Thread by @JuliusGoat

PRIDE

When Bailey Ligneclaire’s bored—like now, between the rush hours—she passes the time counting the fights she’s been in.

*…and the first fight came when you were only ten, up against a teenager whose name you didn’t even know, a local, one of your regular bullies, he had a knife but you beat him anyway, bare-handed…*

Bailey’s small, almost waifish, but if you watch her walk you see how she carries herself, and you understand that the simple black outfit, and the complicated braids arranged helmetlike around her sleek head, are part of a calculated martial air.

It’s the sort of confidence that comes with the well-earned reputation she’s acquired in the fields of both combat and management.

You wouldn’t dream of attacking Donk at Ralph’s during “office” hours, not when Bailey’s nearby, and you wouldn’t dream of shorting her a delivery of beer or soda pop if you drive the supply truck.

All the affiliated cats know her unassuming form hides ferocious strength and a spider’s reflexes, but civilians know the store manager is here to help them ...

... find what they’re looking for, or to clean up the spill on aisle 4 herself if nobody else is around to do the job, or walk you to the item you’re looking for, or even to personally attend to the counter at the donut shack she named for herself.

Bailey’s Donuts is situated in the corner of Ralph’s parking lot, a building in the shape of two perpendicularly linked diner cars, long and low.

Inside, there’s room for a counter with a display case, and for the fryers behind that.

You can smell donuts sizzling in grease as you order.

On the other side there’s a row of booths hugging the wall. The walls are all done in chrome and mirror, but the shine’s gone to seed, the mirrors dulled and smeared, less reflective but more forgiving than they were in brighter days.

The dilapidation is intentional; it was like this when Bailey persuaded Ralph to let her run it, but it’s kept that way on purpose; it excites her aesthetic sense.

The donuts are cheap and irregularly shaped, fried hot and dipped in sugar, and they taste like love and peace and joy.

. An old place, Bailey’s Donuts, a place that makes its foodstuffs without any sop to the advances of donut technology, a place uninterested in innovation and perhaps ...

... unfamiliar with the idea that innovation might be desirable or even possible, a place left behind by a faster, fleeter, more modern, more improved world.

You consume the same donut here today as you would have forty years ago.

Donut shops like this once grazed wild across the country, but one by one they’ve fallen to the competition—more streamlined, more centralized, increasingly more effective donut shops with more donut choices ...

... quicker average donut production times, lower donut overhead, faster donut purchase processing, market-tested donut décor, synergies of corporate donut cross-pollination, more regularly measurable distribution of donut toppings ...

... growth, you understand, *growth* of, of, of donut brand awareness and donut *thought leadership*….

Bailey’s Donuts, blissfully safe from these corporate behemoths extinguishing its independently owned kin, keeps protected from competition and immediate destruction by its undesirable location.

The donut spreadsheet doesn’t lie, claim the donut accountants from the donut chains; no point in putting a franchise in Loony Island.

The insurance premiums alone make it a non-starter, and the *clientele,* well…it isn’t the right fit for the brand…

But Bailey assessed her own balance sheets, consulted her own catalog of possibility and likelihood and risk, and divined a pathway toward success...

... a market for something cheap and sweet in a place where wealth is rare, but a spare creased dollar, and the desire to part with it in exchange for the distraction of a momentary delight, is not uncommon.

So, year after year, Bailey’s Donuts survives, a relic, a gem from the past, slowly accruing a cozy but yellowed and not entirely savory sediment.

She breathes deep; savors the aroma of cinnamon and dough.

It’s a real place. It’s *her* place.

It’ll be the only thing she’ll miss when they finally get their revenge and escape for good.

A.R. Moxon, THE REVISIONARIES

Paperback out December 1st. Preorder now. bookshop.org/books/the-revi…