Chapter 12: Hood and Flue

The hood went up on the second Saturday of January.

It was a stainless steel monster the size of a coffin.

Piotr had hung it from the ceiling with chain and a look of deep suspicion.

I stood at the bottom of the ladder with a cup of coffee in each hand.

"Hold it steady," he said from above.

"I'm holding."

"You're holding coffee."

"I'm holding coffee steadily," I said.

He laughed, once, down his nose, and went back to the flue.

He had been in my bakery four days a week since December.

He said it was the wiring, then the gas, then the hood.

I knew the real reason.

He liked it here.

He liked his father's counter and the cracked checkerboard and the smell of the oven the first time I lit it.

He did not say so.

Marta said so, loudly, from the back, whenever he was out of earshot.

I handed up the coffee.

His fingers closed around the cup, and he looked down at me from the ladder with those very blue eyes.

"You've got flour in your hair," he said.

"I always have flour in my hair."

"I know."

He turned back to the chimney.

I stood there and noticed that I had noticed.

A month earlier I had walked down a flight of stairs in Wicker Park with a man's heat still running down my thighs.

I had told myself it was a debt called in, that it didn't count, that nothing carried out of that room.

I had lied.

Some nights I lay awake on Marta's couch and replayed it.

My own hand slid between my legs, and I hated every part of me that wanted to.

It was a thing I did not say to Marta.

It was certainly a thing I did not say to the man on the ladder.

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