With a flourish, Pip signed her letter to the university, informing them she would not be attending in the fall. She felt a small twinge of regret as she affixed a stamp to the envelope. Going to college made no sense when she had a career ready made and laid out before her, but still… she knew she was going to miss out on a lot of things her friends would get to experience. She placed the letter in the mailbox and went to the kitchen.
“Roll up your sleeves,” Maggie said from the table, which she’d cleared of everything except large canisters of different types of flour, salt, and sugar, along with other ingredients Pip didn’t recognize.
“We can’t own a bakery to make bread if we don’t have our own recipe for the best bread,” she’d realized, almost as an afterthought when the deal with Mr. Wasserman had been finalized. “Just because we make the best flour doesn’t mean we can make bread people will like.”
By the time Josie got up—she was sleeping in late now that school was over—Pip was up to her elbows in flour, but she had three batches of dough rising with another couple of loaves baking.
“What’s this?” Josie asked with a yawn, her hair a bird’s nest halo around her head.
“Trying to figure out which breads we should make at the bakery,” Pip said, tucking a stray strand of hair behind her ear.
“Mind you,” Maggie said, “these recipes are me own, passed down from my ma’s ma, and hers before her. I suppose they’d be pleased to think they’re good enough to serve in a fancy place like the Wasserman hotel or to sell in stores.”
“We’ve always loved your bread,” Josie said, perking up. “I specially like the brown bread in winter, with soup.”
Pip had a thought. “Maybe they could be seasonal.”
The timer went off, and Pip eagerly opened the oven to pull out the baking pans. The domed tops of the loaves were golden brown, and the entire kitchen was filled with the aroma of the freshly baked bread.
“Can I have a slice warm?” Josie asked.
As soon as the bread was cool enough to slice, they all sampled it, slathered with butter.
Pip frowned. “It’s too dense. Not as light as yours.”
“The secret’s in the kneading,” Maggie said with a knowing nod. “With bread, the recipe’s only half of it.”
Pip slumped against her chair. “How am I ever going to learn all this?” She sighed, looking at the ingredients scattered across the table. “And then it still has to be multiplied to commercial-sized batches.”
But when she drove downtown to Mr. Wasserman’s office two days later, it was with a bag of four different loaves of bread. The sticky July heat made it hard to keep from sweating, and her cotton flowered-print dress stuck to her back when she got out of her car. Thankfully, she’d thought to put her hair up which got it off her neck. A quick glance in the wall mirror inside the hotel entrance assured her the light makeup she’d applied looked fine.
“Mr. Wasserman, please?” she said to the desk clerk. “He’s expecting me. Pip—I mean, Patricia Horrigan.”
“Yes, miss.” He picked up a telephone and dialed a number. “Miss Horrigan to see Mr. Wasserman.”
Just then, Pip’s eye was caught by a woman striding through the hotel lobby. It wasn’t just the flowing trousers and crisp white shirt she wore—the only woman not in a dress—it was the confidence of her movements, her complete ease despite the curious glances she was drawing, and it was also her short hairstyle that reminded Pip of Audrey Hepburn in Roman Holiday.
Apparently, she’d overheard the clerk, because she veered in their direction. “You’re the ten o’clock appointment?”
Pip nodded wordlessly.
The woman held out her hand. “Toni Andretti. Mr. Wasserman asked me to that meeting as well.”
When Pip just stared, the woman’s eyebrows rose in an unspoken question. Pip caught herself and shook the offered hand. “I’m Patricia Horrigan.”
To the desk clerk, the woman grinned. “I’ve got this, Derek.”
He nodded. “Sure thing.”
Toni led the way down a corridor on the opposite side of the lobby from the guest elevators. This passageway was abuzz with activity, clearly the hub of the hotel’s daily operations. At the end of the hall, Toni knocked and opened a heavy walnut door. Pip followed her into a paneled office.
“Morning, Jeanie.”
A middle-aged woman sitting behind an L-shaped desk peered at them over the glasses perched on the end of her nose.
“He’s expecting us.” Toni sailed past Jeanie’s desk, giving the next heavy door a sharp rap and opening it without waiting for a reply. “Morning, Boss.”
Mr. Wasserman looked up from the papers spread out before him. “Ah, Patricia, I see you met Antoinette. Good.”
He got up and came from behind his desk to invite them to sit in chairs grouped around a coffee table.
“How’s the baking coming along?” he asked, taking his suit jacket off and tossing it over the fourth chair.
“Pretty well, I think.” Pip reached into the bag and laid out the four loaves, each encased in plastic wrap. “We’ve been experimenting with family recipes. A couple of dark breads and a couple of white.”
“Patricia’s family are the ones I was telling you about,” Mr. Wasserman said to Toni. “They’ll be baking all the bread we serve.”
Toni stood abruptly and went to the door. “Jeanie, could you send for plates, knives, and some butter, please?”
She sat back down, her knees splayed with her elbows resting on them. “You baked these?” she asked, eyeing Pip curiously.
Pip nodded nervously. A moment later, there was another knock on the door, and a uniformed waiter came in with a tray. He deposited it on the table and left.
Mr. Wasserman motioned to Pip. She realized her hands were trembling as she cut slices of each loaf. Passing the plates around, she waited anxiously as the other two sampled them, some with butter, some without.
“This one’s heavy,” Toni said, pointing to one of the dark loaves.
“It’s meant to be,” Pip said a bit defensively. “The flour is the least processed, the closest to wheat and barley from the field. It’s peasant bread. Meant to fill a hungry belly with the least amount of food. It’s wonderful with soup.”
Mr. Wasserman’s eyes shot to her. “Your great-grandfather?”
“Our cook. But she’s from the same part of Ireland, Connemara.” Pip pointed to the white bread. “Ever since the war, everything has been more and more processed, more artificial. I think we’re going to see a wave of people wanting things that are more natural, closer to the traditional way they used to be done.”
“Nonsense,” Mr. Wasserman said. “Women don’t want to be chained to the kitchen. That’s why we’re seeing more instant foods that don’t take all day to make.”
“But that’s where we’ll come in,” Pip argued. “We’ll do the baking—the old-fashioned way, so they don’t have to.”
Through all this, Toni was watching Pip with an intensity that set Pip’s nerves on edge. Who is this woman? Why is she even here?
“What do you think, Toni?” Mr. Wasserman asked.
Toni sat back with another slice of the dark bread. “They’re all better than what we serve now, Boss.” She turned to Pip. “Can you make these in smaller loaves? Mini-loaves that could be served at each table?”
“I’m… I’m sure we could,” Pip stammered.
“Good.” Mr. Wasserman buttered one more slice of bread and stood. “You two will work together to figure out how much we’ll need.” He returned to his desk.
Toni stood. When Pip remained sitting, Toni crooked an impatient finger at her. Pip jumped up to follow her back through the outer office to the corridor beyond.
“So you’re the one,” Toni said.
“The one what?” Pip was confused.
“A few months ago, the boss gave the order we were to bag up all the leftovers, things we couldn’t serve.” Toni slowed a bit. “We take it to the soup kitchen two or three times a week now. He said something about meeting a baker.”
“But I’m not,” Pip protested.
Toni snorted. “Seems you are.”
She turned down another passageway, and Pip was all turned around.
“Tomorrow, eight o’clock sharp,” Toni said.
“I’m sorry,” Pip said. “What’s tomorrow at eight?”
“The start of the workday.” Toni kept walking, Pip hurrying to keep up. “Meet me here, and we’ll go to the warehouse.” She paused and eyed Pip up and down. Something in her gaze made the blood rush to Pip’s cheeks. “And wear sensible clothes. You’ll be in a construction zone, not a fashion runway.”
The construction noise was deafening. Saws, hammers, drills, the hiss of welding torches. It was chaotic, but Pip loved it. The warehouse, a huge nearly empty shell, was quickly becoming a commercial bakery.
The first morning, the amusement on Toni’s face was plain when Pip arrived at the hotel wearing slacks and Keds. The unnerving thing was the way Pip reacted when her eyes ran slowly down to Pip’s feet and back up again, as if she’d been touched. It made her feel curiously light-headed, kind of giddy.
“This will do for today,” Toni said. “But you’ll want tougher clothes than that. Dungarees and boots.”
“I don’t have those,” Pip said, taking in the way Toni’s men’s dungarees hugged her slim hips, the cuffs rolled around scarred leather work boots.
“You have winter boots, haven’t you?” Toni led the way down a set of stairs and through another warren of hotel corridors, bustling with activity.
Pip caught glimpses of rooms filled with racks of cleaning supplies, others with floor-to-ceiling shelves filled with fresh linens. They wove their way through employees bringing in crates of food from trucks backed up to a loading dock. Toni grabbed Pip’s arm, pulling her aside as one man barreled by pushing a dolly stacked with boxes high enough to block his view.
“This way.”
They descended more steps from the loading dock to what Pip supposed must be the employee parking lot. Toni strode to a bronze Renault Dauphine. Pip slid into the passenger seat.
“Smells new.”
“She is.” Toni backed out of her space and shifted to first gear. “Hang on, Patricia.”
“Pip.”
“What?” Toni turned to her, the car idling with the clutch pressed.
“My friends call me Pip.”
“Okay, Pip.” Toni grinned broadly. “Hang on.”
They roared through the early morning streets toward the warehouse. It was in a more run-down part of the city than their mill, which was located on the Genesee. Back in Pip’s great-grandfather’s day, the river gave him easy access to both the Erie Canal and Lake Ontario. There were a couple of empty lots adjacent to the warehouse, littered with rubble and what looked like the charred remains of small fires.
Toni followed Pip’s curious stare as they got out of the Renault. “One warehouse burned down years ago, and that one,” she nodded, “was condemned after a frozen water pipe burst and flooded the whole building.”
“What about those?” Pip asked, pointing to the burnt areas.
“Bums. They hang out down here, make fires to keep warm, sleep here. We’ll have to clear them out.”
The foreman met them, giving Pip a dubious glance before tossing a hardhat to each of them, and led them through the forest of concrete columns to where enormous blueprints were laid out on a plywood board set on a pair of sawhorses. He walked them through the layout, from the loading dock to where the large flour hoppers were going to go, to where the wiring and plumbing was being laid out for the ovens and sinks.
“Who drew these plans up?” Pip asked, leaning over them.
“The architect Mr. Wasserman hired,” said the foreman, pointing to the firm’s name.
Pip frowned, looking from the blueprints to the space around them, trying to get her bearings and thinking about the baking she’d been doing with Maggie. “But why are the sinks so far away from the flour?”
The foreman shrugged. “Cause that’s where the water pipes are. Easiest to plumb.”
Pip shook her head. “I get that we need the hoppers near the loading docks, so the trucks from the mill can deliver directly to them, but the bakers are going to need these things to be closer together. Once the dough is mixed, the loaves can be rolled anywhere to rise and then to the ovens, but this doesn’t make sense.”
The foreman and Toni both gazed at her with new respect.
“We’ll call the architect,” Toni said. “Have him meet us back here tomorrow morning. In the meantime, have your men work on other things.”
As Pip and Toni walked back to where the Renault was parked, Pip again stared at the empty lots, the remains of the little encampments.
“Don’t worry,” Toni said. “Told you, we’ll get rid of them.”
“Maybe not,” Pip said, her mind whirling.