Bliss (23 page)

“Thank you,” he said, and then he sat down on the wrought-iron bench outside the front window.

This was terribly strange, and made Rose think that perhaps the Back-to-Before Blackberry Torte had only half worked: Maybe it made people walk and speak normally but turned their routines upside down. Mr. Bastable always hurried away from the bakery as though his life depended on it. But there he was, sitting straight as a pole on the bench outside. He wasn't even eating his muffins.

At around eight a.m., Chip came into the shop and helped Rose prepare the bakery for the morning.

“Did I miss anything crazy last night?” he asked.

“Oh, no.”
Just a townwide zombie disco party
, Rose thought.

Rose and Chip wiped down the glass-front case and the mosaic café tables and set new trays of muffins in place of older, stale ones. All the while, Mr. Bastable just sat on the bench. The sun grew hotter and she could see him dabbing at his forehead with a napkin. At one point he took off his blazer. But otherwise he didn't move, and he didn't eat either of his muffins. He just sat and waited.

At eight-thirty, when Rose flipped the sign on the front door to
OPEN
, Mr. Bastable was still waiting on the bench.

“What's he doing?” asked Aunt Lily from right behind her. Rose gasped and jumped.

“Oh, we're not sure,” Rose answered.

Lily disappeared into the kitchen to help Chip while Ty joined Rose at the counter. A crowd of about ten had gathered outside the door.

“I think everyone is okay,” Rose told Ty, who had put on a clean striped shirt and a pair of khakis. “They're walking normally, and they seem to be talking normally. There's just the curious case of Mr. Bastable. He hasn't moved in an hour.”

“Is he waiting for someone?” asked Ty.

Rose didn't have time to answer as the crowd burst through the front door and formed a noisy line at the counter. Mrs. Havegood was first. She was wearing a loud red dress and a mink stole.

“Rose, dear, I need three dozen snickerdoodles, but real snickerdoodles this time.”

“I'm sorry about that last batch, Mrs. Havegood,” said Rose. “I know the Cambodian president must have been disappointed.”

“Oh, he was indeed. We ordered pizza instead, and it turns out that he is lactose intolerant. He vowed never to visit me again, and I told him that was just fine. I am tired of entertaining foreign heads of state. They all have bizarre accents. You can't understand a thing they say. In any case, would you mind fetching me some regular snickerdoodles, Thyme?”

Ty flared his nostrils like a bull. “Not at all,” he said, still upset with Mrs. Havegood for lying. He ducked into the kitchen.

Mrs. Havegood beckoned Rose in close as they waited for Ty to return with the cookies. “Come here, Rose. I'm going to tell you a truth,” she whispered. “When you have all the money in the world, like I do, sometimes even that isn't enough. And you have to invent things that are even more fabulous than all your money. That is a truth.”

Rose looked Mrs. Havegood straight in the eye and smiled. It was a startling admission from the biggest liar in town. Rose suddenly stopped hating Mrs. Havegood and saw her for what she was: lonely.

Ty returned with a white box filled with little tan snickerdoodles. “Here we are, Mrs. Havegood. So the real snickerdoodles are for…?”

“Me and Jimmy Carter.”

“Former U.S. president Jimmy Carter?” Ty scoffed, and Rose swallowed a laugh. At least Mrs. Havegood hadn't lost her sense of imagination entirely.

“Yes,” she said. “Jimmy and I are not ashamed to say we love snickerdoodles
that
much.”

Ty glared at Mrs. Havegood. He wasn't about to let her win this one. “Let me see him,” Ty said. “Let me see Jimmy Carter.”

Mrs. Havegood shook her head. “He's very shy.”

“You're lying,” said Ty, his voice growing louder. “You're a lying liar who lies about everything.”

Rose cupped her palm over Ty's mouth. “Ty!” she said.

But it was too late. “Fine!” Mrs. Havegood cried. “Jimmy!” she called out the window. “Come in here, Jimmy!”

That's when former U.S. president Jimmy Carter walked into the Bliss bakery. He looked older than he had in Rose's textbooks, but that made sense, because he had been president a long time ago. A few thin clumps of white hair cascaded over either side of his head and stopped just above the collar of his denim cowboy shirt.

“Jimmy's dear sister was my college roommate.” She winked at Rose. “And that's a truth.”

Ty's jaw dropped as he handed the box of snickerdoodles to Jimmy Carter. “The United States of America thanks you for your service,” the former president said, smiling.

Mrs. Havegood chuckled as she took his arm. “Have a lovely day, Rose! You too, Thyme!”

Ty winced. It was the ultimate burn.

That is, until Ashley Knob walked in. She was wearing a dress that a normal person might wear to a movie premiere. It was green and short and far too revealing to be appropriate for a high-school girl. She pranced up to the counter and said, “I'd like a scooped-out blueberry muffin, please.”

Rose furrowed her eyebrows. “Scooped out?”

“Yeah. It's where you scoop most of the flesh of the muffin out. Otherwise the muffin has too many carbs.”

Rose thought that that really defeated the purpose of eating a muffin in the first place, but she snapped on a pair of surgical gloves and dove right in.

Ty should have been helping other customers, but instead he leaned over the counter and whispered in dulcet tones, “Hey, do you remember two days ago, when we kissed? Through the glass?”

Ashley pretended not to hear him.

“You kissed me!” he repeated, louder and more forcefully. “We
kissed
.”

“Um, I don't kiss people who work in bakeries,” she said, her nose so high in the air that the top of her head was practically brushing her back.

“But you said you
loved
me,” Ty said, smiling devilishly.

“I'm, like, horrified right now and don't know what you're talking about. I mean, you're pretty hot and stuff, so, maybe if you worked at a hedge fund or you were a lawyer or something I would have kissed you, but here you are scooping out muffins, so, like, no.”

“But don't you remember the crowd of girls and you clawed your way to the front just to try to kiss me, and—”

“Let it go, Ty,” said Rose.

Ashley Knob grabbed her scooped-out muffin and huffed out, the hard platinum ringlets of her long hair whipping Ty in the cheek.

“She totally kissed me through the glass,” he whispered. “I wasn't hallucinating that, right?”

“No, but she was.”

Ty paced around behind the counter. “I don't even like her—I just want her to know that she was going crazy over me. I need to find a picture of us kissing. Do we have any security cameras outside?” Ty threw off his apron, and Rose knew that he was done helping at the bakery for the day.

Ty was back to his old tricks.

Rose craned her neck over the saloon doors and saw Sage and Leigh bouncing up on the lawn where the trampoline had been, while Mrs. Carlson sunned herself in a lawn chair. Rose pursed her lips. She was still the only one really dedicated to the bakery. Nothing had changed. Maybe Aunt Lily was right. Maybe they really were just fine.

The day passed without anything too bizarre happening.

Rose's mind would have been completely at ease had Mr. Bastable budged from the bench, but he hadn't. He was still sitting there, in the blazing July heat, still in his sweater, his blazer folded beside him, and he still hadn't touched the muffins.

Rose was peering out at Mr. Bastable and worrying mightily when Devin Stetson walked in.

His hair was gelled into an insouciant ramp that curved off the base of his forehead. His lips were pink and a little chapped. His milky skin was tanned.

Devin had never been to the bakery before. Why now? Why today, after she'd had literally thirty minutes of sleep and two days' worth of grease and dirt caked in her bangs? Why couldn't he have really seen her last night, when he so feebly attempted to kiss her cheek by backing his scalp into her face?

Devin lingered by the front door as his mother and father, both clad in Hawaiian print shirts and visors and sunglasses, perused the glass counter.

“Do you have any Danishes?” asked Mrs. Stetson. Her eyes were buggy and bright. “Or is it just
Danish
? The plural of
Danish
, is it
Danish
, or
Danishi
? You know, is it like
sheep
, where the plural is
sheep
? Do you know what I mean?” Rose stopped staring at Devin long enough to realize that Mrs. Stetson was talking to her.

“I never thought about it. People usually just ask for one Danish.”

Mr. Stetson laughed as he went to look at the cakes.

Devin stayed by the door and looked at the floor and at the ceiling and everywhere but at Rose's face. Obviously he had no recollection of the night before. Not that it had been real anyway.

He caught her looking at him, and made a face and nodded toward his parents, as if to say, “Sorry about them, they're really embarrassing.”

Rose nodded back to him, as if to say, “Mine are the same way.”

Devin gradually drifted up to the counter and eventually found himself right across from Rose. Rose's face was burning and her mouth was dry.

“You always buy donuts from us, right?”

“I wouldn't say
always
, but sometimes, yes,” she said.

“I'm Devin. Hi.”

“I'm Rose. Hi,” she squeaked. Her hands began to tremble, and she hid them behind her back. Devin Stetson was talking to her! Without the aid of an Upside-Down Cake!

Rose smiled to herself while she packed up the Danish. Danishes? Pastries. She packed up the pastries.

“Thank you, dear!” yelled Mr. and Mrs. Stetson as they bustled out in their Hawaiian shirts.

Devin nodded in her direction. “See you around—like a donut,” he said.

And Rose gave him a military salute, which she realized one second later was the single least attractive thing she could have done.

Rose was hating herself when she caught the reflection of Devin's face in the glass, wincing at his own lame pun.

Even though he didn't remember dancing with her, Rose had managed to jump the biggest hurdle of all: telling him her name. She smiled wider than she thought possible.

That is, until Miss Thistle approached the bakery, and Rose realized what had been keeping Mr. Bastable glued to that godforsaken bench all day. He'd been waiting for her.

Felidia Thistle was hurrying up to the front door in a breezy summer cotton dress, when she was stopped by the froglike squeak of Mr. Bastable.

“Wait!” he coughed. He tried again a moment later, clearer this time. “Wait. Miss Thistle.”

Rose watched through the glass as Miss Thistle spun around, shocked. Apparently, she didn't remember any of the week's events, because she was smiling at Mr. Bastable, who looked truly handsome, despite the formidable sweat stains in his armpits.

“Miss Thistle, those wing nuts in the bakery gave me two carrot-bran muffins by mistake. Would you mind eating the other one? If I have too much starch, it activates my irritable bowel syndrome.”

Rose winced. It could have been a lovely moment, save for the mention of irritable bowel syndrome.

But Miss Thistle didn't seem to mind. She sat down on the bench next to Mr. Bastable, and they slowly nibbled on their carrot-bran muffins, smiling at each other the entire time. Rose couldn't hear what they were saying—probably they were talking about science—but it was a start. She didn't even mind that Mr. Bastable had called her a wing nut.

There was a magic in the two of them sitting there as the brilliant orange of the setting sun glimmered through the trees, but it had nothing to do with spells or mason jars. It was the magic of a person's ability to change, to grow, to heal, without the aid of any magic at all.

At the end of the day, after Chip had gone home and Mrs. Carlson had gone to bed, Rose sat in the booth in the kitchen and drank a glass of water, while looking out the backdoor window at her brothers. They were taking turns pushing Leigh on the swing set with such abandon that they nearly sent her flying over the top bar. It was nice to watch, but Rose still felt a little left out.

Aunt Lily sidled up to the kitchen table in an old-fashioned silk dressing gown covered in bright orange lilies.

“Rose, we need to talk. I have a proposition. You know what I think of you and your potential. I think you should come to New York with me.”

Rose blushed and laughed out loud. The thought of going to New York was so grand and so overwhelming that it sounded like a joke. “What for?”

“I want you to work on my TV show. At first you'll stay behind the scenes, helping me prepare recipes and figuring out how to teach them to a TV audience. But after a while I hope you'll join me on camera! I'll do your makeup, and we can be stars together! You have such gifts, gifts that far exceed operating a small business. We're a lot alike, you and I, and I want you to dream big. You're sensational, never forget that.”

Rose imagined herself baking alongside Aunt Lily in the kitchen of a vast, gorgeous, city bakery, or on the soundstage of a TV studio in front of a live audience of laughing and doting fans. Oh, the love she would feel! The warmth, the acceptance, and the respect!

The thing in the basement had been right all along. Rose did desire beauty and importance, but she didn't want to drink them from a bottle labeled
TINCTURE OF VENUS
—she wanted to earn them. Maybe she would earn them on Lily's coattails, just like it had said.

Rose had to purse her lips together to contain her embarrassingly long smile. “But where would the recipes come from?”