“An early dinner Friday night, and then she’ll take us to the airport,” he says.
I want to ask him what she said, how she sounded, but I just say, “Thank you for doing this.” I slip my arms around his waist and lay my face against his chest. “You want a glass of wine?”
“I’d rather have a beer, if you’ve got any.”
We sit at the kitchen table and watch the tail of Tyler’s Felix the Cat clock swing back and forth.
“How did it go this morning?” he asks.
“Hard. Really hard. Especially for Ellen. That rat bastard told her she couldn’t have the sign. I wish she’d just taken it.”
“What the hell is he planning to do with it?”
“He says he’s going to repaint it for whoever takes the space, but you know he won’t. Anybody paying that kind of rent’s going to want a new sign. He’ll just put it out with the garbage.” I look over at him. “By the way, you wouldn’t happen to know anything about a song called ‘The Queen Street Gentrification Blues,’ would you?”
“The what?”
“Taped on the bakery window?”
His smile is innocent. “Never heard of it.”
“Hmm. The phantom lyricist of Queen Anne Hill.” I take a sip of my wine. “How was your day?”
“Long. I’m rebuilding storage units for one of Josh’s apartment buildings.” He gets up and swivels the chair around so he can straddle it, resting his arms on the back. “Have you given any more thought to what you want to do when we get back? Have you talked to Tyler?”
“Yes to both. I have to go back to L.A. next month anyway. My court date is June twenty-fourth. So I’ll see how it feels, whether I think I can live there again.”
“What are you going to do with all your stuff?”
“Put it in storage.”
He drums his fingers lightly on the tabletop. “You want to go it alone? Or could you use some company?”
I look up at him. “Company would be good.”
“We could drive,” he says. “Go down the coast. Do a little camping.”
I cringe. “Camping? Like cold showers and outhouses?”
He laughs. “Afraid you’ll get your Ralph Lauren sweatpants dirty?”
I punch his arm. “Someday you’re going to have to get some original material and stop stealing from Linda.”
“What about Tyler?”
“She’s undecided at the moment. She’s been approved to get back into the art institute, based on the work she’s been sneaking around doing. I swear I thought she was plotting the overthrow of the government.”
“What do you think made her want to go back?”
“My guess is,” I say, stroking the back of his hand, “that it was her backup plan if I rode off into the sunset without her. At least at first. And then, as she got into it, she probably started to remember how much she loved it.”
“So what do you think she’ll do?”
“I don’t know. I told her she needs to let me know when we get back from New York.” I smile suddenly. “We’re going to New York! I haven’t been there since nineteen…it was the summer of seventy-nine when I went there to visit CM. Oh God, we had so much fun.”
“I haven’t been back since seventy-seven. When I bailed from NYU and took off for Colorado.”
“Just you and the Elky.”
He shakes his head. “Nope. I didn’t have the Elky then. I had no car and hardly any money. I hitchhiked.”
I put my hands on my hips. “See, there’s another thing I didn’t know. Boy, you’ve got some catching up to do. Let’s go to Olympia and get a pizza.”
He stands up. “I need to just run over to see Josh for a second.”
In a few minutes he walks out of Josh’s house carrying a pair of big, nasty plier-looking things with a beak like a snapping turtle. “What’s that?”
“It’s one of those cutters you use to cut padlocks off storage units when the tenant’s rent gets too far behind.” He stashes it behind the driver’s seat.
Later, after a mushroom, pepperoni, and garlic pizza, we cruise down Queen Anne Avenue and he turns left on Queen Street.
“Why are you going this way?”
He looks straight ahead. “I just thought you’d like to see the alma mater one more time.”
I fold my arms. “Not really.”
He pulls into the dark alley behind the bakery and kills the engine. “What are you doing?”
He grins. “How about a little post-dinner demonstration of my rock-climbing prowess. You know, it’s one of those things you don’t know about me.”
“What?”
He gets out of the truck and grabs the cutter, hanging it in a belt loop. I jump out, running behind him. “Mac, you can’t do this.”
“Watch carefully and you’ll see that I can.”
“We’re going to get arrested.”
“If anyone gets arrested, it’ll be me. Then you’ll have to bake me a loaf of bread with a file in it.”
At the corner of the building, he hops gracefully up on the lid of the Dumpster, the cutter dangling precariously from his belt.
“Jesus, Mac, be careful with that thing.”
“Yeah, that could put a crimp in our sex life, couldn’t it? Like that old limerick.”
“What limerick?”
“I was hoping you’d ask.” He clears his throat. “‘There once was a sailor named Bates—’”
“Shhh!”
His voice drops to a stage whisper. “‘Who danced the fandango on skates.’”
“Mac, for God’s sake—” He grabs the drainpipe and tests it with his weight, then suddenly he’s scampering up the corner of the building where the bricks meet at offset intervals, creating handy toeholds.
“‘Till a fall on his cutlass,
“‘Rendered him nutless…’”
He swings up onto the roof and stands looking down at me. “‘And practically useless on dates.’”
I start to giggle uncontrollably.
“You don’t handle tension very well,” he says. “You’d make a lousy spy.”
He moves in a semicrouch along the front of the building until he’s directly above the doorway of the bakery. “Hmm. Lots of pigeon shit up here. Okay, little Ms. Baker, move your buns down here under the sign.”
I look around, reassuring myself that the lights are off in all the surrounding shops. The street is dark and quiet. “We’re going to jail. Mendina probably has security patrols—”
“Hush. I’m going to cut this thing—don’t stand under it till I tell you—and then I’ll lower it down to you.” He leans over the edge.
“Please don’t fall.”
“I’ve got my heels hooked under a conveniently located vent. On belay!”
“What?”
“Rock climbing lingo, my dear. I’ll explain some night when we’re hanging from the towel bar.”
“Mac, hurry.”
He braces the cutter against the wall and there’s a metallic snap. One side of the sign sags, and he reaches over to anchor it under his elbow. “Look out below.” There’s another snap, and he grapples with the sign for a heart-stopping few seconds.
“Okay, reach. And be careful, it’s heavier than it looks.”
I stand on tiptoe, stretching as high as I can, while he lowers the sign, but I still can’t reach it.
“It’s just a couple of inches shy,” he says. “If I let one corner go, you should be able to get a hand on it. Can you do that?”
“Of course, just—”
At that moment a car drives by, headlights illuminating the sign burglars. The driver slows and his head comes out the window.
Shit. My mind races to come up with some sort of explanation. We were just walking by and the sign was falling down, and, not wanting it to fall on an unsuspecting passerby, we decided to take it down…
“Hi,” Mac calls to the guy. “Can you give me a hand with this?”
“Oh God, oh God.”
; The car pulls over, and a middle-aged man gets out.
“He’s going to get a hernia, and then he’s going to sue us,” I hiss.
“What seems to be the problem?” He sticks his thumbs in the waistband of his pants. “I’m not exactly dressed for construction work.”
I can’t even look at the guy.
“She’s not quite tall enough,” Mac says. “If you can just reach up and take the bottom of the sign—you can rest it against the building if it’s too heavy—and I’ll be right down.”
The guy pushes his sleeves up. “Of course it’s not too heavy.” He reaches for the sign and Mac lets go, and he eases it gently to the ground. “Whoo. This baby is heavier than she looks.”
While I’m stammering thank-yous and giving him a Kleenex to wipe his hands, Mac clambers down and suddenly appears beside me.
“Appreciate the help.” He holds out his hand. “David Franklin.”
I don’t dare look at him.
“Sam Turner.” They shake. “Nice sign. What’re you doing with it?”
“It needs some touch-up work.” Mac grins easily. “Thought we might as well get it done while the remodeling’s going on.”
Right. So we decided to take it down with chain cutters in the middle of the night.
Sam Turner looks at the papered windows. “Oh. Yeah. Good idea. Well, you folks have a good evening.”
We haul the sign around to the alley and put it in the Elky. Mac covers it with a tarp and lays the cutter on top. We climb in the truck and I sit there hyperventilating while he wipes his hands on a rag.
“I can’t believe we stole it.” My voice vibrates with a strange exhilaration.
“Hey, you started on a life of crime a long time ago. Remember that lipstick you and CM shoplifted.”
He turns the key, but before he can put the truck in gear, I kneel on the seat next to him, take his face in my hands, and kiss the socks off him.
The thirteenth day of May is cool and breezy. We spend the morning packing, and after lunch the three of us squeeze into the Elky’s cab for the ride to the airport. Mac has granted Tyler the use of the truck while we’re gone and she’s trying hard not to act thrilled.
When we get out at passenger drop-off, he lifts our bags out of the back and hands her the keys. “I’ll take good care of it,” she says. “Don’t worry.”
“I’m not worried,” Mac says. “This truck’s seen it all.”
At the ticket counter we discover that the flight has been delayed.
“Air-traffic control is waiting for the fog to lift,” the agent says. She types into the computer and the printer spits out our boarding passes.
Mac and I both turn automatically to look out the banks of windows.
“Not here. In New York.” She hands us our tickets and smiles. “Can’t take off till we’re clear where we’re landing.”
We go through security and meander out to the gatehouse where I sit reading B Is for Burglar, which I borrowed from Tyler, and Mac paces, drinking Starbucks.
“It’s going to be two A.M. when we get to the hotel,” he mutters.
“Any more coffee and you’ll be taking off without a plane.”
“I’m switching to decaf,” he says, heading back to the kiosk for a topper.
He disappears up the concourse and I look around the gatehouse. It’s crowded now, not one empty seat. Everyone’s heading for New York on business. Or for fun. To connect to another plane going somewhere else. Or to go home. But right now we’re all just waiting. Waiting to start.
Finally they make the boarding announcement and open the jet-way. The plane taxis out behind about a dozen others. Another long wait, poised on the tarmac, then the jets rumble and we lift off, swinging in a wide arc to the west and south. By now clouds have moved in, obliterating every trace of what would have been a fabulous view of the city and Puget Sound and Mount Rainier; still we keep climbing, until suddenly we break out of the clouds into a cobalt blue sky.
When the flight attendant comes by, we order a split of champagne and drink it holding hands. Somewhere over the Midwest, Mac leans his head back against the seat and falls asleep.
I sit and stare out the window of the plane while the sun sets behind us, dissolving into a pool of red, then purple, and finally black. For a few minutes my eyes wander aimlessly in the dark; then twenty-seven thousand feet below us, tiny points of silver appear and begin to open up the night.
acknowledgments
I always think I’m alone when I’m writing…until I get to this part of the book and I realize (again!) how much I’ve depended upon the kindness of strangers. And friends. And family. This time I’d like to thank:
Jerry and Karol Ryan, for sharing their memories and photos of the Yukon.
Grace Marcus, for giving me her beautiful poem, “Warming Trend,” and for being a trusted reader and true friend.
Jo-Ann Mapson, for sage literary advice and abiding friendship.
Kathryn Brown, for letting me pester her with legal questions.
Kit Williams, baker without peer, for generous portions of advice and laughter.
My agent, Deborah Schneider, for never failing to understand where I’m going, even when I don’t.
My editor, Claire Wachtel, for seeing the forest while I’m busy staring at the trees.
All the singers, songwriters, and musicians who live(d) their blues.
And of course, Geoff, for being my own personal North Star.
Last but not least, a hug for Leslie Mackie, owner of Macrina Bakery(ies), for bringing the old McGraw Street Bakery back to life and glory as Macrina Bakery at McGraw, the perfect neighborhood bakery.
About the Author
JUDITH RYAN HENDRICKS is the author of Bread Alone and Isabel’s Daughter. She lives in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Visit her at www.judihendricks.com.
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ALSO BY JUDITH RYAN HENDRICKS
Bread Alone
Isabel’s Daughter
Copyright
This book is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents, and dialogue are drawn from the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
THE BAKER'S APPRENTICE. Copyright © 2007 by Judith Ryan Hendricks. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
Mobipocket Reader March 2007 ISBN 978-0-06-143645-1
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About the Publisher
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Table of Contents
Epigraph
part one
one
two
three
four
five
six
seven
eight
nine
part two
ten
eleven
twelve
thirteen
fourteen
fifteen
sixteen
seventeen
part three
eighteen
nineteen
twenty
twenty-one
twenty-two
twenty-three
twenty-four
twenty-five
twenty-six
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Other Books by Judith Ryan Hendricks
Cover
Copyright
About the Publisher
Baker's Apprentice Page 35