By: Bruce Levine

Four days into the current cycle Brian asked himself if this was really what he wanted to do. It wasn’t that anything was very difficult and certainly within the framework of his expertise. But simply going through the entire process of the fourteen day cycle and then starting over again and continuing to repeat the process over and over seemed more than any human being should be subjected to. Fourteen days, two weeks, a fortnight, whatever phrase ascribed to the period, it all resulted in the same thing – boring beyond description.

Brian realized that, if he were ever going to make it in the culinary world he would have to either establish his own bakery or move on to another area of the pastry chef world.

At present his current clientele demanded a daily array of choices, but because he was in a resort hotel where the usual stay was two weeks he was required to have a rotation system – every first Monday was one set of choices, first Tuesday was another, first Wednesday another, and so on through the entire two week cycle.

Having spent two years repeating this cycle over and over Brian had reached his limit, he realized.

And why, he asked himself, did everything in his life seem to revolve around the number two?

Two years, two weeks, two marriages and, he now also realized two lives ago.

Yes, it was two lives ago that he’d decided to go to culinary school and become a pastry chef. Once he graduated he married a fellow student and they had two children. He’d luckily gotten a good job in a restaurant where he had been allowed the freedom to create his own desert cart. Why had he ever given that job up, he wondered? Was it simply because it felt like it belonged to a marriage that dissolved and, in a cleansing process, he’d tried to erase everything connected to that marriage? Probably.

Marriage number two along with the bakery job went similarly.

Now he was in a resort hotel in Hawaii and, to the average outsider, he would be considered lucky, but to Brian the boredom was becoming increasing intolerable.

As he dusted the Linzer tarts he’d just completed as part of that night’s dessert tray he began thinking about an escape plan. He had enough money to cover him for about six months if he remained frugal and he’d always dreamed of a life where the year was filled with the richness of nature’s secrets, a place like Vermont.

“Yes,” he said aloud as the last of the dusting revealed the perfect confection. “The clock’s ticking. Tomorrow I’ll give my notice.”

He put down the strainer filled with powdered sugar and left the kitchen. It was time to make new plans, plans, he decided with as much alacrity as completing a recipe for a chocolate cake, to open a Bed and Breakfast in Vermont. All it would take was the guts to do it, and he had guts to spare.

For the first time in a long time Brian felt good about himself. He headed to his apartment to write his resignation letter immediately.

Once the deed was done he got in his car and drove to the airport. He wanted to feel his new sense of freedom in a tangible way and the dry run seemed a good way of doing just that.

A new beginning. He sang the words to a tune of his own creation as he drove.

A new beginning he sang over and over.

The End