The Apartment Above the Bakery

The advertisement said "quiet flat, low rent, above working bakery." It did not say that the smell of bread would follow me everywhere, into my dreams, into the pages I was trying to write. But that was the first thing I noticed when I climbed the narrow stairs with my two suitcases and a box of unfinished manuscripts. The whole building smelled like the inside of a warm oven, sweet and dark and a little burnt at the edges.

I had come to the city to finish a book. That was the story I told my mother, and my old colleagues, and the few friends who still asked. The truth was smaller and harder. I had not finished anything in three years. I had started many things, but each one collapsed somewhere in the middle, like a cake taken out of the oven too soon. The flat above the bakery was the cheapest place I could find, and cheap was the only thing I could afford after I stopped pretending I still had a career.

The landlord met me at the top of the stairs. He was an old man named Mr. Faro, with flour on his sleeves and a thin grey moustache. He owned the bakery below and the four flats above it. "You are the writer," he said. It was not a question. "Good. We need a writer here. This building is full of stories that nobody has written down."