Chapter 7
Rose
It’s nothing short of painful living in Tank Graham’s space and cooking in Tank Graham’s kitchen when the man himself has become a ghost.
Our last conversation was two days ago—the phone call where he explained about the kitchen gifts while holding his granddaughter.
Since then, it’s been full radio silence.
And after so much Tank in a high concentration, including a very honest conversation about our late spouses, the lack of communication seemed a little personal. Or, at least, intentional.
I’ll be honest—it hurt my feelings.
I thought maybe there was something budding between us. He’s the one who called us friends, but it felt like there was an ellipsis, not a period, at the end of that sentence.
While baking with the appliances he bought, I tried to remind myself how foolish my thinking had been. Men like Tank—wealthy, handsome, famous—tend to gravitate toward gorgeous, model-like women at least twenty years younger than they are. It’s the way of the world.
Not that there’s anything necessarily wrong with that!
People fall for who they fall for. It just so happens that professional athletes and famous men—and even regular old men, like Emily’s second and third husbands—frequently happen to fall for young and beautiful women who look like they came straight from a factory popping out trophy wives on an assembly line.
Maybe Tank has had his own string of such women he dated after losing his wife. Somehow, I don’t think so. But it didn’t come up in our couch conversation, so who knows. I had enough willpower not to google him.
Either way, Tank ghosting was a good reminder not to read into anything after one deep conversation and some very generous gestures.
I tell myself to be grateful—you get what you get and you don’t throw a fit.
Isn’t that what you’re supposed to teach little kids?
Apparently, it’s also what you should tell grown women who get their hopes up when a man shows them the tiniest sliver of kindness.
And the use of Tank’s icy cool loft and all the new kitchen things is very kind.
Of course, I miss things like my commercial mixer and having multiple ovens and miles of stainless steel counters so I can really spread out.
I thought it might not matter because Kalli’s single pastry case obviously won’t hold as much as mine, which has three large sections.
Not enough room equals not as much baking.
And yet … yesterday, everything sold out by eleven a.m., which meant I ended up baking a lot of small rounds of a lot of things. It also meant making multiple trips across the street to Kalli’s coffee shop with individually wrapped items.
I can be grateful and still recognize that this is not a productive business practice.
It might, however, result in some very sculpted calves and biceps.
Going up and down Tank’s stairs precariously balancing boxes of baked goods multiple times a day has left my arms and legs feeling both pleasantly and achingly wobbly.
I woke up this morning at four feeling like I’d run a marathon.
I’m not sure if this speaks more to my age or my need to add some cardio into my life. Or maybe it’s just perimenopause, since it seems like that’s the great villain behind the curtain.
Tired? Perimenopause.
Brain fog? Perimenopause.
Weight gain? Perimenopause.
Sudden acne? Perimenopause.
What, exactly, is perimenopause? I’m not convinced anyone knows, but it definitely isn’t something our moms ever talked to us about.
They probably just shrugged and soldiered on without speaking about their suffering, which seems to be the way of that generation.
And now it’s all retailers and pharmaceutical companies want to talk about, capitalizing on the spending habits of the female forty and over crowd who have discovered the perimenopause secret.
“I’m so glad you’re back!” Kalli tells me now, holding the coffee shop door open as I waddle in carrying two baking sheets stacked with cookies and muffins. Once I’m through, she sweeps one of the baking trays from my arms. “People have been asking. And I’m starving.”
There are a handful of customers scattered among the tables, and I notice that they’re all looking over with interest. A white-haired man, seated alone at a table with a chess set, is already rising from his chair, an eager look in his eyes.
The hair at a glance made him seem a little older, but now that I’m really looking, he’s probably in his mid-to-late fifties.
Not for the first time, I have to remind myself of my age. I swear, if someone caught me by surprise asking how old I am, my knee-jerk answer might be thirty-five. Or forty. Every time I see a current photograph of myself, I have to squint to find myself.
“Just give us a sec, Glenn,” Kalli calls with a wink. “Let us restock. I promise there will be cookies for you.”
Glenn nods and goes back to his chess set. But he keeps glancing over nervously as Kalli opens the case and starts helping me place cupcakes.
“You don’t need to do that,” I tell her. “I can.”
“I don’t mind. Truly.”
I believe her. I didn’t know Kalli well before yesterday morning, when I arrived with my first baked goods, feeling unsure about this.
But she made me feel like a celebrity rather than a charity case and hasn’t stopped talking up my cookies and cupcakes.
Those are the two items I’m focusing on while I’m out of my commercial kitchen.
They’re easy and an impulse buy. Normally, the bakery is closed on Sundays, my day for catching up on any private orders I might have.
Or just to catch up on sleep. That’s something I don’t expect to see a lot of until I get back to my normal routine.
Lowering her voice now, Kalli says, “Glenn asked when you’d be back with cookies three times while you were gone. We were already sold out when he got here earlier. Business must really be booming in your bakery!”
I wish it were booming. And I almost find myself admitting that, but it sounds kind of pathetic to say it out loud. I also don’t want to lie or even inflate the truth, so instead, I say, “It’s never like this. Maybe it’s the combo of coffee and baked goods?”
Kalli shakes her head as she places the last cupcake and closes her half of the pastry case.
“Nope. I have a supplier I’ve been using since I opened, and I end up donating a ton of food to the food bank at the end of every day.
Which is great,” she adds quickly. “I like being able to give. But this is something else. People love your food.”
Again, I almost tell her that a sold-out pastry case is not the norm for me, but thankfully, Glenn got tired of waiting and is at the counter. Two people are behind him, and another group is walking through the door.
“I’ve got this and one more load to run back and get.” I grab my trays and eye the growing line. “Do you need a hand?”
“Thanks, but I’ve got this. Just hurry back. I have a feeling we’ll need another load soon.” She says this while ringing up Glenn on the iPad with her left hand and scribbling an order on a paper coffee cup with her right.
Very quickly, I realized that Kalli is one of those highly effective people who would be annoying if she weren’t so likeable.
A direct contrast to Violet, the recent high school graduate I hired part-time.
She was the only applicant and I still debated giving her the job.
Her thing seems to be cultivating an aggressively bored personality.
After two weeks, she still needed help ringing up an order on the simple system I have on an iPad.
She also refused to wash dishes or clean, claiming some kind of skin condition that I’m pretty sure was actually about not wanting to mess up her manicure.
When I left a voicemail for Violet on Friday explaining the bakery would be closed for a few days, she texted back her resignation.
Though it took a few follow-up texts to understand this because her “resignation” message read, No because same.
A google search later revealed that this is a Gen Z phrase of agreement.
So whenever I do get back into my bakery, I’ll not only be working completely alone again, but actively trying to hire someone new. Too bad I can’t clone Kalli.
Working alongside her has highlighted what I’ve been missing. Which is someone who cares. If not about baked goods, about doing a good job. About serving people. About doing something that might be simple, but brings joy to someone’s day.
It’s also revealed that I’m doing something wrong since I can sell out Kalli’s pastry case in minutes, but not my own. Also, I need to ask her about the food bank, because I can definitely donate.
As I make my way back across the street to Tank’s, I try not to think about how lonely it’s going to be when the AC is fixed and I have to go back to working mostly alone.
Or, I guess, fully alone until I find a replacement for Violet.
What I won’t miss is the inconvenience of baking in much smaller batches and traipsing back and forth carrying multiple loads of baked goods.
If only Kalli had a full kitchen! But her back room is only set up for dishwashing and storage for the ingredients she needs for coffee.
I have two more trips to make, and then I had planned to bake more to get ahead for tomorrow.
I had only one casualty on the last trip across the street—a white chocolate raspberry muffin that fell off when I was almost here.
Fare thee well, little lady, I thought as it bobbled down the sidewalk.
There was no possible way to retrieve it while carrying the baking sheets without losing any more items. I wasn’t sure if I should even sell a muffin that fell on the sidewalk—even if individually wrapped—but while I was thinking about it, an orange cat appeared, grabbed the muffin, and scampered off into an alley.