Home Baked Page 9

  Naturally, Barb hadn’t told him that the bakery’s most popular product couldn’t be sold in a storefront.

  She offered various reasons for turning the loan down, but Hank kept bringing it up.

  In truth, Barb liked the idea of a charming neighborhood bakeshop. Mer dismissed it without a moment’s thought. Though Barb hadn’t expected her to go for something so traditional, the response still stung.

  Why couldn’t they have a sweet little bakery? Why did it have to be weed?

  * * *

  Doug squinted at Mer through the bottom of his water glass, an imitation of Inspector Clouseau.

  Mer smiled. They’d seen The Pink Panther Strikes Again at the Roxie, then stopped for a coffee at a corner café.

  “I had a great time with you the other night,” he said with an easy smile.

  Mer noticed his slight overbite for the first time. Long dimples puckered the edges of his beard and mustache. Handsome, unusual.

  Mer had been a little surprised to hear from him again, thinking he might be embarrassed. She kept expecting him to allude to it, but he acted as if nothing had happened—like he hadn’t wet her bed. Was it possible that he hadn’t noticed? Was he hoping that maybe she hadn’t?

  Their conversation meandered. Then Doug mentioned, as if it was an afterthought, that he was epileptic. “You should know in case it happens when you’re around,” he said. “It’s no big deal, but if you see me fall down or if I start seizing in bed, roll me onto my side so I don’t choke on my tongue. It’ll pass on its own.”

  The mystery unraveled. “I think you maybe had a seizure when you slept over. You were thrashing, and you . . .”

  “What?”

  “Well, you kind of had an . . . accident.”

  Doug blushed deeply. “That happens very occasionally. I’m not always aware of it.”

  “Actually,” Mer said, pitching her voice low for comic effect. “I thought it was kinda sexy.”

  They laughed and moved on.

  And it was attractive in an odd way; it made him vulnerable. Meridy let her guard down and Doug eased into her life.

  In those first weeks, she learned several intriguing things. That he was a soulful, groovy dancer. That he was usually broke. That he’d let her pay for their dates but might sulk about it afterward. That he sometimes put random objects on his head to be silly. That he trusted his spiritual wisdom above all else. That he believed an environmental apocalypse was coming and that hundreds of thousands of people were going to die in floods, fires, and earthquakes. That he could make her feel beautiful and ugly in the same breath. And that once she’d invited him into her mind she didn’t want to let him out.

  Finally, she learned about the spirit-child.

  They were eating at a cheap Italian place, the kind where “That’s Amore” plays on an infinite loop. Doug had been pensive for several minutes when he put his fork down midbite and said, “Meridy, I have to tell you something.”

  Mer braced herself for the big bummer: he would feed her a line and bail out just when things were getting good.

  “I’m carrying a child.”

  Mer chuckled, relieved. It was just his quirky sense of humor. But Doug’s pale eyes were unwavering. “I had a reading with a friend from the psychic institute the other day,” he said. “Though I really didn’t need her to tell me. This is something I’ve been aware of for a while. There’s a being traveling with me, a little boy who kind of floats along wherever I go. And he’s eager to be born into the here and now.”

  Releasing his gaze, Mer extracted a cigarette from her purse and fished for a lighter.

  “Now I don’t know when it’s going to happen, or who is supposed to bring this child into the world with me,” Doug continued. “I’m not saying it’s you. I only know that this spirit is waiting for me to get my act together so he can come through.”

  Mer exhaled a stream of smoke and waited for the calm to descend. What could she say to that?

  Doug frowned; he clearly didn’t like tobacco. “Anyway,” he said. “I thought you should know.”

  Mer spent the night at his warehouse, but she couldn’t focus on sex and couldn’t relax afterward. She lay fretting in the dark, staring into the void between Doug’s bed and the skylights high overhead. She could hear his roommates breathing at the other end of the warehouse, their nighttime noises unobstructed by walls or ceilings.

  So Doug’s seed needed soil. Fine. But Mer didn’t see herself as mother material. A woman’s maternal clock was supposed to be loud at twenty-nine; she hadn’t heard it tick yet. Crying babies grated on her nerves. She couldn’t picture bending her lifestyle around a child. She had paintings to paint, a business to run. Yet here was a guy, finally, who matched her intensity. She wasn’t ready to give him up. It hadn’t been an easy beginning, but now they seemed to be rolling on twin tracks.

  Doug was dangerous and mystical. Capable of surprise.

  Magician indeed.

  * * *

  At Ransohoff’s, the magic was getting out of hand.

  Demand climbed through the holidays, sending the Sticky Fingers crew into overdrive. Barb spent long nights in the kitchen. Donald wrapped the products, made shopping trips on his skateboard, and sometimes traveled downtown to refresh Mer’s supply. And Mer was selling, selling, selling. Every load they brought to Ransohoff’s sold out. The only limitations seemed to be the speed with which Barb could bake and the amount of product Mer could schlep.

  Serving brownies as refreshment at parties had come into vogue that season. Some customers wanted five dozen, ten dozen, twenty dozen. Mer had to haul those big orders in grocery bags—separate from her basket of breads and such, her cooler of Fantasy Fudge, and the Guatemalan pouch of single brownies over her shoulder.

  Barb joked that she should load Boogie with product and use him for a pack mule. Which didn’t seem like a half-bad idea except that Boogie would probably disappear with the drugs.

  All of Barb’s baked treats were popular, but nothing sold like the brownies. People clamored for them. The other products started to feel like a burden to Mer. Fantasy Fudge was a pain in the ass. It had to be kept cold or it turned into goop—hence the cooler she was lugging to Ransohoff’s. The “straight” goods in Mer’s basket provided good cover because they looked so innocent—but one could only charge so much for products that didn’t have the magic ingredient. And Barb spent a lot of her time trying new recipes every week.

  Barb’s oven had capacity for four nine-by-thirteen-inch pans, each of which held two dozen brownies. Each batch had to cool for about forty-five minutes before the brownies could be wrapped. If we streamlined, Mer thought, we could keep the brownies going all day. Why drag those extra products around? Why squander valuable time on cinnamon buns?

  One night in mid-December, Mer opened her I Ching to weigh some ideas. The results were unequivocal. The dead weight had to go.

  * * *

  “I can’t believe you’re even considering this, Mer.” Barb’s voice crackled through a bad line. Her Wisconsin accent grew sharper when she was annoyed, clipped and nasal.

  “All I’m saying is we should give customers what they want. People are into having a good time.”

  “Well, some people really appreciate my breads and stuff, you know, so I don’t think that’s correct. I’m the one baking. I should have some say.”

  Crackle, hiss.

  “We could double our cash if you’d go with the flow.”

  “Mer, if we stop doing breads and stuff—and you know that’s what I really enjoy making—”

  “I know, but—”

  “Then we’re just dealers. We might as well stand out on the corner, like, Hey, man, wanna buy some weed?”

  “The hexagrams were so clear, Barb. It was Abundance changing to Possession in Great Measure. I mean, how great is that?”

  “You know what, Meridy? If you’re coming from a selfish place in your heart, a place of greed, your hexagrams are going to re
flect that. Just because the I Ching says it’s favorable doesn’t mean it’s karmically okay.”

  “That’s not fair.”

  “I believe you get back what you put into the universe. You know, a few pot brownies mixed in with a bunch of regular-type stuff in the basket is no big whoop. No one’s going to get in trouble for that. But you’re talking about a big fat dope show.”

  “Wait, is this about your dad wanting to invest?”

  There was a long staticky silence. When Barb spoke again, her voice was low. “I think I’d better throw some hexagrams of my own.”

  “Barb, come on—”

  Click.

  Mer slammed the receiver into the cradle, picked it up, slammed it again. She knew she went overboard sometimes. That was her Sagittarius rising, always aiming for the stars. Barb thought she was after money—but that wasn’t it, not really. It was more about feeling alive, tasting the fullness of experience. If Barb wanted to open a little bakery with frilly curtains, fine. It just seemed . . . dull. Here they had a product that was so hot that they couldn’t crank the brownies out fast enough. And Barb was digging her heels in over cranberry bread?

  When Barb was truly furious, she didn’t debate, return phone calls, or answer letters. She disappeared, as if swallowed by a massive fogbank. She’ll come around, Mer thought, but days passed without a word.

  * * *

  Fog moves in peculiar patterns in San Francisco. The Golden Gate forms the only sea-level break in the spine of hills running the length of the California coast. Winds from three directions can’t resist ducking into that gap and dragging fog in with them. As much as a million gallons of airborne water per hour might cross the Golden Gate to linger over the City. In a lengthy friendship like Mer and Barb’s, an occasional rupture was fog over the bridge; it would eventually pass. Mer had known Barb long enough to expect the silent treatment, but that didn’t make it easier.

  Christmas weekend approached. With the holiday falling on Saturday, Mer had planned to do her run on Friday. They had advance orders—and no baker.

  Wednesday morning, Donald leaned in the doorway of Mer’s bedroom. “Still no Barb?”

  Mer shook her head. She’d been awake half the night.

  “Make some calls,” Donald said. “Get us a gram of blow. We’ll stay up and bake.”

  “Do you know Barb’s recipe? It’s all different.”

  He shrugged. “More or less.” He started down the hall, then popped his head back in. “But I’m not doing all the baking. You’re going to have to get your hands dirty, darling.”

  Words of doom.

  An hour later, coked to the gills, Mer stood in the kitchen with Donald, sweating through her T-shirt. She had unearthed the Rainbow Lady’s old recipe for ganja brownies and read and reread it until the handwriting looked like a foreign language.

  She stared blankly at a set of measuring spoons. “I’m supposed to use the t-s-p. Which one is that?”

  “You mean the teaspoon?” Donald said.

  “I guess.”

  “It’s engraved on the handles.”

  “Oh.”

  Mer agonized through every step—cracking eggs (fishing the shells out), measuring sugar (spilling it everywhere), melting bitter chocolate (burning the first round), mixing ingredients (splattering the wall). She and Donald alternately bickered and cracked each other up. They ended up with several batches of mostly edible brownies—but there weren’t nearly enough and they weren’t very good.

  Thursday morning, Barb finally phoned.

  In a “you’re still in trouble with me” tone of voice, she said she’d already started baking that morning—just brownies, like Mer wanted—though she made it clear that she wasn’t thrilled about it.

  “Oh, thank God,” Mer said. “I was so desperate I started baking.”

  “You did what?”

  * * *

  Christmas Eve day dawned sunny and cool. To get in the holiday spirit, Meridy—who was raised Jewish and had never celebrated Christmas—wore a red velvet jacket from the 1940s, her sterling-silver housefly pinned to the lapel, and her mother’s ocelot dress hat cocked at an angle. She carried a grocery bag stocked with 384 brownies, each swaddled tightly in cellophane, and two Guatemalan bags of brownies, one over each shoulder. She had a cocaine buzz spinning behind her eyes and her own brownie trip was going full bore. The season was climaxing, and Mer cradled in her arms something everyone seemed to want: a good time.

  She propped the grocery bag on one hip and pulled open the golden door of the old Ransohoff’s. The place was packed, the holiday crowd stewing in its own stress, shoppers looking for last-ditch purchases. For the street artists, this was the big day, their chance to save for the postseason slump. Most were putting in twelve to fourteen hours at a stretch—a captive audience. Their relief came in brownie form.

  A mighty Christmas tree stood in the center of the main floor, its arms bristling past two levels. Mer maneuvered through the throng to a display case housing stained glass window ornaments. The guy who made them, Tom, was usually easygoing, but today he looked as stiff as a holiday nutcracker.

  “Hey, what’s the word?” Mer said.

  Breaking into a gap-toothed smile, Tom extended his arms as if to hug Mer over the display case, then he turned toward the balconies. “She’s here!” he hollered. “Merry Christmas, folks—the Brownie Lady’s here!”

  “All right!” someone called back from the second floor.

  “She’s heeere!” sang a sonorous voice upstairs.

  The clapping began somewhere nearby and spread, clattering up and down the levels—unwelcome attention for someone carrying hundreds of illegal brownies. Even shoppers joined in, looking bewildered. Suddenly claustrophobic, Mer wished for the anonymity of the open sidewalk. The room seemed to tilt. She set her bags on the glass counter and tried to breathe.

  “You okay?” Tom said. “Need to sit down?”

  Relax, she told herself. They’re just a little enthusiastic.

  She offered a smile. “I guess this is how it feels to play Carnegie Hall.”

  That big load of brownies sold out before Mer could get off the first floor. She dodged traffic to a pay phone across the street from Ransohoff’s and called home to arrange a rendezvous as soon as Barb and Donald could get the next round baked and wrapped.

  While waiting to restock, Mer milled around, browsing the booths. She arranged a trade for a pair of earrings to give Barb and wrote down another large order of brownies for an upcoming New Year’s Eve party. Crashing from the coke and a string of sleepless nights, Mer rested on a bench that faced the giant Christmas tree casting its heady fragrance throughout the room. Its shape called to mind a mastodon green bud, like the fine sinsemilla the Humboldt women were producing with their powerhouse female plants.

  The inspiration that had been tugging at her all month gave a yank she couldn’t ignore. Sticky Fingers Brownies was going to unfurl, plantlike, beyond this community of craftspeople into the city at large. She would sell to waiters and clothiers and hairdressers and dentists and bartenders and go-go dancers and goddamn real estate agents! The business was a mere seedling now. It had to grow—to vegetate, to flower; that was its nature. What they needed wasn’t a little storefront where they could set down roots but the opposite of that: a bigger garden. They had to become more mobile.

  The key, Mer saw clearly, was to meet clients in their places of business. When did people most want to get high? When they were looking at eight hours on the clock! She’d cater to working stiffs and slide invisibly into the City’s machinery to grease its cogs.

  Sticky Fingers Brownies would stone the labor market.

  Mer slipped into the bathroom and entered a stall. She rested her purse on the back of the toilet, fished around in its pockets, extracted a miniature origami envelope, and unfolded it: the last of the blow from their baking frenzy. She heard the bathroom door creak open and a pair of high heels clack into the next stall. With her hous
e key, Mer scooped up a tiny mound of finely chopped powder. When her neighbor flushed, Mer sniffed the snowcap up her nose. As the lady washed her hands, Mer fed the other nostril.

  Mer exited the bathroom ebullient, gratitude surging. With no one to express it to, she edged over to the big tree. “Thanks,” she whispered. “And a very merry Christmas to you.” She grasped a branch and shook it, sending jitters through the ornaments.

  * * *

  Hank Hartman kept pushing his daughter to accept his loan. He was so earnest about helping that Barb felt guilty. She booked a flight home right after Christmas. It was time to come clean. Her dad had known for years that she smoked marijuana, but what would he think of her cooking with it for profit?

  As it turned out, Hank thought it was hilarious.

  He dropped the investment idea and warned Barb to be cautious, but he didn’t seem angry. Barb suspected that he admired her moxie.

  * * *

  On December 29, 1976, clouds gathered over the City. Throughout the Bay Area, eyes turned upward toward the sky’s gray underbelly. Prayers were said, fingers crossed. Forty-six dry winter days had passed since the area’s last rainfall. By year’s end, according to the San Francisco Chronicle, the drought had cost California farmers an estimated $510 million. The governor had declared twenty-nine counties disaster areas. The cloud mass shifted throughout the day. Early evening, with a gallop of thunder, the first drops appeared on windshields, pale sidewalks, dusty fire roads, and desiccated fields. The deluge that followed flooded gutters.

  Mer unearthed an umbrella from deep in her closet and headed outside to gulp lungfuls of petrichor—the smell of fresh rain after a dry spell, her favorite scent. Droplets feathered off the edges of her umbrella. She strolled the Haight throughout the evening, finding excuses to stay out and enjoy the streets washed clean.