HE MET HER AT THE BUTCHER’S SHOP where she lined up behind him alongside the counter, waiting to pay.
“That’s definitely a new one,” she said. “Buying pastry at the meat store?”
Cradling his blueberry Danish, Joel wondered if he was being ridiculed. When he turned around, her glossy lips curved into a warm smile.
“They bring the pastries in fresh each morning from a Romanian bakery in midtown,” he explained, hoping not to sound too defensive. The cashier was ringing him in and he had exact change, which he placed on the counter. Transaction finished, he turned to the girl again. “A lot of people assume Danishes originated in Denmark, but they didn’t.”
“They’re Romanian?”
“No, some say French, but most authorities agree they’re Austrian. The Romanians, however, do excellent versions.”
She laughed, and Joel thought she might be interested in hearing more about the Danish’s contentious history, but then the cashier asked her if all the pink papered bundles atop the glass were hers and did she want them double-bagged, so he lost her attention. He left the shop. Normally, he would have strolled back to the condo for his Saturday morning summer ritual, coffee and pastry while breaking down his fantasy baseball team’s stats. Instead, he waited, leaning against a derelict newspaper vending box under full sun. Downtown Toronto was poor for trees; where he worked on Adelaide West the red maples thrust out of raised concrete enclosures like the wretched arms of prison inmates. Store bells tinkled as she came out with
…
Former longtime Bickford Park resident Avi Sirlin currently lives in lovely Victoria, British Columbia where, on a clear day while standing on his tiptoes by his bathroom window, he can see the distant silhouette of the Olympic Mountains in Washington State. Avi’s previous publications include his 2014 novel The Evolutionist as well as short stories in various journals such as Grain, The New Quarterly and The Fiddlehead. He is completing work (yes, still) on a new novel.