32. Adrian
Adrian
Dona Carmen was in her chair in the corner.
She had been in her chair every morning since she’d re-injured her wrist, directing operations with the calm authority of a woman who considered physical location irrelevant to the exercise of her will.
She wasn’t supposed to be working, and yet, she drank her coffee, watched the bread, and made comments that were technically suggestions yet functionally instructions.
I incorporated the important ones without acknowledging them and nodded at the others without changing anything.
The morning was running well. The pan sobao had come out right. The conchas were proofing correctly. I had a full tray of pastelillos in the oven and another batch of empanada dough resting on the marble.
The rhythm of the kitchen was the thing I had always loved most about it, the way everything had its time, its temperature, and its order. When you understood all three, the kitchen breathed around you like something alive.
Mr. Espinosa arrived at seven-fourteen for his café con leche.
He had been arriving at seven-fourteen every Tuesday for thirty-one years.
He ordered the same thing in the same words, sat at the same table by the window, read his newspaper, and left at seven forty-seven.
He was, as far as I could tell, entirely satisfied with this arrangement and had no plans to change any part of it.
Still, our “four-minute incident” had not been forgotten.
“Good morning, Mr. Espinosa.”
“Good morning, Adrian.” He settled at his table and unfolded his newspaper. “How is Dona Carmen’s wrist?”
“Improving.”
“Good.” He turned a page. “Before the wrist, I was always served by seven-twelve.”
“I know, Mr. Espinosa.”
“The café con leche.”
“I’ll have it right out.”
“No rush,” he said, in the tone of a man for whom rush was irrelevant because the observation had already been made and needed no urgency to support it.
From her chair, Dona Carmen said nothing, but I heard the small sound of her coffee cup being set down, which in her vocabulary was the equivalent of a laugh.
I made Mr. Espinosa’s café con leche and set it before him at seven-seventeen.
He looked at it, then looked at me, then returned to his newspaper, speaking without looking up again. “Three minutes early today.”
“I’m learning.”
“Mmhmm.” He picked up his cup and sucked in a deep breath without taking a sip, an inspector making his contractor sweat, probably for the fun of it.
I went back to the empanada dough.
At nine-fifteen, a regular named Hector came in with a get-well card for Dona Carmen.
Hector had been coming to the panadería for as long as I’d been working there and possibly longer.
He was a retired postal worker who wore the same brand of white polo in varying colors and was unabashedly vocal about every item on the menu.
He presented the card to Dona Carmen with a flourish. She accepted it, opened it, and read it. Then she read it again. Then she turned it around and showed it to me.
Inside the card, in the precise centered typeface of a man who had composed this on a computer and printed it, were the words,
We appreciate your service.
That was the entire message. Four words. Typed. Centered. There was no signature.
I looked at the card, then I looked at Hector.
Hector wore the expression of a man who had put considerable thought into this and was waiting for it to be received at its full value.
“Thank you, Hector,” Dona Carmen said.
“The place isn’t the same without you behind the counter,” he said.
“Adrian has been managing well,” she said.
Hector looked at me and offered a weak smile that didn’t quite reach his eyes. It barely reached his lips. “Your conchas are better than they were last month.”
“Thank you,” I said.
“I didn’t say they were good. I said they were better.”
“I appreciate the distinction,” I said, not bothering to tell him that I’d been making his conchas, despite Dona Carmen running the place, for the better part of the last decade, and that they had not changed one bit in that time. Some battles weren’t worth the fight.
He bought three conchas and left.
Dona Carmen looked at the card one more time, then set it beside her coffee and stared out the window.
She never stared blankly out the window.
The woman rarely sat still for more than a moment.
I was fairly certain something was running through her mind, something she would only speak about when her thoughts were fully proofed, like our bread.
By ten-thirty, the first wave was done.
I cleaned the marble, set the second proof, started the coffee, and sat down across from Dona Carmen at the small corner table where we had ten-thirty coffee most mornings.
This was our time, thirty minutes of not working that was still, in its own way, us working, because the conversations we had at ten-thirty were the ones where the real business of the panadería took place.
I wrapped my hands around my cup as she poured, and we drank in the comfortable silence. Then she set her cup down, released a long breath, and locked her gaze onto mine.
“Adrian, I’ve been thinking.”
She didn’t rush it.
That was the thing about Dona Carmen, she said what she meant at exactly the pace it needed to be said, and you learned that interrupting wasn’t an option and hurrying her was a recipe for disaster.
“My husband wants to travel,” she said. “We’ve talked about it for years, seeing Portugal, Spain, returning to Puerto Rico.” She turned her cup in her hands. “We’re not getting younger.”
I kept quiet because, well, what could I say?
“My wrist,” she said. “It’s not serious, but it has reminded me of something.” She looked at her hand, at the brace she still wore, at the hand that had been making bread in this kitchen for fifty years. “Things end, not badly, just when it’s time.”
“Dona Carmen—”
“Let me finish,” she snapped, then reached out and took my hand, something she’d only done twice in all the years I’d known her.
“You have been running this kitchen for weeks,” she said.
“But, in truth, you’ve been running it for longer than that.
You know this. We both do.” She looked up.
“Mr. Espinosa got his café con leche three minutes early today.”
My brows furrowed. “He mentioned it.”
“He mentioned it because he noticed. He’s been coming here for thirty-one years, and he noticed three minutes.
” She paused, a distant smile filling her eyes.
“The bread is right, Adrian. The conchas are better than last month. Don’t tell Hector I agree with him.
He’s insufferable when he’s right. The empanadas are yours now, not mine.
They have been yours for two years, though you haven’t admitted it. ”
I stared into my coffee.
“I want to retire,” she said. “Not today or next month, but soon. I want you to have this place.”
I was sure I could hear the second proof working in the proofing drawer, the soft sound of something settling correctly into itself.
“My husband has been talking to our accountant,” she said.
“The arrangement he has in mind is favorable. I’m not offering you a gift.
You’ll pay for it, because you should, and because this place deserves to be bought properly and not handed over like something someone is tired of.
The terms are good, generous even, because you are like a son to me.
I want you to know that. You know that, don’t you? ”
My mouth opened, but something had crammed itself down my throat and only a gurgle escaped. My allergies must’ve reacted at that exact moment, too, because my eyes filled to overflowing. All I could do was nod and stare back into my coffee.
She picked up her own cup. “You don’t have to answer today.”
“Okay,” was the only word I could make work.
After a moment of her holding one hand while sipping coffee and watching me stare without seeing through watery eyes, I rose and went to the proofing drawer to check the second proof.
It was exactly where it needed to be. I took the empanada dough from the marble and began shaping it.
My hands knew what to do without my brain contributing a thing, which was good, because I still couldn’t form words, much less coherent thoughts.
I filled two trays, put them in the oven, set the timer, and stood at the counter and waited. Some minutes later, the timer went off. I took the trays out. The bread was perfect.
“Okay,” I said, as much to the bread as to anyone else, though Dona Carmen knew I spoke to her. She waited for me to make eye contact, then nodded once. Then she picked up her coffee, turned away, and stared out the window at West Tampa.
At noon, I sat on the back step with Mofongo on my foot and texted Brendan.
Me: Something happened this morning. Something good, I think.
He called instead of texting, which he did when a thing was real enough to need a voice. How he always knew the difference was a mystery that would never be solved. The man was remarkable that way.
“Tell me.”
I walked him through it all, the coffee, the proofing, Dona Carmen wanting to retire and naming me her heir, if there is such a thing in the bread world.
By the time I finished, my allergies were acting up again so badly that I had to step back into the kitchen and grab a tissue, Mofongo dutifully on my heels.
“Makes sense,” was all he said.
Two words, not congratulations or enthusiasm or the elaborate response the moment might have invited. Brendan merely offered the quiet recognition of something that had been true for a while and had now been said out loud.
“Yeah,” I said. “It does.”
Mofongo sneezed on my shoe.
“What does Dona Carmen say about Mofongo being at the panadería?”
“She feeds him when she thinks I’m not looking.”
His snort flowed through the receiver. “Of course she does.”
“He gets a piece of pan dulce every Tuesday. She acts like it doesn’t happen. He acts like it doesn’t happen. I act like it doesn’t happen. It happens every Tuesday, and probably other mornings, though I haven’t caught them on any other day.”
Mofongo looked up at me, pan dulce nowhere in evidence, deeply unconcerned about the future.