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It was midnight. Crowley, dressed as a nanny, and Aziraphale, dressed as a gardener, were meeting on a bench under the arbor on the Ambassador’s grounds as they’d done every Saturday night for the past five years.
“How goes it on your end?” Crowley asked, draped haphazardly on his corner of the bench in a way that made his jacket gape open at the neck, threatened to rip his skirt across one leg, and rode it high up his smooth, gartered leg on the other. “Still thwarting my wiles?”
Aziraphale sat upright as though the bench’s back were at a perfect right angle rather than a comfortable curve, holding his hands together in his robed lap. “Naturally,” he said through his false teeth with an air of congenial self-righteousness. “You know all those houseplant leaves you’ve been teaching Warlock to put down the garbage disposal? I’ve taught him to compost them instead. He’s learned to choose nurturing instead of destruction, and that there is a purpose for everything, even that which others would dismiss and discard.”
Crowley smirked. “You’ve taught him the weak and broken are as good as literal shit,” he said.
“I’ve taught him no such thing!”
“Fit only to be consumed by the strong and the worthy!” Crowley cackled.
“All right, then, if you’re so clever, what have you taught him?”
“Seeing as idle hands are the Devil’s workshop, I’ve been making sure he doesn’t have too much in the way of structured activity,” said Crowley. “It’s going splendidly.”
“You mean you haven’t done anything with him this week?” Aziraphale said, aghast. “It’s summertime! School’s out! The boy needs some sort of structure in his life.”
“You give it to him, then. And I’ll let him run wild and do whatsoever is right in his own eyes.”
Aziraphale gave Crowley a suspicious look. “You’re bored, aren’t you?”
“Wha — agk — no I’m not bored, I’m working on a very important phase of my long-term corruption plot,” Crowley protested.
“Crowley.”
“Could be the most crucial phase of the whole plan.”
“CROWLEY.”
“All right, yes, I’m bored. I had plenty of games and songs and toys and such when I first came here, but he doesn’t like them now. I don’t know what to do with him. Human children change so bloody fast!”
“I’d think now that he’s bigger, you can do even more interesting things with him,” said Aziraphale. “Think of all the documentaries you can watch now! You can show him so much art and culture that wouldn’t have been appropriate for a five-year-old. And there’ll only be more as he grows older.”
“I can’t teach him repetitive songs that drive the adults to madness anymore,” Crowley grumbled. “He won't rot his little brain with the cartoon about the clay bunnies. He won’t build tall towers out of blocks in the living room only to knock them down and leave a mess for the nanny.”
“You’re the nanny!”
“What’s your point?”
“My point is, there must be something the two of you can still enjoy doing together,” said Aziraphale, who truly wasn’t all that concerned by the prospect of a bored Warlock but was exceedingly concerned with the prospect a bored Crowley. “Teach him a craft of some sort. What about sewing?”
“He has enough clothes, and I won’t have him ruining mine.”
“Woodwork?”
“Oh, sure, let’s give the Antichrist a hammer and nails.”
“Baking?”
“What makes you think I know how to bake?”
Aziraphale pulled a small notepad and pencil out of his enormous pocket. He scribbled for a few moments, tore off the paper, and handed it to Crowley. “Here. A simple loaf of bread. I’ll miracle the ingredients into the kitchen in the morning. You don’t have to know a thing, just follow these instructions to the letter. Look, I’ve even drawn pictures for you.”
“Is it necessary that my apron have exactly this many frills?” asked Crowley.
“Er, yes, quite. The frills are an important part of the process.”
“Because I was thinking of adding a few more.”
“Can’t hurt.”
*
At the next week’s midnight meeting, Crowley presented Aziraphale with a thick slice of white toast topped with newly melted butter and a drizzle of honey. “Here you go, angel,” he beamed. “Tell me that isn’t the lightest, fluffiest bread you’ve tasted in all your millennia of existence.”
Aziraphale took out his false buckteeth and put them in his pocket. He hesitated for a moment before he took the bread. As soon as it was in his mouth, his eyes rolled back in his head and rolled right back toward the plate in astonishment. “My dear!” he exclaimed. “What have you done with this? Not even manna in the wilderness or the multiplied loaves tasted so heavenly!”
“Oh, just a little trick Warlock and I discovered together,” Crowley said with his most innocent of smiles. “When you’re kneading the dough, you’ve really got to punch the life out of it. Just pulverize that useless lump.”
Aziraphale looked properly aghast. He took the plate from Crowley’s hands. “I’m so sorry,” he mourned as he gazed down on it. “I’m sure you were a perfectly beautiful lump of dough that deserved so much better. You were meant to be lovingly folded and pressed and kneaded with a firm yet gentle hand.”
“Shall I leave you and the bread alone, then?” Crowley deadpanned.
Aziraphale held the plate protectively in the crook of his arm as he ate what was left of the toast. When he was done, he got out his notepad and pencil again and made a new recipe card. “Here,” he said sternly. “This recipe is for banana bread. You’ve got new bananas in the kitchen. They’ll be ready in a few days. This recipe has no yeast, no kneading, and No. Punching. The secret ingredient to all the greatest recipes is love, Crowley. Not that I could expect you to understand that.”
“I do love punching and beating inanimate objects,” said Crowley.
Aziraphale took the recipe away. When he handed it back, 1 egg, beaten had been poorly erased and written over with 1 egg, affectionately whisked, the 3 very ripe bananas were now to be compassionately softened rather than mashed, and the Pinch of salt was now A small bit of salt cradled tenderly in the palm of your hand.
“See how you get on with that,” said Aziraphale.
“I’ll follow it to the letter,” Crowley promised, silently noting that there was no amendment for testing the bread with a knife.
*
Five days later, Crowley had herded Warlock into the kitchen, where all the ingredients for Aziraphale's banana bread recipe were neatly lined up on the counter next to the stove. Crowley wore his new black apron that covered his entire suit in front up to the collar of his blouse and down to the hem of his skirt. The apron was bordered with tiers of dark red lace ruffles and tied in back with a silver satin ribbon. Warlock wore the grilling apron with an American flag design that his father had sent him for his last birthday.
"First we have these overripe, nearly rotted bananas," said Crowley, handing one to Warlock and opening one himself. "The recipe says we must peel them and put them in the bowl."
Warlock wrinkled his nose. "What's that, a compost bowl for humans?" he asked in his splendidly irritating American accent.
"Yes. Banana bread is precisely compost for humans," said Crowley. "Now, the recipe calls for these bananas to be 'compassionately softened.' Look around for an instrument of compassion, will you?"
Warlock grabbed a meat tenderizer. "How's this? Dad uses it to soften meat before he grills it. There's a video on YouTube of him making presidential steaks."
"Good thing we used the metal bowl and not the glass one, eh? Have at it."
Warlock softened the bananas with all the compassion a jackhammer has for a sidewalk.
After the bananas came the butter and honey, after which came 1 egg, affectionately whisked.
"Warlock, did I ever tell you I wrote some anti-drug commercials for American television in the Eighties?"
"What, the 1780s?" Warlock snarked.
"1980s," Crowley said, nonplussed. "I'll tell you about the 1780s when you're older. Anyway, the commercials went a little something like this." He held up a small empty bowl. "This is the Gardener's advice." He cracked the egg into the bowl and tossed the shells into the compost bucket. As he whisked the egg into a frothy yellow fluff, he said, "This is your brain on the Gardener's advice, all light and fluffy and discombobulated and full of air. Any questions?"
"So many," said Warlock.
"On to the dry ingredients," said Crowley. "I don't suppose you remember the song I used to sing you to sleep with?"
"Who cares," Warlock rolled his eyes.
"I cared enough to make that song up," said Crowley, dramatically offended. "Hold out your hand," he instructed. Warlock rolled his eyes again, but complied. Crowley poured a pinch of salt into the center of his palm. "Sing to the salt the way I used to sing to you."
"Singing to salt is stupid."
"Nothing is stupider than singing to children, but I did that," Crowley said in kind.
"No one told you to."
"Your mum did. Why do you think she hired a nanny if not to do stupid things like singing to children?"
"So you just did it for money? Is that why you do all of this? Would you be baking with me right now if Mom wasn't paying you?"
"Don't be ridiculous," said Crowley. "Of course I wouldn't. I deserve fair compensation for my physical, mental, emotional, and artistic labor."
"So do I," said Warlock. "What'll you pay me if I sing to the stupid salt?"
"I'll get you a vintage Best of Queen CD. Quite valuable as a collector's item. There were hardly any made."
Satisfied, Warlock dramatically cradled the salt in his hand and sang to it before he dumped it into the bowl.
Go to sleep into the bowl
Soon you will be swallowed whole
Salty salty salty salt
If this bread sucks, it's Nanny's fault
Crowley consulted the recipe again. He turned away for a brief moment so he could wipe the inexplicable fog off his dark glasses.
Flour was next. The bag of all-purpose flour Aziraphale had miracled last week was empty, but there was still quite a lot of the gluten-free stuff. "When you come into your power," said Crowley, "you must see to it that the demand for gluten-free everything continues to spread throughout every corner of the earth. It's the most wonderfully evil wile."
"It's not evil if it tastes as good," said Warlock.
"Of course it's evil!" said Crowley. "I'm sure someone spent quite a lot of time on that scheme making sure it's evil. I mean, think of it, people demanding gluten-free food when gluten doesn't actually hurt them," he cackled.
"But it does hurt some people," said Warlock. "A kid in my class had to go to the hospital because he ate gluten."
"Right, but it doesn't hurt most people, and they go out of their way or make other people go out of their ways to get gluten-free things anyway," Crowley tried once more to explain.
"Does not eating gluten hurt them?" Warlock persisted.
"How should I know?"
"Because it seems like this lame ‘evil plot’ is just making life easier for sick people."
"Yes! Yes, that's exactly what it's doing. Some of those people can't even work, and an abundance of gluten-free food means they can not work and still eat. Evil, you see? Pure, unmitigated, blasphemous evil."
"Whatever," Warlock shrugged. "Just measure the evil flour so we can eat this bread sometime in my life."
"You measure it. I'll get down the spices," said Crowley. He looked over Aziraphale's recipe. It called for several different spices, but he knew of a special blend that combined most of them. It was one he was personally responsible for and quite proud of. And since he had been baking for nearly two whole weeks, he knew the rules well enough to break them.
He miracled up a small container labeled Pumpkin Spice and thunked it down on the counter.
"Pumpkin spice?" Warlock said in disgust. "That's for basic white girls."
"And what are you again?"
"Fine, I'll get a haircut," said Warlock.
"Do whatever you like with your hair," Crowley dismissed. "But you are at least basic and white, aren't you?"
"You think I'm basic?"
"You bought that whole ‘flavors have genders’ thing." Gendering a flavor, particularly a flavor a certain angel had grown fond of, was one of Crowley's proudest schemes of the 21st century. Girl-aligned persons would feel unoriginal and conformist for enjoying it, and non-Girl-aligned persons would feel guilty and maybe a tad deviant for wanting it. Crowley still ordered it every fall and simply felt smug.
"I guess they put it in pumpkin pie," Warlock reasoned. "Dad says it's unpatriotic for an American man to not like pumpkin pie."
"And your dad's a font of wisdom if ever there was one," said Crowley. "Here, shake as much spice in the dough as you want."
As Warlock generously spiced the dough, Crowley looked over the recipe one more time. The only thing not in the pumpkin spice blend was black pepper.
Crowley grabbed a pepper grinder and miracled a little something extra in with the peppercorns. "Red goes nicely with black, so we're going to mix it half and half with cayenne," he said.
All the ingredients were mixed. The bread was ready for baking. Crowley opened the cupboard where the pans were kept and grabbed the closest bread pan.
"That one's too small," said Warlock.
"Is not," said Crowley.
"There's a bigger one in the cupboard," said Warlock.
"There are three other things on top of it, and I already got this one out," said Crowley. "Let's grease it and pour the batter in."
Warlock watched with a smirk as Crowley poured the batter into the precariously small bread pan, waiting for the inevitable waterfall.
It never came. The batter stopped exactly at the top of the pan.
"Hah!" Crowley triumphed. "Told you it would fit."
"Won't it get bigger when it bakes?"
"It's going to bake for a very long time on a very low temperature," said Crowley. "It'll be crusted over before it rises over the edge."
“You’re an idiot,” said Warlock. “Just pour it into the bigger pan.”
“Do I hear you volunteering to grease a new pan, re-pour the batter, and wash two pans?”
Warlock fell silent. Crowley carefully slid the very full pan in the middle of the center rack, set the timer for an hour, and shut the oven door. A table knife sat on the little square kitchen table, waiting to stab the bread to test it when it came out.
“Can I play Fortnite now?” Warlock asked, setting an unfinished glass of water next to the table knife.
“No,” said Crowley. “There’s only a mild drizzle outside. Practically a day at the beach. Go bother the gardener. Be sure to mention the pumpkin spice; he’s rather fond of it.”
With Warlock out of the way, Crowley selected the most comfortable kitchen chair and pulled up a long playlist of claymation bunny cartoons on his phone.
When ten minutes had passed, Crowley was vaguely aware of the sweet, comfortable smell beginning to fill the kitchen, but not so aware that it distracted him from his cartoons.
When fifteen minutes had passed, he noticed that the smell was much stronger than it should be this early in the baking process at such a low temperature. “Must be the cayenne,” he said, and went back to his cartoons.
When a few more minutes had passed, the smell was made even more homelike with a hint of burning.
Crowley dashed to the oven and turned the light on. The bread was ever so lightly crusting around the edges, but it was still spilling over the sides of the pan like a slow, clumpy waterfall. Lumps clung tenuously to the wires on the center and bottom racks, dripping into doughy stalactites, while stalagmites ominously rose from the bottom of the oven near the element. And on the element itself, a ball of dough was quite blackened, and burned with the tiniest spark of a flame.
Crowley opened the oven. The rush of oxygen fed the spark and magnified it tenfold. Smoke burst forth. Crowley grabbed the hose from the sink. It wouldn’t reach. He had to do something before the fire alarm went off and alerted his employer. He grabbed the glass Warlock had left on the table. Thank Hell Aziraphale had been pestering the child to drink more water.
The splash from the glass missed the burning lump entirely, succeeding only in soaking the lumps on the lower rack. Crowley filled the glass and splashed the oven again, this time soaking the clumps on the oven floor but still entirely bypassing the ever-growing flame. He filled the glass a third time. This splash hit the clumps on the center rack, sending them crashing downward into the sopping mess. It was as though he was physically incapable of dousing the flame.
He snarled and grabbed the table knife. With a calculated strike, he knocked the flaming lump of dough off the element and into a puddle of water and mush. The standing water instantly cooled the flame.
“You might turn the oven off now,” Crowley heard a rural-accented voice behind him stifling a giggle.
“Nanny goes too fast sometimes,” said Warlock.
“Yes, you could say that,” the Gardener chuckled as Crowley turned around. “What do you say we help Nanny clean the kitchen?”
“I think Nanny made the mess, so Nanny should clean it up,” said Warlock.
“The boy does have a point,” said Crowley, annoyed at his kitchen being seen in such a state, not to mention all the splashes and smudges on his apron and his disheveled hair.
“I’ll bet Nanny’s cleaned up a lot of your messes over the years,” the Gardener said to the boy. “And besides, Nanny just fought fire with a knife! That’s rather impressive, don’t you think?”
“Yes, this rather impressive table knife,” Crowley twirled it sarcastically between his fingers with a vague but impotent sense of threat.
“Quite the little warrior,” the Gardener said with a smile and a microscopic fist pump.
“Little; I’m taller than you,” Crowley muttered. “All right, if the both of you are so keen on helping out, cleaner is under the sink, rags are in the second drawer from the bottom on the left, and I’ll take care of transferring the bread to its new pan.”
Crowley quickly did his part while Warlock and Aziraphale did theirs. The moment the oven was clean, Crowley shooed them back to the garden, put the bread back in the oven, and took care of the dishes while it started baking again.
Half an hour or so later, Warlock wandered into the kitchen. “Is the bread done yet?” he asked.
Crowley paused his cartoons. “There’s another quarter of an hour left,” he said. “It’ll probably take longer since both the bread and the oven cooled earlier.”
“Oh,” said Warlock. He stood for a moment, as though about to turn and leave, but he came to the table instead. “That’s not too long,” he shrugged. “What are you watching?”
Crowley held up his phone with the cartoon onscreen. “The writing is really quite good,” he said. “Explores a lot of complex existential themes television for grownups doesn’t get right. And the animation is a real work of art.”
“I never thought about that,” said Warlock.
“Of course not. You weren’t old enough,” said Crowley.
Warlock dragged the second chair out from its place and moved it next to Crowley’s. “Is it okay if I watch it with you? Just ‘til the banana bread’s done.”
“Suit yourself.”
*
A couple nights later, Crowley, with his nanny look back to its usual impeccable state, met Aziraphale in the garden and presented him with a perfect slice of banana bread. “Only piece left,” he said. “About halfway through the re-baking, I remembered I never greased the second pan, but the bread was so moist it didn’t matter.”
“Ohhh,” Aziraphale breathed after swallowing the first bite. “My dear, this is astounding. The cayenne and pumpkin spice were inspired. And best of all, you can taste the secret ingredient.”
“Gluten-free flour,” Crowley nodded.
“That, too,” said Aziraphale. “But I meant the love. Must be because an angel had a hand in saving it from the flames.”
“Yes, must be,” said Crowley, “Oh, hold on a moment.” Crowley checked his buzzing phone. He had a message from Warlock with a link that promised The Top 57 Times You Had No Idea Saturday Morning Funtime Taught You Postmodernist Philosophy WILL BLOW YOUR FREAKIN’ MIND!!!!!!!!!
“What are you looking all pleased as punch about?” asked Aziraphale. “Who even has your electronic text mailing code?”
“Ah — erm, it’s just — just Warlock,” said Crowley. “The boy’s up past his bedtime and using screens to spread clickbait,” he sniffed back a tear. “I couldn’t have done a better job corrupting him. Angel, look, it’s a slideshow! A SLIDESHOW! There must be at least a dozen advertisements on each slide!”
“Look there, you’ve won a thousand dollars from Amazon,” said Aziraphale. “Do you want to tap that?”
Crowley put the phone back in his pocket. “So, back to the business at hand,” he said. “What have you accomplished this week?”
“Well, I’ve been teaching Warlock that no ‘app’ can be as exciting as an app-ternoon tending a garden,” Aziraphale said with that little eye-crinkling smile.
“Nooo, tell me that’s not verbatim,” Crowley groaned.
“If I know anything about children, it’s that they love clever wordplay,” Aziraphale cheerfully dismissed him. “Anyway…”
The two of them stayed there sharing stories and banana bread knowing they didn’t have many more of these meetings left. Their time in the Ambassador’s garden couldn’t last much longer no matter how their plan played out, but they could make the most of it for as long as it did.