Tucked down an alley in the once-stately Old Capital neighborhood, a small café, Chez Magnifique, had been operating business-as-usual right through the Great Drought. It never shut down, never seemed to run out of anything, never raised its prices. Customers could still get a slice of carrot cake for $3.75, a latte for $3.50. The service was fast and courteous and the patrons were unfailingly civil.
“Delightful,” said Mr. James, sipping from a chipped china cup.
“Marvelous,” said Ms. White, dabbing orange-colored crumbs from the folds at the corners of her mouth.
“Delectable,” said Mr. Vellum, gesticulating with his fork.
“Magnifique!” said Mrs. Gallow with a theatrical wink.
All four chuckled voluminously at the small, well-worn joke until their chuckles transformed into thick, raspy wheezes. They were dressed formally—the men in threadbare, three-piece tweed suits and the women in faded satin gowns. The customers and their clothing all appeared advanced in age—balding, blotchy—but meticulously cared-for.
At the next table a small boy sat with his mother. Theirs were unfamiliar faces in a place dominated by reliable regulars. Their manners and mode of dress were casual by comparison.
“What’s the matter, Jeffy? Don’t you like your cookie?”
The boy’s face was squashed like a rotted pumpkin. His upper lip and eyebrows met at his nose in an expression of disgust. He raked his tongue with a napkin. The mother looked puzzled. A peanut butter cookie sat on a stoneware plate in front of the boy, with one child-sized bite taken out.
“If you don’t eat your cookie, mommy will!” said the mother.
She picked up the cookie and moved it to her mouth. The boy did not react. The mother took a small bite from the edge of the cookie; her mouth distorted involuntarily and her throat convulsed. She spat the bit of cookie into a napkin and waved to the waiter, who stood behind the counter.
“Excuse me!” the mother called.
“Yes?”
The waiter turned to face the mother, but didn’t move from behind the counter.
“Is something the matter, ma’am?”
“Yes,” said the mother. “Something’s wrong with this cookie. I think it’s gone bad.”
“I don’t see how,” said the waiter. “It was baked fresh this morning.”
“Still,” said the mother. “There’s something off. See for yourself.”
The waiter moved reluctantly from behind the counter to the table where the mother and son sat. He placed the fingertips of his right hand lightly on the tattered tablecloth and stared down at the cookie on its plate.
“It looks fine,” he said.
“Try it,” the mother urged. She pushed the plate toward the waiter.
“After you’re eaten from it?” said the waiter. “Honestly, ma’am, I have no idea what sorts of sicknesses you and your child might be carrying.”
He raised an eyebrow.
“No offense,” he added.
“Then try another from the same batch. Or break a piece from an edge where we didn’t bite. For heaven’s sake, you don’t want to be serving bad cookies, do you?”
The waiter spoke between pursed lips.
“Very well,” he said.
He broke a crumb-sized morsel from an unbitten edge of the cookie and placed it in his mouth. As he bit down and chewed, an expression of concentration crossed his face. The woman heard a gritty, grinding sound from between the waiter’s teeth.
“It tastes fine to me,” he said. His eyes squinted while the rest of his face forced a neutral expression.
“It’s not fine,” the woman said. “We’d like something else instead.”
“Are you sure?” said the waiter. “If you don’t like this perfectly good cookie, maybe this place just doesn’t suit you. Perhaps you would be more content elsewhere.”
“Excuse me?” said the woman. “We’re paying customers. Have I done something wrong? Are we unwelcome?”
“I’m just trying to be helpful,” said the waiter.
“Let us have a slice of that cheesecake, would you?”
The woman pointed to a glass pastry case at the end of the service counter.
“Certainly,” said the waiter.
Behind the counter, he pulled a plate from the top of a tall stack, and took a tarnished pie server from a bin of utensils by a small sink. He reached into the case through an open space where a pane was missing. He placed the cheesecake delicately—ceremoniously—on a plate, then walked back and dropped the plate, unceremoniously, on the table in front of the woman. He plunked a fork down so it bounced slightly before settling.
“Thank you,” said the woman.
“Certainly,” said the waiter.
The woman lifted the fork and perforated the cheesecake. It gave a gritty resistance that reminded her of the cookie. She raised the fork to her mouth and closed her lips around it. Again, the grimace. Again, the convulsion. Again, she spit the clump of grainy pulp into a napkin.
The woman looked at the waiter. He was staring back at her, waiting.
“This is bad, too,” said the woman. “Just like the cookie.”
“I don’t know what to tell you,” said the waiter. “The other customers seem to be satisfied. Maybe it’s just you.”
“Okay,” said the woman. “I can take a hint. We’re leaving.”
“Have a pleasant day,” said the waiter, tonelessly.
The woman took her son’s hand and they walked out together, the woman shaking her head, the boy still grimacing, his lip curled tightly up under his nose. The waiter stood behind the counter wiping his hands on a dishtowel. He watched their backs as they left.
Mrs. Gallow, still seated with her friends, turned in her chair and addressed the waiter.
“Why, whatever was the matter with them, dear?”
“Seems they didn’t like the food.”
“Didn’t like it? Why, that’s preposterous. Unheard of. Un—”
Mrs. Gallow’s remark was interrupted by a stifled gagging sound, followed by a coughing fit. It was a wet, hacking cough. She and the waiter both waited for it to subside. When it did, she continued speaking as if nothing had happened.
“After all, Marcel, everyone knows that, since—well, since the rains stopped—this is the only place in town where the food is any good at all. Anyone with a functioning tastebud agrees.”
Mrs. Gallow’s tablemates nodded vigorously in agreement, releasing little puffs of white, powdery makeup from their collars.
“Thank you, Mrs. Gallow,” said the waiter. “You know just how to nurse my ego back to health.”
Mrs. Gallow and the waiter shared a smile that almost broke into laughter, but didn’t quite. The smiles hovered there, held by sheer determination, and then faded.
“I should have known better,” the woman said.
She had led her son by the hand out the door and then out of the dim alleyway, back into the late-afternoon sun.
“I just should have known better,” she repeated. “Should have known it was too good to be true.”
The woman’s name was Dolores Blunt. She was thirty-two, a single mother of her single son, Jeffrey, who was five—or, as Jeffrey would say, five and a quarter. Dolores had spotted the inconspicuous signboard for Chez Magnifique as she and Jeffrey walked through the Old Capital, a part of the city unfamiliar to them. Jeffrey had just been immunized at an improvised clinic set up in an abandoned storefront and Dolores thought she might be able to buy him a treat for his patience and bravery. She felt robbed—duped—by the disappointing experience. Typically, no one promised her anything. She’d learned to expect nothing, to be content with what she received. But this—the raising, and then the dashing, of her hopes, however small, however low the stakes—felt like an unfathomable betrayal.
Dolores and Jeffery had taken a convoluted, two-hour, four-transfer bus ride to get there, and it would take them as long, on the same set of buses, to get back.
“Come on, Jeffy, we need to get home.”
“But I’m hungry.”
“I know, sweetie. We’ll have dinner when we get there.”
They walked three more blocks to the station, arriving just in time to climb onto a departing bus. Outside the windows they watched the city lurch into motion and slink slowly by. More than half of the storefronts were vacant or showed signs of distress–cracked panes, faded going-out-of-business signs, steel bars, chain-link, padlocks. There wasn’t much, and what there was, was tenaciously protected.
Dolores and Jeffrey sat close together watching the scenery. Frequently Jeffrey would reach over, tug on the frayed hem of Dolores’s sweater and say, “Mommy, look!” Dolores would reply, “Look at what, Jeffy?” even when it was obvious what the boy was pointing at. This was her way of urging him to describe, to develop his language, to make his own sense of what he saw.
After a while Jeffrey dozed against Dolores’s arm. She continued to watch the buildings and people trickle by. Each time they reached their transfer, Dolores lifted Jeffrey from his seat. Finally, the last bus pulled into the station near their home.
“Wake up, baby,” she said. “It’s our stop.”
They stepped off the bus and quickly walked the three blocks home. Dolores was anxious and tugged at Jeffrey’s hand. When they reached their building, Dolores keyed into the exterior door. She had her keys out ahead of time so they could duck in quickly, spending as little time as possible standing still on the street. When the building door clicked shut behind them, Dolores relaxed some. They walked down the long hallway to their apartment, Dolores keyed in again, and then shut, latched, and bolted the door behind them. Her shoulders dropped slightly and she took, without realizing it, her first deep breath in hours.
“I’m still hungry,” said Jeffrey.
“I know, sweetie,” said Dolores. “I’ll make us dinner.”
Dolores went to the cupboard and pulled out two foil packets, each the size and shape of a slice of bread. She took down two bowls, ripped open the packets, and dumped out the contents: a grey powder that looked like household dust. It was a synthetic macronutrient blend—more nutritionally sound than dust, but not much tastier. From the refrigerator, Dolores took a small jug of water. She measured a few spoonfuls into each of the bowls, and stirred until the dust was moistened into a pasty muck. All the while, she shook her head, trying to remove the memory of the café. She began to wonder whether she had imagined it, whether the whole thing had been a sort of urban mirage, summoned by a cocktail of austerity, nostalgia, and desire. But, no: the anger, tying knots in her gut, was very real indeed.
“Dinner, Jeffy.”
She set the two bowls and two clean spoons on a folding table where two plastic chairs sat waiting. Jeffrey came in from the living room, his coat and shoes still on. They sat down, picked up their spoons, and ate together in silence.
In the small commercial kitchen, through the velvet-curtained doorway behind the counter of Chez Magnifique, Marcel, the waiter, stood in the glow of a single bare lightbulb surveying his work. He stood over a stainless steel table scattered with cookie cutters, pie plates, cake tins, loaf pans, gelatin molds, icing bags, and other baking paraphernalia. The table stood against a bare cinderblock wall. On the wall, above the table, a shelf was mounted. Lined up on the shelf were tubs, each one filled with a thick, heavy, grainy paste. Using an ice cream scoop, Marcel spooned out the pastes and packed them into the various molds, squeezed them through the piping bags. He shaped them to resemble cookies, cakes, pies, and other pastries.
Marcel made the paste himself. He made it from sand, with a minimal amount of water added–not the precious, potable water that was government-rationed, but the murky wash water, which was less closely guarded, and came at less of a premium. The sand he got from farmers, whose desertified land was good for nothing else, as it had not produced crops for several seasons. They parted with the sandy soil for free, or nearly free—dirt cheap, Marcel sometimes joked, generally receiving a dry and lifeless response from the farmers. The only stipulation was that Marcel had to go and pick it up himself—which he did, once a week, with a borrowed cart that he pulled behind his careworn bicycle, riding beyond the city to the desolate rural outlands.
At the café, Marcel had a small but devoted clientele. For the most part they either had been, or now claimed they had been, members of the socio-economic elite—former aristocrats of the city. Now, they folded themselves into his chairs every day to tell each other grandiose, meandering anecdotes and eat cakes made of sand.
When Marcel had finished shaping and arranging, he covered his creations with damp towels and placed steel storage tubs upside-down over top, to seal in the moisture and keep them ‘fresh.’ This kind of effort seemed almost perverse, but he knew his livelihood depended upon people buying into his illusion, and even people who ate dirt wanted to eat the best-looking dirt they could get.
When Marcel’s preparations were complete, he pulled a chain to douse the light. Then he stepped out into the back-alley darkness, and the door swung shut and locked behind him. The city no longer supplied electricity to the lampposts, so even out on the sidewalks, the night was dense with deep, shadowy pockets. At irregular intervals, coffee-can lanterns burned in shop windows, the only visible signs of life.
Marcel ducked into one of these fire-lit storefronts. The proprietress was ancient—she handled the money and goods with veiny, arthritic claws. Her eyes shone from deep-sunk caves. Marcel assumed a son or grandson must have been waiting in the back room—surely a woman in her condition couldn’t be tending the place alone—she’d be too tempting a target for thieves.
Using money from the day’s sales—money drastically devalued, but not quite worthless yet—Marcel bought a small paper packet of cornmeal and a thumb-sized, waxy nugget of lard. Where such scarce commodities as grain and lard came from, even in such tiny quantities, Marcel did not know, did not ask, tried not to even think about, and suspected his ignorance might be for the best.
As he continued walking, he heard faint wails and banging echoes in the distance. Finally, he arrived at a dilapidated apartment block, where he turned a key to unlock two deadbolts and then the doorknob itself, to find that the door was chained from within.
“Pssst!” said Marcel.
“Who is it?” said a small, high-pitched voice from inside the door.
“It’s me, your papa!” said Marcel. “Who else?”
“My papa who?” said the little voice.
“Your papa, Marcel!”
“My papa Marcel who?”
The little voice giggled. It was a game Marcel’s young son Michel played often.
“Okay, little one: open up,” said Marcel. “Papa is tired.”
The door closed to a crack, then swung open to reveal little Michel standing in patched red pajamas in the darkened room, grinning. As Marcel entered and shut the door behind him, Michel wrapped his arms around his father’s knees and squeezed tight.
“Where’s your nana?” asked Marcel.
There was a soft glow from down the apartment’s central hallway.
“Snoring in her chair.”
Marcel made a game of walking around with his son latched to his legs. He waddled like a penguin to the kitchen, where he set down the packets of corn meal and shortening and lit a burner on a small, portable, propane stove. He took a pan from a hook on the wall, put the small hunk of lard in the pan, and while the fat melted, he scooped out the cornmeal, added a small amount of clean water, and kneaded it together. Marcel formed the meal-mush into patties and dropped them, one at a time, into the larded pan. When the cakes had browned, Marcel took a towel from a shelf nearby. He folded it twice, set in on the counter and set the pan, still hot from the burner, onto the towel. He picked Michel up, and sat the boy on the counter next to the pan of corn cakes. Marcel took one of the cakes, blew across it, and handed it to Michel, who received it eagerly with both hands. Marcel took a cake for himself and chewed it slowly, while the boy devoured the first one, then two more, before looking suddenly very sleepy.
Marcel carried his son down the hall and put him to bed, before returning to the kitchen to wrap up the last of the corn cakes, which sat cold in the pan.
“Gout,” said Mr. James. “It must be. I’m convinced of it.”
“Do you think?” asked Ms. White. She pursed her lips. “I’m certainly not a doctor,” she said. “I suppose I’ll take your word for it.”
Mrs. Gallow had not shown up at Chez Magnifique that morning. Her friends sat around their usual table speculating about her absence.
“I must agree,” said Mr. Vellum, nibbling at a slice of cake. “What else would she be suffering from but gout? It’s obvious: too much rich, decadent food!”
“Indeed!” said Mr. James. The muscles of his face twitched into a strained smile. He looked over at Marcel, who was working quietly behind the counter.
“Isn’t that right, Marcel? Too much rich food around here?”
Marcel looked up when he heard his name. He nodded at Mr. James, and smiled with the same visible strain. Mr. James coughed into his handkerchief. A brown, grainy clump appeared alongside a fresh, wet spot of red. He drew the cloth away and stuffed it in his vest pocket. Marcel nodded, his forehead tight, and then he turned away, wiping his hands on a dishtowel.
Just then, the café door swung wide, slamming loudly against the wall. Dolores stood silhouetted in the doorway. Marcel looked up, and at first he didn’t recognize her.
“Good morning,” he said. “Welcome to Chez—”
He recognized her mid-sentence.
“Welcome back,” he said. “I’m surprised to see you again.”
“What’s good today?” she said.
“I—everything is good,” he said. “I made it myself, fresh this morning.”
“Well then, I’ll take one of those, and one of those, and one of those,” said Dolores, pointing at three of the trays in the display case.
Marcel hesitated, then nodded and bowed slightly.
“Very good,” he said.
He kept his eyes on Dolores as he plated the pastries and handed them to her on a dented, tarnished metal tray. She took them to a corner table and sat facing the wall, away from the counter and the group of regulars. She surveyed the collection in front of her: a slice of orange-ish carrot cake, a square of dark fudge, and a tan-and-brown éclair—all perfectly formed in their palette of earth tones. Dolores reached out and pressed a forefinger into the carrot cake. Its point crumbled like an arid cliffside. She repeated this several times, until the whole slice had eroded away, revealing not the sponginess of cake, but the granularity of sand. She picked up the fudge square, palmed it, and closed her hand around it, making a fist. She watched the corners ooze between her fingers. She rubbed the pads of her thumb and forefinger together and felt the grit, heard it grinding against itself. The éclair she laid flat on one hand, and then pressed and slid the other hand over top of it, crumbling it apart, causing bits to rain down onto the plates and the tray in front of her. She took a moment to gaze at the ruins before she picked up the tray and returned to the counter. Marcel had his back to her. He pretended to be busy at the sink.
“I’m finished,” she said.
Marcel turned and looked at Dolores, then down at the tray. He frowned.
“And, how was everything?”
“A little dry,” said Dolores. “Suppose I could get something to wash it down?”
Marcel searched Dolores’ face.
“Of course,” he said. “What would you like?”
“A latte.”
“Very good,” he said. “Go ahead to your table, I’ll bring it out.”
“No thanks,” she said. “I’d like to watch you pour it.”
Marcel stared at Dolores for a long moment. He could see it had become a standoff. He leaned toward her and motioned her closer to the counter.
“Would you like a tour of the kitchen?” he said. “I can show you where I make everything. Since you seem so interested.”
Dolores suddenly felt nervous. She had a vision of being bludgeoned with a rolling pin. However, her curiosity outweighed her fear, and she thought, perhaps foolishly, that she could handle any threat this relatively slight man might pose. She walked around the end of the counter and followed Marcel behind the curtain and into the kitchen.
“As you can see, this is a café. Nothing more, nothing less,” he said quietly when they were both behind the curtain.
“A café that sells pastries made of dirt? How do you keep your customers?”
“My customers—” he began, then paused to consider. “My regular customers get what they’ve come for.”
Dolores snorted and glanced around the small kitchen. She paced across to the prep table where Marcel made his pastries. She lifted the lid from one of the bins and stuck her hand into the sand, pulled out a fistful and sifted it through her fingers. She reached into another bin, grabbed a handful, and dusted it onto the table. There was a bucket of brown water nearby, and she reached into this, too, cupping her hand and drawing out a palmful. She mixed the water with the sand and made a paste. She formed the paste into a small ball, and then flattened in into the shape of a cookie, a pasty puck.
She lifted the grainy lump to her mouth, took a bite, and swallowed hard. Her jaw tensed, and she retched, convulsed, and vomited onto the floor. The rest of the paste-cookie, which was still in her hand, she flung against the wall where it splattered into a spray of particles that fell like fireworks.
“It makes them happy,” said Marcel.
“It’s a lie!” said Dolores.
Marcel gave an almost-imperceptible shrug.
Dolores clutched the metal prep table, with its row of inset bins full of dirt and water. She tugged at its beveled edge, tried to topple it, wanted desperately to see it all splattered across the floor. But the table was bolted to the wall and didn’t budge. She tried again, leaned into it, applied all the weight and leverage she could muster. Veins bulged at her temples and wrists, until finally her arms went limp and fell at her sides.
Dolores began to cry silently. Marcel walked across and touched her on the shoulder, but she swatted his hand away, and then swung wildly, hitting the side of his face, hard, with a half-open fist. Marcel reached up to touch the rising welt below his eye, and Dolores ran out of the kitchen, through the café, into the alley. Outside, she spat to remove the last of the dirt and the taste of bile. She wiped her eyes to better see through her tears. She exited the alley onto the sidewalk, and by the time she got to the bus stop she had finished crying and was ready for the long ride home.
Marcel returned from the kitchen into the dining room of Chez Magnifique. Mr. James was coughing loudly. He held his handkerchief to his mouth. The center of it, which had been a dingy gray, was now soaked a deep, shiny red. Mrs. White fanned herself with a napkin from the table. Mr. Vellum leaned over and patted Mr. James gently on the back.
“Hey there, old boy, are you all right?”
Mr. James said nothing. His eyelids drooped and he collapsed forward on the table. A red splotch spread from his mouth across the white linen of the tablecloth, crawling toward his companions, seeping underneath their plates and cups and saucers.
“Heavens,” said Mrs. White. She looked like she might faint.
“Dear boy,” said Mr. Vellum. “Well, I think… rather…shall we? Is it that time?”
“Oh, yes, I’d say so,” said Mrs. White.
Mr. Vellum got up, pushed in his chair, and walked around to pull out Mrs. White’s chair as she stood. He offered his elbow, which she gripped for balance with her gloved hand, and the two of them walked out of the café together, acting for all the world like nothing had happened, like Mr. James was only napping after eating too much sugar.
Marcel stared from behind the counter. He opened his mouth, as if to call to the retreating pair, but no sound came out. For a few moments, he stood there, wringing a dishtowel between his hands. Then he turned toward the doorway leading to the kitchen. Just beyond the curtain, he could see a mop and bucket leaning together conspiratorially.
Outside the café, all over the city, a red-brown rain began to fall, smearing and spattering the parched, dusty buildings and the thirsty ground. It was the first time in years anything had fallen from the sky, and at first it seemed it must be a hallucination. As Dolores rode toward home, she noticed the tinted liquid hitting the windows of the bus and running down in rivulets, like so many rust-colored snakes. She slid her window open and reached a hand out to feel the dampness on her skin. She thought she should probably feel excited, or relieved, or maybe even scared—the color was so strange, not like the rain she remembered. But the truth was, aside from the cool moisture of the droplets, aside from the swaying lull of the rolling bus, she didn’t really feel anything at all.
END