Charlie the baker pushed past the dingy curtain door in the back of his shop and over to the cot by the back wall and shook the boy.
“Wake up, it’s past six” he barked.
The boy didn’t move. Charlie walked back to the front of the bakery and continued to feverishly cram dough onto the metal baking sheets. The store usually opened at six thirty and he was running way behind schedule. Yesterday had been a long day, and for the first time in years, waking up hadn’t been easy for him.
The baker was sure the boy was exaggerating. Max was always trying to get himself out of doing work and the baker was sick of it. He had practically taken the boy off the street, was giving him a place to stay, and teaching him an honorable trade. That's more than anyone had done for him to be sure. But was the boy grateful? No. Of course not. Instead he spent his time putzing around, feeling sorry for himself. He had to be asked to help out; he did a shoddy job sweeping, didn’t have the common sense to open the window or door to air out the place when he was cleaning, and now he was getting up late. The baker hadn’t had the luxury of an uncle when he was coming up. He had worked his way up from the bottom despite all the opposition, put himself through culinary school, he had applied for and gotten a restaurant license, and opened his very own shop. The baker had never taken help from anybody to get to the place he was now, but what thanks did he get? None from the boy, that was for sure.
They just don’t make children like they used to, he thought. No work ethic, no people skills, and no sense of cleanliness or pride in a job well done.
He bustled around the kitchen banging as many pans as he could in the process, but to no effect. “Get up Max,” he shouted through the clamor.
The people waiting for the #70 at the stop in front of the bakery made shadows against the large windows that paraded by in a distorted silhouette merry-go-round. There was still no noise coming from the back.
“Did you hear me?” the baker yelled to the curtain, “I said get your scrawny ass up.” Just plain laziness, he thought to himself, that’s all there is to it. Mr. Dewitt is a fine, upstanding man who knows the value of hard work. The boy just came up with some outlandish tale to spite him and get some attention, he thought, and he wasn’t going to put up with it any more.
The boy—a frail little thing—rolled off the faded green cot into a slouched lump, furiously rubbing his crusted eyelashes. He occupied himself with this for a couple of minutes, trying to gain his footing in the waking world.
Fresh bready steam infused the air in a burst as the curtain flew open again, surrounding the baker in a puff of smoke enhanced by the streams of light on his flustered face.
“This is the last time I’m coming back here. Customers’ll be here soon, and you’ve got to wrap up that order for Mr. Dewitt before he gets here.”
The boy looked up blankly for a second, and then reached for the shirt on the fold-up chair next to his uncle’s old army cot where his clothes were thrown the night before. His shirt hung so loosely from his flesh, the buttons practically begged the holes to hold them. The baker couldn’t understand how Max even thought up the story. It was so ridiculous after all. Mr. Dewitt wasn’t that kind of man anyway. The baker had a sense for that kind of thing. There was no way it could have happened in the first place. And even if it did, shit happens. People just had to learn to suck it up, as far as Charlie was concerned. He hadn’t had it easy himself. But did he dwell on his hardships? No sir. He did not.
Charlie turned and went back to the front of the store. Large loaves sat on baking sheets cooling behind the still empty glass display cases, and several trays of danishes, éclairs, donuts and cream puffs sat waiting to be boxed. The steam swirled upward to join the dust being beaten around by the ceiling fan.
The neighborhood had changed drastically over the past couple of years. Most of the small family owned shops had closed down, and gradually, organic food marts, expensive boutiques, and upbeat restaurants—with their fluorescent lights, two seater tables and happy neon colored walls—started springing up in their places. One by one, all the buildings in the area had been sold to the tofu eating smoothie makers. Dewitt was the new owner of Charlie’s building, a big-shot stockbroker from ‘the Merc’ (as he called it) at LaSalle and Van Buren, now trying his hand in real-estate. He checked on his buildings regularly and often dropped in without prior notice. He had replaced three of his buildings already with $15 an hour parking-lots or fancy café’s, and the bakery was definitely not as profitable as his latest endeavors.
Charlie was trying his best to attract the newer clientele. He made some of the fancy specialties he saw in the new coffee shops and added more decorations to the cakes and bonbons, but he hadn’t had much success yet. These new recipes weren’t in his hands or heart, and it showed in the taste.
Max shuffled into the kitchen. His hair, trying desperately to escape from his head, stretched in all conceivable directions; and his shoes were untied. The baker stared at them. Of course his shoes were untied. Nothing he said to the boy about cleanliness and professional presentation had ever seemed to stick. Max grabbed a soggy sundried-tomato roll and stuffed it half way down his throat.
“You going to help out this morning? Or just stuff your face?”
The boy grabbed another roll and a frosted cookie before reaching for the broom. His face looked like it had been forced through a funnel on his way into the world. It was pinched at the nose and mouth, leaving his eyes extremely wide-set, and his forehead even wider. His baggy pants shuffled to the front of the store leaving smudged streaks on the floor.
“Could you open the front before you sweep?” the baker exclaimed.
“I know.”
“Well you never do it.”
The bells clanged in angry little peals as Max pulled the door open, and began to half-heartedly sweep the entry way.
***
Yesterday had been an average day. By three in the afternoon, the rolls were getting dry. There was hardly anything in the register, and it didn’t look like traffic would get heavier anytime soon. Max had been sitting on the padded stool behind the counter, his moist fingerprints studding the glass as he tapped it. The fan was whirring, as it always did, and the sun wrapped its long smooth fingers around the shop making the dirty windows look frosted from the inside. The buzzing florescent lights were dimmed to keep the bills down, and the combined effect made everything look tinged with brown. The boy had been in a very quiet mood, and he sat with his homework in front of him, scratch marks and ketchup covering the small problem-sets.
Max liked math. Playing with numbers was fun for him. He could plus and minus them, times them and divide them, and in the end, everything equaled out to what it was supposed to be. Once he got into it, he didn’t even have to think anymore. He could let his head leave his body—fade into a world of numbers where nothing else mattered. Drawing let him do that too. It was like being in another world. A nicer world that he made himself. He especially liked shading: the way it made things jump off of the page.
His favorite thing to draw was Comics. His Spiderman looked almost like the one on TV now. He’d been saving his money to buy a real set of drawing pencils, the ones with different darknesses, and maybe even some colors too. He had his old crayons, but it was hard to get the same effects you could get with pencils. Markers didn’t work that well either because he couldn’t really vary the dark, it was all the same shade. Before, he used to like coloring everything as dark as he could, but it ran the crayons down too fast, and it always made things look flat.
He had seen this show on PBS in Art class with this old man with a curly blond fro. Bob something. He talked really softly, and made everything look so easy. But he drew with paint, and it was mostly trees and flowers. Not that he didn't like nature, comics were just so much cooler.
The boy looked up into the sepia glare of the sun through the tinted storefront. He wished he could go outside. He was so tired of working; and no one was coming inside. He didn't see the point of cooking and cleaning all the time if there weren't going to be any customers.
There was a nice tree in the park down the block. One with knots and knarls that looked like trolls lived in it. Max could see the one that was right in front of the store, but all the ones on the street were the scrawny ugly ones trapped in the black metal grates on the sidewalk. And those ones barely even had leaves. He thought maybe he would draw a truck. There was a big red one right out front. He needed his pencils though. It would never work without the pencils. Mr. Dewitt had bought him pastels, but he didn’t like those. They were greasy, messy, like Mr. Dewitt made him feel. They got all over his hands and clogged his fingerprints with gooey gunk that got darker anytime you switched colors. He thought maybe Uncle Charlie would buy them for him for Christmas. He had asked him before. Maybe he would remember.
The door opened and the boy jumped. He hadn’t been watching the street as the black BMW parked. He recognized the footsteps though, and his nerves forced his fingers up to his earlobes.
“Hello Max,” Mr. Dewitt sneered with a smile.
