Free Joy For Beginners by Erica Bauermeister

shape wrapped in a white cloth, laid on the tiles of her doorstep. She picked it up and felt the warmth coming through the material: she smelled the thick, golden scent of freshly baked bread as she unwrapped the loaf. She pulled off a chunk and bit into it, feeling the crunch of the crust against her teeth, the softness beneath it, the heat rising up into her face.
    Tucked into the paper wrapping was a note. It read: “7 pm tonight. Be hungry.”
    Utterly predictable, Daria thought. But she smiled.
     
    HENRY REFUSED TO TELL Daria where they were going. The building they ended up at was made of brick and wrought iron, set in the oldest part of town. The neighborhood was once the hub of the city, a patch of land where first settlers and then shopkeepers staked their claims, back when Seattle was the last stop before Alaska, when you could make more money outfitting prospectors than you could ever dig out of the ground or sift from a river. The staid and the desperate and the adventurous mixed together, holding on at the edge of the continent. Nowadays the prospectors were inside the buildings playing with computers, the panhandlers sifting a different kind of river. When Daria was in her twenties and first arrived in Seattle, she had loved the edginess of it all, but it had been a while since she had come down at night and things had become darker somehow. She pulled her coat a little closer and concentrated on the white Christmas lights hung among the branches of the trees lining the street.
    Henry looked at her and smiled slightly, opening a door that was almost hidden on the side of the building. They entered an industrial kitchen, its entryway lined with gray plastic garbage cans marked “wheat” and “white.” Daria watched as Henry moved confidently through the space, lifting a cloth cover from a large metal pan and inhaling with satisfaction. He wore a long black coat and a scarf wrapped casually around his neck. The whole scene seemed hopelessly, deliciously Parisian, and Daria felt her shoulders relax.
    “Is this your bakery?” she asked.
    “From five until eleven five mornings a week. Come on,” he said, leading her out to a hallway behind the bakery and up a flight of creaking wooden stairs covered with a faded rose-colored runner that smelled of bread and old tobacco. The opaque glass door at the top had an ornate doorbell, and Henry pushed it and waited, until the door opened to reveal a tall, round man in his thirties wearing cargo pants and a tuxedo jacket.
    “Henry!” he said joyfully. “The man who makes the world smell wonderful in the morning. I’m glad you’re here. And this?” He motioned to Daria.
    “I’m Daria,” she answered, putting out her hand.
    “Beautiful name. Lovely face. I’m William—welcome to the Underground Restaurant.”
    “The what?” Daria asked Henry in an undertone.
    “You’ll see,” he whispered.
    The space was vast and open, with eighteen-foot ceilings and huge, multi-pane windows spanning the main wall, looking out to the cranes and containers of the port, the water beyond. The floors were oak, as old as the building itself. In the far corner was a kitchen with a six-burner commercial range and a capacious refrigerator. A wood-fired pizza oven nestled next to the stove, crackling cheerily. A steep red ladder led up to a loft area above the kitchen. The rest of the room was given over to two long tables and a series of ancient couches and oversized chairs where people were already lounging, wineglasses in hand.
    Henry grabbed two wineglasses from the table near the front door and pulled a bottle of red wine from his coat pocket.
    “I love the pockets of this coat,” he said cheerfully. “You could keep a tuba in them.”
    The wine was soft and round in her mouth and tasted of cherries and chocolate. The room was warm for all that it was cavernous. Henry and Daria found a pair of chairs and sank in, watching the people around them.
    “So, does William live