The Lieutenant and the Baker

Walter Hartman had been forty-two years old for three months, and he still wasn't used to it. Forty-one had felt fine. Forty-two felt like a number the army assigned you.

He was on leave. Two weeks of it, after eleven months of dust and paperwork and getting shot at twice. His plan was simple. Sleep. Drink coffee. Walk around until his legs got bored. Do not, under any circumstances, start anything with anybody.

That was the plan, anyway.

Mesa Verde was the kind of town that existed because the base existed. Two motels, four bars, a gas station, and a strip of shops that looked like they were holding each other up. Walter walked it every morning. It took about twenty minutes, which told you something about the town.

He had a favorite coffee place by day three. It was fine. The coffee was fine. Walter was starting to think fine might be the whole point of leave, when he passed a bakery he'd walked past six times without noticing.

The sign said THE DAILY RISE. The window said OPEN in hand-painted letters. And the smell coming off the place was cinnamon and butter and something else he couldn't name.

Walter went inside.

The first thing he heard was yelling.

"You smashed forty eggs, Darryl! Forty! That's not damage, that's a philosophy!" A woman stood behind the counter, dark-skinned, thirty or so, with flour on her apron and a crate of broken eggs at her feet. Yellow goo was spreading across the tile. The delivery driver, a kid in a red cap, held his clipboard like a shield.

"The truck hit a pothole, Ms. Fitch. That's on the county."

"The county didn't stack the crates three high. You did that."

"I got fifteen more stops, I can't..."

"Then run along and make them, and tell your supervisor I'm short forty eggs and one whole morning of work."

The kid left. The bell over the door was still ringing when the woman noticed Walter standing there in his uniform, because he'd worn the uniform, because it was comfortable, because he hadn't thought.

"Great," she said. "An audience."

"I could help clean that up," Walter said. "If you want."

"Did I ask for help?"

"No, ma'am. I offered."

"Ma'am." She said it like a word she'd stepped in. "You're the type, you know that? The type who thinks a uniform means he can fix everything. A country, a dam, a crate of eggs. Well, some things are just broken, soldier. Eggs happen."

Walter had been yelled at by better. He picked up the empty half of the crate and started scooping shell and goo into it with a rag he found on the counter.

"Hey. I said..."

"You can throw me out after the floor's clean. Right now your whole shop smells like rotten egg and it's eight in the morning."

She stood there with her hands on her hips, clearly working out whether she could fight him for the rag. Then she gave up, grabbed the mop, and started on the far end while he worked the near end.

They met in the middle. Both reached for the mop bucket at the same time, and their hands touched on the handle.

Walter felt it. Something small and electric and completely stupid. He pulled his hand back.

Tulani Fitch felt it too, and immediately diagnosed herself. Low blood sugar, she decided. She hadn't eaten since yesterday, and a spark happens when a system runs low. That was science.

"I'm Tulani," she said. "Fitch. Tulani Fitch. I own this place."

"Walter Hartman." He wiped his hands. "I'm on leave at the base. Two weeks."

"Two weeks, huh." She looked at the floor, which was clean, then at him. "You actually mop."

"Nineteen years in. You mop a lot of floors."

"Well." She untied her apron, then tied it back on, like she couldn't decide what she was doing. "There's coffee. It's free to people who clean up forty eggs."

The coffee was better than his usual place. He told her so. She said of course it was, and then asked what a soldier from the base was doing in her bakery instead of the diner with the flag pins in the window. He said he liked quiet. She snorted at that, but she refilled his cup twice.

He came back two days later. That was not the plan.

He brought a box of pastries from the shop down the street, which was a stupid thing to do and he knew it while doing it.

"Tulani," he said, setting the box on the counter. "I brought you a peace offering. From Carl's, down the street."

"You brought me pastries from CARL'S?" She looked at the box like it contained a snake. "From my competitor?"

"I figured it was either that or an apology, and this was both."

"An apology for what?"

"Being pushy. The other day. The mop thing."

Tulani opened the box. She examined a croissant with the seriousness of a jeweler.

"Walter. This croissant is a lie. Feel this. It weighs nothing. It's a bread-shaped sponge." She broke it open and showed him the inside. "See? Dough didn't laminate. Carl buys pre-made frozen dough and calls it baking. It's an insult and you brought it into my shop."

"I didn't know."

"Of course you didn't. Nobody knows. Nobody knows what a croissant is supposed to be anymore." She dropped the croissant back in the box. "Where'd you learn to mop, Walter?"

"Fort Bragg, mostly. Then Korea. Then Texas."

"And where'd you learn what a good croissant is?"

"Nowhere. That's why I brought you Carl's."

That got a laugh out of her. A real one, short and surprised, like it had come out before she could stop it.

"My oven is dying," she said, out of nowhere. Then she looked annoyed at herself for saying it.

"Dying how?"

"Dying dying. Twenty-two years old, six years younger than me, and it heats uneven. The left side runs hot. Every batch of croissants comes out lopsided. One side golden, one side sad."

"Twenty-two years is not old for an oven. What is it, a deck oven? Convection?"

"A what?"

Walter walked around the counter. She let him, which surprised her. He crouched in front of the big steel box in the back and looked at the element on the left side.

"Your element's half shot. It's drawing power but it's warped. That's your hot side." He stood up. "It's a cheap part. I can have it in town by tomorrow."

"You can fix ovens?"

"I can fix most things. It's the uniform thing. You were right."

Tulani looked at him for a moment. Then she got two coffees without asking.

"Tomorrow," she said. "If you fix my oven, I'll teach you why Carl's croissants are a crime against France."

"I don't need the payment. I was going to fix it anyway."

"I know you were. That's the problem with you types." She slid his coffee across the counter. "But this way it's a trade. I don't owe soldiers favors and soldiers don't owe me anything. Deal's a deal, clean and square. That work for you?"

"That works for me."

"Good." She pointed at him with a spoon. "And Walter? Don't bring Carl's pastries in here again. I mean it. I'll call the health department on you AND him."

Walter drank his coffee and thought, not for the first time and not for the last, that he was in trouble.

The cinnamon kind.

He came back the next day with a wrench and a plastic bag of parts. Tulani was in the back, elbows in a bucket of dough scrapings. She heard the bell and shouted that they were closed, then saw who it was and stood there with wet arms.

"That's the oven?" He nodded at the duct tape holding the back panel together. "You fixed this with tape?"

"With tape and prayer. Mostly prayer." She wiped her hands on a towel. "It's held for three years."

"Tape is not a fix. Tape is a delay." He crouched down and pulled the panel off with one tug. Inside was a mess of dust, crumbs, and one warped element glowing dull orange at the middle. "Yeah. There's your problem."

"You're not going to break anything worse, are you?"

He didn't answer. He reached in and unscrewed the old element without looking. Tulani watched him work for a minute, arms crossed, then went back to her bucket. When she checked again he had the new element in and the wires connected, and he was testing the thermostat with a little screwdriver like he'd done it a hundred times.

"Where'd you learn to do that?" she asked.

"Kitchens. You fix a lot of kitchen stuff on a base or you eat cold food." He tightened one last screw and stood up. "Turn it on."

She turned it on. The element glowed even, both sides, no hot spot.

"Okay," she said, after a minute. "Okay. That's annoyingly clean."

"I've been called worse."

"Leave it on. Give it ten minutes. I want to see something."

She slid in a tray of croissants. In ten minutes they came out done, both sides the same. Tulani stared at the tray like it was a magic trick.

"Huh," she said.

"You're welcome."

"I didn't say thank you."

"You didn't have to." He picked up his coffee. "I'm going to go wash up."

"Back door," she said. "There's a hose."

He washed his hands and came back in through the front, and she had a plate of eclairs out on the counter. Fresh, still warm, the chocolate still soft.

"These are the trial batch," she said. "First batch from the fixed oven. Eat one and tell me if it's good."

He bit into one. Chocolate, cream, the pastry crisp all the way through. It was, he decided, better than anything he'd had in nineteen years of base mess halls and roadside diners.

"Well?" she asked.

"It's very good."

"Just very good?"

"Extremely good. The best eclair I've ever had."

"That's what I thought." She poured him more coffee without asking. "Sit down. You've earned it."

He sat. He ate another eclair. She started talking about ovens and temperature and how her last one had a hot spot that she'd had to compensate for by