Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them...Continued.

8: Finally

JACOB
     Finally. He had a lease, he had furniture, he had kitchen supplies, he had everything he needed. The only thing he was missing was pastries.
     A hard three hours work took care of that, making his apartment smell like heaven. He had three batches of paczkis, two batches of pies, and hundreds of cookies and rolls. The rolls were tied in traditional knots like his Grandma taught him, and the paczkis were dusted with powdered sugar. The cramped apartment was filled to bursting point with delicacies.
    The only problem; they didn't sell right away. He brought them down to the bakery one batch at a time. The bakery, being only about a block away, was close enough to his house for him to do this in about ten minutes. However, no one seemed to notice that the empty lot was no longer empty. He hadn't actually thought of doing anything but arranging pastries in the glass displays in front of the window, but since everyone in New York was moving so fast, they didn't notice. Of course, one thing that would catch a person's eye was a pop of color, maybe paint something on the glass or put something bright on display. But where was he supposed to find something like that? He couldn't conjure things like Newt and Tina and Queenie, with one flick of his wand. WAIT.
    Newt=Blue Coat Man! The man in the blue coat that gave him the silver was called Newt. Where had he remembered that? Tina was a lady he could vaguely remember. She had brown hair and a stern look; maybe she was a cop, or something? And Queenie....he felt a strange little twinge in his chest when he thought of her, but all he could recall was a musical laugh and a hand on his cheek. Her face was blurred and fuzzy in his head, which was buzzing at the moment with the new recovery of information. Jacob's head throbbed sharply as he had a flash-back:
   He was running across a frozen lake in Central Park with weird leather armor on, skidding across the ice as he ran. An erumpent chased him, allured by the musk that Newt had accidentally spilled on him. He ran and stumbled, and clasped a tree for safety, when finally the erumpent was sucked back into Newt's case with magic. With a nervous laugh, Jacob realized for the first time just what he'd gotten into. The scene flashed and changed.  He was standing back in his empty bakery, alone.