Sweet (9 page)

“Teddy,” the man said, holding out his hand. Jules froze, looking at him dumbly, his arms still pinched to his sides, until the man smiled and said, “No jam hands. I swear. Very clean.”

*

Jules, his touch cool and dry and gentle, had taken his hand, lightly but firmly, and introduced himself. While he spoke, Teddy had smiled at him and held his hand carefully as a moth wing in his palm. Then he’d taken the cup of tea and the cookies to his usual table by the window, trying not to glance up too frequently at Jules, who was scrubbing the counter with a rag in one hand, a bottle of spray cleaner poised at the ready in the other, smiling faintly and humming to himself.

It was not often, anymore, that Teddy felt completely unsure. He knew the hour he’d wake in the morning, without an alarm, by the dawn’s sunlight slicing through the two-inch crack in the blinds he left open every night. He knew when he’d drink his afternoon coffee, and how weak and acidic it would be from the office coffeemaker; he knew when he’d chat up the secretaries, and what each of them would say, the order of questions and pleasantries and idle talk; he knew when he’d stack up the day’s paperwork at the corner of his desk, what the fruit vendor on the corner of his block would shout at him as he passed, where he’d leave his shoes and belt when he walked in the door to his apartment, the exact portions of prepackaged meat and pasta and salad greens he’d dose onto his dinner plate in the fluorescent buzz of his kitchen that night. He knew how each day would start and end, with what it would be filled and what the next day would hold for him.

This, however, here, the bakery, dark and warm and colored rich with silks and velvets, full of sugar and soft light and glinting glass, was the slipping spot, the unschooled element, the grain of sand on the oyster’s belly, a little irritation to the rhythm, undoing an hour at a time from that tightly wound spool that kept his days in order. He came here
precisely to sit and bask in how it felt
not
to know.

Jules glanced up every few moments as he polished the wood and the glass and the metal of the counter with quick, tiny circles of the cloth. More than once when Teddy glanced at him, their eyes caught, and it was like a stubborn match finally striking, the flare that quick and
hot. It occurred to Teddy that
Jules
was perhaps watching
him
, though for what reason, he couldn’t figure.

Sitting there, watching Jules from the corner of his eye, he felt like a man on a high wire, barely balanced, still up in the air only by miracle and dumb luck and some strange trick of gravity, which refused to let him down.

*

Jules had watched the man—
Teddy
—sit and nurse the cup of tea and the two little cookies. He’d busied himself with cleaning, but it was a thin excuse and he knew it, woefully transparent, silly. The counters were, as always, pristine. Several times, Teddy had caught him watching, glancing up as if he suddenly felt Jules’s stare, and Jules had looked away pink-faced, quickly but not quickly enough.

Nevertheless, Jules had watched Teddy eat, watched him sigh and gaze out the window to the street and watched him, after he’d finally finished the tea, carefully clean up the table, toss the trash in the can by the door and pack up his small shoulder bag. Before he left, he’d come to Jules’s counter, placed his hand on the top of the cash register and tipped his head to the side slightly, smiling a crooked smile. “Nice to finally meet you, Jules,” he’d said, and Jules had thought how pleasant, how warm and lovely, his name sounded in that man’s mouth. Teddy had lingered, his hand curling over the ornately molded metal top of the cash register, as if there were
more he might say, then suddenly rapped the top of the machine twice with finality and said simply, “Thank you,” before he turned and went on his way, leaving behind only the thud of the closing door and the clap and clatter of the little bells against the glass.

“You morons!” ‘Trice yelled, exploding through the kitchen door. The previously quiet shop front burst into a clamor of movement and noise as ‘Trice banged the espresso machine’s filter to dump the old grounds, then turned to joggle the lever on the grinder and tamp the coffee into the filter with more force than necessary. Jules stood, watching, as she clanged through the routine of pulling two shots and steaming some milk, then dumping everything—somehow both violently and with great precision—into two mugs, sliding one in his direction and taking a long, not-quite-calming sip from the other.

“What?” he asked guiltily.

She glared at him over the top of her mug, which she refused to lower from her face;
her left hand was knotted into the long locks at her shoulder. “You’ve got to be kidding me,” she said. “I practically threw you against him, and you did nothing. He had a gift for you, you know!”

“What?” Jules asked again. “Wait!
I’m
yelling at
you
here, not the other way around! You don’t get to yell! Were you
trying
to humiliate me with that cricket note? Were you trying to humiliate
both
of us? Where did you even
get
that? Were you rooting through my drawers?”

“It fell off his stupid sleeve last time he was here, and I kept it!” she yelled, then stopped suddenly. “Wait,” she said too quietly, looking at Jules with a mixture of sadness and disbelief.

“No!” Jules slammed his coffee mug down on the counter with a bit more force than he intended. “This isn’t your little fantasy to direct, ‘Trice. You can’t embarrass me like that! You can’t lock me out of my own kitchen in my own shop! If I don’t want to talk to him, I don’t have to! You don’t get to
do
that to me!”

He felt himself taking off, felt the runway dropping out from beneath him, felt his arms pinwheel against his will in the air above them. He
hated
the feeling of losing the ground under him.

“Wait,” ‘Trice said again, more quietly. “How can you be so smart, and still be so
stupid?
” She put her hand on his arm before he could wave it again, before he could yell or throw the coffee into the sink and storm out, before he could fire her or cry or run or do any of the twenty other things he wanted to do.

“That,” she said, looking at him with wide eyes, shaking her head softly, “was not a cricket.”

Eight

Jules had tried calling
the
phone number he had for Grasshopper several times, but hung up each time just at the voicemail (
You’ve reached Teddy Flores,
said the familiar voice, and each time Jules kicked himself—a footless, internal kick, but a kick nonetheless—for his own stupidity. No—
blindness.
No—
willful
blindness. Because, he thought, launching another footless, internal kick, how could he have overlooked something so obvious? Only through willful blindness and his willingness to allow other people—
‘
Trice, sure, but
Avon?
—to interpret the world for him. He’d never done that. He’d always been staunch in his insistence upon understanding the world on his own terms.
Until,
he thought, with another internal kick,
now. Why now?
)

For the third day in a row, Teddy had not made an appearance at the bakery. Jules had waited, had watched through the crack in the kitchen door every time he heard the jingle of the door bells; like some slavering, Pavlovian puppy, he’d been trained to the sound. His head would jerk up, and he’d drop whatever knife or spatula or cookie or tart he happened to be holding and, wiping his hands on his apron front and pulling at the strings, bound to the door to watch. Each time, he was disappointed to see it wasn’t Teddy.

Grasshopper hadn’t made an appearance online, either. A complete and dusty, pregnant, holding-on kind of silence had settled that made Jules itch, made him groan inside with both dread and anticipation.

“You’re being a stalker again,” ‘Trice whispered over his shoulder. She’d come from out of nowhere and pounced as he sat hunched and miserable at the tiny desk he’d shoved into the back corner of the kitchen and sectioned off with a folding rattan screen from the flea market (a desk meant
for bill-paying and recordkeeping, but more recently the site of his cranky brooding and the repository of his clandestine collection of Charming Grasshopper things: the set of keys, a doodled napkin, the foil from the packet of bread pudding—which, yes, he’d carefully scrubbed and folded—and now a crumpled sticky note with the words
I quit
scrawled in red ballpoint). ‘Trice gingerly set a cup of coffee on the desk in front of him, then put her hands on either side of it and leaned over him; her long locks were stiff and a little scratchy as they slipped over his shoulders. The beads and shells she’d tied into her hair clank
ed softly as she shook her head. “Liking him isn’t wrong, you know. You’re not doing anything wrong,” she said quietly.

He gave her a hard look over the top of his reading glasses, one that meant she was still on thin ice, and far too close for his liking, but he knew the look had no real heat.

“You have to leave him a message next time, or it’s just plain creepy,” she said, a little more lightly.

Obediently, he dialed again, and listened to the whole message this time (Teddy’s voice was muted and professional-but-friendly, a little raspy on the tenor notes, a little rattly in the bass), but couldn’t bring himself to speak when the beep came and hung up with shaking hands and a sigh.

“Oh, Sugar Cookie, this is bad, isn’t it?” ‘Trice asked before she stepped back and sat on the edge of the desk. “This isn’t like you. What is this?”

Jules looked at her balefully, then dropped his head onto his arms, breathing in the paper and ink mustiness of the desk blotter. “I don’t even know!” he wailed, his voice slightly muffled by his own arms. “I don’t even know what this is!”

“This,” she said, dropping a gentle touch to one of his forearms, then carefully moving her hand to stroke the back of his hair, “this is you waking up after sleeping for a very long time. This is you fumbling around because everything’s still a little numb from staying so still. This is you finding your sea legs, sailor. This,” she said and her hand was cool and almost motherly on the back of his neck before she took it away, “is a fucked
up but very fixable situation.”

When Jules looked up, ‘Trice was standing at a more reasonable distance, with her head bent low, her face shaded by the swinging ropes of her hair and her hands to herself, cradling his phone.

“What—”

“This is a very fucked up situation, the two of you playing stupid staying-away games like this. You’re miserable, and you’re off and you’re hardly getting things done in here, and I can’t stand it anymore. Get some caffeine in you,” she motioned to the cup of coffee, the lip of which Jules was tracing with a fingertip, “while I fix this, so you can get back to your normal, bossy, picky, know-it-all, stick-up-the-ass self.”

She typed rapidly with her thumbs, made a satisfied noise and tossed the phone onto the desk in front of him before he’d managed to close his gaping mouth with a little squeak.

“I miss that guy,” she said, then turned and left the kitchen in a flap of beads and cotton and the stale and cloying smell of clove cigarettes. Jules wasn’t sure if she was talking about his normal self or Teddy.

“You are such a cliché,” he called halfheartedly after her, knowing she probably didn’t hear him and knowing, too, that it was certainly a case of the pot calling the kettle black, and that this very fact was a large part of why they loved each other like family. He picked up his phone and peered at what ‘Trice had done.

A text message to Grasshopper—whose name, Jules realized, he must soon either change to “Teddy” or delete from his phone entirely, depending on how things went in the near future (and here he felt himself deliver yet another internal, footless kick):
I’m sorry I was heretofore an idiot. Please, stop by the bakery tomorrow after you are done with work. I’m leaving a gift with ‘Trice especially for you.

“Heretofore?” Jules yelled at the door. “Should we change the name here to Ye Olde
Bakeree? What am I, eighty-seven years old?” It was a bit better, he supposed, than “hitherto,” but not by much.

Please disregard my careless use of the word “heretofore.” I know I am not at a Renaissance Festival, nor in a production of
A Midsummer Night’s Dream, he typed.

Then he waited, staring at the screen of his phone for several minutes before turning it off, placing it in a desk drawer and deliberately concerning himself with writing checks and filing bills.

He could hear ‘Trice clatter about in the front of the shop as she cleaned the counters and unclogged the steamer on the espresso machine, scrubbed the sink and re-parked the stools at their proper tables, though it was far too early in the day to do so. She was, he figured, puttering, bored, avoiding the kitchen and avoiding Jules. She was waiting, too.

The noises were distant and softened by the door between them, reminding him of the clamor of his grandmother’s dinner preparations, the smell of pot roast and the flicker and whine of the TV while his father half-dozed
in the dimmed living room. If he entered the kitchen, he’d be given plates and silverware to lay out on the table and, if he were lucky, his grandmother would step around the center counter and show him how to fold the napkins into pretty shapes, with her hands cupping his shoulders as he worked under her gaze. He missed that feeling, knowing that she was watching, that she’d carefully, sweetly reach down and fix what he managed to botch, while her voice flitted between under-the-breath melodies and careful instruction, as if none of it mattered very much but all of it was very interesting. He missed the warm kitchen, the cooking-smell, the evening light, the creak of the oven door, the thump of the kitchen towel, which she wore tucked into her waistband like an apron, as she tossed it onto the counter when all the work was done.

He slid open the drawer and stared at his phone, willing himself to shut the drawer again before waking it to check his messages. It had only been twenty minutes. There was nothing.

But I am leaving the gift. That part was accurate. You should come by to pick it up. The gift. ‘Trice will have it when you come to get it.
If you want.

The minute he sent the note, he thought better of it, but it was too late. Instead, he took the phone, pushed out into the front of the bakery and thrust it at ‘Trice.

“Take this,” he said. “You’re in charge of it now. I can’t be trusted.”

“What did you do?” she asked, shaking her head, but didn’t really seem to expect an answer from him. Instead, she pocketed the phone and went back to polishing the glass on the pastry case.

In fifteen minutes, Jules was back, and when he asked for the phone, she handed it back.

Nothing there.

I really am sorry. If you will ever talk to me again, please come get your treat,
he managed to send before ‘Trice noticed what he was doing and swiped the phone out of his hands.

“You,” she cranked, looking at the screen, “
really
cannot be
trusted with this. I will let you know when he responds. Now go bake something.”

Jules, grumbling, slumped back into the kitchen. He had to think up a suitable treat to leave for Teddy the next day. He kept himself mostly busy, puttering in the kitchen, flipping through the recipes in his notebook and scrabbling in the large walk-in refrigerator for ingredient ideas. The whole afternoon, he’d manage to last twenty minutes at a time before popping his head out into the shop front, only to have ‘Trice yell at him to get back in the kitchen and
work.
“I said I will let you know, you burdensome mule!” she would shout. Another time, “You are boring me with this stupidity!” And finally, “Come out here and
take
this phone from me, if you want it, you scrawny thing! I will break you in half!”

This last time, he knew, she meant business.

*

Teddy had, upon the advice of his superego or some such sanctimoniously know-it-all inner voice, stayed away from Buttermilk for several days. If one were to be absolutely accurate, in fact, he’d stayed away from
Jules
—the bakery, the blog, messaging and phone. Finally meeting Jules—his stone-gray eyes the only thing, Teddy remembered, that belied his papery, fragile appearance—had been a terrible mistake. Teddy had been pitifully inept, tongue-tied, ridiculous, and Jules had seemed bothered or angry or both, or perhaps—worse—entirely indifferent to him. Teddy had slunk out of the bakery as quietly as he could after spending what he thought was a face-saving amount of time at a table with some tea and cookies.

Since then, there had been no messages of any kind from Jules. Clearly, Teddy thought, pushing himself where he hadn’t been welcome had been a
huge miscalculation.

The office was a sickly yellow-green. The sickly yellow-green lights whined and zimmed incessantly overhead. The yellow-green walls, the yellow-green Formica of the front desk and the carpets and the air itself—everything felt limp and damp and nauseating. Even the bright orange bird of paradise blooms at the front desk looked peaked and sharp. The day dragged on, but Teddy refused to let himself wander online, knowing exactly where he’d go if he did and exactly what disasters might result. He held firm; he sighed heavy sighs. He sorted the papers on his desk twice over, sharpened every pencil in the cup and refilled his stapler. He linked the paperclips into one long chain, which he then hid under the desk like contraband because he knew paperclip chains were, without a doubt, a complete waste of office supplies and therefore frowned upon. But the chain made a satisfying clink when it dropped against the metal desk or the plastic floor mat, so he clinked it again and again like a latter-day
Jacob Marley, rattling up courage or ire or just a little noise, until several heads popped up over the top of his cubicle walls to glare at him and he dropped the chain into a drawer.

Teddy felt full of caffeine when the world wanted to sleep; he felt all pins and staples and broken glass. He couldn’t remember how, before
all that,
he hadn’t noticed how
empty
his days were, how filled with the hum and buzz and flurry of absolutely nothing to think about. He bought two little purple plums at the fruit stand at lunch, simply to cheer himself up, and they sat at the back corner of his desk the whole day, carefully aligned side by side against the cubicle wall and staring at him accusingly like giant, bloodshot, angry eyes.

When the clock hung high on the wall near the front desk snapped, finally, to six o’clock, his bag was already packed up, his desk was
neatened beyond its usual neatness, and he stood jerkily and hurried to the lobby to catch, he hoped, the last few dwindling rays of sun before it set without him.

The street was a noisy, fuming relief; he leaned heavily against the rusting metal sculpture outside his office building (he’d never really understood its simple, fat lines of red steel hulking their way upward and cranking around each other in thick angles; a creaky monument, he always thought, to the mechanical and the doomed and the desk-bound which never seemed to garner a glance of interest from passersby, but did, at lunchtime and after work, become the hangout for desperately puffing smokers and numerous obliviously shitting pigeons, a depressing sentinel to mark the beginning and end of the day) and pulled out his phone to check his messages.

There were
few people in the world from whom Teddy expected to hear on any given day: his mother (who left long, winding messages with no point except, he thought, to ribbon her voice into his day and tie up the distance between them so tightly they both felt her loneliness and ache in the camel-colored house on the manicured lawn in a city he’d left far behind years ago, and the gap in her story that was the shape of his father, always traveling, always leaving her alone to feel more keenly against her back the long press of days, all completely alike, so that sometimes Teddy sent her Gerbera daisies, orange and red and yellow and pink, just for the clashy brightness they might add to her day—
you are,
she’d said in one of these messages,
like a missing limb, and sometimes, sweetheart, I think I can still feel you even though you’re gone
); his friend Dan (who called like clockwork once a week on Thursday afternoons to say hello and not much else, filling the space—almost desperately, Teddy thought
—between breaths with stories about his two-year-old daughter or the alumni association of which he was president, or the last movie he’d watched on the rare night he and his wife could sneak out to see something without puppets or cartoons and asking, finally, always, how was the job, how was the city, how was he feeling—and Teddy felt, always, at those moments, the pressure to say something that made his days sound bumpier and brighter than they usually were—and then the questions to which Teddy always had to answer no:
No,
he hadn’t read the alumni newsletter,
no
, he hadn’t seen that show because even off-Broadway tickets were expensive, and
no
, he didn’t think much about the old gang anymore, and
no,
and
no
, and
no
); and Maggie (who called herself the World’s Worst Fag Hag because she was never around to go to clubs or go shopping or go to brunch since her job as a shoe designer meant she was always somewhere more interesting, like China or Brazil, and it didn’t matter that Teddy didn’t like to do those things anyway, it was the principle of the thing, she’d say, then revolt him with a story about the latest gustatory abomination she’d tried in the latest tiny, foreign town and then fill the final moments of their conversations with fountains of her raucous, unbridled laughter, which made Teddy smile but feel all the lonelier).