Brioche

It was a meek ‘hello’ from the sun that woke him up in the end. Eyes grittily opening, he peered around from his den of blankets and creases. Outside, beyond the curtain, lay a promise of a perfect picnic-blue sky. ‘Today’, he mused, hoped, ‘today will be.’

Rustling his hands around his washbag, he took out his medication and gulped it down with stale water from his bedside table. Perhaps his mouth was dry from the sleep, or the dust that flitted in the streaks of sunshine had seeped into his water; something made it taste so grey. 

10:39. Later than a normal 10 a.m. rise, but not so late that his day had trickled away quite yet. In motions utterly separate to his mind, which was no longer (and never indeed) present today, his fingers flitted around the carousel of social media. Messages from others, unopened like a looming deadline, were ignored as he swiped to the next app. 

11:17. Time to get up and go, but for what? The morning had seeped in one blank gurgle away from him. A dressing gown enrobed his pasty skin and tousled pyjamas and he padded downstairs. More water, drinking in slurps like a child from a sippy-cup of weakly diluted orange squash. He felt the cool liquid ooze down to his belly. 

Cereal. Milk. Milk was empty, but that was OK, there was toast. No one else was up, or home, but that was... OK.

Did he really want to talk, or speak, or be today? Or did he want to become a grey vessel, swelling to bursting point with cloudy thoughts that started from nothing, ended with nothing and made him feel like nothing?

He ate the toast and didn’t brush his teeth for too long. Lazy. When he spat, a globule of grain-flecked foam bubbled before him. Down the sink it went, and so the day went on.

12:20. It was someone’s lunchtime out there. Probably. He threw on a blank yellow tee that had long faded into a pastel hue and some jeans that lay crumpled on the floor like some discarded newspaper on a city tube. He put on yesterday’s socks. Familiar in shape and feeling, that same peeking hole on his heel, but strangely cold, and perhaps, slightly damp.

Keys, phone, wallet. No face mask. Up he went, got one. OK, now down again, now out the door. Finally.

Harsh blue, uncompromising midday sun, and 12:45, nice round number, that. He passed some others, or they passed him, he wasn’t ever really sure. He looked into a clothes store. There were clothes. There were clouds blooming in his mind. 

He watched as the day, filled with all those around him doing things, and things just… slipped away. He wandered aimlessly about town, wondering what to do, which was difficult, just about out of reach from a mind absent today, but back tomorrow. Hopefully.  

He came across a bakery, glass fronted, italics and flourishes detailing some exquisite name. The milky blue, the ever-present sun, a watery memory of Ambre-Solaire sun cream, a trip to the bakery as a treat. Wicker baskets and sandwich crumbs in sand could just about be made out amidst the fogging blank behind his eyes.

Stepping inside, he filled up his sinuses deep to the pores with the waft of freshly baked bread, the sort you sink your teeth into. A neat display of polka dot pastries lined up in cute ranks before him. A green jam one glistened at him. Which fruit made green jam? Maybe, he thought, it could be kiwi or grape, given how frightfully fancy the place was. Outside, others droned past. He felt safe, isolated from that, as he stood watching through the glass pane from inside.

A mother and her child came in. The mother: refined, cherry-tart lipstick, with wrinkles and dimples forged from loving smiles. She looked like just the sort of lady you would leave your bag with to watch over while you went to the loo in a café. Her daughter, skipping quickly in tow, watched with wide eyes, although not wide enough; clearly she had been here before, and often too.

“Since you were so brave today in the dentist, Ella, you can pick out a pastry as a treat.”

He watched as the mother guided Ella over to the delicacies displayed in front of him.

“Well, Mum, I thought the dentist said I should not eat any chocolate, so I can’t have the pain au chocolat like usual.”

He knew it! This visit to the bakery was clearly routine.

“And I don’t like the one with raisins in, so I don’t know what I want. Excuse me mister, which pastry do you think I should ha-“

“Oh, Ella, don’t go bothering that poor man!”

“But I don’t know what I want Mum, they all look so nice! Maybe, since I was so brave, I could have them all?”

Over by the till, he noticed the cashier, a petite woman with swept short hair and a raspberry jam coloured apron, smiling to herself knowingly. Perhaps the stage was set.

“Well,” he found himself saying, suddenly rushed to the front of the clouds in a piercing realness, “my favourite would be one of these, for a treat.” He pointed to one of the plump chocolate chip brioches. “They’re rather good, if I say so myself.” He said, making a conscious but pleasingly unconscious effort to mirror the girl’s very matter-of-fact tone.

“A bree-otche, I’ve never had one of those before! But my dentist said I couldn’t have chocolate.”

“I think, as long as you don’t tell them, you can have one.”

The mother laughingly agreed, and after a slight hesitation, picked out three brioches, glazed brown under the warm buzzing light of the display. Maybe the third one was for the husband at home? He found himself slightly following the pair to the till, and inwardly flinched when the £12.30 bill was rung up. A flick of a credit card waived it, and suddenly, the mother was facing him, through the clearing fog in his mind. She was holding a crinkly paper bag with the tell-tale bulge of a brioche inside.

Laughing happily, she told him this was his treat for helping Ella choose. Despite the pleasantries of stuttering refusals, he took the brioche in his hand while she told him to have a lovely day. Perhaps she knew he hadn’t been. 

And so, he drifted again. Passing out of the bakery clutching the bag of happiness, he felt amidst an ebb of grey.

1:38. It was getting late. The day, today, it had passed on by with hardly a word in sideways. It was as if the script for the day had been blotted and smudged in vast lazy ink spills of fog. And now, no longer knowing what the day held nor what the script read, he set off into the clear afternoon. 

Perching on a bench in the city centre, he rustled open the bag. He held up the brioche, and, with a silly wonder, he watched as his view of a bustling metropolis was dwarfed by a great hunk of brioche. Busy businessmen disappeared behind the pastry and popped out the other side, just as hurried as before. All around him was a rush, but the brioche remained unmoving.

At first, he nibbled at it, imagining he was a rat in a pantry gnawing at stale husks of rye. He sat and rolled the morsel about his mouth until it was a distantly sugary mush that slid down his throat 

Way above him, the day was growing overcast, basking the already grey concrete buildings and pavements in a bland, pallid hue. But he didn’t mind.

He figured life was too short, and he sunk his teeth deep into the pillowy pastry, silently giggling to himself as he ripped off such a sizeable chunk that it filled his entire mouth. 

And so he sat, with the pigeons to keep him company, people-watching as he munched his brioche. He idly swung his feet back and forth in a silent joy he hoped only he would know.