Bread Alone (46 page)

I take a sip of wine, turn partway around on my chair. “Pretty quiet for a Saturday, isn’t it?”

Kenny shrugs. “We get the regulars during the week, but folks came on the weekend to hear what Mac was going to come up with next. Mr. Cool”—he nods slightly toward Shawn—”don’t know his arse from deep center field, music-wise. His idea of oldies is Twisted Sister. And God knows, I’m not much with the tunes. We played Mac’s last two tapes till people got sick of them. I guess I’m going to have to see about ordering some tapes from somewhere.”

“How is he?

“Mac? Fine.”

“What’s he doing?”

“He didn’t say much. I guess he’s working on Bensinger’s place, mostly.”

I eat another peanut and drink some more wine before I ask, “Did he say anything about coming back this fall?”

Kenny shakes his head. “He won’t be back.” He starts loading dirty glasses into the tray he just emptied.

“You don’t think he will?”

“He’s talking about driving up to Alaska in September. He always wanted to go up there, you know.”

I rip off a damp corner of the napkin, roll it into a little crumb. “Does he have a phone or anything?”

Kenny gives me a smile that skates on the edge of pity. “Nope. There’s an emergency number, but it’s just a rental agency. You want it? Or you want me to tell him anything next time he calls?”

I think for a minute. “No. Just tell him hi for me.”

Even though it’s the end of June, it’s still cool enough at night to use the woodstove. I light a little pile of kindling. When it’s burning fast, I open
the door and lay a chunk of alder inside. For a minute, the fire dies, as if smothered, then the log catches.

So Mac’s finally going to Alaska. I rummage through my tape box in search of the last tape he gave me. I’ve never played it. I turn it over to read the card and I have to smile. Title, artist, record label, and running time painstakingly printed for each song. I lay it back in the box and pull out Mozarts Symphony no. 40 in G Minor. I always liked that one.

I lie down on the futon, pull a blanket over me, tired but not sleepy. Through the glass doors of the woodstove, the flames lap at the wood the way you lick an ice cream cone. It doesn’t even appear to be burning till you look up and it’s down to papery white ash.

July. Toulouse was in the middle of the worst heat wave in recent memory. The bakery, of course, was an inferno. Phillipe and Yvon wore shorts and went shirtless, but I didn’t have that option. I wore white cotton overalls with a sleeveless T-shirt. My hair was twisted up and covered with a scarf soaked in cold water. The scarf usually stayed wet for less than thirty minutes before the water evaporated, to be replaced by sweat. We drank gallons of water all day long. I thought I’d never feel cool again.

One morning I arrived at the
boulangerie
early to find Jean-Marc loading the oven. I stood in the doorway to the
fournil
watching him. He wore his usual white pants, white shirt, white apron, and he seemed oblivious to the sweat pouring off him as he worked in the oven’s fiery blast. When the last of the dough was in, he closed the heavy door and turned away.

“Bon matin,
Wynter.” As if he knew I’d been standing there.

“Bon matin,
Jean-Marc.” Not even 6
a.m.,
and I was already wilted and cranky. He motioned me out the back door. Even in the alley, it was oppressive. No breeze. I leaned my head back against the wall, closed my eyes.

“It’s hotter than hell,” I said in my best colloquial French.

He smiled and mopped his face with a white towel.

“Oui, c’est vrai.
But it is the fire that make the bread, Wynter,” he said.

Nineteen

I
n composition class, they tell you that a cliché is a disaster. The literary equivalent of farting at the dinner table or walking out of the bathroom with the hem of your dress tucked neatly into your panty hose. What they don’t tell you is that clichés have become clichéd because they’re true. Because they’re exactly how most people act.

Like in every romance novel worth its satin bodice, there comes a time when the heroine’s lover takes a hike. Crazed with longing, she—get ready, here’s the cliché—searches for his face in every crowd.

So even though Mac’s been gone for five weeks and he’s never called, and I have no reason to believe he’d be in Seattle, and he was never even my lover, I find myself looking for him. Scanning faces on the street, at the park, in restaurants, waiting for the bus, in line at the grocery store, every time I pass Bailey’s. Every time I see a tall man in faded jeans and a blue windbreaker or a black baseball cap, every time I see a white El Camino, I have to look, even though it defies logic.

On July first, I call my mother. Just to say hi. I’ve been doing that every couple of weeks since I came home, and it makes her so absurdly happy, I have to wonder why I never did it before.

After the usual pleasantries, I ask, “What are you guys doing for the Fourth?”

“We’re going down to Long Beach.”

“Long Beach?”

“We’re spending the night on the
Queen Mary.
They shoot fireworks off from the bridge and they have parties in all the different restaurants.”

“Sounds like fun.”

“I think it will be. Gary and Erica and the kids are coming down.”

I nearly choke. “I’m sorry. Did you say Gary and Erica?”

“Yes, we were rather surprised when he told us they wanted to come.” She pauses.

As you should be, Mother. Since two scant months ago he was crawling around naked on my futon and begging me to come to San Francisco.

“I’m not sure what’s going on. For a while I thought he was rather enamored of you.” She waits again. “What ever happened with that?”

“I’ll tell you all about it sometime.”

“He seems like a very sweet boy.”

“He is. Please tell him hi for me. And try to say it in front of Erica.” She gives it her merry laugh. “Will do.”

Seattle is having a heat wave, something I didn’t know was possible. It has to do with a huge high-pressure area stalled between two low-pressure areas, and it’s hanging smack over the city. It’s been miserable for almost a week, high nineties during the day, eighties at night. Not a breath from the Sound to bring relief. Even the water itself looks oddly flat and still. It’s eerie. Everyone says it’s not that unusual, it happens every year or two, but it feels unnatural to me, and I realize that I’ve gotten used to the cool weather. I’m even maybe starting to like it.

Friday is the Fourth of July and the bakery’s closed. I was thinking about going down to the waterfront to watch the fireworks, but Tyler convinces me that I should go with her and Barton the hairdresser—except she calls him a stylist—to Gasworks Park to watch the display
over Lake Union. When they come by for me at six-thirty, it’s so hot that my own sweat hangs in a cloud around me like a personal steam bath.

Barton the stylist is a tall, thin guy with an infectious grin and bleached-blond hair with black roots. He bats his big, dark eyes at me. “I’m Barton. How do you like my shirt?” The shirt in question is a blue Hawaiian number with ugly red flowers all over it.

I laugh. “It’s a great example of the genre.”

“Very tactfully put.” His eyes lock on my hair. “Ooh, what a lot of hair. How I’d love to play with it sometime. Strictly on a professional basis, you understand. Can I touch?” He rubs a piece between his fingers and holds it against his cheek. “ ‘Like a virgin,’ “ he sings. “No perms, no colors. But we can fix that. Let Barton pop your cherry, honey. Strictly on a professional basis, of course.”

“Should we take snacks with us?” I ask on the way to Barton’s green Plymouth Valiant.

“Barton packed us a gourmet picnic,” Tyler says. “With a thermos of his secret-recipe strip-and-go-nakeds.”

“Fat, sugar, alcohol, chocolate, hallucinogenics,” he intones. “All the major food groups.”

Parking is scarce around Lake Union, even under the best of circumstances, so we end up having to schlepp our blankets, basket, and cooler for blocks before we find a patch of grass not occupied by other humans. I’m dripping and miserable and wishing I hadn’t come. Barton’s first official act as host is to pour drinks out of the giant thermos. He’s even brought sprigs of mint for our cups. The concoction is refreshing and lemony; I gulp it down.

“Careful, Wyn, baby,” he warns. “It tastes good, but it’s got the alcohol content of jet fuel.”

I lie down on the blanket, balance the sweating glass on my stomach. “What’s in it? Or is that a trade secret?”

“Basically lemonade, vodka, and beer. ‘It’ll cure whatever ails you,’ as my granny used to say.”

“That one has to be in the granny training manual,” I smile. “Mine used to say it, too.”

“I think mine did, too,” Tyler says, “but she always talked Polack, so I’m not totally sure.”

Barton spreads out the gourmet picnic—two pressurized cans of “cheese product,” a box of Triscuits, and a box of lavosh. A huge bag of popcorn, a small can of almonds. A tin of onion dip with the top peeled back, potato chips, Oreos. A box of peppermints like the ones restaurants give away, giant economy-size bag of M&M’s. A pie plate of homemade brownies, which I’m certain are loaded.

“Ta-da.” He bows with a flourish. “Regional cooking of provincial New Jersey.”

I watch the stars appear in the slowly dimming sky, listen to Tyler and Barton chatter about people they know, reach for the salty almonds once in a while.

“Wyn, darling, you’re so quiet over there in your little corner,” Barton says presently. “Have some food. It’s going to be a while before the show starts.”

“She’s in pain,” Tyler says. “A busted marriage, two boyfriends gone missing.” She squirts some cheese-flavored chemical onto a cracker and hands it to me.

“They weren’t boyfriends. One was my stepbrother. The other was just a friend.”

Barton raises one eyebrow, like Vivien Leigh in
Gone With the Wind.
“My, my, my. I have to say, I admire your style.”

“I just don’t seem to be very smart about men.” I swallow the cracker almost whole to avoid tasting it, take another good swig of my drink.

“Now, there’s NO pity like SELF-pity!” He does a great Ethel Merman. “Barton knows what will make you feel better.” He gets up, comes around behind me. “Sit up, sit up.” When I do, I feel the effects of my one strip-and-go-naked. Before I know what’s happening, he’s taking my hair down, combing it out. “You don’t mind if I play with your hair? A new do always makes us feel better.”

So we sit, listening to jazz from somebody’s boom box, getting high on strip-and-go-nakeds, eating junk food, waiting for the darkness while
Barton braids my hair into lots of skinny braids. I probably look like Medusa, but it does feel good.

Finally, at nine-fifteen, the first salvo goes off from a platform in the middle of the lake. We ooh and aah along with everyone else, but Barton continues to work on my hair. I never tire of watching fireworks. They’re utterly useless, just beauty for its own sake, a life span measured in seconds. I even love the smell of gunpowder and the little black puffs that hang in the sky after the glitter disappears. But tonight they seem to underscore the heat. After the inevitable gut-busting finale, Tyler and Barton start packing up our stuff and talking about going to some club on First Avenue. Portable generators hum as lights go on.

“You guys go ahead,” I say. “I don’t need anything else to drink tonight. I’ll catch a bus home.”

“We can take you home first,” Tyler says.

“I want to sit here awhile. It’s too hot to be inside.”

Barton gives me a hug and adjusts my braids. “This is a whole new you. Totally tribal. Come see me.”

Tyler grins. “You look like Bo freakin’ Derek. Miss Perfect Ten. Watch yourself, babes. Don’t get in trouble with it.”

I laugh, twist my head, whipping the braids from side to side. “feel like a helicopter.”

They disappear into the crowd and I wander over to the kite meadow, a big hill next to the old gasworks. I sit on the grass and watch heads bobbing up and down as people gather their paraphernalia together and disperse lethargically. Kids run away from their parents and slink back, frazzled by the effort. Dogs bark unenthusiastically at each other, moving slowly in the heat. I watch for tall men in black baseball caps. I even see a few, but of course they aren’t him. I know I should get up and leave. Most of the people are gone now except for a few bunches of kids. It’s probably not a good idea to be the last one here, but a few more minutes won’t hurt. I pull my knees up, hug them to my chest, rest my forehead on them, braids falling around me like a curtain.

“Are you all right, miss?”

I look up quickly at a middle-aged couple carrying folding chairs.
He has a crew cut and nice eyes. Her eyes are cautious, like she thinks I’m on a bad drug trip or having a spontaneous abortion. “I’m fine, thanks.”