I never thought the idea of making love communally would be all that useful for a business, but then again, I’d only been living in Duluth, Minnesota, for a year.
My wife and I had moved to the city in August, where I’d restarted my studies, and my wife, who’s from the area, suggested we get involved with a bakery, a so-called “cooperative,” that a friend of a friend was trying to revive. I’ll admit I was skeptical. My wife doesn’t cook. And I was already overwhelmed with tasks, from refinishing our floors and maintaining the dilapidated wreck of a house that we’d bought near downtown to finishing my homework each night—I settled on criminology, which would later prove useful, given the folks with whom we worked. Even the bakery was collapsing. The oven didn’t work, the floor needed tiles, the sinks and stove had to be gutted, all of which I thanklessly did while my wife took her turn playing the part of the domestic—three hours brushing rolls, two more stirring creams, a few minutes here and there to do icing, which Roderick, the fuck, helped her do. Not that I’m bitter. It was a fruitful operation. We were two of twelve in the gig, and frankly things were going amicably until they decided—I emphasize they—that our bakery needed a “hook.”
It started on a Saturday. I’d just swung by Home Depot to pick up some caulk, and, upon approaching the corner of Fourth, which is where I normally parked, I found a strange van lurking next to the shop: an enormous, blue, half-peeling Dodge whose cabin was vaguely stenciled A.C. Heating & Gas. Since I’d just installed the boiler myself and even had the City come down to inspect it, I had no idea why it was there. But I faintly realized something was awry when I noticed the Led Zeppelin shirt tied to the rearview. My wife despises Led Zeppelin, though I’ve always been a fan.
Our bakery was—I emphasize was—located in one of the dicier parts of town, East Hillside. The neighborhood had at one time been populated by millionaires, back when the grain mills still churned, ore was shipping in, and the timber mills ran at full mast. Now the area consisted chiefly of homeless—how they survive in Duluth, I don’t know—and halfway houses, into which the mansions had been ignobly converted. The place smelled of Dumpsters and lice, not to mention the ever-present rain that engulfed it. Even in January, when the regional temperatures hit negative forty, somehow East Hillside barely dipped below freezing—it might have been the effect of the power plant just up the street—and the result was a residual, light, dripping slush, not unlike the glaze my wife began applying to buns. I emphasize began.
When I approached the bakery, the first thing I noticed was that the windows were curtained, and a small line had formed by the door. These weren’t the usual Saturday-morning shoppers. No wearied fathers with infants in tow, no tawny tourists sporting Duluth Packs. No, these folks were scraggly—bearded, like me—in vintage, fur-collared coats or ankle- length, brown leather jackets. One woman, whose neck was tattooed and barely visibly beneath her blue scarf, wore a vintage pea coat, not unlike Audrey Hepburn’s, and nibbled a long cigarette.
“Greetings,” I said.
Nobody replied.
I’ll admit I hadn’t gotten out much. Between work and school, I rarely visited The Lounge, a bar up the street, where my wife and the other bakers often went, and where alt-country and cover bands performed, most doing shoddy impersonations of Dylan. Why we’d even come to Duluth I didn’t know, though the housing was cheap, tuition was affordable, and my wife had her parents nearby, who were less of a burden than I’d supposed. Plus, we were planning to have kids soon—as soon as I finished my degree—and, assuming the bakery didn’t take off, I’d get a job in corrections, which had always been a minor goal, if not my loftiest dream.
Inside, the bakery was dark—too dark, I thought—and the unmistakable sound of Led Zeppelin’s “Kashmir” rang from the back: “Talk in song from tongues of lilting grace / Sounds caress my ear.”
Beside the display case with honey rolls, which I had also installed, and the overpriced cookies we peddled, two women were going at it, both locked in sumptuous embrace. They were still clothed—one in a flimsy sundress, the other a ragged fur coat, which enshrouded them both—and both lay pressed against the glass. I couldn’t make out either face, though long locks of auburn hair streamed out from the coat.
Beside them, a tall Japanese man in faded blue overalls appeared to be smoking a pipe, while Claire, our associate, was fumbling with the iMac’s credit card swipe. The place had gotten crowded, and a couple more hipsters were raising their phones, apparently trying to record.
“Where’s Laur?” I asked Claire, referring to my wife. Claire smiled at me gingerly. A ruffling ensued in the coat, and then, beside the display case, beside the snickerdoodles I had just baked, and which we sold for a full three-and-a-half dollars a pop, my wife emerged with her lips against somebody else. She smiled a bit deferentially and pushed the young woman aside.
The crowded stirred, as if I had interrupted the show.
“Hey, sweet,” said Claire, as if speaking for my wife. “Laura’s busy. But I want you to meet Zuriñe.”
Zuriñe, whom I knew was half-Spanish, and who wasn’t unattractive, albeit rounded in parts, had begun working at the bakery this week. She studied eco-lit at the college and was an adamant vegan, which is why the snickerdoodles tasted like dust. Our shifts hadn’t overlapped, but as an owner of the cooperative, I’d been apprised of her hire, as well as her culinary needs.
“Laur,” I begged half-insistently. “What is going on?”
Zuriñe tried to hug Laura, who still shied away, less embarrassed, it seemed, than confused. Then Laura, strangely enough, reached out for a tray of glazed sticky buns. “Here, dear. I made these for you.”
Before she could pass them over, however, the crowd began staking its claim.
My first instinct was: what had I done? Failed to satisfy her lately? Waited too long to have kids? Sure, my hours were long at the college, and she’d had little to do beside mope around the bakery and come up with delicate buns. Worse, she took to The Lounge, where she’d obviously met Zuriñe.
“I’m sorry,” said my wife, licking her thumb, munching on a delectable treat. “We were just having a . . . snack.” She smiled at me lovingly, knowingly in fact, as if I shouldn’t be jealous or mad. I knew my wife had fooled around a bit in college—she had studied at Madison, and unlike me, was incredibly, eerily smart. I also knew better than to act the part of the cuckold, especially in an aura like this, so I reached for a sticky bun, having parted the crowd, and said, “Okay, that’s cool.”
Zuriñe, by the way, in case it wasn’t clear, lived in the refurbished van. How she heated it in winter, I still didn’t know, though I’m guessing my wife would find out.
.
One of the difficulties in manning a small business operation, or so said Jamaal, our Business Associate—who, by the way, never set foot in the place—was securing advertising pledges and promoting your message abroad. We couldn’t depend on tourists, who were plentiful in summer but disappeared as soon as the snow, or slush, as it were, began to fall. As part of our campaign to “spread awareness,” I began distributing fliers and taping up posters in shops. “Try our Love Brownies. You’ve never known such delectable warmth.” Or: “Non-cumbersome Muffins. All the sweetness, with none of the flakes.” Soon our messages became even less subtle. “Stop in Saturday, Nov. __, for the baking event of your life. Chocolate gooey richness, no questions asked. 21+.”
I will say this about Duluth: The town is comparably tolerant. Unlike Superior across the bay, where they practically stone fornicators, Duluth has a thriving gay community, pays for recycling, and generally tolerates bikes—that is, for the three months of the year when they’re rideable. It is also for these reasons that a small hipster community has formed. What these folks do, I don’t know. Like most, I suppose, they have trust funds. But they began congregating nightly at The Lounge, and before that, the bakery, which became the most happening place. Can I say happening? Is that the appropriate term? I grew up on a farm, and though I relocated a lot when my dad left, I was never cool enough to like Dylan or the rest of these alt-country bands. Which is probably why I’m stuck with Led Zeppelin.
I came home about a week after this kissing debacle to find my wife in bed, enshrouded in blankets, a glass of wine in hand, giggling uproariously. At first I thought she was masturbating—it wouldn’t be the first time that I caught her, which sometimes provoked something else—but rather she was gripping a frayed orange book. It was The Idiot, by Dostoevsky, which I couldn’t recall having seen.
“The City’s getting on us about the boiler,” I said. “They’re looking to dig up a fine. I should never have let Roderick try to install it, let alone do it mys—”
“Honey, come lie down with me.” My wife looked at me placidly. She was visibly drunk, and I didn’t want to get involved.
“I’m drunk but truthful,” she said, leafing through the novel.
Uncorking the bottle: “Do you want to talk about your new woman-friend, Zuriñe?”
“She’s just a kid. Besides, she likes Zeppelin. You’re the only one that I love.” She rose to hug me, and I took a swig of the wine.
For some reason, the only words that came to mind, words I didn’t say, were: Talk in song from tongues of lilting grace / Sounds caress my ear. “Duluth Packs is littered with fliers,” I finally mumbled. “So’s Fitger’s Pub.”
She looked at me softly. “Do you want to have kids?”
“Not really,” I said, with a smile.
I should have seen it coming. I mean, all of us should, all of us who wed in our youth. I’d met Laur in college when I was hauling her futon, and we’d hooked up one night at a pub. I hadn’t been with a lot of women before her. In fact, I wasn’t very popular in school, wasn’t much of an athlete, nor much of a scholar to be sure. At the time I was working my way through Eau Claire, mostly doing floors and odd jobs. Tuition was unaffordable, even then. I was just looking for an educated woman, and that she seemed to be. Her folks were doctors—psychiatrists, in fact—and she’d grown up along the North Shore, about a dozen clicks north of Duluth, in a spacious log cabin, which, of course, her father had had built. They were country-folks, or trying to be, and I admired them for that goal, since I, who had had the roof taken away from over me at least six or seven times (I followed my mother to Wyoming, then Utah, then back to Wisconsin, where she finally found a man she could love), had never much warmed to the city, or the rich folks who people that place.
Laur, when I first met her, looked beautiful to me: large, copper eyes; radiant hair; generous bosom; thin wrists. She was a little heavy in the middle—all of us are—and her forehead was narrowly lined, suggesting to me that she’d read, or at least was wise for her age. She’d studied English at Madison and considered writing fiction but was afraid of “pursuing that path.” She just wanted a “normal life, not a writer’s,” she said, that evening at the High Noon Saloon, where some indie band was playing. Ass Cobra, I think they were called. She sipped her Stroh’s and gripped the pine table, leaning close to my ear. “You seem like a normal person. Not like these folks.” We were seated upstairs in a balconied section, beneath which some moshers now spun.
“I’ve never been here.”
She leaned into my face. Her copper eyes glimmered. She put my hand to her hair. “Do you want to go work on that futon?”
“Why not? Ass Cobra isn’t too great.”
She smiled at me softly—that same one she’d later make when I told her I’d handed out fliers.
.
And here we were on a Friday, prepping the joint, if joint is the word I can use. Though the bakery’s exterior had been done up before in a late- forties style, with its original clapboard façade, acrylic red awning, and turquoise wood cutaways denoting our previous name—Like a Rolling Scone—we officially re-registered as Love’s Bakery and Social Club, and the turquoise was replaced with a peculiar, almost lavender, pink. “Are we creating a brothel?” I had asked, inspecting the shade at Home Depot. “Zuriñe’s my friend,” Laur explained.
At least it was out in the open, this thing, though she and I had barely spoken throughout the month. I had had exams, not to mention a leaking roof amidst a surge of fresh hail, and Laura was recruiting new hires, whatever that entailed. She had spent Tuesday and Wednesday nights of that week away from our home—I didn’t ask where—and came back with a chill and runny nose.
Claire had spent the week devising heart-shaped red bagels, which I didn’t think possible, and may have not been entirely natural, as was her wont, though didn’t seem to run afoul of Zuriñe. Roderick , who lifted weights in his free time and mildly resembled an ox, both in size and in temperament, went to work installing new lights, which he did with the precision and care that I imagine a hooved animal would take. The result was a kind of blinking, half-reddened interior—I believe the bulbs were chromium—and not unlike a beating heart, which I immediately had to rewire. Our display case was replaced with an antique Chesterfield couch, which they’d somehow lugged from the Goodwill. And the small seating area, which had formerly contained a few stools and scuffed tables looking out onto Fourth, made way for what I can only describe as bleachers, or a makeshift array of wood piers. These were covered with brushed velvet—also from Goodwill—and an assortment of mounted trays (suffice it to say Roderick had had a long week). I had no doubt the seating would collapse and probably kill a few people, assuming the bagels didn’t get to them first.
Am I being bitter? Possibly I am. Or was. Because when the crowds began arriving that night—yes, night; folks actually camped on the street—for The Event the next morning, which they’d appropriately dubbed “Human Kneads,” I began to take umbrage at my wife. Not because she was sleeping with someone else; I could care less (or, at least, let’s pretend for a second that’s true); but that she was indubitably right. All week, the bakery had been raking in sales. We’d sold out of sticky buns, or “Love Rolls,” as we called them. Breads were backordered, and by Thursday, the oven conked out. Fortunately, Roderick and Jamaal had had the brilliant idea of outsourcing most of the goods—they had contacts at two other local bakeries, both Scandinavian and relics of an era long gone. Come Friday morning, Zuriñe’s van had been filled and unloaded at least seven times, mostly with “Love Bars,” our signature dish, a kind of gooey, red substance layered with crumbs, and in which, it was rumored, Roderick had sprinkled ample doses of Intrinsa, which may or may not have been legal in Canada.
I first noticed the gatherers that Friday, since they weren’t our typical crowd. The vintage clothing was replaced with new, upmarket brands—Canada Goose, Patagonia—and the shoppers themselves were not young. Mostly middle-agers, even some elderly types. Barely a soul under fifty. They said they were visiting from Bismarck, Detroit. One couple drove an RV from Tampa, which, in November, I couldn’t believe. All had been apprised of an occurrence this Saturday and wanted to get a good seat. Oh, and could they try the Love Bars? I guess the Yelp reviews were off the charts.
I also began to wonder how long the authorities would stay away, but soon the fire crew showed up, then the police team, as well, and asked if they could get some good seats. Oh, and maybe some bars for their friends.
The few folks who did camp out that night—there were only two or three—were relatively young—in their mid-forties—and Roderick agreed to let them sleep in the shop, where they may or may not have been treated to some of his signature bars.
I went home that night and helped myself to a drink—a couple, to be sure—and worked on resealing our roof. I’d done well enough on my tests—aced Crime Prevention, though only pulled a “B” in Social Structures, having boggled the Chicago School—and didn’t much care to ask where my wife had since gone. At around midnight, however, I got a call from her folks, who asked if I could pick her up. Apparently, she had arrived in a fit, passed out on their couch, and woke up, cursing my name. Why they’d bother to call wasn’t clear, though I’d begun to suspect they trusted me more than her.
“Sure thing,” I explained, not looking forward to braving 61 in my truck, in which the heating didn’t work, and even less to hearing the tale of where she had been.
“I’m sorry,” she growled, as the door to the cabin flung open, and out she sprang wearing her coat—the new (vintage) fur one. I tried to hug her. She stepped inside our Ram. “I hope the fucking heater’s working.”
Returning, cowled like a monk in her coat, she explained that she’d had a fight with Zuriñe. Wasn’t a big deal, but she didn’t feel comfortable with her. She said she “loved her husband the most” and “wasn’t into these things.” It had just been “an experiment,” that’s all. “Zuriñe was really cool, and she encouraged my writing. But I told her I’m married. That’s it. And when I explained to her I was pregnant—”
“You’re what?”
Her copper eyes flickered. “Oh yeah. By the way.”
I gazed ahead at the sleeted expanse of the road.
.
In Dostoevsky’s The Idiot, which I’ve subsequently read, a young Russian prince returns home after having spent four years abroad recovering in a Swiss sanitarium. He finds himself surrounded by scoundrels and knaves, among whom, ironically enough, he remains the shrewdest one. At one point, the narrator—I presume a stand-in for Dostoevsky—begins lashing out at the people of his place and time. “Many of our young women have thought fit to cut their hair short, put on blue spectacles, and call themselves Nihilists. By doing this they have been able to persuade themselves, without further trouble, that they have acquired new convictions of their own.”
I’m trying to imagine what my wife might have seen in this book, what she found hysterical. After all, she was friends with Zuriñe, Claire, Roderick, the rest, and if my wife couldn’t see through them, which I’m sure she must have done, it’s hard to see how anyone could.
That night, eight hours before “Human Kneads,” with my wife now snoring in our bed, I found myself restless, unable to sleep, and decided to go for a drive. It wasn’t the thought of having a child that unnerved me. In a strange way, I’d warmed to the thought, however quickly it had ensued. Rather, I remained puzzled as to what my associates had planned, or how they’d coopted my wife. I sought some counsel, or the closest thing, at The Lounge up the street from our shop.
“I think it’s kinda spooky,” said Claire, my associate, whom I found in a booth near the back. It also wasn’t lost on me (later) that her head had been shaved, though it was Roderick, at the bar, wearing spectacles, less blue than dark green, and of the sort Groucho Marx donned. “I mean, a lot of us were fooling around,” she explained. “Nothing really serious. You know, just kisses in back, a few pokes here and there by the sink”—I winced—“but your wife, no, she wasn’t down. She and Zuriñe, they kind of went their own way, and I guess it came to fruition that Saturday, the morning you walked in. I can’t account for it. She isn’t that type. And she loves you, I know,” Claire sighed.
I sipped my ale, which was apparently unfiltered and resembled somebody’s waste. “Well, that’s good to know.”
“She wasn’t even keen on ‘Human Kneads,’ or whatever they’re calling it.” Claire glanced up at Roderick, who was sliding tickets down the bar in exchange for a thick wad of cash. Behind him, a Led Zeppelin cover band was playing—seriously—and Chinese lanterns hung beside the musty brick wall. The place had been a warehouse formerly and still smelled of dehydrated fish, though that might have been the T-shirt Claire wore. Beyond her, the front room was mobbed, despite the ring of last call. “Frankly, I’m not too into it either. It was Roderick’s idea. And Jamaal’s. It seems to me a guy-thing . . . and degrading, really, to girls. But I’ll tell you the truth: we all need the tuition. And I guess you’ve got a child on the way.”
I watched her sulkily.
“Congratulations, by the way.”
“In my thoughts I have seen,” wailed the black woman-vocalist, tambourine in hand, “rings of smoke through the trees . . . And the voices of those who stand looking.”
.
Communal, as I understand it, implies some kind of mutual exchange, or at least the tacit understanding that goods are being equally shared. In my course on macroeconomics, which I initially flunked, the textbook mentioned intentional communities, citing the Kibbutz as an example, and showing how all of them failed. This was for debated reasons—my guess is Mao had an answer, if not Claire herself—but the textbook, from what I recall, described the “problem of incentives,” that is, what motivates a person to give and not just take. It’s beyond me to dispute that. Suffice it to say that when I entered Love’s Bakery and Social Club the next morning, sharing was not in effect.
Roderick, who evidently displayed ample prowess as a bodybuilder, stood stiffly in front of Lisa Ann, another associate, who was rubbing agave on his chest. His loincloth, I descried, passing beyond the manned doorway (a whole team of security was present, whom Jamaal had apparently hired, and the place was fully darkened, though packed to the brim with souls), consisted of some kind of sticky bun, which was carefully fastened with pins. To what it adhered I don’t know—this doesn’t speak well of his girth—and Lisa Ann, who knelt beside him on the rickety Chesterfield, was wearing a sequined dress, that, if I’m not mistaken, was lined in parts with granola, which she occasionally, languidly licked. The music, if one can call it that, was some kind of Gregorian chant, and I only realized the pertinence of that when Claire, clad in full nun’s apparel, including tunic and coif, emerged from the kitchen bearing a tray full of dongs. They were shaped like éclairs but lacked chocolate icing and mushroomed a bit near the tips. The insides contained a gooey white cream, as the audience discovered, amidst loud applause, when one entered Claire’s cupped throat.
“Love bars for sale,” called the overalled Japanese man—the one who’d been sporting a pipe. Evidently he, too, had become an associate, making his rounds down the aisle.
Zuriñe, for her part, was nowhere to be seen. It’s possible she, too, was sick, like my wife, or had also remained at home. This was just as well, since I probably would have spat in her face, or, worse, tried to undertake what Roderick now did to Lisa Ann. I won’t describe it. Suffice it to say that copious amounts of custard were involved—jam filling, as well—and the crowd was fully enthused.
No one seemed to take notice of my entry. Which was just as well. Because when the first pipe began to blow in the basement downstairs, nobody paid me much heed.
I suppose my technical role was operations manager, handling, as I did, the facility equipment and repair. One of these tasks, undoubtedly, was ensuring that the boiler had been up to code. I’ll admit—I’m writing “fiction” after all, as my wife would claim to do—that the left guardrail might not have been installed, and we’d had several other issues with compliance, though I doubt these can account for what occurred. Rather I like to think fate was behind it, or maybe just the heat in that place, which had undoubtedly risen with all of the baking that week, not to mention the display on our “stage.” And, of course, I can’t rule out the possibility that Zuriñe, or someone, was siphoning heat to her van.
The first rattling, I believe, shook the piers, discombobulating most of the viewers, who attributed it to the stage, where Lisa Ann was undoubtedly having a good time—Claire had since joined her, nun’s habit and all—though the more likely explanation was the pressure valve warped, and the seating itself had come loose. This wouldn’t become apparent, of course, to anyone in the venue but me, long after the crowd was dispersed and the bakery—or what was left of it—was fitfully, lawfully condemned.
I often wonder what the police must have thought—apparently licenses were acquired; leave it to Jamaal to have procured all the necessary permits, and in no short amount of time—when the boiler flew up through the stage, just beside Roderick, who was flexing and admiring his bicep. Whether he had achieved climax at that point— the groinal buns remained intact, even as the back floor dissolved all around him—remains a standing question. What isn’t is the fate of our roof. In view of a hundred peering eyes, possibly more, a rusting cylinder shot through the tiles. It must have been three yards in width, twice that in length, and a solid ton in weight. That it had been jealous of Roderick, or dismissive of his size, also couldn’t escape our view as it plunged through the air, like some hell-sputtered missile, and took half the ceiling with it, soaring up into space. Somebody screamed. White powder flew. Then the roof beams started to collapse.
In the stampede that followed—picture: naked limbs, globs of red jam, and granola bits whipping through air—I managed to make my way out, prying the back door and probably saving quite a few lives. Indeed, it was no small miracle—call it an act of grace, attributable, I’d guess, to Claire’s robe—that nobody was seriously injured, at least inside our store. A few folks suffered burns—Roderick’s arm was singed, and something else, which he wouldn’t describe—and the bakery became a total loss. That’s assuming that it hadn’t been before.
As for where the boiler came down, that I can’t say—after all, isn’t fiction, unlike marriage, governed by laws or rules? Suffice it to say my wife’s favorite lounge no longer serves unfiltered ale, or much of anything for that matter, though Led Zeppelin continues to play for whatever grim creatures emerge.
As for my wife, well, she ran away and is living, I suppose, in a van. I haven’t inquired. Her folks are still here. She studies writing these days in L.A., joined, it would seem, by an acquaintance of herbivore taste. I know because the alimony bills include a grocery tab, which I can see. Her parents help us out. In fact, they’ve taken me on as a handyman up at their place. Whether their daughter will return, that I can’t say, though I’m looking forward to meeting our child. And who knows? Maybe I’ll teach him to read Dostoevsky. “I’m drunk but truthful,” says Lebedeff, the rogue of the tale, after his wife is long gone.
A Chicago-native, J. A. Bernstein is the author of a novel, Rachel’s Tomb (New Issues, 2019), which won the A.W.P. Award Series and Hackney Prizes; and a chapbook, Desert Castles (Southern Indiana Review, 2019), which won the Wilhelmus Prize. His stories, poems, and essays have appeared in about seventy-five journals and anthologies, including Shenandoah, Boston Review, Chicago Quarterly, Tin House, and Kenyon Review, and won the Gunyon Prize at Crab Orchard Review. A husband and father of three, he teaches in the Center for Writers at the University of Southern Mississippi and is the fiction editor of Tikkun Magazine.