The Commons · June 24, 2230 · Afternoon, before the supper shift
Olga had put on her good blouse to ruin a cake.
This was not how she described the afternoon. She had told Jilly-Quill she would be unavailable until the kitchen bell, which he understood to mean available in an emergency, available for a question, and available if he stood in the doorway looking sufficiently troubled.
“The supplier brought the wrong—” he began.
“Ask the supplier.”
“I have.”
“Then wait for the second person to speak.”
She shut the door to the little preparation room. It did not latch. He could have followed her, which made his decision to stay outside visible to both of them.
The cake lay in two pieces on the board. One piece had risen beautifully and stuck to the tin. The other had come out freely and resembled a collapsed hat. Olga had borrowed neither extra fuel nor the kitchen's supper flour: this was her little parcel of meal, her saved sweetening, and the tail end of a fire already doing other work. The failure was entirely hers. She found that almost refreshing.
On a stool by the door, Sada's daughter watched with the grave attention children give adults who have become less competent than advertised.
“Could we put the tall one inside the flat one?”
“Then we'd have a hill in a pond.”
“It might be a landscape cake.”
“Don't name it until we know it can be eaten.”
The girl had been helping her mother sort scraps and had come to return Olga's scissors. Olga had asked whether she wanted to scrape the tin. The invitation had expanded into an apprenticeship in concealment. Together they loosened the stuck half with a spoon and arranged the rubble on a plate.
Olga's hands hurt when she gripped the spoon too hard. She eased them, letting the girl take the tin without turning that transfer into a speech about youth. Beyond the wall, somebody dropped a bowl. Neither of them moved.
“What's it for?” the girl asked.
“Eating.”
“I mean why.”
Olga considered whether a cake needed to submit a reason before entering the Commons. Birthdays were useful. A birthday allowed sweetness to look like an obligation, and people who would never spare a little for themselves would defend somebody else's portion fiercely.
It was not anybody's birthday that she knew of.
“I wanted cake,” she said.
The girl nodded as though this was an unusually good reason. Then she asked whether her mother could have some.
“Of course.”
“And Carla?”
“If she comes.”
“And—”
“How many people are we up to?”
They counted on their fingers. The cake had begun as a small private pleasure and was already approaching the dimensions of a public disappointment.
Olga took the girl's counting hand gently and laid it on the table.
“We are allowed to stop before everyone.”
The words were easy. The doorway made them harder. There were people in the warehouse who had arrived with less than the girl, people who needed supper more than either of them needed sweetness. Olga fed people every day. This did not make the unused room feel entirely private.
Jilly-Quill knocked against the open frame.
“That isn't knocking,” Olga said. “That's being here noisily.”
“I brought a clean cloth.”
“Did the supplier tell you to?”
He looked at the cake. His face did something she recognized immediately: the practical softening with which he approached a problem that might upset her.
“I can find another tin.”
“Can you find the flour that goes in it?”
“I only meant—”
“I know what you meant. Sit down if you want a piece.”
There were two stools, both occupied. He remained standing, which was a habit so complete he did not notice it. Olga pushed a packing crate toward him with her foot. He sat, knees higher than he preferred, clean cloth still folded across his hands.
The girl offered him the landscape explanation. He looked at the cake again, more carefully this time.
“Which part is the river?”
“There isn't water.”
“That is how I recognized it.”
Olga laughed, and the girl laughed because she had been trying to make the same joke without finding its door. The cake ceased being a failed object and became something the three of them could discuss rudely.
Jilly-Quill unfolded the cloth. Inside it were two apples, small and soft on one side.
“The supplier brought bruised ones,” he said. “I wanted to ask whether they'd keep.”
“You asked a different question.”
“You answered before I got to it.”
She let that be true. He had not come solely to interfere with her afternoon. He had also come because for much of his life she had known what an apple needed.
“Cut them,” she said. “Use the good parts.”
He borrowed the small knife, took too much off the first apple, and was corrected by the girl, who had been watching the spoon work. Olga withheld her own instruction. It took effort. Jilly-Quill saved more of the second one.
They laid the slices across the cake. One bruised apple could hide a surprising amount of structural disagreement.
“Now it looks intended,” he said.
“Don't insult the cook.”
The girl wanted to fetch plates. Olga sent her for three, and a fourth to cover the piece for Sada. Not eight. Not a stack to be distributed through the warehouse until each person received a sweetness too small to taste. She watched Jilly-Quill hear the number and fail to increase it.
When the girl was gone, he touched the cuff of Olga's blouse.
“You'll get that stained.”
“That's what washing is for.”
“You save it.”
“I'm wearing it.”
He drew his hand back. She regretted the sharpness a little, but not enough to withdraw the answer. The blouse had spent too many good afternoons hanging in the dark while she dressed for usefulness. Its small buttons were difficult with swollen fingers. She had fastened them anyway.
“It's a nice blouse,” he said.
“Yes.”
That was better.
They ate from the plates when they arrived. The cake was dry along one edge and surprisingly fine under the apple. Jilly-Quill asked for the collapsed part. The girl wanted the hill. Olga cut herself a piece with enough sweetening to make the work worthwhile.
Someone called his name from the yard.
His head turned. Then he called back, “In a few minutes.”
Nothing fell apart within their hearing. He finished his piece, including the crumbs. Olga did not thank him for sitting with her as if he had performed an extra shift.
When the girl carried the covered plate to Sada, Jilly-Quill washed the tin. Olga stayed in her blouse. There was a pale crescent of meal on one cuff and a spot near the lowest button. She brushed away the meal, looked at the spot, and left it.
At the kitchen bell she would put on an apron. Until then, the cloth was still good.