The Invitation Without a Menu

In 2017 the Baha Mar opening brought renewed energy and more work around Nassau's visitor economy. Dev had prepared for the 21 April first-phase opening without assuming the resort itself would hand him a contract. His own customers were smaller accommodation businesses, work groups, private hosts and people who still needed breakfast after the headlines had moved somewhere else.

The company grew through repeat orders, not an enormous dining room. Tess made routes and quantities less dependent on his memory, while Dev improved products and trained other bakers. Once, he arrived at a delivery wearing a good shirt with flour along the sleeve. A customer said successful men were apparently dressing more casually. Tess said that particular successful man had become attached to his breakfast.

Nell sang at private gatherings and was thirty-two. After hearing her perform, Dev accepted an invitation to a quiet supper where she would not be asked for one more song. Nell wore blue, moved her chair closer and asked what he sounded like when nobody needed feeding. His answer made her laugh. Their private kiss came without an audience and required no applause.

Ivy photographed local events and was twenty-six. She challenged him to take a picture in which she was neither working nor politely waiting for him to finish describing a pastry. Their personal afternoon became playful, then unexpectedly tender. Ivy touched his wrist before kissing him and said the second photograph was much better because he had finally looked at the person inside it.

Bea designed interiors and was thirty. She invited Dev to an exhibition after meeting him through friends, wore a simple dark dress and forbade him to calculate whether the room could contain more tables. Bea took his hand as they walked. At their later personal supper, her smile made him forget the room entirely; her kiss completed the improvement.

He was honest that he had not promised exclusivity. The women he dated wanted different things, and the invitation to another evening remained theirs to offer. Tess also became a substantial romance after a late working day ended with a supper that neither called a meeting. She arrived wearing perfume he had not noticed beside the ovens, and Dev found himself much less fluent than usual.

Tess laughed at his attempt to present himself as an exciting stranger. She already knew the man who could remember an overseas share price and forget where he had put a clean apron. Their first private kiss was warmer for the familiarity. In the morning, she still wanted a practical production plan rather than a love letter attached to the delivery schedule.

Jill took him out on an ordinary personal boat trip with a properly arranged crew. He discovered that future knowledge did nothing helpful for the mild queasiness in his stomach. She handed him water, waited until he felt better and asked whether the grand future included a man who could tolerate a gentle afternoon. Dev said the forecast had apparently omitted several humiliating details.

On shore they laughed about it over supper. Jill wore the silver earrings again, kissed him and described the longer charter work she wanted someday. He liked her more for the ambition and immediately felt the small selfish fear that it might carry her away. This time he asked about the journey instead of searching for a reason it should end at his own door.

May invited him to a family meal and left one chair beside hers. He was beginning to recognise the different ways each woman made an evening feel personal. She wanted him to speak without impressing anybody, eat something warm and ask for another helping if he liked it. Dev did all three, then found himself helping wash dishes long after he could reasonably claim he was still a guest.

One night Duke arrived at a private event, saw Dev carrying a tray and called him the pastry man loudly enough for a few people to laugh. Dev felt the old heat in his face. Then May took one of the little pastries, asked who had made it and kissed his cheek after his answer. The room suddenly seemed less certain about who was supposed to feel embarrassed.

Dev still carried the tray. He had earned money making what was on it, and the shares in his other account were already worth more than the original purchase. But the useful change in that room had cost neither a yacht nor a performance. He could stand beside something he had made while a woman he admired looked pleased to be standing beside him.