Bread Alone (26 page)

PUMPKIN SPICE MIX

¼ cup ground ginger

¼ cup ground cinnamon

3 tablespoons ground cardamom

3 tablespoons ground cloves

Mix spices thoroughly and store in a jar.

Jen laughs when she notices me frowning. “We make six dozen at a time,” she says. “The proportions are on the back. And the spice mix is in the storeroom, first shelf on the left. I think you’ll have to open a new can of pumpkin.”

She works with her back to the café, but I keep looking up from my muffins to watch the first assault—yuppies in their power suits, parking their BMWs at the curb, pickups full of blue-collar guys who work across the bridge in Ballard, local merchants up and down Queen. Between eight-thirty and nine, the second wave hits—left-over hippies, punkers, and students, and, finally, about ten, the neighborhood moms with their strollers and toddlers, and the blue-hair set.

The hum of voices is punctuated at intervals by the bang of the door, the scalding hiss of the espresso machine, the coffee grinder whirring, the cash register dinging, and the traffic noises. It’s sensory overload compared to the stillness and the rhythms of making bread at night.

Jen sticks a pan of cinnamon rolls in the oven about the time I finish the muffins. I wipe my hands on my apron. “Can I watch you make the scones? I love them, but mine never turn out like these.”

“There’s two schools of thought about scones.” She smirks a little. “At least around here. There’s fluffy scones—they’ve got more cream and eggs. Kind of like biscuits. And there’s short scones, which I prefer. They’ve got more sugar and a lot more butter. They’re denser, almost like shortcake.” She depresses the button on the food processor, cutting the butter into the dry ingredients in about five long pulses. She dumps the crumbly mass onto the worktable and flips it gently twice, patting it into a long rectangle. “What we make here is sort of a compromise.”

She holds up two floury fingers. “Two things. The butter’s gotta be really cold, even frozen’s okay. And don’t handle the dough any more than absolutely necessary. That makes them tough. You can use a knife or a biscuit cutter or whatever you want, just make sure it’s sharp. The sharper it is, the higher they’ll rise.” She uses a Chinese cleaver, swinging it back and forth, separating the dough into triangles. We load them onto half-sheet pans and stash them in the freezer to bake off tomorrow.

Ellen insists on driving me home at eleven and helping me carry the five-gallon bucketful of tools that Lloyd has selected as my learner’s set. The bucket has a blue canvas liner—Ellen says it’s called a “tool apron”—with pockets for different hand tools. A drill and a heavy orange extension cord are in the middle. There’s also a circular saw that would make a formidable weapon should you happen to be attacked while it’s plugged in.

I sigh. “Never in my wildest dreams did I envision myself with power tools.”

Her eyes close when she laughs. “Never in my wildest dreams did I picture myself with someone like Lloyd. I hope he wasn’t too pushy.”

“I’d call him persistent. And he’s right, I guess. It’s probably a good idea for everyone to know how to use a screwdriver.” I drop my backpack on the chair. “He told me how you guys met.”

She waves her hand dismissively. “He tells everyone that story. It’s his evangelical Lutheran upbringing. Every time he tells it, my shoulders start itching, like I’m going to grow wings. Well, I better get back to work and let you go to bed. Thanks for sticking around this morning.”

After she leaves, I stash the tools in my office, curl up in my down comforter without bothering to open the futon frame, and fall into an exhausted, dreamless sleep.

“Missed you last night,” Mac greets me as I scoot onto my stool at the bar.

“One of the women at work has the flu, so I worked an extra five hours yesterday. I didn’t even roll out of bed till eight.”

I’ve become a barfly. Sort of. I’ve taken to spending three or four evenings a week perched on this stool, reading and nursing my one glass of wine. Two, if I don’t have to work that night. I always felt sorry for people who hung out in bars, and slightly condescending toward them—like, if you had a life, you wouldn’t be there—but I’ve decided there’s a lot to recommend it. Of course, you have to choose your saloon carefully.

I’d be willing to bet that everyone who comes to Bailey’s lives within a three-mile radius of upper Queen Anne. If you didn’t, you’d probably never venture in. It’s not the sort of place where enthusiasts congregate to taste the latest boutique pinot noirs from Oregon. I always take a book, but a lot of times I find myself staring at one page while I listen to the guys debate obscure sports trivia or brag about their kids’ free-throw averages.

Girlfriends gather at the big tables by the fireplace to gossip and complain about their boyfriends while a group of older women calling themselves the “Thursday Night Grannies” shoot pool and exchange recipes for things like Mississippi Mud Cake and Baked Artichoke Dip.

I don’t get involved in a lot of conversation, except sometimes with Mac and the other bartender. Kenny’s older, maybe around fifty, short and husky, with thinning dark hair, watery blue eyes, and a nose that looks like it’s been broken at least twice. He used to box, but now he just coaches kids at the community center on Capitol Hill.

These two work well together in the small space behind the bar, probably because they work on different planes. Kenny’s motions are direct, short and jerky, but efficient, just what you’d expect from a fighter. Mac is tall—over six feet—with an odd, lanky grace. They’re both in constant motion, never getting in each other’s way, never forgetting what they’re about, never reaching for something to find it’s not there. I like to watch them.

Okay, I like to watch him. Mac. I like the way he works, as if there were nothing in the world he’d rather be doing at the moment than getting some old codger his Ballard Bitter. I like it that he gives his full attention to anyone who talks to him, even if the person is obnoxious. The way he gets so caught up in the music that he doesn’t even know he’s mouthing the words.

He told me one afternoon that he’s from New York, that he dropped out of NYU his sophomore year to wander around. He came through Seattle on his way to Alaska and he was low on money, so he took a job tending bar at some place down in Pioneer Square and just stayed.

I’ve heard about his ex-girlfriend Laura, who owns an art gallery in Bellevue. They broke up six months ago after two years of hot-and-cold-running romance. She told him that he was financially challenged and always would be, and she needed someone with a little more ambition.

He’s not racehorse gorgeous like David, but then, who is? Mac has more the look of a hawk, with his long nose and high cheekbones, deep-set gray eyes—a certain fierceness that’s not unattractive.

But Mrs. Morrison didn’t raise any daughters dumb enough to sit around staring at some bartender and wondering how he’d look in those nice faded low-rise jeans if he just took his shirt off.

I’ve told him a little about David. Okay, I’ve told him a lot. It wasn’t intentional, but he’s so easy to talk to, it just slipped out. Anyway, he said he knew I was married the first time he saw me. When I asked him how he could know that, he said, “You looked sad. I see a lot of it going around.”

On Saturdays, I can stay till last call if I want, since I don’t have to rush home and eat dinner and go to work. The music’s every bit as good as Mac promised. I like the way he puts the tapes together.

Sometimes he starts wild, like Billy Idol, and then drops back into the Platters, then punches it up with the Stones, sliding back into mellow with Joni Mitchell. Other times he’ll kick off with something sad and slow like “That’s How Strong My Love Is” by Otis Redding, and gradually work up to Chuck Berry or Eric Clapton. If he gets on a roll, there might be a solid hour of Motown, or the British Invasion, or surf music, but usually it’s an interesting mix.

And every so often he’ll come down to my end of the bar and say, “You like this one?” I’ll have to stop and listen and figure out that The Drifters are singing “There Goes My Baby.” Then I’ll say, yes, I do like it, and he’ll point out to me that the lyric is actually in blank verse.

Or he’ll say, “Wyn. Check out the kick-ass horn section on this Otis Redding. See how they echo the lyrics? The way they pull you right into the next line?”

Usually, Saturday night the place is packed, but tonight’s the finals of the high school district basketball tournament, so a lot of people are at the game. He’s playing early Dylan from
Blonde on Blonde
and
Highway 61 Revisited.
I’m in the middle of a P. D. James mystery, Superintendent Dalgliesh explaining to Sergeant Martin why the blackmailer had killed the head of the clinic, when Mac raps his knuckles on the bar in front of me.

“Hungry?”

“I’m getting around to it. But don’t bring me any more peanuts. I’ll just eat them.”

“You want to go get Italian with Kenny and me?” “Where?”

“Lofurno’s. Down on Fifteenth. You can either go with us after we close up or we’ll stop by your place about one-thirty.”

It doesn’t occur to me to wonder how he knows where I live until he’s at the front door. He’s lounging against the porch rail, and when he reaches for the visor of his baseball cap, the picture stops rolling and comes into perfect focus. I stare at him.

“Oh my God.”

“What’s wrong?”

“You delivered my firewood. That’s why you didn’t have to ask where I lived.”

The corners of his eyes crinkle with amusement. “Took you long enough.”

“Your hair. It was really long.”

“That was the day before my annual shearing.”

“Why didn’t you say something before?”

“Well …” He sticks his hands down into his jeans pockets. “I had the distinct impression that you were pretty grossed out that day.”

“Grossed out? I thought you were the psycho-killer handyman.”

His knees bend when he laughs. Then I’m laughing, too, and shortly we’re both bent double, wiping tears away. I recover myself, pull the
door shut, turning the key in the dead bolt. “Come on, Kenny probably thinks you got lost.”

We step off the porch and crunch about halfway down the gravel drive before he says, “Kenny bailed on us. His wife wanted him home tonight.” He brushes a hemlock branch aside for me to pass by.

“I didn’t realize he was married.”

“Is this okay?”

“As long as they’re happy.”

A battered, white pickup truck noses up to the curb. It looks held together with barbed wire and chewing gum, and the left-rear fender is gray with primer.

“My God, it’s the Millennium Falcon.”

“Sorry, the Beamer’s in the shop this week.”

I climb in. “What
is
this thing?”

“An Elky.” When he slams the door, I half expect the window to fall out.

I sit running my index finger over the tuck-and-roll vinyl upholstery while he walks around to the driver’s side and gets in. “What’s an Elky?”

“El Camino 454 SS. Nineteen seventy-one,” he says proudly. The engine hacks and strains and dies. Three times.

“Do you realize what the emissions on this thing must be like?”

“This truck and I have been through a lot together.”

“There’s probably a hole in the ozone layer with your name on it.” On the fourth try, it kicks in. He puts it in drive and we pull away from the curb. “In seventy-one, nobody was thinking about hydrocarbons and nitrous oxides and particulate—And what kind of gas mileage do you get?”

We stop at the corner and he looks over at me. “I think of it as recycling. If I wasn’t driving it, it’d be rusting in somebody’s front yard.”

Lofurno’s is another place that you’d never find by accident. Just driving by on Fifteenth, you wouldn’t notice the peeling, gray clapboard building
huddled at the foot of a bluff. And if you did notice, you’d probably think it was vacant. There’s no sign, no visible window lights, only a few cars in the muddy parking lot. In a linoleum-floored hall just inside the front door, a bare lightbulb hangs from a black cord. On the left is a plain wooden door, to the right a flight of stairs.

Mac opens the door into what could be a movie set for a speakeasy. The air is heavy with garlic and cigarette smoke, warmly lit by amber lamps. A black woman in purple chiffon sits at a baby grand piano, sipping a clear liquid that’s too viscous to be water. Her hair is silver, but her face is smooth and ageless. She winks at Mac, brings her cigarette to her mouth with a jeweled hand and takes a drag, exhaling a slow stream. Two couples sit at the dark-wood bar that runs the length of the room, and one of the guys looks up when we come in.

“Hey, Mac. How’s it goin’?” He slides off his stool and lumbers over, hitching up his pants. He looks like Victor Mature, with those sculpted lips and a large, handsome nose, black eyes, and a wave of steel-gray hair breaking over his forehead. They do this shoulder-clasping thing that I’ve never seen anywhere except in movies about the Mafia. His name is Tony—what else?—and when Mac introduces me, Tony gives me this kind of macho nod that reminds me of an old joke about Italian foreplay. Then he picks up two menus and leads us to one of the high-back booths opposite the bar. In a few minutes, a waiter in a black vest and a long white apron brings a bottle of Chianti and two glasses.