“Is this what you always dreamt of doing? Baking?”
The boy had been sitting in front of the shop for over an hour, his posture even sadder-looking than the old falling-apart bench in the sidewalk. His hoodie and sweatpants looked new, clean, and there was no starvation in his face, at least not for food. But she’d lost count of the days she spent with that special kind of hunger behind her throat, so she carefully opened the grass-green door and asked if the boy would like to come inside.
Cherry tarts wouldn’t fill that particular emptiness, but being sad on an empty stomach would for sure be worse.
“Why do you ask? Having work problems?”
His eyes were huge and his his eyelashes even bigger, fanning his eyelids as he opened them. They were brown, brown like the walnut cream she made, the one with not-that-much chocolate that sells a lot in winter. He still hadn’t eaten the cherry tart she put in front of him. He just kept watching her work, cleaning her station, huge brown eyes fixed on broken-short nails.
He smiled, a sad, sad thing.
“That doesn’t answer the question.”
“Does it matter? It pays the bills. No one really does the job they want.”
“But if you could do anything, what would you do?”
“Does ‘not work at all’ count?”
“Sure, if you want to. But if you didn’t work at all, what would you do?”
She decided the boy was weird. But she was weird, too, so she stopped where she was scrubbing a stain in the counter, gaze lost in the people passing through the front windows.
“But I thought you didn’t like baking?”
The boy turned his head to his right. He was looking at her as if he thought she was weird.
“I said my mother was a baker. And that no one does the job they want. But I think it’s because you start doing whatever it is you like doing, and you turn it into a job, and then you don’t like it so much anymore.”
“Why would you think that?”
“I liked baking with my mother.” She blinked, and the old shop was now an old kitchen, flour everywhere, the smell of burning sugar, mom’s raspy laugh. She blinked again. “Now I wake up at three in the morning to bake for people who don’t know what ‘thank you’ means. Still beats most other jobs, though.”
“Why? Because you like it?
“You ask a lot of questions.”
“And you keep answering them.”
“Because, well, it makes people happy, I think. Everyone likes a good pastry. I may not be saving the world, but no one really is, right? We’re all gonna be dead ‘cause of global warming or, like, mutated fish, before we turn 50.”
“That’s awfully pessimistic. We’re not going to die because of fish. It will surely be the microplastics.”
“That’ll be on the fish.”
“You sound like an old men with too many degrees.”
“Anyway. If we’re all going die anyway, why keep baking? Shouldn’t we just, eat the fish already?”
“Now who’s pessimistic? And I can’t believe you’re asking me the meaning of life. I’m a baker, not a philosopher.”
“So you can’t have an opinion? Tell me anyway.”
The boy was definitely weird. His eyes were shining now, fixed on her face, huge and brown and interested. She went back to scrubbing.
“I think… I think life is as good as a collection of days. And we don’t need to ignore the bad days, but hang on and make sure there are more good days after them. More good days than bad ones, you know? And just… making people’s days a little better makes my day better. So I’ll keep baking. At least until the fish comes.”
The brown pools disappeared as the boy blinked. When they appeared again, fat drops of water were clinging to his lashes.
“That’s a really pretty way of thinking.”
“And you? If you could do anything, what would you do?”
“Not what my dad does, that’s for sure.”
“He makes decisions. All day.”
“Doesn’t sound so bad. We all do that. But answer the question, what would you like to do?”
He picked up a napkin, folding it with precision.
“I guess I would like to make people’s days a little better, too.”
He finally picked up the cherry tart, pinkie finger up. He bit, and a brave tear left his eyes, fighting the way down his face.
“God, this is a really fucking good pastry.” There were more tears after the first, flowing freely now. “Will you marry me?”
She almost didn’t even laugh. “Sure. But I won’t bake for the wedding.”
“I’m serious. You should be a queen. You’d be great at it.”
“So you keep saying. You’ll be a queen one day.”
“Well, suit yourself. But just so you know… I won’t bake at the coronation, either.”
They came before opening hours the next day.
Three royal guards, dressed in rich crimson, gold lining their uniforms. They carried a fancy looking letter, which they handed her, but the curved letters were hell to read. She waited until one of them recited the message from their iPad.
The prince was looking for a wife. He had found one. She was to get on their car and proceed to the palace.
She politely declined, asked them about their mothers and lovers, offered some jelly tart and sent them on their way.
Before lunch, there were five others guards in front of her shop.
He only came by sundown, when she was closing, after a full day of baking and selling and sending fancy soldiers on their way. The boy was alone, and dressed pretty much the same: hoodie and sweatpants, and less sad looking eyes.
“You sent my guards home.”
“And then sent them home.”
“Well, the pastries go better with tea. I don’t serve it here.”
He kept standing there, in the middle of the empty shop. He didn’t look like a prince. She stepped behind the counter and picked up a plate.
“You want a cherry or strawberry tart?”
“Figured. I had to google you, y’know.”
The brown eyes seemed to gleam, and he moved towards the high chairs.
“Well, when random people dressed in gold show up and say someone wants to marry you, you start to think you might have met that person before. When they say that person is the prince, and you realize you don’t know what he looks like, you google him.”
“Nothing as exiting as a conversation about mutated fish, unfortunately.”
“Pity. He sounds like a bore.”
There was silence for a while. Outside, the sun was way down, the city lights getting brighter by the second.
“Why do you want to marry me?”
He turned his head to the right, blinking like he still thought her weird.
“I told you yesterday. I think you should be queen.”
“I like baking. I don’t want to rule over anything.”
“You like baking, yes. And you can keep doing that here in your shop. But I need to marry, and I would like for my spouse to care about the right things.”
“And what would that be?”
“Making people’s days a little bit better. Even if it is one pastry at a time.”
The air on the shop seemed to stand still. It was mostly the same since her mother’s passing; stone floors, big windows, grass-green door. Falling-apart bench in the sidewalk.
Well. It seemed like a good deal.
“What would I need to do?”
“Would I still get to bake?”
“Okay then. I’ll marry you. Do you want another tart?”
“Depends. Are the mutated fish in stock?”
“Disappointing. But we’ll make do until then.”
