Chapter 6
Harsk
The roast went down at four, and the six bags are stacked in two rows of three by the back door, each lettered ETHIOPIA.
OCT. in the block hand that always leans six degrees forward.
I closed the building at five on Saturday, so the back-room air has been sitting still for thirty-six hours, gone still as a room nobody opens a door to.
I grind nine ounces and pour the carafe.
The bloom is slow this morning off thirty-six hours of cold still air, and the capped glass goes to its shelf.
The apron on the back hook beside mine is brown paper canvas, hung there since Saturday evening, the strap still twisted at the top where she left it.
I do not untwist it.
Through to the front. “Morning, you,” I tell the machine, and I run the blank shot and dump it.
The chalkboard from Saturday is still on the easel, so I wipe it down and write Monday’s line in pencil first and then in chalk over the pencil.
TODAY: ETHIOPIA POUR OVER. SMALL BLACK ONE SUGAR AVAILABLE. I set the chalk down.
I cross the floor, flip the bolt, and turn the sign so OPEN faces the street.
The bell rings.
Korren comes through it in his forestry coat, the paper folded under his arm and sawdust on the cuff, and he does not look at the chalkboard he has not looked at in fifteen years.
“Korren.”
He nods. I have the cup down before he reaches the counter, drip black, and the folded five comes across the wood, the same as every Monday. He reads the paper through and sets it on the window bar where it has lived under his hand on Mondays for a decade, and he nods on the way out.
“Korren.”
The bell. The five sits folded on the wood, and I drop it in the tip jar.
Bex comes in in the canvas apron and ties the strap without looking at the knot.
“Hey.”
“Bex.”
She wipes the back bar, then fills the small carafe at the window bar for the marina pour-over. The marina kids come in early and clear out before the school crowd.
The room has the second-cup quiet it gets once the people who needed coffee to start their day are out the door with it. The paper is still on the window bar where Korren left it.
Pat comes in for the small drip. She works at the elementary school. She’s been a Monday for four years. She takes the paper off the window bar without asking. Has for four years.
She unfolds it and reads it standing up, drinking the coffee while she reads.
Her head lifts and she looks across the room at me. She does not say anything. She looks back at the paper and reads the next paragraph.
“Harsk.”
“Pat. Tea?”
“Tuesday before Thanksgiving.”
I cross the floor with the rag still in my hand.
The headline runs the width of the front page above the fold.
The chain has a name on it I have known by sight for seven months, and my eye lands on it and slides off, the letters refusing the order they want.
The subhead reads Sacramento operator promises new community gathering place by holiday season, and the date in the third paragraph is Tuesday, November 24.
Six weeks. The opening photograph is the green and white plywood across the street, shot from the curb in front of my own door, my own awning gone to a brown blur at the left edge of the frame.
A man in a parka with a clipboard is quoted in the fourth paragraph.
“Teakettle Bay is an underserved market,” he says. “We’re excited to bring a community gathering space to a town that has been ready for one for a long time.”
I read the sentence twice. The name underneath it is Greg Massey, regional operations director.
She is watching me read.
“Yes,” I say.
She closes the paper and refolds it as she found it, then sets it on the window bar with the headline up so the next person walking past can see it from the sidewalk. She sets the empty cup on the counter on her way out. “You’ll do all right, Harsk.”
The bell.
Bex has come around the counter and is at the window bar with the linen still on her shoulder, reading. Her finger goes to the date in the third paragraph and stays there a second.
“Harsk.”
“Yes.”
“You worried?”
I set the rag down on the wood.
“We open tomorrow.”
Her finger comes off the date, and the corners of her mouth fight a real smile and lose. “Cool.”
She goes back behind the counter, and the paper stays where she folded it.
Delia comes in two days early on her week, fast, and she sees the paper on the bar before she reaches the counter and stops. She reads the date and looks at me.
“Earl Grey,” she says, “and you will have a good morning, Harsk Olenden, do not let that man with the clipboard ruin a good Monday.”
“Delia.”
“I am serious.”
I pour the hot water for the lemon next to where the tea cup will go.
The step on the sidewalk a half second before the bell is hers, and I know it without turning.
The bell.
She comes in with her coat half off her shoulders and her hair still wet at the ends from the bookstore shower, and the band on her ring finger is a thin pale strip of metal cooler than the silver and the gold I have seen on her other days. Monday, then.
“Morning,” I say, at the wand.
“Morning.” Quieter than the customers got it.
The cup is on the back bar where her hand will fall when she ties the apron at the second knot. Black, one sugar, stirred twice, the spoon on the linen.
She ties the strap, her hand finds the cup, and she does not say thank you. She drinks the first inch standing up.
Her eye goes to the window bar, so she crosses to it and unfolds the paper.
She reads the headline, then the subhead. She does not put her finger on the date. She reads the whole article through standing up, the cup in her left hand and her right palm at the edge of the bar holding the paper open against the morning light.
She refolds the paper, headline up, and sets it back on the bar. She does not look at me. She drinks the second inch of the coffee, then picks up the linen and goes to the steamer wand.
Bex looks at me, and I tip my chin at the espresso group. “Pull a shot. Show me the crema.”
Bex pulls a shot while Maggie wipes the wand.
The bell has rung four times since Maggie crossed the floor with the linen.
She’s at the wand. I’m at the espresso group. The paper sits on the window bar where I folded it back. Bex is at the till counting the float for the second time.
Annie and Tom come in for the order I have known for six years, drip black, drip black with room. “Annie.” “Tom.” Maggie pulls the linen off her shoulder and is at the till by the time Bex slides over to free the space. The cups go down, the change comes back, and the door opens and closes.
The geometry holds.
The morning has the rhythm a kitchen gets when three people have been working the same square footage for two weeks and the bodies have learned where the elbows go without anyone ever saying out loud where the elbows go.
I pour, she steams, Bex rings. The pitcher hand goes left when my drip hand goes right and we do not bump. Nine days clean.
Presso is at the front window in the small patch of sun the awning lets through after ten.
A man I do not know comes in with the newspaper folded under his arm in Korren’s fold.
He stops at the window bar and looks at the headline, then across at me. “You Harsk?”
“Yes.”
He nods once. He buys a small black and drinks it at the bar standing up next to the paper, and he does not say anything else. He leaves a two on the wood and goes out. The bell.
Maggie was at the espresso group when the man asked the question, and she does not look up from the milk pitcher.
When the bell shuts behind him she crosses to the back bar with the pitcher and sets it down. Her hand finds the cup at her elbow without looking, black, one sugar, stirred twice, because I poured it before she crossed the floor.
She drinks.
She does not say thank you. Then she does a thing that is new: she tips her chin at me, once, on her way back to the wand.
“Bex.” I tip my chin at the steamer. “Watch the angle she just did.”
“Cool.”
The lunch order from Garza’s comes in, three sandwiches, two coffees, one iced tea. Maggie writes it on the pad in pencil and reads it back and is out the door with the paper bag against her hip. The bell.
I have the espresso group apart on the wood, the basket wanting a flush. “Don’t start,” I tell the grinder.
Bex is at the till sorting twenties. “He didn’t say it to be friendly.”
“No.”
“The guy with the paper.”
My chin lifts a quarter inch at the grouphead.
She closes the till drawer with her hip. “He wanted to see your face.”
“Yes. And the room.”
I run the flush, and the grouphead lets out the morning’s pressure. I dry it and put the basket back in. The bell.
Maggie is back with the empty bag and the receipt in her teeth. She takes the bag to the back, and the receipt goes in the wood tray by the register where receipts go. She comes around behind me, and the pitcher is in her hand and full before I have turned for it.
Liana at noon.
The vet’s coat, dog hair on the cuff. “Iced coffee.”
“Liana.”
I have it built before she gets to the counter. She pays with the card she pays with, and her eyes go to Maggie at the wand, come back to me, and find the paper folded on the window bar. She reads the headline standing up. Her eyes lift to Maggie again, and back to me.
She does not say anything.
Whatever she came in already knowing, the paper has confirmed it for her, and she lets that settle without a word. She picks up the iced coffee. The bell.
Maggie has seen Liana see the paper, and has seen Liana look at me after. She wipes the wand. She does not ask.
Pat comes back through on her lunch break and buys a small drip and reads the headline once more standing up, then refolds the paper and sets it back on the bar. “Harsk.” She nods on her way out, and the bell sounds.
The paper stays, and it will stay. The headline is up so the sidewalk can see it through the glass.
The afternoon lull starts. The bell goes quiet, the grinder is off, and the espresso machine sits at pressure, hot and waiting. Bex is at the four-top wiping down with the linen like I showed her Wednesday, and Maggie is at the chalkboard with the rag and the pencil stub.
She rubs out the morning line, then writes tomorrow’s pour-over special in pencil first. TUESDAY: HONDURAS POUR OVER.
EARL GREY WITH LEMON ON REQUEST. She glances at me before she goes over the pencil in chalk.
I nod once. She goes over it in chalk. Her letters lean back the four degrees mine lean forward.
Two scripts on one board.
At 2:30 Bex is on her break, and the room has three customers in it, two reading at the four-top by the window and one at the bar with a book. The bar customer is one I’ve seen for a year. He waves off a refill.
Maggie comes around behind the counter with the linen and the spent-grounds tin.
She empties the tin into the compost like I showed her the first Tuesday, then rinses it and sets it back.
She does not need me to tell her the order.
She does it because the tin is full and it is the part of the afternoon where the tin gets emptied.
I am at the back bar refilling the bean hopper for the morning.
She is in the small space behind me where the back bar meets the cherry counter, and her elbow comes past my left forearm without touching it. She sets the rinsed tin on the rack and turns back, and her shoulder passes the inside of my arm and clears. We do not bump. She goes through to the front.
The hopper is full, and I close the lid.
She is behind me like a candle just lit in a room you are not looking at.
The four-top by the window pays out. So does the man with the book. Bex is back from her break. Maggie is at the chalkboard, I’m at the till, and Presso is asleep on the back counter in the square of sun the back window lets through after three.
Maggie’s cup is empty on the back bar.
The carafe is in my hand for nothing in particular, so I pour the inch into her cup and set the carafe back on the warmer.
She is at the chalkboard and does not look. When she comes back to the bar her hand finds the cup. Fourteen days running. She drinks the first inch standing up. She does not say thank you.
She nods at me.
This time I see her do it on purpose. Once, small, eye contact for the half second it takes.
I nod back.
Then she is at the till asking Bex about the loyalty cards we have not ordered yet, and Bex is saying Cool. The paper is on the window bar. The chalk on the rag in her hand reads tomorrow’s pour-over special in two scripts.
The last customer is the woman with the canvas tote who comes Mondays for the small drip on her way home from the post office. The bell. “Harsk.” A nod. One cup slides across. A dollar drops in the jar. The bell rings again.
It is Monday at five, and the tables are wiped and Presso is on the back counter and the grinder is quiet. The paper is folded in the recycle where Bex put it on her way out.
I bring the till drawer to the counter.
Twenties, a stack of seven. Tens, nine. Fives, twelve. Ones in two leaning rows of sixteen. I count once and count again, then the float goes back in its envelope and the rest goes in the deposit bag.
I take the pencil stub from the apron pocket and write the number on the slip. 1,317.
Last Monday’s slip is up in the binder clip on the corner shelf. 1,180. The pencil hovers, then writes Mon Oct 19 under the new number.
The pencil stub goes back in the apron pocket.
At the chalkboard Maggie has the rag in her hand. She rubs out the Monday line first, small black one sugar, the grinder log, the drip status, working across the board from the left.
When she gets to tomorrow’s line her hand slows. TUESDAY: HONDURAS POUR OVER. EARL GREY WITH LEMON ON REQUEST. Her own letters under my pencil tracing. She wipes it down. The chalk comes off on the rag, and both scripts go with it.
The rag reads tomorrow’s pour-over special in smeared gray.
She sets the rag down on the back bar.
She opens her mouth.
She closes it.
I am at the till and I see her do it. I do not ask.
She takes her apron off the back hook between mine and Bex’s, the twist at her strap still there, folds it once, and sets it on the shelf.
“Tomorrow,” she says.
“Tuesday.”
She nods. She picks up her coat. The bell.
The window goes dark behind her, and Main Street is the wet shine it gets after a thin rain I did not notice land.
The deposit bag is in my hand, the pencil stub is in the apron pocket, and the rag is on the back bar.