A Field Guide to Deception (20 page)

When she had explained to Claire that she missed the freedom they'd had during the summer, Claire suggested that Liv take Simon to see a movie. Frequently, in the evening, while Claire and Bailey poured over recipes and invoices, discussed advertising campaigns and effective websites, Liv and Simon played trains, read stories, colored, or explored. Liv loved him, of course, and savored her time with him. But she could not, at present, recreate in many of the ways that she craved.

On Thursday morning, Liv told Julia Drake that she had to pick up materials at Miller's Hardware and offered to bring back coffee. Drake had mastered the lean. She leaned whenever she talked, in doorways, against the banister, on the kitchen counter, and Liv could visualize her in the classroom, leaned against the blackboard, or the back of her desk. Brunette, perpetually clad in button-down oxfords and khaki pants, mid-forties, glasses folded in her hand and thrust like a pointer more often than worn.

“Where?” she asked, leaned against the kitchen counter, newspaper unfurled. “Café Baked?”

“You're not supposed to call it that,” Liv said. “That's my private nickname.”

“I mean it like you do, as an endearment.”

“Is that how I mean it?”

Drake smiled. “Yes. That's how you mean it.”

“I'll stop there if you like, or elsewhere if you prefer.”

“You're too accommodating.” Drake considered, her glasses prodding
her lip. “I'm fine with Café Baked. I'd like a scone, too, and a lemon bar. Let me get you money.”

“Don't bother. I take it in trade.”

Drake laughed, slid her glasses back on. “I'm sure you do.”

Liv entered the café through the kitchen. Bailey, on her own, had five crepes going, ingredients prepped for dozens more. Every other station cleared, Bailey kept hers pristine, wiping its surface incessantly, like a mechanical tick. In the corner, the dishwasher purred. On the racks, pots and pans piled one inside the other, like Russian dolls.

“Hey you,” Bailey said. “Have they called you about the garbage disposal? Damn thing's clogged again.”

Liv cleared the disposal, while Bailey chattered away.

“Fucking insane all morning. Peter went home with some kind of drippy contagion. I don't know why I hire men. They are frail, every last goddamned one of them. And that bitch with the notions came in with her personal trainer. Actually, I'm glad I was here for that conversation.”

“Which one is she?”

“The bitch with the notions? Are you from the Midwest; how don't you know this? The bitch with the notions is the one who wants us to provide comment cards, and business cards, and tells us every day who we should advertise with, and how we could improve our menu, and which suppliers we should never use et-fucking-cetera. She knows more than Nietzsche. She's got a fucking solution for everything.”

“Right. Yeah, I've heard about her.”

“So today she brings in her personal trainer to get his approval of the menu, and he tells us we're a little heavy on the carbs. I hate that woman. Maybe we need a new garbage disposal.”

“This one's old. Just run it with plenty of water, and slowly, and it should be fine.”

“You keep saying that, and it keeps clogging.”

“Pleasure as always, Bailey.”

“Sorry,” Bailey said, adding garnish, before picking up all five plates. “Try the pumpkin bar. You'll love it.”

Out front, every table filled, and the counters Liv had built on either
side of the entryway as well, their tall stools invariably populated by small children kicking their legs as though treading water. Maybe twenty-five seated customers, in addition to the line waiting to order. Sophia, Bailey's housemate, quite noticeably pregnant now (Claire said she was carrying the baby high) took Liv's order and asked how her day was, and if she had any time to look at the garbage disposal.

“Maybe we should get a new one already,” she added.

“It's just old,” Liv said, taking her order in a little box.

“My point exactly.”

“Double Americano,” Liv said, handing Drake her loot. They ate at the kitchen table, from plates she'd purchased in Florence. The kitchen austere: with lean, tall cabinets, an island, rose-colored wallpaper, and high-end appliances.

“Garbage disposal or dishwasher?” Drake asked.

“Disposal.”

“Maybe I should get a machine and we can make espresso here.”

“Tempting,” Liv said, “but think of the gossip we'd miss.”

“Eventually they'll settle down, get their groove.”

“It's too bad you get cell reception here. I could let it all go to voicemail.”

“They'd just call the house.”

Liv smiled, shook her head. And then, the pumpkin in her mouth so affecting that she felt her breath catch, Liv remembered an afternoon wandering through a little town in Vermont, the girl beside her radiant with love—radiant—like a fucking planet the girl glowed. Cinnamon, apple, cloves, the girl's fingertips, the bite of her mouth, their hands raw from cold, and working outdoors, and Liv could feel it—the afternoon, the girl's intensity.

When she looked up at Drake, for a moment she saw the girl at the market, her striped scarf, her knit cap, the jar of syrup in her hands, and Liv smiled. The ache of that day fresh on her skin, like a piercing.

“What are you grinning at?” Drake asked.

“I'm taking a Bailey tour,” Liv said. In answer to Drake's raised eyebrows, she went on. “The pumpkin . . . took me to an afternoon in Vermont.”

“The taste, you mean? What did you call it—a Bailey tour? I love that.”

“Her food does that. Her baking, especially, it's transportive.”

“You're right,” Drake said. “It is transportive. And the afternoon in Vermont?”

Liv blushed, looked away.

“It's okay,” Drake murmured.

“You know that time when you think you might die of it—that it'll kill you—how much you feel, that your skin won't be able to contain it.” Liv smiled as though her experience were a tired joke, another puppy love story. She could not say the Vermont afternoon had been an entire age—a lifetime, a reign—transformative and obliterating. She could not say how it had marked her: a thick scar in the shape of a star on her upper arm.

“You're editing,” Drake said.

“It's not much of a story.”

Drake said nothing, and they finished in silence. In the attic, the bandsaw whirring, Liv tried to push that Vermont afternoon from her mind, found instead the scent of wet hay, mud on their boots, a track to a barn, an old thresher. The girl had smelled musky; her nipples had a bitter taste, and discharged when she came. Taller than Liv, pale and bony, with the strange bruised look of vegetarianism beneath her eyes, she'd spoken with an Appalachian accent, a rustic music.

Simon butted a chair against the kitchen counter, and climbed up. In the mornings now, he made his own cereal, poured the milk slowly, always less than his mother poured, no longer drowning the poor Cheerios. Soon Liv would come down, and he would make her cereal too, while she made coffee. She liked bananas, torn into
chunks, in her muesli.

Something was wrong. Simon knew this. But in the mornings, eating cereal with Liv, both of them at the table in their pajamas, Simon didn't worry. After she finished her coffee, Liv would ask him if he wanted anything else, and he always said yes, and she'd make him cinnamon toast, and drink another cup of coffee.

They did it every morning as though each time it might turn out differently. They ate breakfast, performed their routine, with sincerity. Simon could rely on breakfast, just like he could rely on Liv.

Bailey sat on a stool in the kitchen, her clogs on the floor, and flexed her feet. In the corner, Claire entered receipts on her laptop. The café hadn't been opened two months and the numbers were phenomenal. Ten days after they'd opened, a local magazine, a weekly paper, and the daily for the Inland Northwest had reviewed them. The reviewers gushed about the food.

Janet Nadeau, the food critic for the daily, had come back for lunch on successive days, and written a comparative review that likened the pleasure of eating Bailey's crepes to exotic travel.
Dining in Spokane has just been transformed.
The Fresh Baked Bistro
will set you on a journey through taste and memory that will seem improbable, until that second bite convinces you. You will delight in the use of basil and spinach and cheese. You will marvel at the berries and Greek yogurt, and the incomparable brioche. You will feel that you have never eaten with so much attention, your senses heightened, every bite bolder and more satisfying.

And business showed no signs of slowing. Since then, a Seattle paper, and a regional magazine had interviewed them, and taken photographs of food presentations, and Bailey at her station. Hectic, maddening, the pace they'd set couldn't be run indefinitely, but for now, Claire and Bailey could manage the sixteen-hour days, the riot of customers, as the endeavor's urgency and newness sustained them through their exhaustion. In the evenings, it gave Claire a rush, booking their numbers—cost of goods sold, equity accounts, expense categories,
receivables, payables—the strange language of business. She did the bookkeeping for the café, and had, that morning, secured a CPA to handle quarterly taxes, and all the year-end formalities for them.

“How do you know this guy again?” Bailey asked. She'd taken to asking questions multiple times like a child. Claire tried not to let the interruption, or the repetition, irritate her.

“He was my aunt's CPA. I ran into him this summer. He's a nice guy.”

“And a good CPA?”

“She always got money back on her returns.”

“A restaurant is a little different, though, isn't it?” Bailey exhaled, stared at her socks. “Look, Claire, we're partners, right? I really want to be in on meetings like this. I want to meet this guy, and weigh in about whether or not I can work with him.”

Claire stared at her computer screen. How was this already so complicated? Did every little decision require a committee meeting? “Are you handling the bookkeeping, or am I?”

“We're partners, Claire. We share the responsibilities. I don't know this guy, and I want to know anyone who has anything to do with the money. I don't want some ass stealing from us. I don't know anything about him, or his business, or his reputation.”

“Fine, I'll arrange a meeting for the three of us.”

“This week?”

“This week.”

“Good,” Bailey said. “That's all sorted.” She slid her clogs back on and stretched. “How's Simon doing? Is he liking the place any better?”