"You combine 200 grams flour, 50 grams sugar, and 100 grams unsalted, molten butter. You can add lemon zest from an organic lemon if you have one... this gives the crust a nice flavor. Then you knead and rub the stuff with your fingers until it's kind of grainy. Finally, you add an egg and knead it some more... this should turn it into a tender dough. A bit like shortcrust. You let it rest for at least half an hour, then you can roll it out on a baking parchment and transfer it to a large pie plate."

The dough in question was sitting snugly and silently in its plate on Art's kitchen table. Monica had prepared it in her apartment and brought it over for finishing the pie at his place.

"I..." Art hesitated. "I wouldn't have thought you know how to cook like that."

She grabbed a wooden ladle intended for the salad and turned to face him. "And what... my dearest, heroic neighbor... are you trying to say here?" Her dark eyes glittered as she moved the tool towards his nose.

Art held up his right hand and took a step back. Since his fall from the bridge, his will for survival had grown stronger, and he wasn't eager for death by ladle. But his escape was stopped short by his back making contact with the fridge. "I never thought that you..." He ogled her weapon in trepidation and sought for the right word.

She slit her eyes.

He finally found one. "I never thought you're a... homemaker."

Yes, homemaker has enough negative connotations. A safe word.

She didn't lower the tool, but the corners of her mouth twitched once.

"I may only be a waitress, but I know how to do pies."

"Yes, of course." Art tried to push the ladle away, but she made a threatening move at his fingers. He pulled his hand back. "I just didn't expect you to bake. Baking pies seems like something Adriana would do... or would have done."

Do they do pies in prison?

Any trace of a smile disappeared from Monica's face. "Adriana? Do you think she's more of a homemaker?"

The question felt dangerous, like a trap waiting to snap at him, but he couldn't put his finger on the exact nature of its threat.

"Yeah, she's a homemaker as in... someone who's spending lots of time at home, cooking, and baking."

She tilted her head. "And, do you like that in a woman?"

Art scratched his head. "All the things I like in a woman stand right before me."

Darn... maths is definitely easier than talking to this girl.

"Okay." She lowered the tool. "But..." She tapped it against the cast enclosing his left forearm, the not-too-gentle knocks making his mending bones rattle. "...be warned, my wrath doesn't spare cripples. With me angry, you wouldn't be as lucky as with that bridge. There won't be any fluffy snow drift giving your ass a soft landing." She turned away from him, put the ladle back onto the table, and started scattering ground almonds onto the dough.

Art let go of the air trapped in his lungs. "It wasn't exactly soft, my landing... I was knocked unconscious, and Jake thought I was dead."

"Of course... my hero."

Dead...

What was on the other side of death? What happened when biochemistry broke down, and synapses stopped their restless firing? Whatever it was, Art had decided that it could wait—there was so much yet to be discovered and explored on this side of it.

"Would you get the zwetschge, dear?" Her sweet and innocent voice was one of the things to be discovered and explored. "Open them for me?"

"The... tswedgke?"

Monica laughed and motioned at a bag of frozen fruit she had brought along. "The plums. Zwetschge are a European type of plum. I don't know if you have them in the States. Anyway, I think they are the best for making a pie. But you can also use other types of plums, or apricots, or cherries, or apples."

Art held the bag between the fingers and thumb protruding from his cast. Then he stabbed at it with a knife.

"Don't cut yourself, my hero." Monica placed a hand on his shoulder and took the bag from him. She widened the gashes his efforts had created.

The fruits inside were cut into halves. She started placing them side by side on their bed of almond crumbs.

He helped, one-handedly.

For a moment they worked in shared silence, creating a simple yet perfect pattern of concentric zwetschge circles—a sweet bullseye.

Her perfume hung in the air, or the fragrance of her soap. Or was it lemon zest?

It's hot in here.

"Is the oven hot yet?" she asked.

His mind was still on the heat he felt, and it took him a moment to untangle the temperatures at question. Then he checked the display on his range. "180 degrees Celsius."

"Great, open it up, here we come."

He opened the appliance's door, and she placed the pie plate onto a rack close to the bottom.

"That's it?" he asked.

"Nope. Well, what follows is optional... the filling. I need a bowl, two eggs, and the cream."

He handed her a bowl from his cupboard and pointed at an egg crate sitting in a corner of the table, right beside the maraca he had found in his attic compartment. "The eggs are there, on the table."

Monica opened the crate, retrieved an egg, and cracked it into the bowl in a fluid, single-handed motion.

She's a crack egg-cracker.

"Sure it wasn't you?" Art asked.

"Hmm, what wasn't me?"

"The one leaving an egg on the ground floor landing," Art replied. "You seem to be a skilled egg-killer."

She laughed. "Well... who knows?" She turned her dimpled face at him. "Just kidding... Honestly, it wasn't me." She pulled another egg from the crate, hesitated, and waved it at the maraca. "Hey, what's that?"

"A maraca. Found it in my attic... I actually thought it might be yours."

"No, it's not." She opened the second egg, adding its contents to the bowl. "Cream?"

Art opened the fridge and retrieved the bottle. 35% fat—his arteries clogged just by looking at the stuff.

"We don't need much of that, a deciliter or so." She poured it into the bowl. 

As a mathematician, Art was all for metric systems. Yet one deciliter? That would be a bit more than 3 fl oz. in the real world.

"Do you have any vanilla sugar?" she asked.

"Vanilla sugar?" He tilted his head.

"Never mind... I'll take regular sugar instead." She took hold of the jar of sugar he used for sweetening his coffee and added three teaspoons to the mixture. Then she stirred it with a fork.

When she finished, she waved the fork at the maraca, the motion sending drops of filling over the table. "Might be Knooch's... the maraca. She's lived in South America, too, hasn't she?"

Art used a rag to clean away the scattered filling, feeling very Tavetian in the process. "Yeah, true... the thing may be hers... Her attic compartment is next to mine, it might have slipped through the bars."

"Would you please open the oven, my hero?"

Art did as requested. Using a towel, she pulled the grid with the steaming pie halfway from the black, hot cavern, poured the filling over the plums, and pushed everything back in. Art closed the door.

"Why do you add the filling only now?" He watched the pie through the oven's window.

Reality TV at its finest.

"Otherwise it might turn black before the fruits and crust are done. Especially if you're using frozen zwetschge."

"How long do we leave the pie in there?"

"Let's try a quarter of an hour, then we'll have a look at it. It'll probably take a bit longer." She reached for the maraca and rolled it slowly in her hands, her gaze on its gaudy pattern.

Art set the timer of his phone to 15 minutes. The time on its display reminded him of the guests they were expecting.