Chapter 2 #2
The scent reaches me before the rest of her does.
Warm paper and beach grass, two notes side by side.
One from somewhere else, the kind of paper that has been read and read and read again until it has gone soft at the corners.
One from here, the dry grass at the top of the bluff above the harbor, like it gets by mid-October.
The two notes do not argue with each other.
They sit together like two things on the same shelf when they know the same hand is going to reach for both.
Boy, Naskha says, without being asked.
I set the steam pitcher down on the rubber mat and straighten, and my right hand comes off the grouphead.
She is at the counter now, at the gap between the espresso machine and the till.
No binder today, only a canvas tote on her shoulder.
The navy fleece is the same one. Her hair is pulled back, and the thin gold band sits on her right hand where her hand has come to rest on the wood.
She breathes in once and breathes out, and the breath out runs the smallest fraction longer than the breath in.
“Good morning,” she says.
The voice is up. The smile comes on all at once, a sign meant to be read. It holds two seconds, and then it slides, and her face underneath it is tired in a way the smile was hired to cover. I’m not supposed to have seen it. I don’t say I did.
“Morning.”
I made my peace with being alone six years ago.
I made it on purpose. A woman with two scents and a tired smile doesn’t undo that.
I have been telling myself as much since the bell rang yesterday afternoon, and again in the cold apartment at eleven last night, and once more into the roaster room at four this morning.
The telling has held about as well as the work has, which is to say it is holding right up until it isn’t.
“I came back about the sign,” she says.
“Yes.”
“Are you still hiring?”
“Yes.”
She nods down at the wood. Her hand on the counter stays where it is, but the thumb of that hand brushes the gold band once, a small fast brush, the kind a thumb does on its own while the head is busy elsewhere.
“When can you start?”
“Now.”
The spare apron hangs on the back hook at my left shoulder, and I have it down before I have finished deciding to take it down. Short canvas, the color of brown paper, one front pocket, two straps. I hold it out, and she takes it.
“Your name.”
She looks up. “Maggie,” she says. “Maggie Russo.”
“Harsk.”
“I know,” she says, and she says it like a person who read a name off a sign once going past and read it again coming back. She does not work the smile onto it. Her pitch comes down half a step toward something I think is closer to hers.
“Alright.”
She steps around the end of the counter like a person stepping around a counter that comes up to the height of her ribs.
The milk steamer station is three feet to my right, a square of mat, a pitcher, a rinse cup, a small towel, a wand.
She sets the tote on the floor by her boot, and her eyes go to the wand and then to me.
So I show her. “Pitcher here. Cold milk to the bottom of the V. Wand a quarter inch under the surface. Listen for the paper-tear sound. Hold the pitcher with the back of your hand against the side, and when the side burns your hand, the milk is ready.” She listens without interrupting, with the whole of her attention, like a person who has not been listened to in a while and has decided to pay it forward to a wand and a pitcher and a man behind a counter.
“Wipe the wand after every pull. Steam through it once after. Tap the pitcher on the mat. Swirl. Pour.”
“Got it.”
She picks up the apron and runs the first strap around her waist, brings it to the back and forward over the hip, and her hands stop there.
“First strap,” she says, under her breath, to the apron, the same way I say Morning, you to the espresso machine.
She runs the second strap behind her back to meet the first. “Second strap.” She ties them off. “Knot.”
The list is short, and the numbers are for the wand and the pitcher and the apron in her hands, and none of it is aimed at me. So I keep my mouth shut and let her have it. The list is hers, and a man does not narrate another person’s morning back at them on the first day.
The steamer hits its ninety-second cycle and exhales, and Presso’s ear flicks once on the back counter. The thin gold band catches the light off the brass apron buckle as her hand comes around to settle the front pocket.
“Sixteen an hour,” I say. “Six to two unless we trade. I close. You open with me on Thursdays.”
“Thursday I’ll be here at five thirty.”
“Five forty.”
“Noted.”
She has the apron tied. She is on the right side of the counter, at the milk steamer station, three feet to my right. My grandmother is at my left shoulder in the photo behind the espresso machine, at the same angle she has held since 2003.
Look at her, boy, Naskha says, in my head. Do not look away.
I look at the steam wand. The collar tightens under my thumb. The bell over the door doesn’t ring. Fog holds outside. It’s 5:45 on a Wednesday morning in mid-October, and for the first time in a long while there are two of us behind the counter.
She is at the milk steamer station wiping down the wand. The pitcher is rinsed and upside down on the mat. The small towel is folded just as she folded it and again at one. She wipes once more and lays the towel on the rail, and her hands come around behind the apron.
“Knot,” she says, under her breath, to the apron. “Second strap. First strap.” The canvas comes loose, and she lifts it over her head and hangs it on the back hook at her left, beside mine. The two aprons hang there together, which is a thing I notice and do not say anything about.
The tote goes up on her shoulder. The thin gold band catches the light off the till as her hand comes to rest on the wood.
“Tomorrow,” she says.
“Five forty.”
She nods down at the wood and steps around the end of the counter like she stepped around it this morning. The bell rings as she goes out. The door closes. It rings again on the latch and settles. Presso’s ear flicks on the back counter and goes still.
I am at the till. The carafe is on the back-room shelf where it has been all day.
The framed photo behind the espresso machine is at my left shoulder, where it always is, where Naskha has had a clear view of the whole thing.
I count the cups on the rack, and I do not let myself read anything into the number.