I pause with the wire in my hand. “Heritage dust?”
“Expensive flour.”
“That is dishonest.”
“Exactly. We should do it.”
Darlene snorts. “What would we call our cinnamon rolls?”
Evie dusts flour off her hands and considers this with the solemnity of a military council planning a campaign. “Rotational sugar spirals with emotional support glaze.”
I look over the top of the display case. “That is worse.”
Her smile turns toward me, bright and pleased. “But memorable.”
“It sounds like medical equipment.”
“Fine. You name one.”
“I would call it a cinnamon roll.”
Darlene points her knife at me. “See, this is why we keep him in repairs and intimidation.”
“I have other uses,” I say.
The room goes quiet for a fraction of a breath.
Evie looks at me. Darlene looks at Evie. I look back down into the wiring and realize, too late, that the statement might carry meanings I did not intend to present in a bakery kitchen before seven in the morning.
Darlene breaks first. “Well, praise the Precursors. The man has discovered double meanings.”
“That was not my intent,” I say.
“Intent is overrated. Results are where the money is.”
Evie turns away quickly, but not before I see color rise along her throat. She reaches for a tray of dough with unnecessary focus. “Kauss, I’m going to need you to stop accidentally saying scandalous things before coffee. Some of us have delicate constitutions.”
“You do not.”
“No, but I enjoy pretending.”
My mouth almost moves again.
I catch it before the smile becomes visible.
Not always.
I fail more often now.
That is one of the dangers of the bakery. It rewards weakness. A man lowers one guard, and coffee appears. He shows competence, and people thank him instead of ordering him into another corridor. He sits in the same place three mornings in a row, and by the fourth, a child leaves him a folded paper drawing of a black dragon standing beside a yellow bakery. He fixes a compad, carries flour, reinforces a door, and somehow the regulars begin saying his name as if it belongs among theirs.
Kauss, can you reach that shelf?
Kauss, this chair wobbling again?
Kauss, you mind standing near the door while my daughter waits for transport?
Kauss, tell Evie she’s overworking before she pretends I said it nice.
