Adam Peterson
If anyone asks, we're bakers.
That explains why we wear these white hats. Why flour spills from our pockets. Why we're carrying little plastic brides and grooms. You know, for cakes. Which we make. Because we're bakers.
Once we carried garrotes, our pockets hid knives, our hats were black. Like any cover, it's ill-fitting until we commit. So, go on, burn your fingers. Dab your neck with vanilla extract. Give a cupcake to a child to stop his crying.
You don't have to forget who you are. You only have to never, ever let anyone else know.
And how different is that, really, from the way everyone lives?
You can be yourself when you're alone. Stir batter with a rifle butt. Throw star-shaped cookies instead of shurikens. Practice piping rosettes instead of kneecaps.
All we have to do is exist and get the Johnsons' anniversary cake ready for Sunday. At least until we hear the codeword.
Not the codeword that gives 20% off a dozen arlettes. That's written by the register and expires on the 22nd, though, as friendly bakers—a thing we are, definitely—you'll be expected to honor it with good humor on the 23rd.
No, the codeword we await is the one that sets us free. Back to a life where things are stabbed not sliced, where anything red is blood not cherry, where we sculpt out of plastique not marzipan.
But until then we must only survive. And turn a profit. Margins are slim, and I'm afraid we'll have to downgrade our eggs. Yes, you may want AA but we operate in a B neighborhood and the bottom line is now our boss.
Look, I know glad-handing the health inspector is exhausting when we were trained to solve problems like him with blow darts and shallow graves. But assassination can't solve everything. Only most things.
Here's the truth—
It's not the health inspector we must kill, but the part of ourselves that can't accept who we are.
We are bakers.
And we're not happy. We're not sad. We're not against a second location if we can find reliable help.
Maybe someday this won't be a cover at all.
Maybe someday we'll hear the words that will awaken us and the life we had. Then we'll have to decide. In hiding from ourselves, did we lose ourselves?
Something in the oven is smoking. Let's decide right now—
Save what we can or let it burn?