled off to the precinct, and the truth is, I don’t make enough money to bail you out.”

Eddie lowers his head and turns away.

“Hey, wait,” Theo says, and his voice sounds like refuge. “I’m kidding. But why are you wandering around at this hour?”

It’s a good question, and Eddie has a hundred answers. But he won’t offer any of them. He won’t explain to Theo that the reason he can’t sleep is because he’s been freaking out about a bizarre vision that he had at the Algonquin. He won’t tell Theo that the panic didn’t truly take hold until long after, when he turned out the lights and tried to close his eyes. He won’t say that lying still became impossible. He won’t acknowledge that wandering the streets in the dark, in a city he’s only just coming to know, is probably reckless. He won’t admit that he came to Cornelia Street like a magnet to steel, because despite everything else clogging his brain he hasn’t stopped thinking about Theo, about his opera cakes, about his songbird tattoos. He won’t mention any of that. He’ll just say, “Restless, I guess.”

“I get that sometimes, too,” Theo says. “But why don’t you come in? I just made a fresh pot of coffee.”

Eddie offers another sheepish protest, “I shouldn’t be bothering you,” but Theo insists and soon Eddie is sitting on a stool in the corner of the patisserie’s working kitchen, holding his paper cup of coffee in two hands like an actor in a coffee commercial and watching Theo roll, cut, and shape a batch of buttery dough into croissants. The aromas in the air—yeast, butter, baking bread—captivate Eddie, who’s only ever smelled anything like it outside a Subway shop, or when reheating dinner rolls at Sunset Ridge. These scents are so much better than those, though. Fresh and warm and luxurious. He fills his lungs, over and over.

“Is it always like this in here?” he asks.

“Like what?”

“It just smells so good.”

“Best thing about this job,” Theo says. “Gaston tells me I’ll tire of it one day, but that day hasn’t come yet. The smell of things keeps me awake at this hour. That, and Gaston’s list.”

“His list?”

“He leaves a note for me every night, telling me what I need to make. Sixty of this and thirty of that and an extra two dozen of these. And croissants. Always croissants.”

Theo rolls his wheel-cutter across a sheet of laminated dough to create little triangles, then carefully twists each one into a little crescent shape. He fills a tray with a dozen of these, covers the tray in plastic, then writes the time— 4:15 A.M. —on a piece of blue tape that he affixes to the plastic. He slides the tray into the steel cabinet on the back wall.

“Proofing cabinet,” Theo says. “It’s exactly one hundred fifteen degrees in there. They’ll rise to twice as big and be ready to bake in ninety minutes.”

“We never had one of those at Sunset Ridge. All we ever did with bread was reheat it.”

“Sunset Ridge?”

“I used to work in the kitchen at a retirement community. But just prep stuff. Chopping vegetables, finishing plates. Never baking, except chocolate chip cookies.”

“Chocolate chip cookies count as baking.”

“Yeah, but croissants are different. Yeast and all that.”

“All it takes is trying.”

Theo spreads another sheet of dough onto the counter and begins cutting and twisting again. Eddie is fascinated by his movements, so steady and deliberate, but so quick.

“You’re fast.”

“Gaston would kill me if I didn’t have croissants done for opening. I’m not exaggerating. He’d actually chop me up into pieces. Little ones.” He points at a wall of kitchen knives.

Eddie laughs. “How did you learn to make croissants?”

“From a book. It took about a week to get a feel for the process, but I didn’t get good at it for a few months. Croissants are easy to learn, but hard to master. Most things are like that in baking. That’s what they tell you in culinary school apparently.”

“You didn’t go?”

“No. I can’t afford that. But I got a used textbook from one of the big schools, and I’ve studied it so hard I could recite it to you from page one. Honestly, I think that’s why Gaston hired me. He hates culinary school. He thinks they coach the creativity out of you. He thinks culinary school teaches rules instead of ideas. But food is not like that, he says. Food is too personal for that. You should taste the soul of the baker who kneaded the bread, he says.”

“Do you believe that?”

Theo stops for a moment and taps his rolling pin on the edge of the counter. “I’m not sure,” he says. “Maybe. There is something different about something made by a machine and something made from scratch. I don’t know if it’s the soul of the baker, but it’s something. Then again, the same person, the same soul, can make the same thing exactly the same way, over and over, a hundred times, and it won’t ever come out exactly the same. Ninety-nine of them will be fine. But one will be different. One will be amazing. And you’ll never know exactly why.”

“Like photographs,” Eddie says quietly.

Theo looks at him. “Huh?”

Eddie shakes his head. “Nothing.” He nods at a stack of pastries on the far end of the counter. “What are those?”

“Pastry braids,” Theo says. “You hungry?”

“No, but—”

“Cherry or almond?” Theo asks.

Eddie considers. This feels like a test. He doesn’t want to fail, so instead of choosing, he asks, “Which do you think?”

Theo picks up one of each. He slides them onto a napkin in front of Eddie, then fills his cup with more coffee.

Eddie bites into the cherry one first, feeling the layers of pastry give under his teeth. The crust melts on his tongue in a rush of butter, followed by a bright, tangy-sweet burst of cherry. The flavor saturates his tongue, and he groans in appreciation.

“Try the almond,” Theo says. “Almond is the best.”

He’s right. It’s even better, with a flavor that reminds Eddie of warm caramel.

Eddie watches Theo’s wrists as he fills another tray and slips it into the proofing cabinet. “It’s so weird to be up when everyone else is asleep.”

“Welcome to my world. Sometimes I lose track of what time it is. Like, during the day, when the sun’s up, you can kind of tell by the light if it’s ten in the morning or four in the afternoon, you know? But at night, you’re never really sure. An hour can pass as quickly as a minute, and a minute can feel like eternity. Sometimes I’m like, what even is time? You know?”

“I guess,” Eddie says, thinking back to the Algonquin, and how time seemed to fold back on itself in there.

Theo points his rolling pin at Eddie and cracks a half smile. “Wanna try?”

Eddie shakes his head. “That’s okay. I’ll just screw it up.”

“Nah, I won’t let you. Because—”

“Because Gaston will kill you and chop you up into little pieces.”

“Wrong. He’ll kill and chop us both. And we’d never have a chance. Just look at all the knives around this place. Now go wash your hands,” Theo points at a sink in the corner. “And then come here.”

Eddie gets up off the stool, washes and dries his hands, and stands at the counter. Theo drapes an apron over Eddie’s neck, then carefully ties it behind him to secure it, his fingers grazing Eddie’s lower back.

“Hold this,” Theo says, handing Eddie the rolling pin. He tosses a handful of flour across the counter, then drops a ball of dough in the center. “Now,” he says. “Roll this out flat, to about a quarter inch thick.”

Eddie looks at Theo, then at the dough, unsure of how to start. “Just, press down?” he asks.

“Yes,” Theo says. “Use two hands to keep it even. Put the pin in the middle of the dough and roll outward toward the edge.”

Eddie follows Theo’s direction, but the pin wobbles unsteadily as he rolls. He overcorrects and pushes too hard on one side, tearing the dough. “Sorry,” he says.

Theo stands behind Eddie and reaches around with his much longer arms, placing one hand on each end of the rolling pin, just outside Eddie’s grasp. “Gently. Don’t hold it too tight. Let the pin roll freely between your fingers.”

Eddie relaxes his grip, letting Theo drive. They roll out from the center of the dough in one direction, then the other. Theo turns the dough on the counter, and they roll again, coaxing it into a rectangle. Eddie feels the pin spin lightly against his palms and fingers as they go. Theo’s pace increases, and with each spin of the dough little clouds of flour burst into the air like puffs of smoke, showering down onto Eddie’s sneakers. Soon the dough is flat and even.

“Look at that,” Theo says, his voice a vibration. “You did it.” He pats the dough with his hands, songbirds grazing the tops of Eddie’s forearms, sending electricity glinting across his skin.

Eddie feels Theo’s breath across his neck, Theo’s chest against his shoulder blades. He wants to lean back into Theo’s body, to push his head back into his neck, to get closer. But he won’t move, for fear of upsetting this exquisite balance. He won’t do anything to break this moment (minute, hour, eternity).

Theo begins to hum. Not a tune, just a tone, creating a vibration in his chest that rolls into Eddie’s back and through his body. Eddie exhales, relaxing his stance almost imperceptibly. Theo’s muscles tense around him, strong and gentle and protective. He is so solid, Eddie thinks. So confident in his posture. Feet planted so firmly against Eddie’s. Arms wrapped so stably around Eddie’s chest. They are so close now. This is so real. Eddie closes his eyes. Time stops.

“Holy shit,” Theo says, breaking the spell. “It’s almost five. We’re opening soon.” He steps back and nudges Eddie out of the way, breaking the spell, and turns his attention, mental and physical, back to the dough. He cuts twelve new triangles, swiftly rolls them into identical croissant shapes, and slides them into the proofing cabinet. “Okay, done. They’ll be ready to bake soon. Now I’ve gotta get these opera cakes put together. It never ends.”

“Not ever?” Eddie says.

“Nope,” Theo says. “Not ever.”

It’s Eddie’s cue to go, and so he twists the magnet away from the steel and leaves.