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“No, you wouldn’t, pchelka. Because you’d already decided that I was all yours.”

18

NIKOLAI

The oven comes through Rosa’s back door the following Monday, on its side, on a steel dolly, with four riggers and a great deal of swearing.

Vera was in Pilsen at seven to hand Inés the second check and watch them load it. Now she stands in the kitchen doorway with her arms folded and tells the riggers where it goes. Six inches from the wall, not four. Level before anyone touches the gas. The foreman, who is twice her age, starts to explain something about clearances, and she shows him the manual open to the page, and he stops explaining.

The old oven went out an hour ago, to a scrap yard. Rosa stood in the alley and watched it go without saying anything, and then she went inside and made coffee for everyone, including the riggers.

Mid-morning, the gas fitter gets down on his back behind the oven and comes out again shaking his head.

“Connection needs an adapter,” he says. “The old one stayed at Inés’s.”

“Where can I get one?” Vera asks.

He names a supply house on the West Side.

“I’ll go,” I say.

Vera looks at me. Then she writes the part number on the back of an order slip, takes her own card out of her wallet, and puts both in my hand.

“Get a receipt,” she says.

I get a receipt.

When I come back, forty minutes later, there’s a white box on the steel table and a stack of order slips clipped above the register. Four of them. Whole honey cake, Tues. Tessa is sitting on a stool by the sink eating a day-old croissant over a textbook.

There are four boxed cakes on the walk-in shelf behind her, each with a name on the lid. Vera baked them on Saturday night after closing, two pans at a time, building them in a row down the table while the next layers cooled. I know because I sat on the stool by the sink and watched her do it, and when she ran out of room on the table she handed me a cooling rack to hold.

The gas fitter takes the adapter and disappears behind the oven again.

“Saturday after next,” Tessa says, without looking up from her book. “My exam. In case anybody’s asking.”

“Good luck.”

“Don’t say that. Ask me something instead.” She holds the book out. “Anything on the page. Cover the answer with your thumb.”

I take the book. I ask her about potassium. She gets it right.

At one thirty, the fitter stands up and wipes his hands, and Vera turns the dial on the new oven herself. A low sound, then the blue line of flame catching across the burners, all the way along.

She places her hand on the steel front and leaves it there while it warms, looking across the kitchen at me. “All three decks,” she says, her smile wide. “Isn’t it amazing?”

I smile.

“You could try a little more enthusiasm,” Tessa says.

I thought I was, but I don’t say this out loud.

“The top deck on the old one ran cold,” Vera says, taking her hand off the steel. “I’ve had to bake the Sunday rye in two shifts. Now it can all go in at once.”

“On Sundays you can sleep an hour longer,” I say, ignoring Tessa’s raised eyebrows.

“On Sundays I can bake twice as much.” Vera laughs and catches my hand as she passes. “Don’t look so disappointed. You can stay in bed.”

“With you downstairs?”