June 2008
New York City, New York
The Manhattan neighborhood of Chelsea buzzed under a brilliant blue sky. Greenwich Street was closed from Gansevoort to Jane, its curbs lined with vendor booths. The air juggled a dozen tantalizing smells and sounds. The crackle of grilled sausage and chicken, falafel, burgers and kebabs. Buttery popcorn, sugary fried dough and honey-roasted almonds. A Babel of languages wove with street musicians playing jazz on one corner, reggae on another and classical in between.
Over on Horatio Street, smack in the middle of the festival, the Bake & Bagel hummed with a productive energy bordering on frantic. Already one of the neighborhood’s most popular joints, it was packed today, the line curling through tables and easing out the door.
The owner Micah Kalo had been up since three in the morning, making dough. His daughter and co-owner, Stavroula, was a blur behind the counter. She hustled from display case to register, calling orders back to the double-staffed kitchen.
Assembling and wrapping sandwiches, Geno Caan moved with the automated purpose of one who has reached the tipping point of fatigue. He’d been up since three as well, first helping Micah with the dough prep, now working the line. Coffee couldn’t touch him anymore. He revived himself with strong mint chewing gum and icy swallows of water, coasting on waves of disjointed thought.
The orders were piling up and Javier Landes came in the back to lend a hand. He and the bakers immediately began giving each other friendly hell in Spanish. The one female cook smoothed her hair in the reflection of the stove’s hood, looking back over her shoulder, eyes full of undeclared love.
Everyone loved Jav. No secret that two-thirds of the crowd out front came for the food, while the other third came hoping for a look at the gorgeous hunk who worked here sometimes.
“Move, fucky,” Jav said, hipping Geno out of his way and reaching for the big cutting knife.
“Did you just call him fucky?” one of the bakers said, laughing.
Jav reached the hand not holding the knife around Geno’s neck and smacked a kiss on his crown. “He’s my wittle fucky.”
“Get out of here.” Geno hipped him back with his own collection of Latino put-downs. His Spanish went rusty after his mother died three years ago. But since he became friends with Jav, it flowed again fluently, laced with words his mother wouldn’t approve of.
“I finished that book you gave me,” Geno said to Jav. “The biography of Genghis Khan.”
“How was it?”
“I liked it. You know anything about him?”
Jav ripped a sheet of butcher paper off the roll. “Only what I learned in school. Emperor of half the world. Badass motherfucker.”
“When he was about fifteen, his father died, and the tribe kicked him out. Him and his mother and brothers and sisters. They were wandering around in exile. Starving. Then he was captured by his father’s friends. And they made him a slave.”
“Yeah?”
“They put him in a cangue. It’s kind of like a yoke. A flat piece of board you put your head through. You know, like Puritans would put you in the stocks, but this was a portable stock you could walk around in.” Geno’s hands shaped a square frame around his head. “You could walk and work, but you couldn’t feed yourself because your hands couldn’t reach your mouth.”
“Wow.”
“I was surprised to learn how much of his youth was spent being hungry and a captive. Anyway, he finally escaped, and the escape earned him a reputation. Men began to join with him. They became his generals. That’s how it started.”
“With escape,” Jav said. His dark brown eyes slowly blinked.
“Yeah.”
“And getting your hands back to your mouth to feed yourself.”
“And being known for something else than as a slave.”
They were quiet as they finished up the last of the orders. The pulse of the shop slowed and the buzz of the crowd settled into a lull. Everything in the hot kitchen seemed to exhale and deflate.
Geno took a long swig of ice water and asked Jav, “Do you believe everything happens for a reason?”
“I do,” Jav said. “But not everyone gets the privilege of liking the reason. Of feeling the reason was worth the ordeal or the experience.”
“Never thought of it that way.”
“What, that you don’t have to like it?”
“Yeah.”
Jav looked at Geno a long moment. “You’re going to be a huge voice in the world.”
Geno’s heart curled away shyly. “You think?”
Jav nodded. “You have an important story to tell. A story with a lot of power. It can be the kind of thing that…”
“What?”
“The kind of thing that builds an empire.”