Sweet (3 page)

Three

He
’
d lost his keys.
Apartment,
mailbox, bike lock and the strange little key he’d found on the sidewalk one day and decided to keep because it was the key, he’d thought at the time, to something he couldn’t even imagine, a reminder of whatever was out there waiting for him that he couldn’t yet name. It wasn’t a matter of many keys, for sure, but, upon discovering they were missing—which he didn’t do until late that evening, upon arriving home, fishing in his pocket while balancing his briefcase and newspaper and a lopsided bag of groceries, then putting everything down and really digging—Teddy had felt as if some important part of him was suddenly gone.

Of course, he’d gotten the doorman to let him into the apartment and had immediately set about his nightly business as a distraction. He’d changed out of his suit and into the T-shirt and pair of ratty sweats in which he liked to sleep, put away all the perishables from the market, leafed pointlessly through the files in his briefcase and polished his dress shoes and left them on the mat just inside his front door, all before allowing himself to lapse into a mild, pacing panic and fruitless mental step-retracing.

Tomorrow, he would have to make time during his lunch hour to carefully retrace his steps and find his key ring. And, just in case, he would also have to call the building super and order new apartment and mailbox keys and buy a new bike lock.

It was no big matter, he reassured himself, but there was nothing he could do about the loss of the mysterious little Hope Key.

***

You might imagine that these keys, the ones Teddy lost, the ones Jules found, are symbolic in this tale, that the transfer of these keys will unlock something between the two men who’ve held them. You might even imagine that somehow, by some chance of fate, Teddy’s mysterious Hope Key opens Jules’s apartment. Certainly it should, you might think, open his heart. You must let go of that silly fantasy, for such magical coincidence will not come to pass here. We who are telling you this story are pragmatists and, more importantly, your own experience should tell you that life almost never unfolds so neatly or symmetrically.

This is something in which Jules firmly believed, that life’s coincidences were simply that, and that such coincidences contained no hint of design or rightness or serendipity. Yet he kept the keys in his right-hand pocket and, in quiet moments of his day, allowed his thumb to rub against the warm metal. He imagined that he was polishing a soft groove into the key tops, imagined burnishing the jagged bumps of the keys until they no longer knew the locks for which they’d been cut, but only the shape of his thumb and the constant, slight pressure he exerted upon them, so that, he imagined, when he returned them to their owner—
if
he could part with them—
they’d be worn and soft and dully shining, and would fit nothing but his own hand.

Return to me,
he found himself singing under his breath as he gently stirred cream into a pot of brown, bubbling sugar at the stove. Morning light was just beginning to sliver in through the tiny slatted windows on the east wall of the kitchen, and Jules could hear the hum gradually pick up: the city’s taxis and rushing bikes and quick-clicking heels on the pavement building to a steady music.

He had always been an early riser, so baker’s hours had come quite naturally to him. It was this hour—still gray even in summertime, when the city was slowly cranking into motion, when he felt the solitude and stillness of the dawn hours cracking open and falling away—it was this hour that was his favorite.

Come back to me, come back to me, come back,
he sang, investing the song with all his belief. He sang the melody clean out of the words until nothing was left but a soft, breathless chant, an invocation. Jules was not entirely sure to whom he was calling
—the image in his head shifted between Andy, whose presence it was his ritual to conjure in the lonely hours of the early morning as he worked, and the soft-spoken, dark-eyed, key-losing customer who’d begun to haunt him.

This morning, he might even have been calling himself, for as his body moved on its own memory, he felt his thinking self fade and blow away like dust. He kneaded butter to a soft spread, then folded and rolled and folded and rolled the dough for the croissants.
He set the caramel to cool, creamed butter and sugar by hand, lovingly mixed a dark chocolate cake batter and coiled paper sleeves into a pan for the cupcakes. His hands, his arms, his lower back all worked without his guidance, knowing by heart the movements of stir and stretch and stroke. He closed his eyes. He worked tenderly. He moved like a lover.

Andy was warm and lanky and summery against him. He wrapped his arms, muscled and deep brown, around Jules’s waist, dipped his fingertips beneath his waistband and stroked small, teasing circles there. A ghost of breath, a little wet, golden staccato, curled against Jules’s throat. His skin remembered touch—no one had touched him like this since Andy—and rose in delighted, skittery
gooseflesh between his hipbones and across his belly. He felt Andy’s mouth on the back of his neck, a sweet kiss and bite that made his throat close and a warm
ache ache ache
throb inside him.

Jules scraped the cooled caramel into the butter and beat it together, fiercely, by hand, until he was aching and sweating and tears stung the corners of his eyes.

He knew if he stretched his hand back to touch Andy’s cheek, it would be gone. The whole of the moment, and of Andy, and even the whole of Jules himself, felt vapor-thin, but Jules’s body remembered so clearly in these moments that, if he were careful, if he did not move to touch or look, he could feel Andy for long minutes at a time, long blissful minutes that filled him with a bitter, wanting pang and a ghost-memory o
n his skin and left him shaking and very hard and too full of his own breath.

***

“I’ve lost my mind,” Teddy told ‘Trice.

“Then you’re probably not missing much,” she said.

“My keys are missing. I lost them yesterday. I’m going crazy.” The bakery was one stop on a long key-finding itinerary he was trying to squeeze into his lunch break, but ‘Trice was already pulling him a shot of espresso and rooting for a little curl of lemon peel for the saucer. “And I got the joke, by the way, I’m just not acknowledging it because it wasn’t funny.”

She laughed. “Oho! The puppy bites back!”

Teddy leveled his best, most serious glare. He came off looking rather pitiful.

“Oh, you are twisted up, honey,” ‘Trice said. “In that case, on the house.” She slid the espresso toward him. “I’m going to go check with the big man to see if he found them. BRB.”

Despite himself, Teddy felt the urgency filter out of him as he waited. He’d already made the calls to replace the keys he needed. This was no big loss. Nothing his life couldn’t absorb, anyway.

After several loud, metallic crashes, ‘Trice returned.

“I’m sorry, Cupcake, nobody has seen those keys. But the boss sent this out for you. He’s sympathetic.” She turned toward the kitchen and shouted, “I think he’s actually feeling
guilty!
I think he
stole
those keys!” She paused. “And baked them inside a pie!”

Another loud crash from the kitchen made her turn back to Teddy, snickering. “That is so fun. Here. Take a break. It’s going to work out.”

The cupcake she pushed across the counter looked nothing like the dainty yellow one he’d first had. This one was large, a deep brown cake topped with a swirl of pecan-colored frosting, a pearly nugget of caramel and a dollop of soft chocolate nestled together, all of it glistening with little sparkling chunks of… something like stars.

“Salt,” ‘Trice said. “Trust us. Chocolate cake with salted caramel frosting. You. Will. Die.”

“I’m not ready to die,” Teddy said, widening his eyes and putting on his most earnest face.

“Get your affairs in order.” ‘Trice nudged the cupcake more
firmly in his direction.

“Thanks,” he said to her back as she whisked into the kitchen, leaving him entirely alone in the quiet shop front.

Teddy sat at the little table by the window, the one he now thought of as
his
table. He dipped his finger into the frosting, taking a bit of caramel and chocolate. He licked gingerly, four little licks, then gave up to himself entirely and sucked his whole finger into his mouth. After peeling back the paper wrapper, he bit into the cupcake, which fell apart on his tongue. The frosting was smooth, with a dark, sweet taste, but the little chunks of salt on top bit at him and made his eyes water in the sweetest way. He felt it, the crushing ache in his throat that made swallowing hard, a deep missingness he knew was not about his keys. He tasted bitterness, and wistfulness, and longing, and sugary warmth and desire, and all of it washed inside him like a wave and made the hairs on his arms stand on end. He ate slowly, but without stopping, because he couldn’t bear to lose, not even for a moment, the sensation of the soft cake and velvety frosting and poignant salt burn in his mouth. He felt the shiver of fingers trailing slowly up the insides of his thighs, felt the skin at the back of his neck wake to a wet kiss. He felt his stomach turning over, felt his whole body reaching for someone, wanting desperately to be filled. He felt unfillable. He felt hollowness, groaned with it, and the little cake was no match for the space expanding inside him, his
depthless, blind, sensate need.

He put his tongue to the palm of his hand and licked off the chocolate, its sweetness cut by the tang of his own sweat. He inhaled deeply; the scent of his own skin mixed with sugar and chocolate ruffed up a hot flush on his belly and thighs. He sucked the skin between his fingers, caught between joyfulness and a desire to weep. His own tongue felt foreign there, as if a stranger’s mouth were on him, sucking gently, but nothing was enough.

“Good?” ‘Trice asked, leering at him from over the counter.

Teddy couldn’t bring himself to feel embarrassed. “Ohhhhh
, my god,” he groaned, without taking his hand from his mouth.

“You’ve got a little something there.” ‘Trice motioned to the back of his hand. Teddy promptly flipped his hand over and lapped at the smudge on his skin. ‘Trice snorted.

“Do you think,” he said between licks, “I mean—don’t you think—can I—I feel like I should meet him.”

“Who?” ‘Trice asked, though it was clear from her face she knew exactly to whom Teddy referred.

“You know, the brilliant pastry chef who did this. To me. Did
this
to me.” He gestured at himself. He felt wanton, disheveled, pleasure-mussed.

“He doesn’t do that,” ‘Trice said, glancing over her shoulder at the kitchen door. “Meet people. He doesn’t. He stays in there,” she raised her voice to a shout, “even though I keep telling him to come out here and meet his adoring public! But he won’t listen to
me
!
”

“I’m going to go back there. I have to meet him.”

“I wouldn’t do that if I were you,” ‘Trice said. “Not if you ever want another free cupcake in this town again.”

There was a clatter from the kitchen. Teddy moved to rise, but sat back down quickly, reddening. He pretended to think about ‘Trice’s warning, but she couldn’t have stopped him if he’d decided to go, if he’d been able to stand up and walk, if he hadn’t been embarrassingly—and this fact had swept upon him, a little shock, since he’d been so overcome and warm and tingly from the cupcake—he hadn’t noticed that he was embarrassingly, incredibly, insistently hard.

‘Trice leered at him. As if she knew. Teddy went even redder.

“It’s okay,” she whispered. “He has a blog. Google it.”

*

Pastry-Whipped: Adventures in Sugar by a Dedicated Crumpet Strumpet

by Chef Jules Burns of Buttermilk Bakery

March 25: Coming Out as a Pastry Puff, or, Baking with Lust

A recipe will only get you so far. A recipe tells you how much, and how long and how hard. But even these are, of course, matters that must vary from situation to situation, person to person, desire to desire. Certain days call for harder and longer
—
it’s often a question of barometric pressure, mine or that of the atmosphere
—
or mood, again, mine or that of the atmosphere.

I don’t bake with recipes anymore. I write them down, of course, some approximation of what I do, so that if I am made bedridden by a police horse or tuberculosis (it has always been my dream to die a lingering, dramatic death like the great Victorian heroine I am in my head), my assistant can achieve something close to what Buttermilk customers have come to expect. And many people will tell you that baking
—
unlike cooking, which is to baking as milk is to crème brûlée
—
is a science, is about measures and calculations and exactitude. To them I say,
You need to loosen up.
Actually, what I mean is,
You probably need to get laid.

Some basic understanding of kitchen science will, of course, get you far in your passionate improvisations. Knowing the stages through which sugar passes as it heats, understanding what happens to an egg when you beat it, figuring out the difference between baking powder and baking soda, this kind of basic knowledge will help you, in the same way that a painter must understand how paint behaves, how color changes as it dries, how… I don’t know, since I’m not a painter, but I’m sure there are some very specific things painters must know in order to make art. The art, however, comes from passion. One needs to be adventurous, to be in touch with one’s ingredients, to feel textures and tastes intuitively, to anticipate needs, like a lover. One needs a healthy dose of lust.