The Baker by Paul Hond

Author:Paul Hond [Hond, Paul]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-0-307-76963-3
Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
Published: 2010-12-22T05:00:00+00:00

Steam rose from the canned chicken soup that Ben had overcooked on the stove top. For the first time in his life he was left completely alone, and the sensation of freedom was so great that he was exhausted by it, unable to think of anything extraordinary to do beyond blasting the gas jets in a rage of solitude. He couldn’t even think of a place to go to in the car; under any other circumstances he might have picked up Nelson and just driven around, maybe gotten some beer, but now that he was technically Nelson’s boss, he wasn’t too sure if that would be proper.

He could hear the hum of the refrigerator, the swish of distant traffic, the creaking of the house’s bones.

He looked at the clock. Mickey would be somewhere over the Atlantic by now. What if the plane were to go down? They hadn’t even shaken hands. Ben felt he ought to have learned something from Emi’s death. He’d never told his mother he loved her—she was always in motion, too fleet for such clinging words—and besides, he’d always thought that familial love was understood, and that to express it in words was as silly as praying aloud, as though you wouldn’t be heard otherwise.

Now he wished he had said something specific to both parents, or that they had said something to him.

He took his dishes to the sink and let them crash. Tomorrow, Thanksgiving, would be his first real day on the job. Tonight, the bakers would be hard at work on all the pies and cakes that had been ordered, and customers would have until four o’clock tomorrow afternoon to pick them up and purchase other last-minute items. Ben decided against dropping by the bakery in the wee hours to throw his weight around, though certainly it was his prerogative. He’d take the “hands-off” approach for now.

He went up to his room. It was after eleven, he was tired, and a little anxious about tomorrow. He’d brought home some papers to review for the purpose of familiarizing himself with the ledgers, thinking he could enter the data into his computer and crunch some numbers. Tomorrow, then.

He sat on his bed and was about to kick off his shoes when he heard a noise coming from downstairs. He stood up and listened. What was it? He grabbed the gun from under his pillow. There had been some break-ins lately in the area, you couldn’t be too careful. Then he heard it again: a distinct rapping on the front door: three military knocks. Was it the police? He looked at the gun, confused. Was it Shirley Finkle?

Ben placed the gun in his pocket and went downstairs to the door. He looked through the peephole. It was Nelson.

Ben hesitated in his surprise, then opened the door before he was sure he wanted to.

“Breadcrumb,” said Nelson. He was wearing a dark hooded sweatshirt and an oversized black ski jacket; his face was mostly obscured.

“Hey,” Ben said. “How’d you get here?” He then noticed a car idling in the street.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.