Let Them Eat Cake

by Sandra Byrd

  “I knew you’d be back,” he said. “Ready to sign?”

  “Yes. Then can I show my sister the studio?”

  He had pulled out a sheet of paper but paused in the act of handing it to me. “Studio?”

  “Yes, a studio,” I reminded him.

  “Uh-oh.” He rubbed his eyes underneath his glasses. “I have no more studios. I thought we were talking one bedroom. I must have made a mistake. I’m so sorry.”

  I sank into the chair in front of his desk. Leah put her hand on my shoulder.

  “How much more is the one bedroom?” I asked quietly.

  “Three hundred dollars a month,” he said. “Because we had a misunderstanding, I’ll make it two hundred a month for the first six months. If you still want it.”

  I took a deep breath. “Can I think about it for a while?”

  He shook his head. “Unfortunately, no. I had a line here earlier. I only saved this one for you because I feel like we’ve gotten to know each other.”

  I hit my forehead with the palm of my hand. “See?” I said to Leah. “I’ve been here too much.”

  “Why don’t you show your sister the apartment?” he said. “Here’s the key. Then let me know what you’d like to do.”

  We walked out of the office, and I glanced at the number on the key. Seventh floor. I hit the elevator button, and it glided to the seventh floor. There we found two potted plants that held post on either side of the elevator, and hallways carpeted with new maroon carpeting. Downright regal.

  “Nice elevator. Nice hallways,” Leah said.

  We walked down the hall looking for number 710.

  “There it is,” Leah pointed.

  I slid the key into the lock, turned it, and pushed the door open.

  “It’s better than the studio,” I said. The blinds were open, letting in the late-April sun. Ferries glided across the smooth water of the Sound, and the Olympic Mountains glimmered in the distance.

  “Wow, Lex,” Leah said. “You should be a real estate agent. You know how to find a place.”

  “Look in here,” I called from the kitchen. New appliances, none of them stainless, which I loved. Stainless seemed cold to me unless it was in a commercial kitchen. Double convection oven. Sub-Zero fridge. Cherry floors.

  “This is a bargain,” Leah said. She peeked into the bedroom, next to the living room. They shared a common fireplace and the view. “I can understand why you want to do this instead of something bigger but not as nice in West Seattle.”

  We sat cross-legged on the living room floor. The warm afternoon sunlight streamed down on us.

  “Should I sign?” I asked.

  “Only you can decide that,” she said. “Can you afford it?”

  “I have no idea what the assistant managers position will pay,” I said. “But its got to pay more than I make right now, for sure. If it were just like, thirty percent more, and I was careful, I could swing it. I have some savings I’ve been putting away for about three months.” I’d bought a few clothes, paid my car off except for two payments, and the rest I’d saved. Thanks to my parents, I had no student loans.

  “I think Luc will be fair,” I said.

  “Lex, what if Luc doesn’t offer you the job?”

  “I know,” I said. “I’ve thought of that. But he’s been making sure I do a lot of things all over the shop. I love every aspect of working there. I can speak French with the family. I know baking. He thinks I have a good heart. And he likes me,” I ended. “I know he does.”

  “It does seem right,” Leah said. “I just don’t want you to be disappointed.”

  “If it doesn’t work out,” I said softly, “I’ll still have tried everything I can do to do what I love and make a living. Then I guess I’d have to move on.”

  “To do what?” Leah asked.

  I shrugged. “Real estate agent.” I tried to be lighthearted. The truth was, I had no guarantee of ever finding a really good job, much less in the next two months.

  We walked to the elevator and glided down to the office again.

  “And?” the office manager asked.

  “I’ll take it,” I said.

  “I knew you would.” He beamed. “Here’s the rental agreement.”

  We left the complex, and I turned and blew a kiss at it, neatly folding up my lease agreement. I felt like framing it. I slipped it into my glove box, and Leah and I went to look at several other cute options for her and Nate to make their first home. She showed enthusiasm, but secretly, I think she liked mine best. I loved her and I loved Nate, but I didn’t want my big brother as a neighbor at my first place on my own. Thankfully, it was a choice I didn’t need to offer. Raphael had made it clear that he was leased up.

  After bleaching the food-service stations at work a few days later, Sophie and I took a break. Patricia had left the bakery to me today while she worked on a special order for a cancer-center fundraiser over at La Couronne.

  “What are you going to do this afternoon?” Sophie asked me.

  “Bake cookies,” I answered. “Patricia left the dough mixing to me today, which is a miracle, since normally she just lets me pull them in and out of the ovens.”

  “Those ovens scare me,” Sophie admitted. “They’re huge and really hot.”

  “Yeah, they are, but I’m careful.”

  “Speaking of cookies…” She walked back to the employee coat area and returned with my cookie tin in her hands. “Thanks for the PB and J cookies you made for me. No one has ever made me vegan cookies before. Not even my mom.”

  “You’re welcome,” I said. “It was fun.”

  “Did you post the recipe on Allrecipes.com like your other ones?

  “No.”

  “I wish you would. Vegans have a hard time finding good stuff.”

  I promised I would, and she said she’d post a review and tell her vegan friends.

  I cleaned out the pastry racks while she served croissants and cafés crèmes to a man and woman who’d just come in. They sat in a far corner, heads almost touching, voices low and intimate. I tried to avoid them.

  Sophie noticed their obviously romantic bent too. “Did you ever hear back from that Davis, Marks guy?” she asked.

  We’d talked about the date the day after, and she’d noted how much fun I’d had, even though I’d tried to downplay it to her.

  And myself. I knew she was just being nice, but I didn’t need a reminder of my rejection.

  “Nah,” I said, shrugging it off. “It’s okay. We didn’t have all that much in common.”

  I thought about people like Bill and Jill, future pastor couple extraordinaire. Nate and Leah. Even Steve and Tanya. They just seemed to fit in so many ways.

  “I think I need someone more interested in the stuff I’m interested in,” I said. Someone who is in my league and preferably French.

  We could both hear Luc’s voice streaming in from the oven room. Sophie looked at him, then at me, and turned away. She knows.

  “Alexandra,” Luc called, on cue.

  “You got things here?” I asked, glad for the chance to excuse myself.

  “Oh yeah,” she replied, back to her normal self. “Go on.”

  I slid down the glass on the pastry case and stood back to examine it. “Voilà,” I said. “Perfection.”

  In the bakery, the Trois Amis were rolling croissants.

  “I want to show you how the ovens work,” Luc said. “If I’m not here and Patricia isn’t here, someone should know what to do.”

  I agreed, pleased and excited.

  “The heat of the oven has made your face like a rose,” Luc teased.

  He showed me the oven’s different settings and the proper procedure for turning them on and off.

  “See how they swivel?” He reached in with a gloved hand and a pole and spun the racks inside the oven. “The bread is then baked evenly on all sides.”

  “I see!” I said. I liked everything about it: the tools of the trade, the smell of the bread, the ba
ker himself. I understood him and his passions. And he, mine.

  My lesson completed, he headed into the office to do paperwork, closing the door behind him, and I went back to my bakery. All right, Patricia’s bakery. But mine for the day, the first day I was really in charge of any baking.

  First, I rolled out the puff pastry for the palmiers, delicate flowers shaped like the palm of a hand. After forming them, I skillfully brushed on the glaze, like a Moroccan woman painting henna on the hands of her clients. I popped the cookies into the huge, floor-to-ceiling oven, rolling the baking cart in and shutting the door behind it.

  Then I mixed up dark chocolate-chunk cookies, a favorite among our patrons. French foodies didn’t like change; some people ate the same thing day after day. Or, if we did make a change, they expected it to be among the most traditional offerings. The vegan recipe might need to find a different bakery outlet. Maybe when Sophie opened her coffee shop!

  A few minutes later, I realized the oven timer was going off. Had it been beeping for a minute or two already? I slid another huge tray of chocolate chunk dough balls onto the waiting oven rack and raced back to the oven room.

  I grabbed an oven mitt, but in my rush, I grabbed a short one and not the one that reached all the way up to my elbows. I opened the oven door and wheeled the six-foot baking rack out of the oven. As I slid the tray of cookies off the rack, the most virginal part of my forearm bumped up against the rack’s metal framework.

  “Ahh!” I screamed. With great restraint, I managed not to drop the rack of palmiers onto the floor but onto the stainless steel counter next to the oven. Auguste heard me and raced into the bakery.

  A livid red welt at least three inches long sprang up across my forearm. I pulled off the glove, gritting my teeth and trying not to cry while Auguste hovered over me, murmuring comforting things in French, like one would to a hurt child. Jacques and Guillaume arrived with Luc, who carried a first aid kit. He led me into the office and waved to the Trois Amis that things were okay. I walked quietly, in deep, throbbing pain, not wanting to disturb the few café customers.

  “Sit, sit,” Luc cooed in French, leading me to his chair. “Eh bien, this was not a good way to start your baking today,” he said, but with more tenderness than reprimand.

  He very gently spread ointment across my forearm, then covered it with a bandage. When he was all done, he said, “Now you have begun to gather the tattoos that mark true bakers.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “I need to finish the cookies.”

  “Non,” Luc said. “No more by the ovens today. Give this a day to be still.”

  “But Patricia expects them to be done tomorrow,” I protested.

  “I will come in early tomorrow, and you can too, and we will have a café crème and you can bake before the rush. How about four?”

  I smiled. “Thanks.”

  “Voilà, problem solved!”

  I saw a small stack of confiture, the jam Luc brought back from la belle France each year. “Maybe this is a good time to talk about the rack of goods we can sell in the front of the store,” I suggested.

  Luc pulled a chair up next to me. “Maybe it is,” he said, but his voice was somber. “I don’t think this is a good time to start a product rack sales project right now, Alexandra. I’m trying to decide if we’re going to open another store. I’m managing two stores at once, really. Patricia is getting ready to go back to France, and Margot, her sister, is preparing to come here very soon to learn how to work at the bakeries for the next six months. She’ll bring others with her. I’m going back to France in July for both personal and professional reasons. And”—he held my gaze as he dropped the final bomb—“I talked with Sophie, and she’s not convinced it would be a moneymaker.”

  Sophie! Since when did Sophie get to decide if things would be moneymakers? She hadn’t said anything to me. Was she talking about this behind my back?

  Luc must have read my face. “I asked her opinion, Alexandra, and as much as she knew you liked the idea, she had to tell me her own thoughts. So, regrettablement, the product racks will have to wait.”

  “Je suis désolé,” he continued to apologize, “because I know how important it is to you, and I care very much about that.”

  I was still trying to process this. “I understand.” What else could I say?

  The phone rang, and Luc turned to answer it. I stood up, preparing to head back to the bakery to do what cleaning I could with my right hand.

  Out of the corner of my eye, I noticed a sheet of paper. It was the closing schedule that Luc and Patricia used to determine who would close the store on what days. It listed the schedule for May. Luc and Patricia’s names filled half the boxes.

  Sophie’s name filled the rest.

  II faut savoir saisir sa chance.

  You must take opportunity by the hand.

  My face must have shown my general discouragement, because my dad started being really nice to me. Or maybe he realized he would miss me when they moved. I don’t know. I had enough trouble trying to figure out my own emotions, much less anyone else’s.

  “If you give me a hand, I’ll buy you a Red Mill burger for dinner,” Dad said, walking past me on his way to pack some things in the basement. Most of them were going to the Salvation Army.

  “You bet,” I said. I pulled my hair back into a French twist so it’d be out of the way and headed downstairs. I scanned the basement, taking in the thirty years’ worth of memorabilia. “You want to get this all done tonight?” I asked.

  “No, but a lot of it, while your mother is out of the house. She’s so sentimental, she’ll coo over every little toy and blanket down here and nothing will get done. She told me to do it while she’s at Italian lessons.”

  Mom was blossoming under the twice-a-week lessons, and her friend Teresa had signed up too.

  I dragged a box over and began to sort through the piles. Nate’s Rollerblades! After he’d fallen at the rink during a church event and broken his wrist, Mom wouldn’t let him go again. He wouldn’t sell the Rollerblades, though, so here they sat. I put them into the Salvation Army box.

  I flipped through my yearbooks. Tanya looked so young, a little pumpkin face before she thinned out as a teen. I set them aside to put with my things.

  Oh! My kiddie kitchen utensils. I picked up the little pink spatula. I’d drawn a smile under two of the holes to make a face. My Mini Maddie measuring cup. My Easy-Bake Oven.

  “Remember this, Dad?” I held up the pink oven. “Remember when I made you cupcakes and brownies?”

  “Yes,” he said, his gruff voice softening a little. “I remember how gummy those cupcakes were, with the messy white frosting and those little sprinkly things. But they were best things I ever tasted because they came from my girl.”

  “And,” I said, flashing the burn on my forearm, “I distinctly remember burning my hand on the light bulb. It must have been a sign!”

  The Easy-Bake Oven reminded me of Patricia. She was nice to me for one whole day after I burned myself, then went back to snarling. She hadn’t let me make anything new, but I was still in charge of cookies. And errands. And taking dictation on her product orders. The cookies, at least, were a step in the right direction.

  An hour or two later, we’d made good progress and hauled everything to the end of the driveway for the Salvation Army to pick up the next day.

  “Dad?” I asked. “How about if I drive, and I’ll take you past my new apartment?”

  He smiled. “Sure, honey, I’d love to see it.”

  We drove to Red Mill and ate our burgers, then headed downtown. When we pulled up in front of the building, I could tell he was genuinely impressed.

  “This is a nice place, Lex.”

  We parked the car around the block and stood in front of the building.

  “Secure entrance twenty-four hours a day,” I said, proudly pointing out the thing I knew he’d think was the most important. “And is it affordable?” he asked. Okay, second-most important.


  “I think so,” I said. “If I get the promotion to assistant manager.”

  We walked around the building, and he looked at the flier. I pointed out the one bedroom I’d contracted.

  “And what if you don’t get the promotion?” Dad asked.

  I know, I know. Im banking quite a bit on something that has never been mentioned between Luc and me, and that’s looking even dimmer after seeing the closing schedule.

  “If I don’t, then I lose my deposit, and I find something small in West Seattle,” I said. “I don’t have many other options.”

  “A roommate?”

  I shook my head. “I don’t know anyone. And it’s a one bedroom. I shared a one-bedroom place in college, with twin beds, and I don’t want to do that again.”

  He seemed to understand that, and we drove home. “It’s a terrific place, honey, and I hope you get it. But maybe you should think about a few other options. That’s a lot of money to lose.”

  “I know,” I admitted. It was half my savings. “But what other options?”

  “Well, I met with Mack—my friend at Peterson’s—the other day. He didn’t mention a job, but it might be worth a follow-up.”

  I knew he was right. If that schedule meant what I thought it meant, I might be running out of options. “I’ll call him tomorrow.”

  When we got home, I made white cupcakes with frosting and sprinkles, and left them on a plate in the kitchen with a little card that said, “Dad.” Then I logged on to Allrecipes.com to see if there was any new feedback on my recipes. On a whim, I scrolled to the bottom of the page. At the very bottom, in tiny black letters, one phrase caught my eye.

  Jobs

  Inaction Designer

  Licensing Coordinator Sales

  Recipe Writer

  Recipe writer!

  I read the job description. I wouldn’t create recipes, but I’d be figuring out how to make them work for the readers and making sure the ingredients were correct. And they were located in Seattle.

  I quickly uploaded my résumé and grinned. I’d tell no one.