Bliss (25 page)

W
hy the long face, kiddo? You don't like the balloons out front?”

“The balloons are great, Aunt Paulie,” Sera assured the older woman. And they were—once she'd popped the cock-shaped ones (which Pauline had got from the Ecstasy Emporium) with a cake tester while her aunt wasn't looking. She'd also taken a spit-dampened finger to the chalkboard sign Pauline had, with great zest, inscribed with the words “Cum in! We're wiiiiide open!” and replaced the missive with a more decorous invitation for customers to attend the store's grand opening.

“Then what? You look like someone swapped salt for sugar in your favorite recipe.” Pauline leaned against the counter, examining her niece with narrowed eyes.

Sera sighed. “I don't know what I was expecting, Auntie. I suppose I was being unrealistic, but I had this fantasy that we'd be swamped from minute one. An addict's grandiosity, I guess.”

Pauline gave Sera a squeeze that threatened to bagpipe all the air out of her. “It'll happen, Baby-Bliss. Give it time. It's early in the day.” She patted Sera on the shoulder.

Sera sighed. As grand openings went, she'd seen better. She'd also seen much worse. Or so she reminded herself throughout the day as she, Pauline, and Friedrich, the tongue-tied young barista they'd hired from the local liberal arts college, managed the steady trickle of customers who filed in and out of her new shop. She told herself to be patient, be realistic. Yet as the day progressed, there was no stampede for fresh cupcakes, no run on the croissants. Tourists wandered in, murmured appreciatively over the bright, cheerful décor, then bought a latte and a bear claw or two. Sometimes they stayed awhile. More often they moved on to the next stop on their agenda, be it museum, gallery, or boutique. Mr. Yazzie from next door came in around midday for his promised sticky bun and a minute of friendly chat. Even Lupe had wished them a sulky “good luck” on her way to opening Lyric Jewelry. And of course, Aruni was her biggest champion, not only dropping by for a green tea and a veggie breakfast mini-quiche first thing in the morning but sending all the students from her midday class over to check Bliss out after they'd finished twisting themselves into pretzels of serenity. Hortencia had bustled in toward three when her shift at Knit-Fit ended, carrying a hand-crocheted cozy for Big Mama's container, along with a hug and a kiss for Sera and Pauline. The Back Room Babes had made a point of popping in for cups of kombucha, scones, and slices of pie, bringing a smile to Sera's face with their cheerful greetings and loud exclamations of delight as they bit into their treats.

Overall, as the day went on, Sera found herself reasonably pleased, if not giddy with the triumph she'd secretly envisioned.

Her aunt, however, seemed to have developed some of Sera's earlier malaise. Pauline had started out happily enough, decked out in her favorite rainbow-colored skirt, a screaming yellow bandanna, and a shirt that proudly proclaimed “Bakers Like It Hot and Steamy!” Between ringing up customers at the front register, she'd amused herself asking Friedrich all sorts of impertinent questions about his love life and clucking over his blushes and stammers. But as time went on, she'd soured. For Pauline, who stood at the ready, positively panting to show folks the “other side” of the business, had had
not one customer.
Sera could tell she was getting miffed. She kept glancing from the roped-off back room to the last customers lingering over their pastries, then over to Sera. But Sera had, in no uncertain terms, forbidden Pauline from evangelizing about the wares behind the curtain if customers didn't specifically ask about them. Sera had no intention of becoming famous for peddling sexual aids—at least not before she became the toast of this town's culinary culture.

At this rate, that might take awhile.

Maybe I should have spent more on advertising,
Sera thought as she wiped down the counters and counted the leftover croissants she'd be donating to the food depot on Siler Road if they didn't sell out. But she'd done what she could afford, and she knew she'd have to rely on word-of-mouth from satisfied customers to begin building a loyal fan base.
I just need patience, and a little faith,
she told herself. Of course, a nice review wouldn't hurt either. But Sera's polite message to the food editor at the
Chile Paper
, inviting him to check out her new business, hadn't been returned.

And speaking of returns, Sera was still awaiting Asher's. It had been over two weeks now, and even Lupe, whom Sera had risked cold shoulder-itis to ask, had no firm ETA for the enigmatic Israeli. She couldn't help feeling he should have been there for her grand opening, though she had to concede that wasn't quite fair—it wasn't like she'd told him when she intended to open. Still, his absence hurt—more than she liked to admit.

Maybe he's not
coming
back,
thought Sera.
Maybe that wife of his convinced him to stay, or…
Sera had no answers.

But she
did
have one more customer, as she saw when she looked up in response to the chiming of the bell Malc had fastened over the door. A painfully thin young woman, perhaps mid-twenties, with the look of a computer sciences major entered the shop. The woman stopped, sniffed, and coughed, as though the scents of cinnamon, butter, and sugar were disagreeable to her. Then she lifted her chin and marched up to the counter, stiff-legged. She pulled out a pad and scanned it, then fixed Sera and her aunt with a gimlet glare.

“Are you Ms. Wilde?” she barked.

Both Pauline and Sera started. “Yes,” they answered in unison, then glanced sheepishly at each other. Pauline grinned, slung her arm around Sera, and elaborated. “I'm Pauline Wilde, and this-here genius is my niece, Bliss, the mastermind behind this oasis of oral delights.”

Sera winced.

The young woman coughed another dry cough, peering at the two of them as though they were specimens in a not particularly fascinating zoo. “So you're the owner,” she said to Sera, who nodded.

“Proprietor anyhow,” she agreed. “Pauline will always be the real boss around here.”

The woman didn't smile or acknowledge Sera's distinction, except to scribble a note in her little pad.
Awkwaaard,
Sera thought. But she couldn't afford to alienate someone who might be a local. “What can I get for you?” She gestured at the display cases. “The
tarte tatin
is very nice, and the chocolate ganache cupcake is, if I do say so myself, completely out of this world.” She smiled warmly at the woman. It had been awhile since she'd dealt with difficult customers, but her old skills from her days catering to some of New York's finickiest foodies hadn't completely left her.

“I'm not hungry,” the woman said flatly. She cleared her throat again, as if the very notion of cupcakes made her gag. “I came because I was called.”

“Called?” Sera ventured. She could well believe the woman wasn't hungry—she'd seen the type before: the soulless, hardly human sort who had no interest in food beyond how it might sustain them. The type, frankly, that gave Sera chills. Sera looked her over more closely. The woman's face was startlingly square, with nearly no chin but incredibly wide jaws, like a living Lego action figure, or a less attractive Betty Boop. Her throat was so gaunt Sera could see the rungs of cartilage beneath the skin, and she could only imagine how skeletal the rest of her must be. Her long, mousy brown hair was tied in an untidy bun. It, too, looked thin.
Eat a cupcake, lady,
she wanted to scream.
It's obviously an emergency.

“Yes,
called,
” Lego-head said. She sighed irritably. “I'm Marnie Pyle. From the
Chile Paper
?”

In her excitement, Pauline elbowed Sera in the ribs hard enough that Sera yipped. “From the
Chile Paper
, you say?”

“Yessss,” the woman hissed impatiently. “Someone called the food section about this bakery, wanting a write-up. I'm who they sent.”

“Oh!” said Sera, her focus sharpening. “But we called Burt Evans, the regular reviewer. We never heard back, so we figured he wasn't interested.”

“Burt's got gout.” The woman's disgusted expression clearly said,
Serves him right, the fat bastard.
“I'm planning to go into investigative journalism,” she said importantly, “but my editor seems to think I've still got some dues to pay. So I got assigned to cover this”—she looked around the bakery dismissively—“story.”

You don't always get to choose your angels,
Sera reminded herself.
But once they arrive, it can't hurt to roll out the red carpet.
She exchanged significant looks with her aunt, who was squirming with barely suppressed excitement. Sera winced internally. An excited Pauline was a garrulous Pauline—and lord only knew what she might say. “I got this, Aunt Pauline. Think you can man the register alone for a bit?”

Pauline, standing in the nearly empty shop, gave her niece a disbelieving look. “Did I suddenly go senile in the last twenty minutes?” she muttered. Sera ignored her. Much as she didn't want to offend her aunt, she
really
didn't want Pauline's unfiltered outrageousness to affect Ms. Pyle's write-up. Sera came around the counter, ushering the woman gingerly over to a table. “Please, let me offer you a cup of coffee—Friedrich, would you make our guest whatever she'd like? Anything you want, Friedrich can make it—we rescued him from Starbucks and he's still in the honeymoon phase,” she joked.

Lego-head didn't smile. “Coffee, black,” she said.

Friedrich nodded and wordlessly poured a cup of joe—from the freshly brewed pot, Sera was glad to see. Sera brought it over to her “best” table, a lovely little inlaid marble square parked between a pair of squishy antique leather armchairs she and Malcolm had carefully Scotchgarded. She glanced back at her aunt, who was fulminating not very quietly by the register. Friedrich kept his head down, wiping up stray coffee grounds with a rag. “Maybe you could bring us an assortment of pastries, Aunt Pauline. You know all the best ones—not that there are any bad ones,” she added hastily, glancing at the reporter.

“Let me see if I can get my feeble old brain to work well enough to pick a few,” said Pauline, sniffing.

Sera wiped the wince off her face. “So!” she said brightly, watching as her guest settled stiffly into an armchair, “you're here to write a review of Bliss?”

Marnie Pyle coughed. “Less a review than a brief puff piece on the opening. When Burt's feeling better, he may drop by for a more thorough story.” Her tone told Sera not to count on it.

“Right, well…” Sera trailed off. “Uh, so what comes next?”

The reporter dug into her messenger bag and placed a digital recorder and her notepad on the table between them. “I'll ask you a few questions, then you answer them,” she said, her expression indicating Sera had been on the waiting list for a brain transplant too long. “I'll try to make this quick.” Sera could almost hear the unspoken,
For both our sakes.
Marnie coughed; a single, Gollum-like bark. “So, we'll start with your background as a baker, and then talk a bit about what brought you to Santa Fe from wherever it is you're from.” She leaned back in her chair—a pose not so much receptive as infinitely weary.

Sera hit all the high notes, weaving a highly sanitized version of her story for the bored reporter. Neither her education at New York City's preeminent culinary school nor her experience in some of Manhattan's finest kitchens seemed to impress the woman.
She probably wouldn't know Jacques Pépin from Jacques Cousteau.
As she watched Lego-head's eyes glaze over like honey dip on a donut, a thrill of panic swept over her. A bad review could spell the end for them before they'd barely begun. Sera well knew the effects of negative publicity—back in New York, Blake Austin's smear campaign had effectively ruined her. But nothing she said elicited more than a sigh or a brief scribble on the reporter's pad.

Sera tried harder. She hadn't slept for two days, and she was running mainly on sugar and caffeine. But she'd be damned if she didn't give this interview her utmost. Forcing animation to replace her exhaustion, she rhapsodized about Santa Fe's spectacular climate and bemoaned the kinks the high altitude had thrown into her well-rehearsed recipes. She shared how her aunt had invited her to set up shop, and how it had always been her dream to become a
pâtissière.
She talked extensively about their menu, being sure to mention McLeod's famous pies. Still, nothing seemed to capture her guest's attention.

Until her aunt stepped in.

“Here we go!” Pauline sang out, swishing over to their table with a swing in her hips and a plate piled high with samples of Sera's treats in her hand. With a flourish, she set the plate down and plunked her bum on the arm of Sera's chair. “My Bliss here is hands down the best baker in New Mexico—New York, too, I bet. I taught her everything she knows,” she confided.

Sera tried not to wince.
Please, please don't embarrass me
, she silently pleaded, remembering other times over the years when she'd futilely sent up this same prayer. It would be just like Pauline to start babbling about Sera's orgasm quest… or the back room. Under the table, Sera crossed her fingers.

Lego-head looked dubiously down at her plate. Pauline had arranged perfect bite-sized samples of some of Sera's greatest hits—from a classic Napoleon to a hazelnut-infused
mille
crepe,
plus a petite triple-chocolate mousse (the same that had first garnered Blake Austin's attention) and the green chile quiche Sera had added to the menu as a concession to the locals (she had experimented with green chile cupcakes but had given it up as a bad job). Everything looked exactly as Sera would have hoped—mouthwatering, elegant, and fresh.