A Renaissance

I am feeling one hundred times better about my novel today.  Heather and I had a four hour long Skype/drinking/noveling session, where we discussed the directions of our novels (and we even had time for a social justice break, where we wrote angry letters to the editors of the Record about how shocked and appalled we are).  I had a lot of fun writing today, and I am now at 8,014 words.

Lucky for Ellie, the camera crew was not in the bakery every day.  The show, “Becoming (Cup)cake: The (Inter)liminality of Bite-Sized Desserts” (obviously Gordon’s idea, not Penny Lane’s), shared a camera crew with another MuchMusic reality show, “Are You Good Enough to House My Child For Nine Months?” a show hosted former disgraced Prime Minister Stephen Harper about a weekly guest’s quest to find a baby mama.  Dr. Phil is the consulting psychiatrist on the show, and Dr. Laura gives weekly sex advice.  While Ellie would have never supported such a show, she was partly pleased that it existed because it meant that her life was relatively private for a few days every week.

Trying to learn something that you are supposedly an expert at is difficult, and Ellie was learning this lesson the hard way.  Since she was supposedly the founder of Penny Lane’s Bakery, she should have known a great deal about baking cupcakes.  She should have been able to whip up a batch without the recipe and with her eyes closed, if closed-eyes cupcake baking wasn’t a major health hazard.  An icing bag should have been like an extension of her body, perhaps like some weird Edward Scissorhands baking incarnation. 

But no, she was not Ellie Icinghands.  She was Ellie Abbott, and she had once burned a no-bake cheesecake recipe. 

Luckily for her, Penny Lane was so adept at baking cupcakes that she rarely did it anymore; she was able to delegate the task to others.  Others like Mick Tatum, one of her more handsome employees.  His strong jaw sent a shiver down her spine, and his gorgeous dimples could have formed their own swimming pools that she gladly would have dove into and splashed around in.  Together they would swim in those dimples, like two dolphins in the ocean of their hearts.  One time when Mick had spilled some cupcake batter on his shirt and had removed it to put on a new one, Ellie had caught a glimpse of his glorious, glorious abs, on which she could have grated cheese on them to make a nice polenta lasagna.   His money lines were so defined that… well, in light of the fact that Ellie is technically Mick’s boss, it would be inappropriate to finish that sentence.

He did not seem particularly smart (but do you really need to be if you look like that?), so she hatched a plan to trick him into teaching her how to bake cupcakes.

“Mick,” she began, going with the sudden stroke of genius, “I am now going to test you to make sure that you are doing your job correctly.”

“What?” he asked, confused.  He was confused often though, so it wasn’t exactly a change of pace for him.

“I have been reading a lot of books lately about, uh, leadership,” that seemed plausible, right? “and they encourage you to teach through teaching.  If you teach me how to bake a dozen vanilla cupcakes, I can evaluate you.”

“Okay,” Mick said, trying to sound like he wasn’t questioning Ellie’s methods. 

Before he could begin, the bakery was thrown into pandemonium when suddenly Gordon and some people that Ellie didn’t recognize burst into the shop.  Gordon appeared to be held by his collar by a cool drink of water who did not appear to be so cool at the moment.  He was surrounded by several equally good looking men who were probably his cronies.

“Are you responsible for this…vampire?” the gorgeous stranger asked Ellie.  It didn’t bode well that he was that angry with her when they didn’t even know one another.  Or did they?  She wasn’t sure.

“I’m actually a vampyre,” Gordon corrected him as he raised a single finger didactically.  He was forcefully shoved in Ellie’s direction in response to that correction.

“And I don’t really think of myself as owning him so much as being stuck with him,” Ellie pointed out.

“Well, whatever he is, could you please keep him out of my shop?”

“What?  I had nothing to do with him going into your shop,” Ellie shot back defensively.

“Sure,” he scoffed, in a way that told Ellie that he wasn’t sure at all.  “You’ve been trying to sabotage my shop from day one.  ‘Buns of Steel’ has been bringing the noise, and you’re just afraid to hear it!” he accused.

If Ellie had just been defensive before, she was now completely enraged.  Who did this beautiful man think he was, coming into her bakery (well not her bakery, but that’s beside the point) and accusing her of trying to sabotage his shop?  And more importantly, were her ears just hearing what she wanted to hear, or was this shop really called ‘Buns of Steel’?

“I’m sorry, but I’m really not clear on who you are, or what this shop is that you refer to as ‘Buns of Steel,’” which was of course accompanied by forceful air quotes.  “And furthermore, how dare you accuse me of attempting to sabotage your shop!  I am offended!” Ellie cried indignantly.

“Oh really?” the handsome man responded incredulously.  “Do you honestly expect me to believe that you are unaware that another bakery opened up one street away from yours?”

“Yes,” Ellie said sheepishly, not sure of what else to say.

“We have also met many times, Penny Lane.  I’m insulted,” he said, before storming out of her shop, his face registering genuine hurt.  Even though she didn’t know him, she felt bad that she had caused it due to her ignorance about what was supposed to be her life.

As Ellie watching the 'Buns of Steel' team leave, she became distracted by the visual confirmation that the name of this rival bakery was incredibly apropos.  She had never seen so many scoops of butter pecan ice cream in once place in her life.  She wasn’t sure what she had been doing before this, or why she thought that it was important.

The 'Buns of Steel' crew