The smell of freshly baked bread wafted out of Casey's Pastries on its opening morning. Redheaded Casey Novak rushed back and forth, lime green apron outlining her authoritative movements. Casey whirled about, opening ovens, extracting pans of bread, setting timers, answering the phone: it was a grand day and this was just the beginning.
"Hello," came Casey's sharp but sweet voice into the receiver of the phone. "This is Casey's Pastries and I'm Casey how may I help you?"
"Yes," returned a heavy and slow voice in return, "I wanted to know, how is your rosemary bread?"
"Quite splendid, sir, would you like to place an order for it, we can have it ready once we're open?"
"No, no, I'll just stop in soon and pick it up. You have some freshly baked, yes?"
"Pulling it out of the oven right now!" Casey answered as she carefully withdraw a baking sheet punched out with craters filled with risen dough.
She set the baking sheet down momentarily to carry a basket of cranberry muffins to the store's counter, which was ready and waiting for the first customers. Casey's Pastries was a neat little shop, built from the first floor of a renovated apartment building near a busy street corner of New York. Above her was tucked away office space and a few remaining tenants. The real estate was the key, however; after finding a spot almost any business could thrive considering the sheer volume of traffic that flooded the streets of New York daily. It wasn't even seven in the morning yet and still Casey could hardly see the opposite end of the street, much less hear very much over the raucous honking of car's horns and the continual drawl of their engines.
"Casey! Do you want some of the bagels set out on display as well?"
Casey turned from the gleaming storefront window to one of her assistants, a young blonde by the name of Alex. Alex was holding a tray of bagels and smiling eagerly. All of her employees were thoroughly excited about the opening of Casey's Pastries. Casey had combed the cafes, bakeries, and pastry shops of New York City meticulously after graduating from culinary school, searching for the best bakers to join her new armada. She intended to make a name for herself as a respectable and delectable baker, and she wanted only New York's finest to join her.
"Yes, please, set the bagels out as well. And, Alex, are the munkins finished yet?"
"It'll be a few more minutes but then we'll have them out as well," Alex said as she scrambled off.
"Make it snappy we open in five!"
"Got it," trailed her voice.
Despite her urgent tone Casey knew everything was ready. She almost felt like dropping into one of the deep blue armchairs they had placed around the seating area. A mix of tables, round and square, small booths, armchairs, and a small bar with stools sat arranged in an apparently random but carefully planned fashion about the floor of the pastry shop. Although it was called Casey's Pastries it was meant to be more of an avant-garde cafe, but Casey had furnished it traditionally. A slight ramp sloped up past the glass display case that boasted rows of tarts and treats, behind which resided muffins, danishes, scones, doughnuts, and soon, Casey's munkin, a delight that she had invented entirely herself and was soon to be the staple of New York pastry fame. She could already see the cover of The Urban Gourmet. Behind the display case were wooden mesh grids that housed the array of bread Casey offered, everything from banana nut to sourdough to poppyseed to multigrain to walnut and more; the list went on, and would frequently vary with Casey's mood and the stock of local markets.
Casey stood proudly behind her counter. It was one minute until opening, and a line of eager customers had already formed outside the door. Alex hurried out with the munkins and placed them delicately among the other treats in the glass case. Casey had prepared these last so they would be especially warm and fresh for the store's first customers. Casey's other assistant, Abbie, had just appeared from the back of the bakery where she had been refilling the ovens with bread ready to rise.
"Alex? Abbie? Everyone ready? Today begins the slow ascendance of Casey Novak to world-acclaimed pastry chef! Now, it's time! Abbie! Get the door! Casey's Pastries is open for business!"
Abbie rushed over to the door, unlatched its triple-enforced steel lock and swung the door open to admit the throng of hungry citizens. In proper New York style, they poured in like a deluge and the bakery was soon swamped with noisy chatter, cell phone ringtones, the cries of little children and rebuffs of their parents. But Casey was prepared, she hadn't slaved away for the last few years for nothing. She could take this crowd, in fact, this crowd wouldn't know what hit them.
"Hello and welcome to Casey's Pastries congratulations on being our first customer I'm Casey how may I help you?" Casey said all in one swift rehearsed breath, the words flying out and the sentence ending before the customer had easily comprehended any of it.
"Good morning," the man clad in a blue coat and red tie replied, a little unsure. "Could I please have a plain bagel with cream cheese and black coffee to go?"
"Certainly," Casey said as her finger punched the items out on the register in front of her. "It'll be $2.35 please." The order had already appeared on a monitor in front Alex who had sliced the bagel and was now awaiting its crunchy toasted form to appear in the egress of the toaster. Abbie was now back behind the counter and commandeering the second register, handling business almost as fast but not as deftly as Casey Novak a few feet away.
In this manner customers were quickly shuffled in and out, and within a few hours the clamor died down enough for the diligent girls to relax a little.
"I guess this is the lull before the lunch crowd," murmured Casey to Alex as she hurtled by with another tray of bread."
"It looks like it," said Alex in return. "Speaking of lunch we'll need some more of your cryptic munkins!"
"Right," said Casey, "I'll get on it!" She sped off in a lime green and red blur.
Casey left Alex and Abbie to handle the front while she headed to the ovens to work up another batch of her fabled munkins. She pulled out a bag of secret flour imported from Jamaica and mixed it with brownie bits and caramel, and then used a special mold to craft them into cushy little balls. She coated them in mulberry powder which was carefully made from mulberries grown on the slopes of Mount Hiei. It was rumored that the mulberry trees harbored the spirits of an ancient Japanese sect of ninjas, and they had been personally recommended to her by a reputable chef. Casey made about a hundred and then set them all in the oven to let them settle into their delicious doughy futures.
She returned to the front of the store to check up on how things were going. Seeing that they had some spare time and it was nearly lunch, Casey prompted Alex, "Alex, quick, one Casey Club, what goes on it?"
"Turkey, ham, provolone, bacon, lettuce, tomatoes, onions, mayonnaise and the customer's choice of bread in that order and with an ounce of love!" Alex replied without hesitation.
"Excellent," Casey said, delighted. Casey wasn't worried that her employees had forgotten, she was just teeming with excitement and couldn't resist testing them. Alex and Abbie had memorized the store's menu and could recite the ingredients of anything they sold forward and backward, along with its price before and after tax. After being handpicked by culinary maven Casey Novak they had sought to live up to her expectations, and so far were doing so like true apprentices. They had heard the rumors that Casey's old job had ended abruptly and she had then turned to her second favorite hobby of all time: the art of cooking. Casey's past was a subject of intense curiosity for Alex and Abbie, but despite their polite prodding they could extract no more from Casey other than that she had 'been a lawyer in a previous life,' so they mostly let the issue rest.
The day continued pleasantly and by evening Casey was convinced of the store's success. By no means, however, did the pastry shop lack a constant presence of customers at any time during its opening day, and therefore Casey, Alex and Abbie were all quite exhausted when it came time to close. Seven in the evening was when the store closed, Casey had chosen it because it was a decent hour for a bakery to close and it meant that they had very simple hours: 7am-7pm weekdays.
Casey walked to the front and locked the door before heading toward the rear exit in company of Alex and Abbie.
"So, good first day Casey?" asked Abbie.
"Yes, I think so!" Casey replied smiling. "What do you think?"
"I thought it was splendid! You should have seen the happy looks of the little children who devoured your munkins! What do you put in those anyways?"
"Oh, you know, just a little magic touch, that's all. It's my own secret."
"Fine! Keep your secrets! But when you become famous don't forget about us!"
"Oh I won't, don't worry, maybe I'll name my next concoction after you. Abbie's Strudel, topped with Alex Creme, how does that sound?"
"As long as you don't put us in it, great!" Abbie replied laughing.
Casey flicked off the light switch and the three departed, more as companions than coworkers; another attribute Casey had deemed indispensable to the success of her store. As Casey left the thoughts moved to the rest of her life, to things that she had not considered during the daytime in the rush of business. To bills to pay, to trash that needed to be taken out, to the annoying sound her car made when driving on the highway, to Clifford, her neighbor that she had a crush on. She thought of what this day had symbolized, how it was the beginning of a new stage in her life, how she was finally going to be able to move on after what had happened- after she could no longer be a lawyer. Soon, her thoughts had drifted far away from the homely pastry shop that she had spent the last year designing, planning, and staking her hopes on- and from the neat and orderly tarts and pastries, muffins and cakes, bagels and munkins that peacefully resided there. Even if her thoughts had returned again to these baked goodies her mind could not have perceived how one of the munkins trembled slightly in the dim twilight offered by the store's windows, how it seemed to shake some of its dark green powder off of itself, and wobble in place. She could not have imagined how a little puff of the powder emanated from its round surface as if it had exhaled a breath; an alteration so subtle that not even had her face been in front of the glass display case would she have interpreted this imperceptible change for the sign of awakening it signified. No, Casey's thoughts were elsewhere, as where the thoughts of the other of New York's laboring and sleepless citizenry, on the night of the Eternal Recurrence.
The little munkin puffed out another ring of its mulberry coating, and stirred slightly, now rolling around in place. Had someone had ears of the size or tuning to hear such small movements, they would not only have perceived an irregularity attributable only to conscious movement, but would have also been able to make out the faint stirrings of a voice, a voice that grew and subsided gradually, as a tide surges against a barrier before breaking through. Then, finally, in relief and release, a coherent voice burst forth from the round ball of baked dough.
"Well I'll be if it hasn't been long enough!" The munkin rolled about now excitedly, as a child becomes energized after waking up.
"Brrrr!" The munkin said, spinning and sending clouds of the dark green powder out and among the other baked items. The powder settled among his soon to be comrades, drifting down like a coat of snow, and they, too, soon began to depict signs of stirring.
"All right, all right now! It's time to get up and going, we've got work to do! Come on my friends wake up! I told the government had some weird-ass conspiracies! I'll glad you'll finally have to believe me about this one!" said the munkin. And with that came simultaneous bursts of breath identical to the one that had just animated the munkin, and soon the glass pastry display was bursting and thriving with the activity of dozens of little baked beings, now in chorus producing an all too familiar sound, DOINK DOINK.