Brief Encounter at Baxter & Evans

Vern Baxter had a system. Two bags of croissants in his left hand, a tray of four iced coffees balanced on top, and a plan to shoulder through the coffee shop door without spilling anything. It worked great right up until a woman reached past him for the last blueberry scone.

"Hey! I saw it first!" he said, and it came out louder than he meant.

The woman laughed. She was maybe thirty, dark hair clipped back, holding a briefcase like it weighed nothing. "You saw it first? You're carrying half a bakery, buddy. Where would you even put a scone?"

"Fair point. But I have a system. The scone goes in the coat pocket."

"In the pocket!" She looked at his coat like it had personally offended her. "That's a crime against scones."

"I'm a professional, don't worry." Vern shifted the coffee tray and stuck out his free hand. "Vern. Baxter. Baxter and Richards."

He did not know why he said that. The name just fell out of his mouth.

She shook his hand. "Talia Evans. Evans and Kramer, across the street."

Oh no. "Nice. Big building. Lots of glass."

"Very observant." She picked up the scone anyway and paid for it, and Vern felt a weird little loss about that. "So what's Baxter and Richards? I don't think I've heard of you."

And that right there was the moment Vern should have said, actually, I own the bakery on this corner, the croissants are mine, I get them wholesale from myself. That would have been easy. Honest, even.

Instead he heard himself say, "We're a boutique firm. Mediation, mostly. Contract stuff."

"A boutique firm," Talia repeated. She looked amused. "Doing what, exactly? Because I specialize in contract disputes and I've never seen your name on anything."

"That's because we're boutique."

She laughed again. God, she had a good laugh. "That word is doing a lot of work for you this morning."

Vern looked down at the croissants like they might save him. They did not. "We're bringing these to a mediation session," he said, gesturing with the bags. "Client morale. Big session today."

"You brought four coffees and thirty croissants to a mediation?"

"It's a big mediation."

She was grinning at him now, and Vern realized two things at once. One, she was way too smart to believe a single word of this. Two, he did not want the conversation to end, which meant he was going to have to keep going.

"How long have you been there?" she asked.

"Five years," said Vern, who had opened his bakery three years ago and had never worked at a law firm in his life.

"And before that?"

"Small town. Family practice." Technically true. His family baked. It was a practice. "Different kind of law."

"What kind?"

"The kind with a lot of bread."

Talia stared at him. Then she snorted, actually snorted, into her coffee. "That was terrible."

"Thank you. I've been workshopping it."

"I'm serious though, Evans and Kramer does a lot of work with firms your size. I'd have heard the name." She took a sip and studied him over the cup. "Unless you're very new."

"We're very selective about our branding," said Vern, who had a logo for his bakery that his daughter had drawn in high school, and it was a cartoon loaf wearing sunglasses.

Well. It was a cartoon loaf, anyway.

"You're weird," Talia said. It did not sound like an insult. "Most lawyers at these things talk about themselves for twenty minutes and then ask if I've heard of their firm's podcast."

"Is there a podcast?"

"Ours? No. Theirs? Yes. Three of them somehow."

"That's two too many," said Vern, and she laughed again.

Here is the thing about the coffee shop on the ground floor of that office tower. Vern went there every Tuesday and Thursday morning, mid-rush, because the espresso machine at his own shop had a temper and the woman who ran the register at the tower coffee shop made better lattes than he did. He was not going to admit that out loud to anyone. But it meant he now had a problem. He could never come back here. Or he could, and lie better, or, third option, and this one was forming in his head like dough rising:

He could keep this going a little longer.

"So," Talia said, checking her phone. "I have a thing in ten minutes. But. There's a networking mixer next Thursday. Firm mixers are awful, but this one has an open bar and no podcasts. Are you going?"

"Am I going," Vern repeated.

"Do you want to go?"

"Yes," he said, way too fast. "I mean. Sure. Yeah. Work thing, networking, love it. Huge fan."

Talia pulled a pen out of her briefcase and grabbed a napkin. "Give me your number. If I have to suffer through a mixer, I want at least one person there who makes me laugh."

Vern dictated his number and she texted him a single thumbs-up. His phone buzzed in his apron pocket. Wait. No, it buzzed in his regular pocket, because he was not wearing his apron, thank God.

"Next Thursday, seven, the Marlow Hotel," she said, backing toward the door with her scone. "Don't bring thirty croissants."

"No promises."

And then she was gone, across the street and into the glass building, and Vern stood there in the coffee shop holding four iced coffees that were now completely melted and were absolutely not going to a mediation session, because there was no mediation session, because he was a baker.

* * *

"You're back early," said Deb, his one employee, when he pushed through the door of Upper Crust. "Where's the good coffee?"

"Deb, I need you to be honest with me. Do I seem like a paralegal?"

Deb looked up from the register. She was twenty-six and unimpressed by everything, which was why he liked her. "You seem like a guy who got up at three a.m. Why?"

"Nothing. No reason."

"You met someone," Deb said immediately.

"I did not meet someone."

"You met someone and lied about something and now you're spiraling. That's your whole pattern. That's exactly what happened with the dentist."

"That was one time, and she asked if I flossed regularly, and I panicked."

"So what did you lie about this time?"

Vern put the sad coffees down on the counter and leaned against the display case. Outside the window, the tower gleamed. Somewhere up on the eleventh floor or whatever, Talia Evans was eating his scone and thinking about a fake law firm.

"I said I was a paralegal," he admitted. "At a firm called Baxter and Richards."

"Which doesn't exist."

"Which does not exist. And then she said she's an attorney at Evans and Kramer, which is like, an actual firm, a real one, with real attorneys, and now she invited me to a networking mixer on Thursday and everyone there will have a LinkedIn."

Deb was quiet for a second. "Okay, so just tell her. Before Thursday. One text. 'Hey, funny thing, I'm actually the baker across the street, the croissants were mine.'"

"That's so embarrassing."

"Compared to showing up at a lawyers' mixer and knowing nothing about law? Which is worse?"

Vern opened his mouth. Closed it. He thought about his daughter, Riley, who was twenty and at college and who he called on Sundays, and who had told him last month, verbatim, "Dad, you have to talk to adults who aren't me and Deb." She would be so proud of him for meeting a woman. She would be so horrified by the rest of it.

"What if she thinks the bakery thing is a downgrade?" he said.

"From what? Fake paralegal? Buddy."

"She's a junior partner, Deb. Junior partner. That's a real title."

"And you're the guy whose croissants she'll now associate with this whole thing, which honestly is a great marketing angle if you'd stop panicking for five seconds."

Deb had a point. Deb usually had a point, and it was deeply annoying.

His phone buzzed. It was the number he did not have saved yet.

Talia: Still thinking about the scone pocket. Thursday stands? 7pm. Wear something pocketless.

Vern read it three times. Then he showed Deb, which was a mistake.

"She's cute," Deb said. "And funny. And you're going to blow it by Thursday if you don't fix the lie."

"I know. I know." He typed back: Thursday stands. My pockets will be empty and honest.

Three little dots appeared. Then: That's the first honest thing you've said all morning, Baxter.

"See, she knows," Vern said, holding the phone out. "She's known this whole time. She's an attorney, she does contract disputes, I said boutique firm like six times."

"So come clean."

"Or," said Vern, and he heard himself say it before his brain could stop it, "or I learn enough about mediation by Thursday to survive one mixer."

Deb put down the pastry tongs. She looked at him the way she looked at customers who asked if the croissants were gluten free. "You want to spend the next week cramming fake law instead of sending one true text."

"The mixer has an open bar, Deb."

"That's not a plan, that's a disaster with alcohol."

But Vern was already pulling up a search page on his phone. What is mediation. How to talk about mediation. Mediation for beginners.

Somewhere across the street, eleven floors up, Talia Evans was probably telling a coworker about the weird guy from the fake firm. And the weird guy from the fake firm was watching a video titled "Ten Minutes to Understand Mediation" at 1.5 speed, standing behind his own counter, in his own bakery, which she did not know was his, and thinking that Thursday could go one of two ways.

Either way, he was out of blueberry scones.

The texts kept coming the next morning.

Talia: So how's the week at Baxter and Richards? Any juicy mediations?

Vern stood in the back of Upper Crust at 4:45 a.m. with flour up to his elbows and stared at the screen. He typed: Busier than usual! Then he deleted it. Then he typed: Big contract dispute this week. Very confidential. Then he deleted that too, because it sounded fake, because it was fake.

Deb came in at six and caught him scrolling through a legal glossary site.

"What's a non-binding memorandum of understanding," she read over his shoulder. "Vern, honey."

"Research."

"You've got flour on the phone screen."

He wiped it with his sleeve, which just spread the flour around. Talia texted again at 9:40, right when he was