Car Chase

My name is Carol Chase. Most people call me Car, for obvious reasons. They think it’s funny, but it’s not. Not the thousandth time around.

I used to be a sales rep for Nissan, but when my male coworkers started making cracks like, “That Car’s body could use a good wax,” and “Who wants to be the first to look under that sweet Car’s hood?” I had to quit. It’s not that I can’t take a joke, I just get tired of hearing the same thing day after day. Now I make pastries. They haven’t found a work-related way to torment me at the bakery yet, but they’re working on it. Brandon is getting close with his “Car doing donuts in the parking lot” concept.

I’ve been at Molly’s Cake Hut for three months, which makes it the longest stint I’ve ever gone at a job without someone swiping my nametag and putting a little sticker over the “-ol.” I want to tell them how much I appreciate that, but I don’t want to supply them the idea if they just haven’t thought of it yet. So I just sit back and enjoy the work, silently rejoicing in the blissful, fattening smell of cookie dough. Teresa, a pudgy redheaded teenager that has worked there far longer than I have, often has to remind me that the calories aren’t going to seep into my body through my skin.

It’s really a great place; I only have three coworkers, and that means less recurring characters in my life that could start to irritate me one day. Plus, I get all the baked goods I can eat, though that isn’t all that much. I weigh in at about one-twelve, and while I could eat my weight in cookies when I was younger, it gets harder every year to pack them in. When I hit forty next summer, I’ll probably only be able to eat half a Dark Delicious Fudge Massacre at a time.

Not that anyone realizes I’m thirty-nine. Most people see my slender frame and nearly wrinkle-free skin, which remains elastic because I used to hide from the sun a lot, and they assume I’m one of Teresa’s friends, or at worst, her older cousin. Believe it or not, I don’t enjoy it. I’m a woman, damn it. I didn’t tolerate condescension when I was sixteen, and I sure as hell don’t appreciate it anymore now.

For instance, when I interviewed at the bakery, Molly apparently had not read my resume very closely, and she kept referring to me as “Miss.” The woman just celebrated her thirtieth birthday last week. She looks young, but I didn’t say anything at the time because I thought I might be making the same mistake she was. She calls me Car now instead of “Miss.” Other than that, she has never indicated that she actually went back through my resume and realized her error, and I’ll certainly never mention it.

Brandon came dangerously close to asking me out on my training day. He’s older than Teresa, maybe twenty-three, and he’s an adorable kid, big brown eyes and a cherubic face, but it would have made things infinitely awkward if he’d actually voiced his interest. I know some women thrive on the attention of younger men, but it just creeps me out. I’m old enough to be the kid’s mother, for God’s sake. Give me an intelligent, experienced man with a receding hairline any day. I had one once, but that was way back when I was too young to appreciate it. And it wouldn’t be very practical to try to take him back now; his hairline is too receding these days.

It went like this: Brandon was supposed to show me how to knead dough. I thought it was silly at first. I mean, what kind of idiot can’t knead dough? But there are technical intricacies of which I previously had not been aware. Maybe that’s why the scones I used to make for my great aunt always had the consistency of almost-dry concrete.

He began by sprinkling the countertop with flour. Then, he plopped a big, wet wad of sourdough right in the middle. There was a little wooden bowl full of flour to my right, and he reached across me to pat his hands in it. The candied smell of his cologne mixed with the pungent sourdough, and he stared at me as he pushed his powdery palms into the mound of unbaked bread. His face was stone serious except for a playful glint deep within the wishing wells of his eyes. His voice was smooth as he told me to “push the dough in and up, not straight down,” and to “give the ball of dough a quarter turn every once in awhile so it all gets worked the same amount.”

The shocker came when he let me take over. I powdered my hands and buried them in the warm, soft dough. He watched me for a moment, and then he came behind me and put his arms over mine, holding onto my wrists as I fingered the dough. He controlled the amount of pressure I exerted, gently resisting or exaggerating my motions. He whispered something in my ear, and though I couldn’t make out what it was, I took it as a sign that now was a good time to stop the situation from progressing. I turned around and gave him my best grown-woman smirk. I tried to convey the cynicalness that teenagers sometimes try to fake but only adults can achieve, the kind that takes years of hard work and practice.

He looked at me, and I actually watched the light fade from his eyes. It was like he was coming down from some kind of flaming high that leaked out through his retinas. In an instant, he became…platonic.

I scooped up a handful of flour and launched it at his face, and we’ve been buddies ever since.

Word count: 998