I read the name of the place, carefully stenciled on to one of the front windows. NAZIR’S BAKED GOODS.
So much for the idea that nothing ever changed around here.
The door was unlocked, and I stuck my head inside.
‘You open?’ I called.
I saw a young woman’s head come up in the softly lit kitchen area behind the counter. She had jet-black hair, tied up in back, but not covered with a hairnet or a baker’s hat. Her eyes were more black than dark brown, unless it was just the lighting. Her short white tee-shirt sleeves were rolled up almost to her shoulders. She was small. Thin and small.
‘Not quite,’ she called back. With some kind of accent, but I couldn’t place it. ‘We open at seven. But … what do you want? The Danish are still in the oven, but the donuts are done. You just want coffee and a donut?’
Suddenly I wanted coffee and a donut more than I’d wanted to get out of this town as a kid. More than I’d wanted a cigarette while talking to Ben. It had been days since I’d enjoyed the smallest luxury or felt any pleasure at all. Coffee and a donut suddenly loomed like the promised land. I would be maddeningly incomplete until I reached them.
I wanted to say, You have no idea how much. But I didn’t want her to think I was some kind of freak.
‘That would be great,’ I said.
I closed the door behind me and approached her counter. The display case was not yet filled with donuts. They were still on racks in the back, with her.
‘What do you want?’ she asked. ‘We have glazed,
crullers,
powdered sugar, cinnamon twists … no jelly-filled yet. I haven’t had time to fill them.’
Again I struggled with her accent, but it just felt unfamiliar.
‘What’s good?’ I asked, feeling about as adept at conversation as my brother Ben.
‘It’s all good. But the glazed are still warm. Something special about eating a donut when it’s still warm.’
‘Glazed, then.’
She pulled a little individual sheet of tissue paper out of a box and used it to pick up a donut without touching it. She placed it on a small paper plate for me, leaving the tissue wrapped around its sides.
‘Help yourself to coffee. Oh. Do you need me to put out sugar or milk?’
‘No. That’s fine. Just black. Thanks. What do I owe you?’
‘I haven’t opened the cash register yet. You can pay on your way out.’
I’d actually intended to take my coffee and donut to go. But, since I couldn’t pay for them until after seven, I sat.
I sipped the coffee. It was dark and strong, and made from some kind of good quality imported beans. Definitely not gas-station coffee, which I’d been subsisting on for days. I took a bite of the glazed donut, and my eyes literally tried to roll back in my head, it was that good.
I looked up to see her watching me.
‘You’ve created magic,’ I said.
‘It’s just fresher than you’re used to.’
Then I sat in silence for a minute or two, looking out the window. A few cars rolled by, but it didn’t seem like enough. I drank and wolfed, treating the food and drink like a lifeline. I consumed them like a dying man who thinks he might still, just barely, be able to save himself.
And then, predictably, they were gone. And I missed them.
I got up and poured myself a coffee refill.
‘Another one?’ she asked. ‘You seem hungry.’
‘That would be great.’
‘I have some cream-cheese Danish just ready to come out.’
I watched her pull on a long hot-mitt and slide a tray out of the oven. She set the tray on her wooden work table and levered a spatula under the biggest, nicest Danish. I brought her my paper plate, so as not to be wasteful, and she tipped the Danish on to it.
‘Careful,’ she said. ‘Hot.’
I sat back down with it, watching her roll out a big piece of dough and then cut it, with quick motions of a knife, into pieces whose purpose I didn’t understand.
I was wondering if she was younger than me – and if so by how much – when she spoke.
‘You’re new in town,’ she said, with the accent that I still hadn’t figured out.
‘No, I’m old in town. I was born here. I went off to college six years ago and never came back.’
‘Until now,’ she said, looking up from her work.
‘Yes, until now.’
I wasn’t going to answer any more questions unless asked.
‘Why now?’ she asked a moment later.
‘My mother died.’
‘Oh. I’m so sorry. I should never have asked.’
‘No, it’s OK. So I promised myself I was done with this place for ever. And I built a whole new life. And now all of a sudden the new life is gone, and I’m back here, and I’m stuck.’
‘Why stuck? Why can’t you go again, after honoring your mother?’
‘Because somebody has to take care of my brother. And nobody else wants the job.’
‘Is he much younger, your brother?’
‘No. He’s older, in fact. I think he just turned thirty. Unless I’m off by a year. No. I’m not. He’s six years older. So he just turned thirty. Last month.’
And I hadn’t so much as sent him a two-dollar card.
‘If he’s older, then … Oh!’ she said suddenly. ‘I know who you are. You’re Ben’s brother.’
Small towns. Gotta love ’em.
‘You know Ben?’
‘Sure, everybody knows Ben. The bag boy. Over at Gerson’s Market. He’s very sweet. Everybody likes him. I heard about his mother. Your mother. Very sad. She was very young. I’m sorry for your loss.’
I had no idea what to say. So I said nothing. I watched
her
load tray after tray of donuts into the display case. But then, when she was done, I decided it didn’t look like enough donuts. Not for a thriving bakery on a Saturday morning. Then again, based on the number of customers she had at opening – and it was by then a minute or two after seven – this was hardly a thriving bakery.
‘You don’t look like Ben,’ she said, without looking up from her work. ‘He’s so tall. And you’re …’
‘Puny?’
‘I was going to say, compact.’
‘We’re only half-brothers. We had different fathers.’
She leaned her bare arms on to the clear glass counter and looked right into my eyes. I looked away. I’m still not sure why.
‘I heard a rumor about Ben’s brother, but maybe it’s one of those things that people say in a small town, and maybe it’s not even true.’
‘That’s all very possible,’ I said. ‘What did you hear?’
‘That you worked on the one-hundred-and-fifth floor of one of the World Trade Center buildings, and so I thought probably Ben’s brother is dead.’
‘That last part didn’t quite pan out.’
‘The rest is true?’
‘No. I worked on the one-hundred-and-fourth floor.’
‘Seriously?’
‘It’s not the kind of thing people joke about these days.’
‘So you weren’t at work when it happened.’
‘I was trying to be.’ I stopped dead for a minute, gauging how much of this I was really prepared to tell. Testing it like an old manual dipstick in a gasoline tank. ‘I was doing my best to get out the door. And then the phone rang. And I was late. And so I almost didn’t get it. I almost let it go. But then for some reason I did. Get it. And it was my old next-door neighbor. Telling me about my mom. Telling me he had Ben, and he wasn’t willing to have him much longer. So I called in to work and started booking a flight. Of course all the flights were grounded before the morning was half-over …’
I was careful not to look at her as I spoke. I looked down at my Danish, touched it. It had cooled to eating temperature. I wolfed it down in six bites. It was incredible.
When I finished, and looked up, she was still leaning on the counter watching me.
‘So your mother saved your life,’ she said.
‘Not purposely. But yeah.’
‘How do you know not purposely?’
‘She couldn’t have known.’
‘How do you know what people can know? People can do all manner of things if it’s important enough. If a mother can lift a car off her son, maybe she can die at just the right time to save him.’
I didn’t like talking about my mom. To put it as politely as possible, I hadn’t broken through to any kind of acceptance in the last four days. I was still firmly planted in the initial stage of grief: denial. Her death
was
still something I was dreaming. A bad dream. But a dream, nonetheless.
‘You really think that’s possible?’ I asked, and then slugged down the last of my coffee.
She walked around the counter, and for one awful moment I thought she was coming right at me. That she might touch me, try to comfort me. Some kind of unbearable human interaction like that. Instead, she flipped on the lights in the seating area. I winced, and covered my eyes with one hand.
‘Sorry,’ she said. ‘You never know. In a world like this, you never know what’s possible. So I figure, don’t say it’s possible, because you don’t know. But, then again, don’t say it’s not possible. Because you don’t know that, either.’
Suddenly, I couldn’t get out of there fast enough.
‘What do I owe you for all this?’
‘On the house,’ she said, walking back to her own side of the counter.
‘Seriously? Why?’
‘Because your mother just died, and you came home all the way from New York to take care of your brother, Ben. And so I say the least somebody can do is give you coffee and something to eat.’
I thanked her and ran. Or nearly ran. I wondered if she was as aware as I was of my sudden desperate need to get away.
I looked back through the window and saw her looking out at me. Watching me go.
I read the name of the bakery again. Nazir’s. That and the accent came together in my brain. And it answered a question. It explained why nobody else but me had come in for coffee and a donut that morning.
I stuck my head back in the door.
‘Where are you from?’ I asked.
‘Wichita.’
‘I meant originally. Not that I care.’
Her black eyes burned right through me.
‘You care.’
‘Not in a bad way, I don’t.’
She turned her eyes back down to her table again. ‘Egypt,’ she said. ‘We are Egyptian. Naturalized. We are not terrorists.’
I didn’t ask who the other part of ‘we’ was.
‘I’m sorry. I really wasn’t meaning to pry.’
‘What did you do there?’
It was too out of context. It sailed right over my head.
‘What did I do where?’
‘On the one-hundred-and-fourth floor of the World Trade Center.’
‘Oh. That. Advertising. Hatcher, Swift & Dallaire. It’s an ad agency. Or … I guess it
was
an ad agency. A good one. I was lucky to work there.’
‘You’re young to be a New York ad man.’
‘That’s why it was lucky.’
I drove home – back – thinking that, in New York, people would get the difference between a terrorist and
a
naturalized Egyptian. And maybe even care. But this was not New York.
I was guessing Nazir’s Baked Goods had been having trouble with cash flow for … oh, about four days. Assuming they hadn’t been all along.
When I got back, I found myself curled in the middle of the living room rug. Literally. I don’t remember getting there. I just found myself there. I just came to awareness on my side on the rug, in a fetal position. I don’t think I fell, because nothing hurt. I think I climbed down there. But I have no memory.
I shook, and I sweated, and at one point I buried my face against my own knees and let loose a throat-straining scream. One good pull-every-muscle-in-my-body scream.
Call it a delayed reaction.
IT WAS THREE
days after the towers fell, and I’d been half-walking, half-hitchhiking for about an hour. I mean, since my last ride had dropped me off. Not in total. In total I’d been hitchhiking for most of three days.
Three days ago, when I’d been closer to New York, my thumb and I had been greeted like a civilian survivor of an honorable and justified war. But I was very far from New York by now. In fact, I had only about five miles left to go.
It was also nearly nine o’clock, and dark. People don’t like to pick up male hitchhikers after dark. Doesn’t let them get a good look at the hitchhiker first.
The car was more like a Jeep or a Land Rover, very old and hulking. I turned when I heard the poorly muffled motor, and stuck my thumb out. The headlights nearly blinded me. I squinted into the light, and watched him roar by without even slowing down. Then, a split second later, the brakes squealed as the monster
skidded
to a stop. While I was wondering what to make of this, the driver threw into reverse and backed up to where I was standing.
I waited while he leaned over and rolled down the old-fashioned, low-tech crank window.
‘Rusty?’
‘Oh,’ I said. ‘It’s you. Larry.’
Larry Del Veccio was one of the guys I’d gone to high school with. This may sound like a remarkable coincidence. But in a town with a population of 2,250, not so startling.
‘I go by Russell now,’ I said. Which
so
did not matter in that moment.
‘Sorry about the headlights. Have to keep ’em on bright because one of the low-beams is burned out. Get in, man. You’re going home, right?’
‘I’m going … yeah. To … the house. My mom’s house. You know.’
I refused to call it home.
‘Get in.’
I observed myself, as if through someone else’s eyes, as I got in, levering my huge backpack over the passenger’s seat. My lack of sleep was catching up with me big.
‘Really sorry about your mom,’ he said as he gunned the big beast back out on to the little highway.
‘Thanks.’
‘So unexpected.’
‘It was.’
‘She was so young. Or at least she seemed pretty young.’
‘She was fifty-four.’
‘That’s young. I mean, to die.’
‘It is.’
Larry pulled a pack of Marlboros out of his shirt pocket, and pressed the dashboard lighter in with a click. I think he was trying to keep busy. I think conversing with me was not soaking up enough of his evening.
‘Vince and I went by and saw Ben,’ he said, gearing up for another try.
‘That was nice of you. How does he seem?’
‘I don’t know. The same.’