The Panic Button Nina Moldawsky On the underside of the Broadway Bakery cashier counter,
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there was a bright red Panic Button. It was for dire emergencies and dangerous intruders, like robbers or terrorists. Niala Prescott, the young graduate who worked the register on weeknights, wondered every day when the time would arise for her to press the Panic Button and summon the police. When customers ordered their cookie boxes, cupcakes and pies, she looked them in the eyes and thought, “Will you pull a gun on me?” but said “Is there anything else I can get you?” She smiled at patrons, her hands folded neatly over her khaki apron, with just a little twitch in her fingers – an urge to press the Panic Button. Garrett Tyler, the baker in the open kitchen, felt differently about the Panic Button. He thought it pointless. He thought, by the time a button like that is pressed, the crime has no doubt already occurred. He thought, only a fool would press the Panic Button. Why panic when you could instead, say, stop the crime? Garrett was full of opinions like that. Not that he advertised them. He was the type to volunteer more time than necessary, take the hardest jobs, throw dashing smiles to female customers, and get them to upgrade that nine-pack to a full dozen. Everyone at the Bakery quite liked him. Not Niala though. She found him a fraud, but they were the only ones who worked the front, so they had to get along regardless. It was a dead hour. Not one customer in the store, but Garrett and Niala knew it was the calm before the storm – the after-dinner rush flooding in for dessert. Christine Benson, the boss baker, came out to put cake tins in the open kitchen ovens, and a thick aroma of heat and sugar made its home amongst the empty tables. In the silence of the store, she set the radio to world music, which played anything from “The Thong Song” to indistinctly tribal drumming, and every 30 minutes, that song about putting a lime in a coconut played. The music captured Christine’s chillaxed personality, and she danced along while snapping her fingers to the beat of the beeping timers. Niala and Garrett laughed as she grooved away to the back. Once alone, they were uncomfortably silent, as always. Garrett gave her an awkward stare as he reached for the scissors, carrying out his task of cutting up baking sheets.