Three
T he alarm buzzed angrily from its perch on the bedside table. Lauren opened one eye and stared at the green numbers flashing at her, reminding her it was four in the morning. She closed her eye and breathed in, filling her lungs with the cool morning air. The snooze button, even if it only gave her ten minutes more of sleep, was a luxury she couldn’t afford. Another deep breath and she kicked the blankets from her body before rolling off the bed and to her feet.
Every morning it was the same thing. If she didn’t kick the covers off, she’d find an excuse to burrow back underneath them and if she didn’t roll out of bed, she’d sit on the edge and stare at the empty wall.
Next on the list was the walk down the cold hallway into the equally cold bathroom with the hexagon-shaped tiles on the floor that were so old they’d skipped right over retro to antique. She reached into the shower, which was just a pipe attached to an old claw-foot bathtub in dire need of a new coating, and turned on the hot spigot. Yes, the shower was so old, it used a hot and cold tap to regulate the temperature coming out of the decrepit shower head. It also took half a lifetime to heat up. While the water warmed up, Lauren stripped out of her sleep pants and shirt and tossed them into the almost over-flowing hamper. The hamper could take maybe two more items, if they were on the small side, before it lost its structural integrity and Lauren had to do a load of laundry.
Fog grew from the bottom of the mirror above the sink. The signal to get into the shower. If she waited any longer, she wouldn’t have enough hot water for her shower and if she jumped in before the steam appeared on the glass, in need of a coat of paint on the back to remind it that its job was to reflect, she risked a case of hypothermia.
As she stood under the running water, Lauren stared at the mildew and hard water stains marring the grout between the tiles lining the walls of the shower. No matter how often she cleaned or hard she scrubbed, the stains remained.
She closed her eyes and imagined they weren’t there.
It didn’t work.
Her imagination failed because she couldn’t erase the image of the stains from her mind. Just like she couldn’t erase the stains from the tiles and grout.
She looked up at the shower head and reminded herself she needed to poke out the lime deposits inside the small holes the water came out of. Before long, the water would be a trickle instead of the light spray.
The shower was old. Older than her grandparents, probably. It was one of those ancient fixtures that was part of a clawfoot cast-iron bathtub. Lauren was paranoid the floor wasn’t sturdy enough to hold the monstrosity and that the tub would fall through the substrate while she was sitting at the kitchen table, just below the upstairs bathroom, eating dinner.
But her friend Jake assured her that the old house was sturdier than anything built now, and the bathtub wouldn’t come crashing down on her head. Just to be sure and to make Lauren happy, he’d pulled out a ladder and checked the kitchen ceiling.
Not that she’d be able to afford to fix any problem if there was one. Even if Jake didn’t charge her for his time, which he wouldn’t, he never did. She wouldn’t be able to afford the materials. What didn’t go to pay for groceries and house necessities went into keeping the little bakery and coffee shop she’d hoped would be her salvation open. Unfortunately, the bakery had turned into her albatross. Even with Jake helping with what he could, the small, converted house just off Main Street was the definition of a money pit. One problem after another had shown up after she signed the loan papers. She couldn’t afford to lease a storefront on Main Street. The rent was out of this world and seemed to only be getting higher. But she could afford to buy the converted house that had been a gift store, then a cafe, then a distillery storefront, then back to a cafe, and was now a bakery and coffee shop. Lauren’s bakery and coffee shop.
She knew it was going to be tough the first year, but she was going on year four now and it hadn’t gotten any less tough. That all being said, she wouldn’t give up Beans & Buns for anything. Not even if it was the only business in town that was still open. Which seemed to be more and more likely as the shops on Main Street closed their doors when the rent got to be impossibly high for them.
Lauren grabbed her shampoo. At the same time, she was squeezing a healthy amount into her palm, the pipes whined in protest. She told herself not to worry about the pipes. At least not until something happened, and they broke. And hey, if the pipes broke, she wouldn’t have to worry about the bathroom floor collapsing into the kitchen, not when the house was being flooded. Too bad the previous owners of her shop converted the upstairs into office and storage space and the little bathroom no longer had a shower. If they hadn’t been so intent on removing any evidence of the building’s origin as a house, she and her father could have moved into the shop. Not that her father would ever agree to such a suggestion.
She washed her hair and body, rinsed the suds away, then jumped out of the shower and dried off with a thin cotton towel that had seen better days.
There wasn’t time to worry about the worst that could happen. She needed to get to the shop and make the cookies, bread, and breakfast pastries for the day. The people in town might not want to spend their money on scratch cakes, but they had no problem buying cookies and bread.
Wrapping the towel around her body, she hurried from the bathroom to her bedroom.
Lauren pulled on a pair of jeans and a long-sleeved tee-shirt with the shop’s name, Beans & Buns, just above the left breast. She twisted her shoulder-length brown hair into a bun and held it in place with a hair elastic and bobby pins. As soon as she finished dressing, she grabbed her keys, purse, and cell phone and left her room. The floor creaked with each step she took, which did nothing to ease her fear that the ceiling wouldn’t eventually come crashing down, despite Jake’s assurances it wouldn’t.
Before walking out the front door, she detoured into the kitchen. She pulled the sliced turkey, mayo, lettuce, cheese, and tomatoes from the fridge and made a sandwich using a loaf of 3-day-old bread she refused to sell at the bakery. After putting the finishing touches on the sandwich, she wrapped it and the plate it was on with Saran Wrap and put it in the fridge, along with the ingredients she had pulled out to make it.
Lauren grabbed a pen and scribbled a quick note to her dad and stuck it to the fridge door with a magnet.
‘Dad-
Sandwich in fridge.
See you at dinner.
-Love Lauren’
Her dad could make his own lunch, but she enjoyed the morning ritual. Besides, he always made dinner for her. It was his way of showing her he loved her. And Lauren making her dad lunch was her way of showing him she loved him.
The car she learned how to drive in greeted her mockingly on the driveway. The Mercury Sable was only a few years younger than Lauren, but at least it got her to her destinations most of the time. Not having a vehicle in Iron Creek wasn’t an option. And there wasn’t even a taxi, just a guy who would come and pick you up at a bar and drive you home for ten dollars. There wasn’t any bus service either, except for school buses, and the only time they were used to transport anyone other than students was during the Smoked Meat Fest when Main Street was closed to traffic and the merchants needed to get festival goers into town without blocking the roads up with traffic. That didn’t mean the roads never saw the wheels of buses, though. Those belonged to the luxury coaches seniors rented to take them to the casino on the nearby reservation.
The Mercury turned over on her first attempt at starting the car. She hoped it was a good omen, since it normally took two or three tries before the engine turned over.
The drive to Beans & Buns took less than ten minutes, even with the one traffic light on Main Street being red. On the way to her bakery, Lauren counted the shops still in business on Main Street.
Five.
The same as yesterday.
Which was good. Or at least she supposed it was good.
Last month there had been six. So maybe it wasn’t as good as it could have been.
Lauren didn’t want to dwell on the relative goodness or badness of the number of shops still open on Main Street. By now, she wasn’t sure what was worse. A slowly dying town or a town that collapsed overnight when the largest and main employer closed and let all the employees go.
Beans & Buns was a block off Main Street, far enough away for locals to be willing to stop by between June and August, but close enough for the summer invaders to wander by. Except last summer was the coolest on record and there weren’t as many invaders as usual. The fickle finger of weather had dashed the hope of the three months during the summer carrying Lauren through the rest of the year.
She pulled her car into the small lot behind the building, parked, and hurried into the dark building. Before she even turned on any lights, she raced to turn off the alarm. times she hadn’t been fast enough and one of the town’s police officers stopped by to make sure everything was fine. Not that the alarm company called the police. The alarm was loud enough for them to hear it a few blocks away and figured it was best to be safe rather than sorry. But Lauren hated that their visits were always for nothing and worried the one time the alarm would be real, they’d take their time getting to the shop because they expected usual false alarm.
As soon as the alarm was disarmed, Lauren flipped on the lights, threw her belongings onto one of the boxes filling the back room, turned on the commercial bun coffee maker, then headed for the kitchen where she turned on the ovens and the radio. With Jake’s help, they moved all the old kitchen equipment from the back of the building to the small area in the front that had windows on the two exterior walls. Jake had added a window to the interior wall so customers could watch Lauren bake.
After washing up and tying a bandanna over her hair, she pulled the ingredients for chocolate chip cookies from the cooler and laid them out on the large marble counter in the middle of the room. The giant Hobart mixer, that was definitely older than she was, came to life as she added the sugar and butter until a nice creamy mixture formed, then came the rest of the liquids. She added baking soda dissolved in hot water (her secret to making the cookies crispy on the edges, but soft in the center), then followed it with the rest of the dry ingredients.
When the batter was finished, she spooned it all into a large mixing bowl then grabbed the bowl from the Hobart and lugged it to the sink where she’d wash and dry it so she could start on the oatmeal raisin cookies while the chocolate chip cookies were baking.
The system was perfect. By the time a tray of cookies finished baking, she’d have another tray ready to go.
For the next hour, she rotated the baking trays from the counter to the oven to the cooling rack while mixing the cookie dough between those three steps.
After finishing the last tray of oatmeal raisin cookies, Lauren pulled the now-cooled tray of chocolate chip cookies from the rack and carefully arranged them on the tray that would go in the display case.
As soon as she stepped out of the warm and cozy kitchen, she knew something was wrong. The rest of the shop was freezing. Before she forgot what she was doing, Lauren put the cookies in the case, then checked the vent.
No air.
Maybe it was just the pilot light?
Lauren hated going to the cellar. They’d tried to make it more welcoming with an old couch and some lights and chairs, but no one wanted to take their breaks there and Lauren didn’t blame them. The cellar was right out of a horror movie and nothing they did helped to make it less terrifying.
With flashlight in hand, she made her way down the steep stairs and shivered as the cool, damp air slammed into her. The heater was an old unit that required priming and pushing buttons that only worked a quarter of the time to start up the pilot light. But it still worked, or at least it had until this morning, so replacing it had slipped down her worry list.
She bent down on her hands and knees and peered at the flickering flame of the pilot light. Its presence eliminated the only reason she could think of why the main part of the bakery didn’t have heat. Thankfully, she had a last resort. It would cost her, but nothing more than a dozen cookies and a home-cooked dinner. She pushed up to her feet, pulled her cellphone from her back pocket, and unlocked it with a swipe of her thumb.
Jake’s number was second on her list of contact numbers. Not, because her contacts were in alphabetical order, but because she called him more than all the other numbers in her phone except for one. Her father.
“What’s wrong?” He picked-up after the second ring.
“It’s the heater and the pilot light is still on.”
“I’ll be there in ten minutes.”
It took him fifteen minutes, but Lauren wasn’t going to point that out to him. Jake was doing her a favor.