“Should have gotten here first, then.” He motioned to the boy behind the counter, who was boxing up the pie, and asked, “Will it keep until tomorrow?”
The boy assured him it would.
Tomorrow? If he wasn’t even going to eat it until tomorrow, surely he could come back the next day when there were new pies.
She tapped him again, and he turned again, annoyed. “You don’t understand. I need that pie.”
“Your life depends on it?”
“No, but I need it.”
“You’re going to a funeral, and it’s in honor of the deceased?”
“No.” Her voice was growing weaker.
“It’s your mother’s birthday and she just found out she’s got cancer? Peach is her favorite?”
Stefanie shook her head, unable to muster any voice at all.
“Or you promised to bring it to a potluck wedding? No? Your nephew’s birthday, then? You’re having marital problems, and your husband loves peach pie, so you’re hoping if you bring it home, he’ll remember how much he loves you?”
“I’m not married,” she said.
“Well, what is it? Tell me why you so desperately need this pie and it’s yours.”
“I was reading a story, and it made me want a peach, except peaches are out of season. Then I saw this bakery and thought, yes, a pie.” Why was she telling this stranger all that? She twisted the onyx ring on her index finger.
“Must have been quite the story.” His tone had changed, and she noticed that his eyes were the same color as her favorite ring. She should have known that a man with onyx eyes would bring trouble. At the time she was struck by how shiny those eyes were, staring intently at her.
They stood in the small shop, talking about poetry as customers skirted them to order. Stefanie had never met a man who likedThe Death Notebooksbefore. The pie rested untouched on the counter. Eventually, when they were the only customers left, the boy behind the counter cleared his throat and asked if they needed anything else.
“Being inspired by a story seems the best reason of all.” He lifted the pie off the counter and held it out to Stefanie.
She hesitated. “What if we split it?”
She meant divide it down the middle, each taking their respective half, but he asked the boy for two forks and led her to a nearby park where they found a bench and over the next two hours proceeded to eat the entire pie.
Alice sighed. It had been six weeks since Stefanie called to tell her about Keith. Theirs had quickly become one of Alice’s favorite love stories, the way they shared a pie like teenagers in old films shared milkshakes. Except this was not love. Even before Stefanie told her the details, what she saw on Stefanie’s face was not love at all.
The kettle whistled, and Alice fetched two mugs. She’d wanted Stefanie to see the beauty in her sadness, but she must have given her the wrong story. No, this wasn’t love. It wasn’t an example of a woman who had learned from the wrong relationship. This was violence, and Alice couldn’t stomach any part of it.
She brought their tea into the living room, where Stefanie sat on the couch, staring vacantly at the smudged glass coffee table. She took the mug from Alice, warming her hands on its sides. Alice waited for Stefanie to tell her what happened.
“My dad, he would... I watched it for years. I swore I would never let anyone do that to me. Keith wasn’t...he didn’t seem like the type. Then again, my father didn’t either.” She blew on her tea. Then she looked up at Alice, one eye wide, the other swollen shut. “Why would you write that for me?”
There was no sufficient explanation or apology, so Alice simply said, “You didn’t deserve it.”
The women sat side by side, sipping their tea. Alice considered offering to return her money but sensed this would offend her.
Suddenly Stefanie stood, put the tea on the table, and wiped the single tear that had escaped her good eye. “I just figured you should know what sort of story you wrote me.” With that, she walked out.
Alice surveyed the spines on her bookshelf until she located Stefanie’s story. Throughout the story, the peaches, while blemished, were never bruised. In over seventy pages there wasn’t a single thing that could be viewed as violent. There wasn’t any discordant diction, any foreboding imagery. The story was sad, sure. Melancholy even, but there wasn’t a moment of violence in it. It would have made sense to Alice if the story was filled with battered, bleeding peaches, angry metaphors. Then she would at least understand how Stefanie’s tragedy could have happened. Instead she was left with the unsettling realization that her stories could be dangerous and she had no idea why. At last she was convinced. A million love stories were not worth this one.
26
Closed for Business
Alice waited for the backlash, an exposé in the local paper, a scathing review on Yelp, calls from former clients asking if one of her matches had turned violent. But nothing happened. There were no cancellations from present clients, no names removed from the waitlist. If anything, new requests grew at a more vigorous rate. Alice stopped answering her emails and voicemails. Books recently bound remained on the shelves of Santa Barbara Bindery. Works in progress languished. No more names were added to the waitlist, and those already on it were holding out hope for something that was never going to happen. Alice was done. Oh, Alice Productions was closed for business. At least she hadn’t quit her catering job.
