Beneath a Transparent Dream novel · Chapter 16 of 24
Chapter 16: The Scone Man
Dot put a small grey drive on the steel counter next to the proving trays.
"From the idiot," she said.
Matilda was sitting on the flour sack with her grandmother's quilt around her shoulders.
"I don't want it."
"It's not a favour, he says. It was always yours."
"He says a lot of things that are true after the fact."
Dot pulled up the stool and sat down hard.
"Your grandmother kept a cash book," she said. "Every regular got a line in it, with a nickname. She wrote down what they ordered, and whether they tipped."
"I know."
"I'm telling you there was a boy who ordered a plain scone."
Matilda looked up.
"Nine winters ago," Dot said. "I came in at four and he was already waiting on the step, with a sketchbook. Tall, thin as a rail, no coat worth the name. Your grandmother called him the Architect."
"I don't remember an architect."
"You were at the counter on college breaks with your head in a cookbook. You didn't look up for anyone."
"Dot."
"Go and get the book, honey."
The cash books lived on the high shelf in the office, in a row of green cloth spines.
Matilda took down the one for the year she had turned twenty-one, and opened it on the desk.
Her grandmother's handwriting ran down the page in blue ink, slanting hard to the right.
Dec 3. Sketchbook, plain scone, no butter. Four quarters.
Dec 4. Sketchbook, plain. Four quarters.
It went on every day through the winter, the same line, and the same four quarters.
On the twelfth of February the line was longer.
Sketchbook brought a friend. Friend ordered a lemon bar and asked M. to the Gull on Friday. M. said yes.
Under it, in the same hand, smaller: Sketchbook did not come back. Pity. He was the only one who ever said thank you to the oven.
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