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Draka frowns at the empty kitchen in front of her. Schmidt had asked her to meet at 6:30 this morning to discuss the bakery’s accounting. It’s only 6, so technically she’s arrived before their meeting time, but she’d woken up earlier than usual this morning by chance. She’d figured that Schmidt would be in the kitchen by now anyways, making dough and preparing the day’s wares. The bakery opens at 7 after all.
“Schmidt?” she calls out one more time. Her voice echoes. There’s no reply. The dough is proofing silently on the counter and a few covered sheets of shaped loaves are already laid out on the racks, ready to be rolled into the oven, but Schmidt himself is nowhere to be found.
Draka walks out of the bakery and looks around. Schmidt’s motorcycle is parked by the back of the shop, so he’s definitely here. Does the building have a secret basement she doesn’t know about?
A small entryway by the back of the building catches her eye.
There’s an address plate pinned to one side. It’s one number up from the shop’s address.
So this is where he lives, Draka realizes, blinking at the numberplate. She’d known in a nebulous way that Schmidt lives above the bakery, but she’s never seen the entrance, and she’s never particularly cared enough to go looking.
She peers up the staircase. It’s narrow and lacking any kind of lighting; the upper level is almost completely invisible, cement steps ascending into darkness.
“It’s a little creepy,” Draka mutters to herself. “Hasn’t he ever heard of a lamp?”
But she turns on her phone flashlight and walks slowly up the steps. Her footsteps echo in the small stairwell. At the top she finds an unassuming door. It looks relatively old. There aren’t any indicators as to who lives there, but who else could it be?
She knocks. “Schmidt? It’s Draka. Are you in there?”
She waits a long moment. Her mouth twitches into an embarrassed smile. What if she’s mistaken and the tenant is someone completely unrelated to the bakery? Maybe Schmidt had just stepped out of the kitchen for a moment. Maybe he doesn’t live above the bakery after all. Maybe Draka had misheard -
The door creaks open. Hazy blue morning light spills through from the opening into the stairwell. Schmidt’s impassive face appears in the gap.
“Draka?” he says. “It’s not time yet.”
Draka exhales with relief. At least she won’t be embarrassing herself in front of any random strangers today. “I’m a little early…”
Silence stretches between them for a moment. Schmidt blinks at her.
“Uh, should I go back downstairs?” Draka jerks her thumb over her shoulder back in the direction she’d come. “Sorry, I got up early, and I just assumed you’d be in the kitchen. If you’re not ready yet, I can wait…”
Schmidt shakes his head. “It’s of no concern. Come in.”
He steps away from the door and holds it open for her. He’s dressed down further than usual; he’s wearing a white crew-neck sweatshirt and a pair of grey sweatpants. Seeing him in home wear feels strange. When he’s working in the kitchen he usually wears a double-breasted baker’s shirt. While he’s manning the register, he’ll wear a barista’s apron or a smock on top of that. Outside of work, Draka has seen him most often in simple, moderately dressy clothing, sometimes with his motorcycle jacket on top. This Schmidt looks like he just got out of bed. A bit of his dark hair is sticking up in the back of his head and his stubble is a little longer than usual.
“Am I intruding?” Draka says, kicking off her shoes and poking her feet into the set of guest slippers she finds in the entryway. They’re white. “I saw today’s dough was already finished, so I thought you were at work already…”
“Ah, I see.” Schmidt closes the door behind her with a clunking noise and turns back towards his apartment, making his way back inside. The living space isn’t large - Draka passes by a single room as she follows him that must be his bedroom. The door is mostly closed. All she can see through the crack is the corner of a bed with dark grey sheets. “You’d be right to assume that. I typically start the day in the bakery before dawn, but I always come back up here before we open.”
She trails him into the kitchen. It’s only slightly larger than the entryway. Silver kitchen implements line every available surface - some of them are even hanging on top of the cabinet doors. The counter is meticulously clean.
The only sign that someone is currently using the space is the tiny table shoved all the way into the nook of the bay window on the far side of the room. A single cup of coffee sits on top of the table, steaming gently - one of the chairs is offset. The reason why becomes clear when Schmidt sits down in it.
“Oh… you do this every morning?” Draka asks. She looks around. It seems a bit like a ritual. She knows some people have them, though she’s never been able to stick to one herself.
Schmidt gestures towards the other chair across the table from him. “Feel free to take a seat.”
Draka pulls out the chair and sits. The table and chairs are worn and pockmarked in places with age. When she puts her full weight on the seat, the legs wobble slightly. One of them is shorter than the others.
“Apologies. I don’t usually have guests, so I’ve never had cause to have that chair fixed.”
“It’s fine,” Draka says. Rather, I’m the one disturbing him, she thinks to herself, wry. She peers out the bay window towards the street below. A few people are walking to and from their cars, their offices, their own business and apartments - a couple of owners are walking their dogs. Some of them are still in pajamas. The sun hasn't risen yet, after all. “What, do you people-watch or something? You’ve got a good view from here.”
“Hmm… not people,” Schmidt says, taking a sip of his coffee, turning his attention back out the window. “Just wait a while. You’ll see.”
They sit in silence for a few moments. Draka fights the urge to pull out her phone and check her email. If it were anyone else, she’d go ahead and give in to the desire, but she feels like Schmidt will tell her off if she tries it in front of him. She’s not in the mood to catch a lecture about how they rot your attention span or whatever.
“Oh, it’s here.”
Draka surfaces from her thoughts - as she watches, the first orange rays of the sun slowly, gently, silently, break the grey horizon.
Within a few moments the kitchen is filled with molten sunlight. It feels a bit like sitting inside of a runny egg yolk, Draka thinks; her eyes widen by a fraction and she just barely holds back a surprised inhale. For some reason she feels that if she breathes too deeply her lungs will fill with light too.
It’s bright…
Her first instinct is to wince away. Dawn is her least favorite time of day. She much prefers the unrelenting productivity of daytime or the darkness and time to think at night. A sunrise is meaningless - it’s purposeless - the news of her father’s death had been delivered at dawn. A workplace accident. She remembers the resentment that had bubbled up inside her. Why is the sun rising when my father is dead? Doesn’t it matter to the world if we disappear? Will the world keep turning even if I die?
If I can earn a lot of money, maybe I’ll be safe from the sunrise.
But she’s been thinking about that less and less recently, she realizes.
Maybe it’s because of Sunrise Bakery. The negative association with the word in her heart has faded without her noticing. Instead it’s been replaced with something a bit more…
Once the first, brightest glare of the freshly born sunlight has passed and she can see again, her eyes no longer dazzled, she glances at Schmidt and realizes that Schmidt is looking at her.
“Well?” Schmidt says, taking another sip of his coffee. Even though his facial expression hasn’t changed much, he seems vaguely pleased. Maybe it has something to do with the angle of the corner of his mouth or the set of his mustache. “Not bad, don’t you think?”
His words seem to break the reverie of the moment. Suddenly Draka can hear the traffic starting up again below the window, the beeping of the crosswalk and the scratch of pavement against the soles of shoes and the combined whispers of a dozen, a hundred peoples’ silent breaths - things that barely make a sound by themselves but that all together coalesce into a crescendo that represents an intricate symphony of interwoven lives. The sunrise illuminates the manmade streets and buildings below; the silence of nature gives way to the bustle of people gathered; the vastness of the universe narrows all the way back down to Draka and the smell of coffee and the ticking of the clock above the kitchen sink in Schmidt’s apartment and Schmidt’s eyes on her.
“I - I guess,” Draka says, looking back out the window. “It’s pretty.”
Schmidt seems to sense that there’s something else she hasn’t said. He knows a lot about her - more than most people - but not even he knows the particulars about everything in her past. All he knows is that her green cowl and her lucky coin, both of which she’d sacrificed in the case of the stolen astronomical data, had been important mementos left to her by her father. She’s not sure if she wants him to know any more than that.
After another long moment, he apparently decides to accept the answer. He leans back in his chair and looks out the window again too. He takes another sip of coffee. “Once I finish this, we can go back down to the bakery.”
“Okay.”
“Would you like some coffee? I should have offered.”
“No, it’s alright. I’ll have some later.”
“Hmm.”
Draka props her chin up with one hand, leaning on the tabletop, and watches the sun slowly finish its rise above the rooftops across the street. Her head feels empty. It’s almost pleasant.
It’s amazing how the planets move without making a sound, she thinks to herself without thinking, watching the last of the stars fade and the moon become a ghost in the sunlit sky. I bet Jolenta and Oczy and Badeni would have something to say about that. Something about how the sun is moving too, not just the planets. I’m sure the Earth actually does make a noise while it’s turning and I just can’t hear it.
Maybe the meanings of words and experiences can change over time.
Maybe the sunrise doesn’t have to be something that inspires agony in her forever.
She’s learned to see the beauty in the movements of the astronomical bodies and the tapestry of the constellations and the steady glow of Saturn at twilight because of Jolenta and Oczy and Badeni. She’d never been interested in those kinds of things before.
Maybe she can let Schmidt redefine the sunrise for her too.
She hears Schmidt set his coffee cup on the table across from her with a sense of finality. It sounds empty. The clunk it makes when it touches the wood is gentle and hollow.
“Shall we?” he says, and she doesn’t have to look around to know that he’s watching her again.
Draka closes her eyes. The sun has appeared in full force now and its rays are warm when they light on her forehead, her cheeks, the bridge of her nose, the cupid’s bow of her mouth. The bright direct light makes everything look orange behind her relaxed eyelids. She feels the corners of her lips curve into what might be the beginning of a smile.
“Let’s stay here for a little longer.”