Sweet (20 page)

It was a long time before he did. Jules had nearly given up, had looked down at his plate to push the food around with his fork, and felt the brush of Andy-the-dog against his leg. He bent to pet him, but Andy avoided his hand, slipped by quickly and settled himself on the garnet-colored cushion across the room. When Jules looked up again, Andy-the-man was gazing at him from the table’s second chair.

“Andy,” he said, his throat aching with the words. “It’s over now. You have to leave. You’re not welcome in my home anymore.”

Sixteen

Jules worked for hours.
He
packed up all of Andy’s clothes, shoes, record albums and books, left them in boxes by the door and scheduled the Salvation Army to pick them up. In a small plastic box, he saved one shirt (Andy’s pink flannel one, which still smelled of him and reminded Jules of his father, too), and every photograph of Andy and scrap of his spike-loopy handwriting he could find. Tenderly, he pressed the plastic lid onto the box and slid it far under the bed, where it could be forgotten but not lost forever.

When he had finished, when every scrap of Andy had been packed safely away or readied for charity, Jules sat at the kitchen table and stared at the apartment. It felt so much more barren than it was.

“You have to leave,” he told the empty room.

The sun flickered in through the curtains as it readied itself to set and fell warm across his neck. He felt the tingling of a not-quite-solid hand pass down his spine to rest on his lower back, but he would not look. Instead, he squeezed his eyes shut, covering them with his hands, and shook his head.

“No,” he whispered. “I don’t love you anymore. I love the memory of you, but I will never love you any more than I do now. You’re
not
anymore. Nothing will grow, because there is no more of you for me to love. There is no more to continue. You have to go. Now.”

As he whispered, it was as if his chest finally cracked open, and everything came pouring out. He felt his heart flop out of his chest, hot and wet and ugly, and flap in his lap like a dying fish. He felt heat burn his neck and cheeks. He felt so empty and so hungry; he felt cold and he felt as if nothing would ever fill him up again.

And then, in the space of a moment, he felt nothing at all. The tingling at his back was gone, the hunger and the pain in his throat, everything was gone in an instant, as if a heavy coat had suddenly fallen from his back. Andy-the-dog came waddling up to him and dropped his wet jowls against the top of Jules’s foot. The sun finally set and took its light with it, leaving the room in deep indigo shadow. He felt his heart press itself back into his chest;
felt his chest clasp and seal around it; felt the air slip, light and clean and sweet, into his suddenly loosened lungs.

He felt it as surely as he could feel a lick of bright, hot sun or the soft warmth of a down quilt: Andy was gone, and Jules was finally, completely alone.

*

Alone, Jules slept. Alone, he woke and showered and dressed, and he dragged himself out onto the gray early morning street and walked to the bakery. In the street-noise quiet, he unlocked the front gate and sent it rattling upward with an effortful shove, pressed open the front door, slipped behind the counter and set the espresso machine humming.

He began his morning preparations in the kitchen, heating the ovens, leaving the butter to rest on the counter, mixing the dough and batter for the day’s pies and cakes and muffins. He worked without the radio, listening only to the swish and groan of cars on the street outside the windows, humming to himself, enjoying his solitude.

He made, just for fun, a very light, airy brioche dough touched with the bittersweetness
of orange zest. He let it breathe in the heat of the kitchen to rise and decided to drizzle it with dark chocolate when it was done.

After several hours, when most of the work was finished and nothing was left to do but wait for dough to rise, Jules sat at his desk and began to work through the bills and filing that had built up there, since neither he nor ‘Trice ever wanted to attend to it. He heard, vaguely, the front door bells jingle as ‘Trice burst into the shop, heard the slamming sound of her banging on the espresso machine, heard her yell, as she always did, “Coffee!” Because he knew no work would get done with ‘Trice slamming about, he put the papers into the top drawer of his desk.

There, in the corner of the drawer, was the ring of keys he’d found on the floor so long ago: Teddy’s keys. He hadn’t touched them, or even looked at them, for a long time; now he took them out and held them, warm and sharp, in his fingers. He counted through the keys, tracing their shapes, until he paused at the last one. It was small, slender, gold, with a tiny engraved “JB” on the head, an elegant key, a key he knew well. It was the key to his bakery. Andy had gotten the engraving done as an extravagant, ridiculous surprise when he had first opened the place. How it had come to be on Teddy’s key ring was a mystery.

Just as he was turning the ring of keys over and over on his finger, ‘Trice kicked
open the door with her foot and burst into the kitchen, a cup of coffee in each hand.

“Coffee, I said!” she shouted.

“Thanks,” he muttered, and dropped the keys in his lap so quickly, he hoped, she would not see.

‘Trice, however, he sometimes forgot, was like a hawk. Or a buzzard. Some bird of prey. She swooped in, plopping the cup in front of him and grabbing at the keys in his lap.

“What are you hiding,
mon petit chou?
” she asked, dancing away before he could grab the keys back.

“Give those back,” he grumbled, pretending to write in a ledger and eyeing her without turning his head from his desk. “And, really,
petit chou?
”

“
Petit
s choux
pastry?” she tried again. “I’m not giving them back until you tell me why you were trying to hide them.” She dangled the keys in front of her on one long, teasing finger.

“You should be flogged for your shoddy wordplay. I was not hiding them. Those are
my
keys. Give them back.”

“These are
your
keys?” she asked, waving the little metal key fob in his face. Engraved on it in looping script was “TF.” “Is your name Tools, not Jules? Have I been saying it wrong all these years?”

“Funny. Give.”

“Okay, Tools Fortunecookie, here you go.” She smirked and tossed the keys back into his lap.

“Ass!” he yelled, though he wasn’t entirely sure if he mightn’t be yelling at himself.

“Yes! Lots of it!” she yelled, heading toward the front of the bakery, then stopped. “Speaking of ass, Tools, your piece of it misses you. He’s on my couch, bitching and moaning about it all night. Would you fix this so I can get rid of him, please?”

She slipped into the front of the bakery before he could answer
. The shop front radio popped to life as soon as the door flapped closed behind her. “And give him his keys back, Tools!” she shouted.

Jules shook his head, laughing. He may be an ass, but ‘Trice was… something bigger than an ass. A monolithic ass. A triceratops ass. An avalanche of asses.

There was a scraping noise behind him, and when he turned, he saw that the screen that sheltered his desk from the rest of the kitchen had been pushed aside. There, sitting on the metal prep table by the ovens, was Andy: hollow, flickering, gray, and definitely Andy.

*

“What is wrong with these?” Jules shouted. “‘Trice! You put too much baking soda in these! It’s a good thing I decided to taste! They taste like soap!” He tipped the entire batch of muffins into the trash can.

“What are you hollering about now, Necker-Chief?” ‘Trice asked, cracking the kitchen door to pop her head in.

“Nice one,” Jules grumbled.

“Thank you, I’ve been working on that one for a while,” ‘Trice said smugly. She slid through the door and into the kitchen, leaning against the metal prep table and gently patting her hair back under the white scarf from which it was trying to escape.

“It’s not nice enough to get you out of the mess you made, though,” Jules said sourly. “I had to throw away a whole batch of muffins because you put too much baking soda in them, and the whole thing tastes awful. Apparently, you can’t bake while you’re mooning over whatever fake-punk boy band you kids are dreaming about lately.”

“I didn’t bake those, Chief,
you
did.” ‘Trice widened her eyes and made spooky hands above her head, humming ominously. “Dun-dun-daaaaaaaaah!”

“Oh,” he said, mollified. “Sorry. My head’s off lately.” Jules turned back to the counter, wiping furiously at the stainless steel. It was already very clean; the sunlight gleamed loudly from its surface. Undeterred, Jules scrubbed.

“Then we should taste everything you did today, just in case.”

“I guess we probably should. Can you…”

“I’ll get it,” ‘Trice sang as she ran to the front of the store carrying a wide plate.
“Back in a flash!”

In less time than it took him to start panicking, ‘Trice was back with a plate full of the day’s goods. She placed it on the prep table between them and gingerly broke off a small piece of the apricot scone and popped it onto her tongue.

“Oh, no, no, no!” she yelled, and spat the rest of the bite onto the counter in a wet glob.

“Disgusting, ‘Trice.”

“You said it, mister,” she replied, wiping at the mess with a sponge. “Those are no good. Way too salty.”

“These taste like actual crap,” Jules frowned, spitting out a bite of blueberry muffin.

“I won’t ask how you know what that would taste like.”

Together, bravely, they sampled each and every thing Jules had baked that morning; salty, soapy, overly sweet or plain as cardboard, each and every one was horribly, irrevocably bad.

“How could this happen?” Jules moaned. “We have to close! We have nothing left!”

“We wouldn’t have stayed open much later anyway. It’s a miracle nobody complained yet today.”

“I’m starting over, just so we have something here,” Jules said, frantically tossing a whisk into a bowl and whirling toward the refrigerator for the butter and eggs.

“Whatever you say, Chief,” ‘Trice muttered as she left the kitchen.

Madly, he beat together the ingredients for his most basic, tried-and-true blueberry muffins. They were bestsellers, and if he had nothing else on hand, they would work. Just as he was finishing mixing the batter, he heard ‘Trice shriek from the front of the store.

“Jules!” she screamed. “Now! Here!”

When he burst into the shop front brandishing a chef’s knife—just in case of robbery, it was handy to have such things—he found her crouched on top of a stool holding aloft a paper cup, her eyes darting wildly around the counter.

“I saw a mouse!” she whispered.

“What?” Jules stage-whispered back. “Impossible! I clean this place myself every morning!”

“Why do you make me clean it every afternoon before I close, then?” ‘Trice glared at him.

“Not important,” Jules whispered back. “Where did you see it?”

“There!” She pointed with one shaking finger to the counter near the espresso machine.

Jules bent over the counter and ran his finger along the joint with the wall. There were no holes, no crumbs, nothing that might attract a mouse. “Here?” he asked skeptically. “Over here? What exactly did you see?”

“I saw a shadow, so I looked,” she whimpered. ‘Trice was a tough girl, laced in tattoos and leather boots and bad attitude; Jules made a mental note that he’d found her Achilles’ heel. “And it must have been under that cup, because it moved. I swear to god it moved. It slid across the counter by itself, like three feet.”

Jules inspected more carefully, quickly upending the cup and then tossing it into the trash. “There’s nothing there now.”

“I’m calling the guy,” ‘Trice said and hurried to the desk in the kitchen.

After she had gone, Jules turned back toward the counter with a disinfecting rag and began furiously to wipe. He pulled all of the equipment, the stacks of cups, the bins of coffee, away from the wall and scrubbed as hard as he could at the still
very clean counter.

When he looked up from his work, Andy was standing next to the counter, flickering in the sunlight from the front window. His arms were folded; he leaned against the counter with one transparent hip. Jules jumped back, tossing the rag at the vision before he thought better of it. Andy didn’t move from the spot, but he reached down and batted the paper tip cup next to the register across the counter.

“Balls!” Jules shouted without thinking. It was one of ‘Trice’s favorite expressions. Andy shook his head slowly.

“You were gone!” Jules yelled. “You were gone! I felt it!”

Andy shook his head again and leaned against the espresso machine. The machine hummed and hissed out a jet of steam when he touched it.

“What?” ‘Trice yelled from the kitchen.

“You can’t be here,” Jules whispered harshly at him. “You have to go. I have customers.”

“Did you see it again?” ‘Trice asked, poking her head out of the kitchen. “Did you yell for me?” She didn’t seem too anxious to come out of the kitchen and into the Mouse-Infested Area. She also didn’t seem to notice Andy, who was standing not three feet from Jules, flashing with the sunlight.

“Jules! Earth to Chef Jules! Did you call me?” ‘Trice waved her hands at his face. “Did you see the mouse again?”

“No,” he said, motioning
absently over his shoulder toward the kitchen. “Go back. I’ll call if I do.”

“O… kay,” she sang and slinked back into the kitchen. The door flapped shut behind her. When Jules turned back to the counter, Andy was gone.