with a ™ over the i Talbot. The husband-snatching chickie-babe who stole my husband!”
Chapter 2
“’Night, Miz T.”
“Good night, DeVon. Desharee.” I step aside as two-thirds of the night crew troops out the front door of No-Bagel Emporium. DeVon wears camouflage and Desharee’s in skintight jeans and a cropped tee. Neither smiles but I don’t expect it. Generation Z projects a permanent bad mood. I can no longer afford trained staff so we recruit for on-the-job educating. DeVon and Desharee are two of my high school work-study-program students.
Bakers are a breed unto themselves. There are rivalries and rituals among my crew that I don’t need or try to understand. Even so, I can’t keep back a big sigh when spying the ricotta tub on the counter that acts as our “fine” box. The crew is young so we fine a quarter per cuss word to keep things polite. My grandfather didn’t believe in cussing. Must be the only male to grow to manhood in New Jersey and not cuss. So we’ve kept the tradition alive in his honor. Today there’s a five dollar bill sticking out of the ricotta tub.
“You don’t need to know about the Lincoln, Miz T.”
Shemar has poked his head out from the back. “We were breaking it down for the new guy last night. It’s all good.” He makes that sideways-fist-to-the-chest move.
But I’m unconvinced. The night shift is the heart of a bakery, when the mixing and proofing and shaping and baking are done. The proof of success is in the product.
I lift out one of the loaves of sourdough stacked in racks for the morning rush and inspect it. It’s lightly brown, the crust texture thick and craggy. One stroke of a bread knife and the still-warm yeast aroma of fresh bread rises into my nostrils. Got to be in the top three of my favorite smells. I’m an olfactory person. The right smell can send me straight into ecstasy. Whatever occurred last night, Shemar got the job done.
“Would I lie to you, Miz T?”
I look up over my shoulder with a sheepish grin to see Shemar carrying a rack of pastries. “So what was the problem?”
“The fool didn’t feed Ma before he left last night.”
I blanch. “Is she okay?”
“True that. After I was done, he won’t ever forget again.”
Even so, I rush into the back and over to a large plastic tub that contains nothing less than our secret formula for bread-making. Lifting the lid, I lean in and inhale, reassured by its vague brewery aroma.
Every artisan bakery has its own Ma, or bread starter for the uninitiated. The fermentation processes caused by microbes that occur naturally in the environment give each bakery’s Ma and the bread made from it its unique flavor and proofing properties. The rivalry among bakers over their batches of Ma is legendary.
I learned not to say Ma contains “bacteria” after a class of first graders on a field trip to a bakery stampeded out shouting, “The bread’s got a disease!”
With a gloved hand I lift a glob of Ma to test its resilience. Like any living thing Ma must be fed or it will die. We put in fresh flour and stir it several times a day. Our Ma is five years old, and counting.
“You want a chocolate croissant?”
My empty stomach growls in expectation of a backslide in my resolve to lose a few. I loooove Shemar’s chocolate croissants but, “No, thanks.”
He crosses his arms high on his chest and leans back on a slant, giving me a smirk. “Watching your shape?”
I roll my eyes but smile. “How’s Shorty doing?”
Shemar pats our oldest mixer. “Shaking her rump like she’s in a 50 Cent video. Sounds like the gears are chewing on themselves. You are going to order a new mixer, right?”
“Soon.”
Last night I tried to find a younger less-used mixer for sale online. But unless eBay is giving them away, I’m several thousand dollars short of a deal. Plus we need new tables and chairs, a better line of credit, and a new—Sigh.
“What can I do you for, Miz T?”
“Not a thing. I’m just going out front to mainline coffee until time to open.”
“So then, I’m going roll on out of here. See ya!”
Shemar heads the night crew and is the only formally trained baker and pastry chef I have. With his cornrows and FUBU styling, he looks more like a hip-hop star than a baker. Desharee once compared him to D’Angelo. He is all laid-back sultry male. He’s also a dedicated baker with a work ethic of which Trump would approve. Shemar could earn a higher wage in a larger operation but he tells me he’s happy here.
The fact that the staff relates to Shemar makes my life easier. The fact he can get my deliveries to arrive on time makes him invaluable. This is New Jersey, and it seems every transaction has a back end. Sometimes he comes to work suspiciously mellow but I give him great leeway, and he gives give me bread fit for Trump Towers.
As I straighten up a stack of long slim baguettes as part of my morning inventory of breads, I’m reminded how he saved me from falling flat on my face when I went to take part in a Career Day program at a local high school last spring.
When it was my turn for a pitch I could tell by the rise of voices talking over me that I was going to lose out to the more sexy jobs like video store attendant, where slipping a free DVD to a pretty girl looked like a better opportunity for teen mating rituals.
Fortunately, Shemar interrupted my little speech and said, “Let me hit this, Miz T.”
He plucked a long baguette from our display and stepped forward, a calm and smooth presence. Then suddenly he went into hip-hop mode. “Yo, yo, I’ma break it down for you. The boss lady, Miz T, she got a job situation with real po-ten-tial. You feeling me?” Without raising his voice he brought silence to the room.
He held up the baguette. “Making good bread with a hard crust and tender center is like making love. You gotta have the touch, aw-ite.” As he spoke he ran a hand suggestively down its long length. The way he fondled that bread had me glancing nervously at a nearby knot of teachers.
Girls giggled and made yum yum sounds while the guys punched one another and grinned.
“You a baker, you can rest easy in your crib all day, get your party on in the evening, and still be steady stackin’ ends at night. But you got to have the will to learn the skills.”
Afterward, the faculty adviser told me the school frowns on using sex to advance one’s career opportunities. But we had made an impression.
The next afternoon two young men and a young woman in a work-study program showed up at my bakery door. Over the next few days, a dozen more potential employees slouched through my door. Word on the street was we were conducting some sort of kinky sex class. A few stayed when they found out we really did make bread.
Satisfied that we are ready to open, I return to the front where I spy Mrs. Morshheimer tapping on my window, as usual, In hopes that I’ll open early. I smile but shake
