The Patisserie Across the Street

The patisserie opened on a Saturday, and the town behaved as though a circus had come. Nora watched it from behind her own freshly cleaned window. She had spent six days getting Hartley's ready — scrubbing the case, replacing the bulb that turned everything sallow, baking until her shoulders ached. She had reopened on Thursday to a respectable trickle of regulars who hugged her and called her by her grandmother's name twice each by accident. But Saturday belonged to Theo. There was a line. An actual line, out the door of the patisserie and down past the tax office, people Nora half-recognized standing in the cold to hand money to a stranger. The shopfront had been painted the soft grey-green of expensive things. In gold script the window said MARCHETTI, and below it, smaller, fine pastries & coffee. Through the glass Nora could see the cases lit like jewelry, the pastries lined up in their disciplined rows. "He's got a machine that makes the coffee with a picture in the foam," said Mrs. Okafor, who had come into Hartley's for her usual seeded cob and had stayed to narrate. "A fern. My grandson showed me. You wouldn't get a fern out of that machine of yours, Nora." "My machine makes coffee," said Nora. "Ferns are free outside." Mrs. Okafor patted her hand, which was somehow worse than if she'd argued. By noon Nora had sold eleven loaves, six buns, and a birthday cake ordered before the funeral. By noon Theo had, as far as she could tell, sold the contents of an entire other economy. She told herself the novelty would wear off. She told herself people would tire of paying four pounds for a thing the size of a plum. She told herself a great many sensible things and believed approximately none of them, because she had grown up in this town and she knew exactly how it worked: it loved anything new, fiercely and briefly, the way a child loves a balloon. At three o'clock the line was gone and the afternoon went grey, and Theo Marchetti crossed the road and walked into her shop. He had taken off the good coat. Underneath it he was just a man in a flour-dusted apron, sleeves shoved up, and he looked tired in a way that made him slightly more bearable and Nora resented that too. "Truce flag," he said, and held up a paper bag. "I'm not eating anything you've made." "It's not mine. It's yours. I bought it." He set the bag on the counter. "An hour ago. One of your cinnamon buns. I wanted to see what I was up against." Nora folded her arms. "And?" Theo was quiet a moment. He had dark eyes and he used them like a man deciding how honest to be, and then, to her surprise, he chose all the way honest. "It's not pretty," he said. "The glaze is uneven. You over-prove your dough by about ten minutes — the crumb's a little coarse. If I served it I'd be ashamed of it." "Get out of my —" "It's the best thing I've eaten since I came to this town," he said, over her, plainly, like it cost him something. "I ate it standing up on the street and I forgot to be a snob about it. I haven't done that in years." He looked at her, and the practiced charm was nowhere in it. "I came over to ask what's in it." Nora's mouth was open. She closed it. Across the street, through two panes of glass, the gold script of his window caught the last of the light. MARCHETTI. Fine pastries. A man who had never been hungry, she'd said, and she had been so sure. "Cardamom," she said, before she had decided to. "There's cardamom in it. Just a little. My grandmother put it in and never told anyone, and the recipe's in a tin I can't open yet, so it's the only one I have by heart." Theo nodded slowly, like she had handed him something heavier than a word. "Thank you," he said. And then, because he was still himself: "Your glaze is still uneven." "Get out of my shop," said Nora, but there was no weight in it this time, and they both heard that, and neither of them said so.