Chapter 7 #2
When I stand up to go she says, not looking up from the book, “I’ve got an apartment over the shop that’s been empty since August. If you ever want to get out of the Sea Wisp.”
I stop with my hand on the door.
“I’ll think about it.”
“Yeah.”
The bell on her side, the fog at my collar, two doors down, the bell on ours. The stack on the back bar is at six and Harsk looks up from the till.
The last customer is the fleece man from first thing this morning, back for a second cup he carries out lidless, and the bell goes after him and stays gone. The window holds the late gray. Main Street has the wet shine it takes on when the fog has spent all day on the asphalt without committing.
Bex left. The tables are wiped, the grouphead is wiped, the carafes are upside down on the towel, and the cat is on the back counter doing her end-of-day audit of the spice shelf, her eyes on the cardamom tin like on a regular shorting the till.
I take the rag to the chalkboard. The Tuesday line first. TUESDAY: HONDURAS POUR-OVER. EARL GREY WITH LEMON ON REQUEST. My letters under his pencil tracing. The rag picks up the grinder log, the drip status, and Tuesday’s specials in the order I wrote them this morning.
Behind me Harsk has brought the till drawer to the counter. The ones come out in their leaning rows, the pencil stub out of the apron pocket in his right hand.
I get to tomorrow’s line. WEDNESDAY: ETHIOPIAN POUR-OVER. HONEY BUN AVAILABLE. The honey bun is Garza’s. The Ethiopian was Bex’s call. I wipe the W in one pass, then the rest of it. The rag is gray now. I set it flat on the back bar, where the chalkboard rag goes every working day.
I don’t turn around.
“I’ll stay through grand opening.”
The pencil stub stops on the deposit slip. It stops, and then it goes again. The ones keep getting counted in their leaning rows.
“Alright.”
The word lands at the till and the till keeps going.
The pencil finishes its number, and the deposit-bag zipper closes a second later, and that is the whole negotiation.
I’ve spent eight years in rooms where a yes came wrapped in forty minutes of language designed to make everyone feel consulted.
This one came in two syllables and a zipper, and I believe it more.
I take the chalkboard half down off the hook beside the back hook and refill it from the chalk in the tray for tomorrow.
WEDNESDAY: ETHIOPIAN POUR-OVER. HONEY BUN AVAILABLE.
My letters lean back four degrees against the place his pencil tracing will go in the morning.
I rehang the board. The silver ring taps the back counter once when I’m done with the chalk.
The cup at my station is full. I didn’t see him do it; he did it while my back was to him at the board, like he does everything to me, without being caught.
Small, black, one sugar, the steam off it sideways in the draft from the back room that never quite shuts.
I drink the first inch standing up. The cup is hot through the ceramic.
My apron comes off the back hook between his and Bex’s. One fold, onto the shelf, the twist still in the strap.
“Tomorrow,” I say.
“Wednesday.”
I pick up my coat. The inside pocket has the binder clip, the cinnamon receipt, the half pencil, and the one widowed earring.
The loyalty stack in the apron I just hung still reads six, which means I gave out fourteen cards on a day the chain’s billboard finished going up across the street with six weeks of orange tape along the bottom.
Six weeks.
I don’t run that math out loud. The math sits where it sits.
The bell.
The fog is at my collar, the gravel is wet underfoot, and across the asphalt the Sea Wisp Inn is a small gray rectangle in a wet gray lot. June’s bookstore window has the lamp on at the back where she reads after close. I cross.
The Sea Wisp room on Tuesday evening is the same beige room with the brown bedspread it was a week ago, and when I look around it there is not very much of me in it.
One suitcase, one tote, the binder, the fleece I’ve been sleeping in.
The toothbrush in the plastic glass with the wrapper still rolled at the bottom, because part of me believed I’d check out fast enough not to need to commit to it.
The mini fridge clicks. I plugged it back in this afternoon, and I’m going to miss the click, which is a sentence I’m not going to attach any snark to.
I carry the suitcase out, the tote on top, the binder under my arm.
The desk clerk is the same one. Pink button-up, highlighter behind her ear, the same one, I’d swear, that’s been there since Thursday.
“Checking out?”
“Yes.” I slide the plastic key card across. “Thank you.”
She picks it up and looks at me like someone who’s said good morning, Maggie eight mornings running and is now watching me pack up.
“You found a place?”
“Two doors down. At June’s.”
“Oh, good.” A half smile. “She makes that apartment nice.”
The walk is the length of two storefronts and a side door at the end of the bookstore window, propped with a brick, a chalk sign over it reading NEW ARRIVALS MONTHLY (OR WHENEVER WE REMEMBER).
There’s a folded note on the inside stair rail in handwriting that loops at the bottom of the y.
Key on the hook. Foghorn. Sorry in advance.
J. I decide on the spot I’m going to like living above this woman.
I go up.
The apartment is at the top of the side stair, a small landing, a door already open. I carry the suitcase in and set the binder on the kitchen table first, a rule I made in the elevator of my old life and never unmade.
The kitchen.
The floorboards are cold through my socks even with the boots still on.
There’s a window over the sink with the curtain pulled half back, and the air through the screen carries the beach-grass smell off the dune at the end of the alley, the kind that smells like itself and a little like salt.
The counter is empty. One sage candle sits in a small ceramic dish on the sill, unlit, the wick black at the tip from somebody’s previous life here.
I light it.
The matches are in the drawer with the dish towels, because June leaves things where a person would go looking, which is more than I can say for the last four places I lived.
The pearl is on the binder. I cross to the table and lift the small pearl ring off the white cover. The thin gold band is room-cold, and my finger remembers it before I do. I carry it to the bedroom dresser and set it in the ring tray.
Saturday’s back in rotation.
I go back to the kitchen, and I open the binder for the first time since the Tuesday a week ago I sat on the edge of that motel bed with it across my lap.
The divider tab in pencil. COMPS. Three coffee shops, two crossed out, the third with a blue checkmark and interesting written next to it in my own hand from before I’d ever walked through the door.
I look at the word a second longer than I planned to. I close the binder.
The Wednesday ring’s in the little zippered pouch in the tote. I dig it out, thin gold, and set it on the binder cover, centered, where the pearl was. The silver ring on my middle finger taps the edge of the table once.
The foghorn doesn’t sound. It isn’t 5:30 in the morning yet. J. is sorry in advance. I haven’t heard the thing once and I already believe her.
The sage candle is burning small and even on the sill, the beach grass is coming in the screen, the binder is on the table and the Wednesday ring is on the binder, and I’m standing in a kitchen that is, as of six minutes ago, where I live.
I sit down at the table.