Kate jerked her head back. “That opposed, eh?”
“Of course! That’s something Jimmy would do. No, I want to start a business, not a church.”
“A non-profit bakery can totally be a thing,” Kate replied, sounding annoyed. “Besides, you’re going to start a church eventually, right?”
Jessica laughed and then realized no one else was laughing. “Oh. Um. No, I have no plans for one.”
“Listen,” Judith said, “I detest organized religion as much as the next bitch, but I feel like you’re wasting an opportunity here if you don’t at least set down a list of rules for people to follow.”
Miranda set a steady hand on Jessica’s shoulder. “While you’ve been focused on the trolls, Jessica, I’ve been reading the other responses. People do want to hear something from you, anything. And when you don’t give them any answers, the next place they land is Jimmy.”
“Fucking Jimmy Dean,” Destinee murmured, tossing back the dregs of her sixth mimosa.
“So unless you want Jimmy’s insane circus-inspired ideas to proliferate as yours,” Miranda continued, “you need to step up.”
“About that,” Judith said, “what the hell was with that chapter? Did he really travel around with a circus for like, what, two years?”
Jessica turned her attention to Judith. “What are you talking about?”
“Railed to the Cross. That chapter. What was it called? ‘Life in Tents’?”
Heads nodded around the table. “Yeah, that thing with the prostitute was pretty weird,” Kate said.
“I almost felt bad for him,” Destinee added. “And that’s saying something, because fuuuuck Jimmy.”
“She hasn’t read it,” Miranda said. “Jessica hasn’t read the book.”
The table fell silent.
Judith chuckled. “Damn, Jess. You’re in for a treat.”
“I’ve read some of it,” Jessica protested. “Just not all of it.”
“Doesn’t matter,” Judith interrupted. “The point is that people are ready and waiting for a little bit of insight from you, and if you don’t give it, Jimmy will.”
“And then they’ll be burning shit to the ground left and right!” Destinee exclaimed, gesturing wildly before refilling her glass from the carafe.
“I don’t have a message,” Jessica said louder than she’d meant to. “I don’t have a message for anyone. I don’t want people to come to me for spiritual answers. I don’t want to be special. I just want to open a bakery and—”
“Serve gluten-free treats that you miracled with the power of God,” Judith finished for her. “Nothing special, though.”
“You can’t help it, Jessica,” Dr. Bell added. “Everything you do is special because you’re God’s daughter. The sooner you accept that, the easier your life will be.”
“For some reason, I highly doubt that.” She placed a hand on the card with her face crudely pasted over Jesus’s. “But I guess I’ll give it a try.”
“Why so grumpy?” Rebel asked from behind the counter of Bat-Ass Brew.
“I’m not grumpy, I’m focused. And I need caffeine,” Jessica replied.
There were a million coffee shops in this town, but Jessica always returned to this one for the reason of it having the best coffee and nothing too terrible had happened to her in it yet. Sure, the baristas at Java Hut didn’t make inappropriate comments, but they weren’t especially nice, and the coffee was just okay. And the last time she’d been—not her coffee date with Brian Foster, but a time after that, when she’d had a sinus headache from hell (maybe literally; she couldn’t be sure) and didn’t think quality time with Rebel would do much to improve her mood—a band had set up about ten minutes after she got there. No one came to a coffee shop to hear live music. Sometimes Austin made no sense.
But at Bat-Ass Brew, there was never any live music, and no one had asked to take a picture with her, which had happened multiple at Hill of Beans by the Capitol. No one had spent an hour giving her side-eye, like many had at Bean There Done That by the UT campus. And no one had coughed awful accusations at her as they passed her table (also Bean There Done That). Because the environment of Bat-Ass Brew was overall more conducive to being God’s daughter, she had resigned herself to tolerating or at least ignoring Rebel’s terrible conversational skills and frequent sexual harassment.
She ordered a simple Milwaukee Protocol and as he went to pour it, she leaned her back against the counter and stared out over the silent shop. How did one create an environment of acceptance or, at the very least, apathy? This was what she wanted for her bakery, whenever that day came. A place where people could come together and mind their own damn business, each person trusting others would do the same.
Thanks to the money from her friends, which still made her head spin when she thought too hard about it, and assuming Dr. Bell could assist her with a plan, that dream could become reality sooner rather than later.
“You strike me as a girl who likes a little cocoa,” Rebel said. She turned to face him. “So I took the liberty of adding a sprinkle of cocoa to the top.” He winked.
She wanted to snap back with, “I hate cocoa. Fix me a new one without the cocoa, you presumptuous asswipe.” But unfortunately, she did love a little sprinkle of cocoa on her coffee, so she pressed her lips together and paid the man.
How does someone look like they like cocoa? She refrained from adding it to her lifelong list of reasons to be self-conscious about her appearance, just below “boring hair,” “no calves,” and “low boobs.”
By the time Dr. Bell joined her at the table a few minutes later, Jessica was fairly certain that it was her childlike chubby cheeks that gave away her love for cocoa.
“How are you feeling today?” Dr. Bell asked, coffee in one hand, black binder in another.
“Good. Better now that I have my coffee.”
“Ooo, what you got there?” Bell leaned forward and sniffed. “Is that cocoa? I love cocoa.”
Data point two. Jessica homed in on all the physical similarities between Bell and herself. They were few and far between, and childlike cheeks did not fall in the overlap of the Venn circles. Bell’s cheeks looked like they were chiseled from marble, two long dimples running the length of her jaw. So it must be some other physical characteristic. Jessica would think more on it later. Probably exactly when she was trying to fall asleep tonight, if she was being honest.
“How excited are you?” asked Dr. Bell.
“Very.”
“Me too, actually.” She scooted her coffee to the side to make room for the binder, which she flipped open. The first page was the budget spreadsheet for Jessica’s business proposal. “To sum things up, I was able to go through, cut a few corners, and eliminate twenty-seven grand that you’ll need to get started.”
Jessica looked up from the spreadsheet that she couldn’t make sense of anyway. “That’s great!”
“Yes. Of course that budget means you’ll have to open without a few of the flashier things, but once money starts coming in, you’ll be able to build and scale up.”
“Seriously, that’s fine. Only one problem.”
“I know. You’re still twenty-three thousand short. But I have a plan for that, too. Well, a few. Now hear me out. You have three options.”
Bell’s tone left Jessica on edge. “Okay.”
Bell flipped to a page that was titled Option One. Damn, this woman loved business plans. “Option one is you find alternate work to earn the remaining twenty-three thousand dollars. Since your rent is already taken care of, that shouldn’t be as tricky, except considering your sparse job history—”
“That’s a nice way to put it.”
“And the fact that you didn’t graduate college, your earning potential isn’t particularly high. My estimate based on typical earning potential minus living expenses outside of rent is that, working forty hours a week, it would take you two point three years to save up that amount. If you worked seventy hours a week, it could be just
under a year and a half.”
“Wow.” Jessica leaned back. “That’s a long time to wait before opening the bakery.”
Bell nodded sympathetically. “I understand. It would be hard to justify dropping out of college before graduation if you took that route. So I don’t recommend it. We have other options, though.” She flipped to the next page. “Option two is you get the twenty-three thousand donated. Miranda and myself have tapped our resources, but that doesn’t meant the font is dry. It just means you would have to get creative. And possibly renegotiate some of your moral objections to certain tactics.”
“Obviously not ideal,” Jessica replied, “but better than the first option. You have one more, right?”
Bell flipped the page. “Option three. This one’s actually my favorite, because it creates a stepping stone for your business so you can truly test out your ideas before jumping straight into it. It’s even more effective overall than having personal financial buy in, although, you will be earning money for yourself along the way.”
“Yes? Care to explain?”
“You invest eighty thousand dollars of the money you currently have into opening a food truck. You use that to create a buzz about your brand, find what recipes sell, what don’t, and create a loyal contingent of customers. Yes, you’re investing money into it, but you can make money back faster, or at least the money you make is more within your control than working a nine to five. You’ll gather useful data on the market, and you won’t just be sitting around or working a job unrelated to your future career. You’ll be moving in the right direction. Then, when you’re within thirty grand of the total money you need to open a brick and mortar, you can sell off the trailer for the remainder. It would position you to start the permanent location with practical knowledge of how to run a business, what foods sell best, and you would already have established your brand within the community.”
“That is …” She thought about it , but it didn’t take long. “That is brilliant, Dr. Bell! That’s … wow. And you’re saying I could get started on that right away?”
“Absolutely.”
Jessica stared at the table, feeling the pieces come together. “I would have to prep the night before, then maybe reheat in an oven in the trailer. And I would need to make a sign of what I have that day …”
Dr. Bell laughed. “One thing at a time. But yes, why don’t we get started now? We can price some Airstreams and start talking about what you would need to outfit it with.”
“I can’t believe it.” Jessica laughed. “Part of me thought I’d never get started on this, and here I am.” She stood up, and, feeling entirely unlike herself, ran around the table, and hugged Dr. Bell at an awkward angle.
“Just goes to show,” said the professor, once Jessica returned to her seat, “God works in mysterious ways.”
“Please don’t bring him into this,” she said. “One more question.”
“Yes?”
“What’s an Airstream?”
Chapter Fourteen
The warmth of the oven was divine in the November chill and made up for the Airstream lacking proper heating and cooling. With the lunch rush slowing at the food trailer park, Jessica was able to stand closer to the heat and let it warm her buns while it warmed the buns.
She’d rarely before had occasion to test out the adage of time flying when one was having fun, but over the past whirlwind month and a half of preparation and operation of Jessica’s Gluten-Free Treats, she had lost sight of time completely. As it turned out, when one didn’t have anything else to do but had a clear goal in mind and process laid out, one could get shit done at an alarming pace. Her days were long, but she never realized how long until she checked the bedside clock at the end of each day. She repeatedly found herself wondering where the time had gone while she was busy shopping, baking, serving customers, pointing to the sign that read photos with Jessica: $10, taking photos with customers, cleaning, packing up, heading home, and prepping for the next morning.
Taking photos with adoring fans, turned out, was actually not horrific. Perhaps she should have guessed this, but she hadn’t. Positive or negative, special attention wasn’t her favorite. But when she knew it was part of her business and she was making money from it that could go toward her dream, it seemed much less personal, and she could detach her ego from it. Only occasionally did fans say unintentionally rude things, like calling her “girl Jesus” or “missiah,” which was apparently a new and common title for her on Twitter. No one dared mention “moochsiah,” though she wasn’t sure if that was more a result of common decency (she didn’t especially believe this was a thing) or the fact that, with her current business endeavor and a frightening amount of overtime from Cash Monet, she was finally overcoming the label.
Mostly, though, people took their picture, paid their money, and then ordered food from her. The photos felt a little like the world paying penance for how it objectified her and tried to bend her to its desires. And she would happily accept all the penance the world offered.
Part of Dr. Bell’s proposed expenses included a car, and while it was nothing special and guzzled oil and coolant like it had a worrisome addiction, it was Jessica’s first, and she quickly wondered how she’d managed so long without one. Certainly it would have been impossible to run her business without it, and she was glad her former professor was insistent on her having it, despite her resistance to getting further in the hole by buying it.
As it turned out, being in the hole wasn’t as dire as she’d expected. With the added cash from photos, the cheap rent, and the ridiculous food-truck prices people were willing to pay not only for food in general but especially for gluten-free food, she was on track to hit the threshold where she could sell the trailer sometime in January.
It was like Dr. Bell knew what she was doing.
Judith was scheduled to arrive for her shift any minute now, but Jessica still had to finish the hot cross buns before she was free to go—her favorite reporter, Maria Flores, had requested something seasonal they could use for the interview B-roll to sprinkle into the segment, and Jessica figured this would do the trick.
Judith burst in the back door of the Airstream. “Hey, sorry I’m running late. My stupid senior seminar professor started talking about David Foster Wallace, and I should have texted you right then to let you know I would be running late, but I left my phone—”
“Don’t worry about it,” Jessica said, smiling placidly.
Judith froze midway through tying her apron behind her back. “Oh yeah, I forget you’re happy now. Okay, well, I’m here.”
Jessica pulled the hot crossed buns from the oven and began plating them. “I think you have a stalker, Judith.”
“But Keith is dead.”
“Who?”
“Oh, wait. What?”
The women stared silently at one other for a moment before Jessica decided to press the restart button.
“You have a new stalker.” She nodded behind her toward the service window. “He came by yesterday when you first got in, and he’s back again today. He’s been sitting at that table all morning, glancing over here. I think he’s waiting for you.”
“That’s … not creepy.” Judith leaned to the side so she could get a glimpse. “Oh. Ohh. He’s, like, fine as hell.” She sounded shocked. “Did he order anything?”
“Yeah, but just a coffee. He asked if I had challah bread, and when I said no, he didn’t order anything else. I explained what else I had, but he just looked at me like I was crazy.”
“A Jewish gentleman?” she said, grinning crookedly and wiggling an eyebrow. “You know I love me a Jewish man.” Jessica did not, in fact, know that, but she didn’t feel like now was the time to bring it up. Judith leaned to the side again to sneak another peek. “He’s awfully blond for a Jew.”
Jessica moved the last bun over to the platter. “You’re splitting hairs about that?”
“No, it’s just that Jewish tradition is in right now, so maybe he’
s just a hipster.”
“Or maybe he converted,” Jessica suggested. “Or maybe he just really likes challah bread.”
“And you said he was here yesterday, too?”
“Yeah.” Jessica shook her head, huffing in disbelief. “He’s so hot. How do you not remember him?”
Judith flipped her long dark hair behind her shoulder. “I was very high, obviously.”
Jessica closed her eyes, cleared her mind, and let the miraculous branding flow through her. She looked down at the rolls. All good except for one, where her image was blinking. She snatched it up and turned to Judith. “Are you high today?”
“Psh, hardly.”
Jess tossed her the roll and Judith caught it and bit off the top immediately, like she always did to avoid Jessica staring back at her. “Ooo … delicious.”
Jessica grabbed the icing bag and squeezed it onto the rolls, drawing circular frames around the images. “You should go talk to him.”
Judith finished off her roll and went to scrub her hands. “I find it interesting that the same guy shows up two days in a row, is staring at you all morning, and you assume he’s my stalker. Nine out of ten stalkers agree you’re way more interesting.”
“I just don’t get the vibe from him. I mean, sure, he’s hot, but when he came up to order? Man. There was just no chemistry. He had to have noticed that, too. It was like talking to my dumb brother or something.”
“Wait, you have a brother? I feel like I should’ve known this …”
“Only a half brother but he’s—Well, you know. I just mean if I did have a brother, I imagine it would be like that.”
Judith nodded. “Speaking as someone who has three brothers, I’m sorry you had to experience that.” She peeked through the window again. “He kind of looks like Chris and Jameson Fractal had a baby.” Immediately, she gasped and whirled around to Jessica. “Sorry, sorry. I didn’t mean to bring him up. I guess I’m higher than I thought.”
“It’s okay. I’ve actually wondered what Jameson is doing lately. Like, maybe I’m over the trauma of seeing his face shot to shit?”
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