Daily Rescue #5

July 25

A man with a sun-reddened face and gelled hair comes in around 10am. He leans over the display case, rests his forearms on its plastic top.

“It’s been a long time since I’ve seen you here.”

“I’ve been away. Back part-time.”

I want him to know it’s not my only work; that, whatever person he thinks ends up as a barista in their thirties, I am not only that.

I’ve missed the simple, full-bodied work of this place —the bending, the lifting, the bagging, and thanking. When the hours slow and I get bored, I start doing it all—the, bagging, the wrapping, the lifting, the pouring—with my left hand instead of my right. What I know too well becomes strange, new.

“So how about the country white? Have that?” he asks.

There are three loaves piled against the bread wall behind me. Two are flat against the parchment, serving as the base; the third is propped diagonally against the first two, like a surfboard against logs.

If he were to have looked up, he would have seen them—their sesame-laced tops, their pillowy Beluga-whale foreheads. It is clear what breads remain, and what kind. But he wants me to do this work too: The seeing. The saying.

“Give me all of them,” he says.

After the country white, it’s the berry bars. Then the sourdough chocolate chip cookies—the house favorite. Then the raspberry scones.

With each item, he moves through the same sequence: asks me if we have them, how many we have, then closes with,

“All of them. give them.”

“All of them?” I sometimes ask, making him pause, say it again.

I want the people standing behind him (the mother with the stroller, the boys in the soccer cleats, the young woman hugging a Kristin Hannah novel) to hear.

“Yup—why not.”

I look up and check the families’ faces for a prayer: Please leave two. Okay, just one. But no one says anything.

It’s almost like they knew he was coming, the way you know about a summer storm. As if they knew that this man, and his hunger, were on their way.

My coworker has been moving around me, ushering these customers around the man’s tall frame—like sheep around a lion, like water around a boulder—trying to grab what’s left for the people next in line.

I hear her ring up their smaller orders: A warm quiche. An avocado toast and a chai.

I’ve shimmied each of the man’s six loaves into paper bags, and lined them up next to the boxes. The entire counter is covered—full—of what he wants.

“I’m gonna need those in plastic. I’m driving out of town,” he says.

The wrapping station, where the metal-toothed roll of plastic wrap lives, is in the back, out of his sight.

Alone, I try to imagine what he’s doing, where and to whom he’s taking this many cookies, this many scones, this many bread loaves. A party? Grandchildren? Fifteen of them?

But when I picture him, I can see only a giant room—like Shrek’s swamp before Fiona, before Donkey, before love broke in—with the breads laid out around him; berry bars bleeding onto the floor, their brown sugar and walnut tops crumbling. Scones like knives, their corners dulling inside a drawer.

The serrated teeth are dull, so after I pull the plastic taut around each loaf, I need to slam my forearms down, hard, across the stubborn shine until it breaks, under the weight of my body. Each time, my arm hits the metal table too hard, and makes a loud thud.

I look back at the register, where the man is waiting now, to pay; where he will leave a 20% tip and wish me a good day.

When I meet him at the register, I do not ask him his story.

This is the one thing I can withhold from him: My interest. My curiosity. The questions that turn shapes into people; that turn a man’s taking, what looks and feels like greed, into a story about giving, sharing.

The only question I am ready to give him before he goes is, “Do you need a bag?” But I stop myself.

Of course he does. Of course.