I heard the sickening sound of flesh meeting pavement and felt my heart plummet. My stomach, however, was more than eager to take its place. My throat constricted and I choked on bile. Each breath I took was laborious. Nobody could have survived a fall from that height. Taylor, the light of my life, was dead. The world faded to black.
I sat bolt upright and found myself in a comfortable bed. I tried to look around, but it was dark, and my eyes refused to cooperate. As the fog of sleep cleared from my mind, I took stock of the situation. I was in my bedroom at home. The last thing I remembered was Taylor—Taylor! I reached out to her side of the bed. She was there, feeling soft and smelling faintly of the lavender-scented body wash I bought the other day. Her presence soothed me; I clung to her like the life preserver she was. My heart calmed, and I slowly drifted back to sleep.
When I woke up, it was to the sight of my wife's gently smiling face.
"Hello, Maddie," she said. "You know that I love when you turn into my little koala, but my bladder just doesn't agree. Could you let go so I can go to the bathroom?"
"Koalas all have chlamydia," I mumbled then froze as I realised what I had just said.
Taylor burst into laughter. "Okay, unless you want me to literally pee myself laughing, you need to let go now." I released her and threw the covers over my head. I felt her leaving the bed more through the sudden absence of her warmth than the mattress and sheets being disturbed. After an indeterminate amount of time, I heard my wife calling out, "Madison."
"Madison is gone. Do you want to leave a message?"
"Tell her that I'm making breakfast."
"No!" I said as I attempted to scramble out of bed and found myself on the floor in a tangled heap of limbs and linen, instead.
"Is my cooking really that bad?" Taylor laughed.
"Of course not. I just wanted to pamper you today." I looked up and gave her my best hangdog expression, hoping that it would persuade her to see reason.
She kneeled and kissed the tip of my nose. "Tell you what. Whoever can make it to the kitchen first gets to make breakfast. Agreed? Good," she said then blinked away before I could register what had happened.
"What? Blaggard! You're a cad and a bounder! A villainous cur. A rogue and a scoundrel whose treachery knows no bounds."
"And I'm making you breakfast, baby," came her voice from the kitchen. She teleported to me and quickly kissed the corner of my mouth. "Deal with it," she said before disappearing again, not quite fast enough to conceal her smug grin.
By the time I managed to untangle myself from the bedding and get myself looking somewhat presentable, the dish was already underway. From the looks of it, she was making scrambled eggs.
I walked up behind her and wrapped my arms around her waist. Standing on the tips of my toes, I managed to kiss the nape of her neck. If Taylor bent her knees a little to help, neither of us mentioned it.
"You cheated," I said sotto voce.
"Funny, that doesn't sound like you dealing with it, but I know that couldn't be the case since I distinctly recall telling you to do exactly that."
"This is how I deal."
I looked around her and surveyed the stovetop. Taylor preferred to scramble her eggs in the American style: cooked in a sauteuse over direct heat. During my apprenticeship to a maître pâtissier in Paris, I was introduced to the gentler bain-marie style wherein the eggs are slowly cooked over a pot of boiling water. I loved how fine the curds were, but she always claimed the resulting dish was too sloppy, so I rarely made them. In addition to the eggs, she was sautéing chanterelle mushrooms in a second sauteuse and frying sausages in a sautoir. The delicate aroma of the mushrooms contrasted with the, well, beefy smell of the beef.
"So, I'm thinking of doing more catering," I said as I sat on a stool by the counter.
"Oh?"
"We made a tidy sum from the wedding order, and it was really nice to bake on that scale."
"It'd mean you'd have less time for the customer-facing sides of the business."
"The salon de thé won't suffer for it. My sleep schedule might, but I'm willing to make that sacrifice."
"You know that I'll always support you. If you want to explore this, I'll be there for you. Heck, if you need more than moral support, I could even help out in the Busy Bee. It hasn't been so long since I worked there. I still remember a thing or two from those days."
"Like the time you used salt instead of sugar?"
"That was one time. Besides, it's not like you never made mistakes."
"I was practically perfect in every way."
Taylor blinked to the opposite side of the counter, leaned over, and whispered, "Tiramisu."
"I thought we all agreed that that never happened."
She laughed and mimed locking her mouth and throwing away the key. After she finished cooking, she served it with buttery toast and a cup of apricot tea, making a show of searching for the key and unlocking her mouth before eating.
"I've started reading Wuthering Heights," said Taylor when she was down to the last scraps of her meal.
I grasped her hand and squeezed it reassuringly. "How are you holding up?"
"Better than I used to. I still miss her."
"I know, my heart."
My cell rang. The words "The Busy Bee" stared up at me reproachfully, as if it somehow disapproved of my decision to spend the day with my wife instead of working. I looked away from the judgmental phone and at Taylor entreatingly. She gave me a small half-smile and nodded. I answered the call and said, "This had better be an emergency." 30 seconds later, I turned back to Taylor and explained that I needed to go into work to find out which of my employees was losing her job.
###
It turned out that none of the workers would be losing their jobs, at least until we could determine who, if anyone, was to blame. It seemed that The Busy Bee had somehow come into possession of 50,000 free range chicken eggs. To put that in context, we usually use fewer than 5,000 in a week. It wasn't clear if the mistake was on our end or our supplier's. If it was the latter's mistake, we could be compensated accordingly, but we couldn't just assume they would deal with it in case it turned out to be our fault. If it was our fault, we'd need to come up with a plan to deal with the excess eggs, hence the odd meeting I found myself in at that moment. It consisted of me, Ruth, Claire, the girl working the counter, and a random teenager who happened to be in the salon at the time.
"Ruth will look into the supplier's side. Right now, we need to come up with a plan for these eggs," I said. "What are some egg-heavy dishes?"
"Meringues," said Claire, my ever-dependable second in the kitchen.
"Meringues are popular, as are macarons," said Ruth. "The excess stock could sell very well."
"Meringues and macarons use egg whites. What about the yolks?"
A muffled noise came from somewhere within Nathalie's hoody.
"What was that, honey?"
"Custard."
"Custer?" asked Ruth.
"She said 'custard.' You're going to have to speak up a little; Ruth has gone deaf in her old age," I said. Ruth responded by throwing a balled-up napkin at me.
"You could, if you wanted to, make egg custard without whites. You don't have to, of course, but whenever we had extra yolks growing up, we'd use them to make a custard or a mousse. It's just a suggestion."
"Thank you, Nathalie. Any other suggestions?"
"Well," said Mary, "we are a bakery. Why don't we make French toast?"
"It's really more of a patisserie than a boulangerie."
"See, you already make it all Frenchy."
"Okay then. Well, thanks for all your contributions. Ruth, can I talk to you in private?" Ruth nodded and led me to her office. Once the door was closed, I asked, "What's the score? Is this going to work out?"
"I'll run the numbers and see what's financially viable, but I think we're still going to have way too many eggs leftover. Making extra cookies and cakes means we'd need to buy even more ingredients. Most of them won't be perishable, so they'll keep for a while, but it is a consideration. The more pressing concern is manpower. We need more bakers, and I don't know if we can afford them."
"Taylor was talking about helping out around here. She could get us over the hill."
"That's one extra set of hands that won't put us in the red, but it won't be enough," said Ruth.
"Apprentices are cheaper than masters. We could find one to be my lackey."
"I'll start making enquiries."
"Also, I wonder if we could get some local kids to blow out and decorate the eggs. You know, like old school Easter eggs?"
"Easter egg painting," she said while jotting it down in her notepad. "Got it. Anything else?"
"Yes." I stood and loomed over the desk as imperiously as I could manage. The effect was spoiled somewhat by my diminutive height and cherubic face, but I persisted nonetheless. "I want to know who messed up."
###
That night, I woke up in a cold sweat and turned to the reassuring presence of my wife.