"From yeast dough we make jellies," explains John, a 40-year-old immigrant from Bangladesh. "You have strawberry. You have blueberry. Lemon. All kinds."

John punctuates his sentences with a quick, jolly cackle and smiles a widely. Six feet tall and narrow, his black hair and stubble are both flecked with gray. He looks like a walking cloud from a distance. dust covers his hands, arms, and apron. Dough specks cling to his brown knuckles and a brush of chocolate dots the shoulder of his gray Twin Donut shirt.

The time to make the donuts begins at 7 p.m. John pounds dough, cuts donuts, fries them, glazes them, and then pounds some more until about 5 a.m. when he dots sprinkles onto the last eclair. By 11 p.m. he's made whole-wheat crullers, glazed, cinnamon, and sugar; old fashioned glazed, cinnamon, powdered, coconut, and butternut; and he's finishing the chocolates while the yeast dough rises.

Floating in 375 degree oil, a dozen or so chocolate donuts fizzle at the edges and bob in the 2-foot by 2-foot pool of the Pitco Frialator. With a nod of his head, John directs his assistant Alfonso Flores to flip the swimming rings of dough. When the short Mexican immigrant awkwardly flops the donuts, John rushes across the room, grabs the two thin wooden rods from Alfonso, and quickly flips the donuts two at a time. With one rod in each hand, like two-handed chopsticks, John moves gracefully and efficiently.

The Dunkin Donuts a few blocks up Broadway gets donuts from a regional donut factory. The little guy with the mustache is, of course, a myth. Twin Donuts is the little guy business-wise, with only a few locations in Manhattan compared with almost 40 Dunkin shops.

"This is the age of commercialism," John says. "People do not depend on quality that much. They depend on advertising."

John started learning to make donuts three months ago. For six weeks, he followed the instruction of two Greek donut-makers from other Twin locations. John learned the most important rule of donut-making from them. "If your dough is good," he says, "your product will be good."

For the Greeks, making a thousand or more donuts takes seven or eight hours. It takes John almost 12, even with Alfonso helping. "I should be more fast. I understand," John says. "I never did a manual job. That is my problem." He worked at the store's counter before, serving donuts, coffee, and assorted foods to patrons who ate at the odd-pink and droopy-gray tables.

John throws flour sidearm onto a dough-stained cloth that covers a 4-foot by 6-foot wooden table next to the Hobarth. Then he kneads the last of the chocolate dough and cuts donut holes five at a time with a metal donut-hole-cutter. Next to the Frialator stands a trough of glaze with a tilted rack attached. On the rack hang three long, metal poles with a half-dozen or so donuts. Between kneading and turning and cutting and frying, John swirls donuts through the glaze trough.

For a moment, John actually stops making donuts. A coffee and cigarette break is the closest he comes to a lunch break. "Once you start job, no respite," he says, "until you finish everything." He clicks his lighter, dusted with flour, and draws deeply on a "Marlboro regular, 'rough and tough.'" He smokes almost a pack a night. Not a day. "Day is sleeping," he says.

By 1 a.m., John has separated 50 pounds of yeast dough into seven sections, pounding each with his palms and punching them down with his fists. One by one, he works them flat with a large metal roller, dusting them with flour as he goes. He flours a 3-inch wide, metal ring with another ring an inch-wide inside. He carefully places the ring on the bubbled, yellowish surface of the dough and quickly spins the rings clock-wise as he pushes it through.

Then, in one motion, he lifts the dough ring, flipping it and the donut hole into his left hand and then tossing the donut hole to the back of the table. He turns the dough ring onto his thumb and repeats until three donuts hang on his thumb and a fourth rests in his hand. Stretching the donut hole, John spins it lightly between both hands, almost as if juggling. He then very gently places each ring onto a metal, grated rack, and, as he releases the ring, it almost imperceptibly contracts, like someone taking in a quick breath. "My instructor told me that you touch softly," explains John of the delicate handling, "as you touch your girlfriend." And then he laughs.

John repeats the process over and over and over again, pounding dough, cutting donuts, frying them, glazing them and then more pounding until after 4 a.m., when he begins filling the jellies.

"It is a good time for me to listen to the radio ... think," says John of the late hours. "You don't have to please so many people. No botherization."

John came to America a year and a half ago. He speaks English well, but some of his phrases are slightly off. "It took me one month to understand ‘What’s up?’" he notes. Despite the difficulty, he likes America. "It is the only place where you find people of all race and color and philosophy," he says.

John whittles away nights thinking about social issues, the state of peace in light of global political actions through the United Nations, and education. He switches radio stations throughout the night to Public Radio International and the BBC, among others. A New York Times lays folded between the pineapple and bavarian-cream-filling containers on a shelf. Thomas L. Friedman's opinion piece will gradually become covered in the flour that whirls around the room.

Still, his main problem is far more local. "It’s a tough job in one sense: you have hardly any chance to stand straight," he says. "Most of the donut people have problems with back ache."

When John’s assistant Alfonso gestures that he has a stomach ache—he speaks no English—John sends him home. It will take him even more time to finish the donuts tonight. And more back ache.

When he leaves the donut shop, John takes the 96th street express on the red line to Grand Central and hops the 7 to Jackson Heights, Queens. Once home he spends a few hours with his wife and kids before they go to school. He doesn't bring home donuts very often. Neither he nor his family much cares for them. "There is a saying in my country," he says, "‘Those who live under a mango tree do not eat mango.’" «

Duncan Hernandez is a writer living in New York. This is his first published story. In real life, he is an actuary.

© copyright 1999 brown electric/cthunder inc., used with permission