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Rose furrowed her brow. “A job? What kind of job?”
“We need help with our recipes,” Mr Kerr said bluntly, rubbing his hands over the smooth velour of his track suit.
Mr Butter glared at Mr Kerr a moment, then turned back to Rose, all smiles. “Yes, that’s the gist of it,” he said, tapping his fingers on the desk. “You see, Rose, we here at the Mostess Snack Cake Corporation were just as horrified as you were by the passage of the Big Bakery Discrimination Act. Of course, the law does happen to benefit our bakery, as we employ well over a thousand people. So we wanted to help a newly unemployed small-town baker like yourself by putting you to work for us.”
Gus fidgeted on her lap. It suddenly dawned on Rose that neither of them had seen a bathroom for hours.
“Think of it as an exchange programme,” Mr Kerr added matter-of-factly. His voice was so deep that it sounded like his throat was trying to swallow the words before they escaped. “Like you kids do in school.”
“Exactly,” said Mr Butter. “You see, Rose, we have something wonderful to offer each other.”
“We do?” Rose said.
“Mostess has the finest baking facilities in the world, thousands of square feet of floor space, the most cutting-edge machinery, and a staff of thousands of qualified baking professionals.” Mr Butter paused a moment to savour the thought of it. “That is what you lack. You, Rosemary Bliss, are a baker without a bakery.”
Rose hung her head. Mr Butter was wrong. The Bliss family had a bakery; they just weren’t legally allowed to operate it. She thought of last night, how cramped and hot the tiny kitchen had been, and how little they could really afford to support the town’s baked-goods needs. How exhausted she and her parents were. They couldn’t go on like that.
“What we lack is the kind of attention that you small-town bakers can afford to lavish on each loaf of bread, each crumpet, each swirl of cupcake frosting, each—”
“I understand,” Rose interrupted.
Mr Butter bristled. “You know as well as I do that a perfect dessert sweetens life like nothing else. People in every town, students at every school, from every walk of life, they all depend upon that little bit of goodness that they can find within, say, a Bliss tart. Or slice of cake.”
“Or a muffin,” Mr Kerr continued. “Or a croissant. Or clafouti. Or—”
“I get it,” Rose snapped.
Mr Butter cleared his throat and ran his fingers along the bald arches where his eyebrows should have been. “At the Mostess Snack Cake Corporation, we believe our snack cakes are nearly perfect, but our recent sales record has not reflected this. Our snack cakes can’t compete with the love and the … how do I describe it … the magic that you small bakeries provide.”
Rose eyed Mr Butter suspiciously and felt something flutter nervously in her stomach. Magic? she thought. He couldn’t possibly know about the magic.
“And shouldn’t every town have what Calamity Falls has? Readily available, forever fresh, fabulous, delicious gourmet treats?” Mr Butter went on. “Before your fortuitous arrival, we had—”
“You kidnapped me,” Rose said again. On her lap, Gus growled.
“—we had the assistance of a master baker who had very nearly perfected our recipes. Sadly, she competed in a baking contest in Paris, and after events there never returned.” Rose immediately knew there was only one person he could be talking about – her devious aunt Lily. “And that’s why we need you,” Mr Butter said. “To perfect the recipes. To make our snack cakes the best in the world. To finish what the previous director started but failed to finish.”
Rose looked down at Gus, who stared back at her with wide eyes, as if to say, Don’t you dare. The point of his tail flicked.
“Why me?” Rose asked. “Why not any of the other bakers at any of the millions of bakeries around the country that were just put out of business by that crazy new law?”
Mr Butter tapped his finger on the tip of his broad nose. “You come highly recommended.”
“By whom?”
“Well … Jean-Pierre Jeanpierre, of the Gala des Gâteaux Grands, of course. He selected you as the winner of the most prestigious baking competition in the world, didn’t he? Wouldn’t it make sense that we would seek your help above everyone else’s?”
Rose blushed. It was flattering, if highly suspicious. Apparently she was never going to live down that competition. “But you said before that you wanted the book instead of the cook. What book were you talking about?”
“We heard that at the Bliss Bakery you use a … special book that makes your treats magically delicious,” Mr Butter said. “That the secret of your success is thanks to—”
“Nope!” Rose lied. How could they know about the Booke? “No special book! We do all our baking from memory. Whoever told you about a special book was pulling your leg. Yanking your chain. Lying through their teeth—”
“And that is precisely why we brought you here,” said Mr Butter. “You are our only hope, Rosemary Bliss. We desperately need your help. Not just for us, but for the good of anyone who has ever turned for hope and happiness to a sweet baked good.” He removed his glasses and dabbed at his eyes with the corner of his handkerchief. “Will you help us in this, our time of greatest need?”
Mr Butter obviously cared about baking, Rose thought. True, he had kidnapped her, but her mother would never have let her go anyway, so in a sense, Mr Butter had no choice if he wanted Rose’s expertise.
And her family was going to need the money.
Maybe she could do a little bit of good and earn some money for her family. True, she’d made that wish that she could be done with baking, but maybe baking wasn’t done with her.
“I can help you,” said Rose. Gus dug his claws into her leg, which made Rose yelp. “I wasn’t done!” she muttered to the cat through her teeth. She turned to Mr Butter. “I can only help if you if you let me call my parents and tell them where I am. They are probably insanely worried by now.”
“Of course you can call your parents,” Mr Butter said. “After you bake.”
The hair on Rose’s neck stood on end. “So you’re holding me hostage!”
“Hostage!” Mr Butter laughed. “I don’t even know the meaning of the word. You’re free to go at any time.” He examined the fingernails of his right hand. “After you’ve completed your duties, of course.”
“You can’t keep me here against my will!” Rose cried.
“Against your will?” Mr Butter fanned the idea away with his hand. “We are not holding you here. You may come and go as you wish … once our five main recipes are perfected.”
Rose was getting nowhere with this man. She thought of her parents, how Ty and Sage would have returned from their deliveries by now. Albert and Purdy would ask where Rose was, and they would say that she’d wanted to make a few deliveries on her bike. It would be conceivable that Rose was still out and about. Maybe her family wouldn’t start worrying until sundown. She could finish the baking here by then, or at least find a phone.
“Fine,” she said at last, gripping Gus so tightly that he knew not to scratch. “I’ll bake first.”
“Come,” said Mr Butter with a smile. “Let me show you where we work.”
Mr Butter led Rose down a bright corridor, with Mr Kerr taking up the rear. From within her backpack, Gus leaned forward, both his paws on her left shoulder, the sound of his constant low growl a comfort in her ear.
Mr Butter opened a steel door and Rose was hit with the smell of sugar and chocolate and bleach, the heat of roaring ovens, and the sounds of industrial hissing and churning and buzzing and pounding.
Mr Butter led them out onto a steel catwalk – with railings, of course – overlooking a vast factory of gleaming stainless steel. Giant metal paddles churned enormous vats of chocolate. Dozens of hairnetted workers piped white dots onto hundreds of chocolate cupcakes that rode on a conveyor belt, like luggage at an airport. A monstrous mechanical press sealed snack cake after snack cake into plastic wrappers, then another conveyor belt dropped the packages into cartons.
Rose stared down at the scene in distaste. She was used to individually packing each precious cake in a white box and tying it off with baker’s twine.
“Gorgeous, isn’t it?” said Mr Butter, inhaling deeply and spreading his arms majestically. “We produce eight thousand snacks of one sort or another every minute. Our facilities here are larger than the Pentagon, and we have more delivery trucks working for us than the U.S. Postal Service.”
When they reached the end of the catwalk, Mr Butter led Rose and Gus into a tiny glass-walled room that was suspended precariously over the factory floor. She looked down at the tangled mess of conveyor belts and was reminded of the stomach-churning feeling she’d had when she looked over the railing at the top of the Eiffel Tower.
The suspended room was empty except for an illuminated glass pedestal, on top of which sat a glass dome. Inside the glass dome was a small hemisphere of chocolate cake, stuffed with white pastry cream. She recognized it instantly as a Dinky Cake.
“Why do you have an entire room devoted to a Dinky Cake?” she asked.
“It’s not just a Dinky Cake,” said Mr Kerr, squinting his dark eyes.
“Beneath this hallowed dome,” Mr Butter began, like he was delivering a sermon, “lies the very genesis of the Mostess Snack Cake Corporation. Our empire was built on the Dinky Cake. Each year, the average person in the United States devours upward of seven pounds of Dinkies.”
“Ugh,” said Rose, remembering the way some of the kids at school used to gobble up the cakes in two bites. “So, why is this one in a jar?”
“This,” Mr Butter said, once again lifting his glasses and wiping his eyes, “is the first Dinky Cake we ever made. And it’s every bit as fresh as it was the day it was manufactured by my grandfather back in 1927.”
Rose was horrified. The Dinky Cake was almost a century old – it should already have rotted away. “That’s vile.”
“It’s sensational,” Mr Butter spat, pressing his spindly arms close to his sides. “It’s the power of preservatives – something your homespun cookies lack. Two days after you bake a cake, it dries out and winds up in the garbage. But with preservatives, each Dinky is guaranteed to be as delicious as the day you bought it, no matter when you eat it. The cakes are, in a way, immortal.”
Gus, who was staring at the Dinky, began to heave.
“Oops! My cat has a hairball!” Rose cried as she whisked Gus out of the room and placed him gently on the catwalk, where he continued to dry heave. “I would like to leave now,” he said quietly so that only Rose could hear him.
“I want to go home, too,” said Rose, equally quiet. “But we have to find a way out of here.”
“We want you to go home as well!” said Mr Butter, who had stepped out of the glass Dinky shrine just in time to hear Rose. “But there is work to do first, so now we are going to bring you to our main test kitchen. It’s the happiest place on Earth.”
“I thought that was Disneyland,” Gus whispered.
Mr Butter put his thin arm around Rose’s shoulder. “Your mission, which you’ve already accepted, will be to perfect the recipes for our five key products. After that, you will be absolutely free to go. With our thanks, of course.”
“Of course,” Rose said with a gulp. “Perfecting a few recipes should be easy.” She looked at Gus.
But the cat only shook his head and sighed.
OUTSIDE THE MAIN factory building, Mr Butter and Mr Kerr ushered Rose and Gus into the back seat of a golf cart.
“Now we are off!” Mr Butter shouted. “To the place where the magic happens!”
“Magic?” Rose repeated. Were there kitchen magicians here? No, that couldn’t be … could it?
“A figure of speech,” Mr Butter said. “I’m speaking, of course, of the magic of industry!”
“Oh,” Rose said, breathing a sigh of relief.
From her backpack, the cat whispered, “Spare me, please.”
Mr Kerr drove the cart past dozens of box-shaped warehouses, all painted a lifeless grey. Rose looked up the alleyways between the warehouses and all she could see were other warehouses, as if she’d entered a labyrinth of grey blocks from which there was no escape. The buildings were so tall and so close together that even the late-afternoon sun failed to penetrate to the ground below, and the streets of the Mostess Snack Cake Corporation were dark as night.
The sun would be setting in an hour or so, and she knew that her parents would have officially started worrying that she hadn’t returned. She considered hopping off the cart and making a run for it, but in which direction? The buildings seemed to go on forever.
“How many buildings are there?” Rose asked, trying to seem casual.
“More than one hundred and seventy-five units in this compound alone,” Mr Butter answered proudly. “Then there’s our other production facility in Canada. That one has only one hundred and twenty-five buildings.”
After what seemed like a long drive, Mr Kerr stopped the cart in front of a grey warehouse with a giant 67 painted on the side. He pulled a walkie-talkie from his suit jacket pocket and spoke softly into it. “Marge, FLCPC landing, over.”
Suddenly, a part of the warehouse wall lifted into the roof, like an automated garage door, and Mr Kerr drove the cart through the opening. The door closed behind them, locking the golf cart into a pitch-black, air-conditioned box.
When the floor underneath started rumbling, Rose realized they were in an elevator. After a minute, the car emerged on the floor of a giant kitchen with rust-colored linoleum tiles on the floor, stainless steel prep tables, and a row of top-of-the-line ovens.
The perimeter of the room was lined with every conceivable kitchen appliance: restaurant-sized stand mixers, deep fryers, toasters and blenders, salamanders and broilers, stainless steel pots and pans, and a rack containing twenty spatulas of various sizes and colours.
Rose gasped. She didn’t like being brought here against her will, but she certainly didn’t mind the kitchen itself. It was almost perfect – the only thing missing was a secret pantry of magical blue mason jars like they had back home.
“Quite something, isn’t it?” Mr Butter asked. “This is our test kitchen.”
He snapped his fingers, and a row of men and women in white lab coats, aprons, and chef’s toques marched in from a small door at the far corner of the room labelled BAKERS’ QUARTERS. In perfect unison, the six bakers filed in behind the row of metal prep tables and stood at attention.
The six bakers were all nearly the same height – that is, on the shorter side, just about as tall as Rose herself. And they were all round. You might not notice it if you were just looking at one of the bakers, but seeing them all together in a row, it was clear they all were alike in one way: they were all overweight.
Also, they were smiling. Not like genuinely happy men and women, but more like people whose mouths were being stretched up at the sides by invisible fish hooks.
“Why are they so round?” Gus whispered, cradled in Rose’s arms. “They look as though they might roll away with just one push.”
“Shh,” she replied. “I don’t know.”
Mr Butter sauntered over to the prep tables and leaned in close. “A spot.” He smiled, pointing at the perfectly clean stainless steel surface. “Someone missed a spot.”
Then he snapped his fingers.
One of the bakers gasped, ran to the back wall, and grabbed a fresh towel and some spray. He hurried back to the table and scrubbed vigorously at the spot.
Mr Butter pulled a magnifying glass out of his pocket and peered at the tabletop. “Better,” he said. Then he stood straight again, cleared his throat theatrically, and addressed Rose. “These are our very best bakers, specialists in every facet of the creation of our great line of products. They now all answer to you, Rosemary Bliss.”
“Um, OK,” Rose said. The bakers’ eyes swivelled from Mr Butter to Rose. One on the end farthest away from her audibly gulped.
“And this is our Head Baker, Marge.”
The woman standing closest to Rose had round pink cheeks and short brown hair that peeked out from beneath her chef’s toque. Her lips were as plump as maraschino cherries, and her nose was as round as a tiny cupcake. The pockets of her apron bulged with paper and recipe cards.
“I’m Marge, and I’m in charge,” she said. “Let me introduce you to our specialists. This is Ning, he’s our Icing Tech.”
Ning, a gentleman with a black crew cut, pointy eyebrows, and a large mole above his lip, gave Rose a salute.
“This is Jasmine, our CTM – Cake Texture Modifier,” Marge said, moving down the line. Jasmine, a woman with two long black braids, nodded, and the wide grin plastered across her face grew even wider. “The texture of a cake is, as I’m certain you know, the most important thing.”
“Next we have Gene, our VP of Fillings, both marshmallowy and fruity.” Gene had a brown mustache and long, curly hair that he wore tied back in a hairnet.
“And down at the end there,” said Marge, “we’ve got the twins, Melanie and Felanie. Nut Chunk and Sprinkle Maestros, respectively.”
At the end of the line stood two young women with short blonde hair and freckles. They waved to Rose and smiled so widely that Rose could see their gums.
These people are smiling, thought Rose, out of fear. They were all terrified of Mr Butter, she realized.
“That’s it,” said Marge. “That’s the gang.”
“And this,” announced Mr Butter with a flourish of his bony, fishy-white hand, “is Miss Rosemary Bliss, your new FLCP Director.”
“She’s a lot younger than the last one,” said Marge, then rushed to add, “but worthy of our respect all the same!”
Rose furrowed her brow. “FLCP? What’s that? It sounds like the noise Gus makes when he gets a hairball.”
The bakers began to titter good-naturedly.
“FLCPs,” said Mr Butter, “are the things we bake. The products. Dinkies, King Things, all of them – they are all different types of FLCPs: Food-Like Consumer Products.”
“Food-like?” Rose repeated.
“Because of the mix of preservatives and chemicals we use in our delicious treats, the government has classified them as Not Food, but Food-Like.” Mr Butter shrugged as though he were talking about a minor embarrassment. He winked at Rose. “But you and I both know that the government makes mistakes all the time, don’t we?”
Rose thought about the wrongheaded law that had closed down the Follow Your Bliss Bakery and nodded. “We sure do.”
Marge came around behind her and spotted the grey furball nestled in Rose’s arms. “Wow! A cat!” she cooed, lifting Gus out and cradling him like an infant. “There is nothing I love more on this sweet, sad dumpling of a planet than a funny-looking, alien-eyed, fat cat with crinkled ears.”
Gus wore a look of sheer contempt as he gazed into the eyes of the round-headed baker.
“No cats in the kitchen,” said Mr Kerr, pulling Gus from Marge’s arms and dropping him back inside Rose’s backpack. She heard the Scottish Fold sigh deeply over the ratchet of the zipper.
“Do I start baking now?” Rose asked, eager to get this whole charade over with so she could return to her family. They’d be worrying, she knew.
“That’s the spirit!” said Mr Butter. “But no. It’s too late today. You’ll start in the morning.”
“You expect me to sleep here?” Rose asked, outraged. “That wasn’t part of the deal.”
Mr Butter gritted his teeth, but said cheerfully, “If you are to perfect the five recipes in the five days we’ve allotted you—”
“Five days?!” Rose repeated, shocked. She had expected to spend a few hours here at the most – not days.
“It’s not enough time for an average baker, I know,” Mr Butter said, stroking his lip, “but are you not the great” – he coughed into his hand – “Rosemary Bliss? The youngest baker to win the Gala blah blah blah?”
“It was the Gala des Gâteaux—”
“Yes, I know what it was called. I said ‘blah blah blah’ to show you that I am not impressed. As I was saying, to make the most of the five days until … well, the five days we have allotted you, you will live here. Your bedroom is up those stairs there, in the office that overlooks the FLCP Development Kitchens. Tomorrow you’ll get started, and Marge and the team will execute your marvelous ideas. The team is always here. If you have an inspirational dream and come up with something brilliant at three in the morning, just wake Marge, and the team will rally behind you.”
“The bakers all live here?” Rose asked, looking around uneasily.
“Of course,” said Mr Butter. “They sleep right back there, in the Bakers’ Quarters. Where else would they live?”
“In town, maybe? With their families?” Rose offered.
“Oh,” said Mr Butter, laughing as though Rose had told a funny joke. “Goodness, no. We are in recipe crisis here, Rose, and recipe crisis requires round-the-clock attention. What are families and homes when there are snack cakes to perfect? Nothing! The only thing that matters – to me, the Mostess Corporation, and to you – is that these recipes be perfected.” He dropped one of his bony hands on her shoulder; it was like having a bag of hangers draped across her back. “The bakers won’t be going anywhere until our little problem is solved. And neither, for that matter, will you. Good night, Rose. We’ll see you in the morning.”
Rose climbed the spiral stainless steel staircase in the corner of the test kitchen, which led to a room suspended from the corner of the ceiling. She could hear Gus snoring from inside of her backpack, so she knew he was OK.
The room had glass walls and looked out over the test kitchen like a fishbowl on a shelf, with Rose the fish. Marge had turned off the lights and the bakers had returned to their quarters at the back of the kitchens. Rose’s room had a single, tiny window to the outside world, just one foot square, above the bed. Through it, June twilight filtered in and glinted on the prep tables in the darkened kitchen below.
The room was filled by a twin bed with a white duvet, a metal desk and desk lamp, and a little wooden dresser. Past a door on the back wall was a white-tiled bathroom, complete with little monogrammed towels. MOSTESS spelled the red thread. Sitting on top of the desk was a glass of milk and a few dry-looking biscuits. Dinner? Rose thought.
Rose breathed deeply – the room had an oddly familiar smell, though she couldn’t place her finger on it. Was it the faintest whiff of old perfume? A faintly flowery hint of … she couldn’t recall where she knew the scent from. Maybe it was just the trusty old smell of a bakery?
White curtains were tied in bunches in the corners of the room; Rose untied them, covering the glass walls for privacy. Then she unzipped her backpack and Gus tumbled out onto the bed.
“Ah!” he said, waking up from his nap. “Are we home yet?” He glanced from side to side, then sat back and curled his tail round his feet. “I was hoping this place was all a bad dream.”
“I’m afraid not,” Rose said. She took a biscuit and broke it in half, popping one of the pieces into her mouth and giving the other to Gus. Then she took a swig of milk.
“It’s OK, Rosie,” the cat said between bites. “We will triumph! Are we not cats? Are we not the slyest, smartest, most surprising foes in all of creation? Are we not—”
“You’re a cat,” Rose said, frowning. “I’m a girl.”
“A technicality,” Gus said. “My point, though, was simple. We shall get through this. We have each other.” He yawned.
Rose cracked open the window above the bed and stuck her head out. The room was pretty high up. All she could see were the tops of other warehouses. They seemed to go on forever. On the very edge of the horizon was a barbed-wire fence. There’d be no escaping through this window.