Chapter 10 Owen
OWEN
I’m not much of a coffee drinker, but after the exhausting day I had yesterday, then stumbling out of the strange bedroom into the strange kitchen, well, this day calls for some caffeine.
If George Knight’s note is to be believed (and why wouldn’t it be), there ought to be some around here.
Hello, Owen!
Welcome to Chez George! Which makes it sound like a restaurant. Which it decidedly is not. There is not much food, but you are welcome to what you can find. I’ve also left you takeout menus from some of my neighborhood favorites. Help yourself to coffee.
Maybe Spanish will do us better: mi casa/su casa and all that.
Funny, I wrote almost the same thing in my note to him.
Anyway, “help yourself to coffee” seems pretty unambiguous, right? But I’ve searched the cabinets and found no coffee—instant or grounds—and besides, there isn’t a Mr. Coffee in sight.
The counters are neat and fairly empty. There’s the array of takeout menus Knight has left me, fanned out on the granite.
And then there is… this other contraption.
Which, if I’m honest with myself, looks a lot like a scaled-down version of something I’ve seen in a Starbucks.
My reflection in the chrome shows my dirty blond hair sticking up at odd angles, which feels about right.
There is no way the guy expects me to make myself coffee with that, right? Besides, if you were going to make that kind of coffee, you’d need some kind of super fancy grind-them-yourself coffee beans, and I haven’t seen anything like that.
I open the fridge, just sort of scoping the place, since the note also said I’m welcome to any food.
It’s pretty bare, just some milk and some fancy cream cheese.
The freezer has a little more to offer, boasting ice cubes, a couple cartons of gelato, and…
several bags of whole gourmet coffee beans. Oh.
I glance back at the gleaming metal beast on the counter.
Maybe I don’t need coffee that bad.