Chapter 9
Maggie
The harbor’s gone quiet like Saturday between the boats leaving and the gulls starting, and the floorboards in the kitchen above June’s bookstore are colder than my socks have any opinion about in the morning.
The sage candle on the windowsill is down half an inch from where I lit it Tuesday, when I planned to become the kind of woman who redirects her morning energy toward an aligned vision.
I look at it and decide that woman can stay in bed. I don’t light it again.
The binder is on the kitchen table, and the pearl on its thin gold band sits on the laminated cover where the Friday pewter was last night.
At some point I started laying the next day’s ring out on the binder like a vitamin so I don’t forget I’m a person with a schedule.
The pearl says it’s Saturday. I pick it up, the band is room-cold, and I slide it onto my right hand at the ring finger where it sits.
It taps the laminate once when I lift my hand, and I don’t tell my thumb to do that.
“Okay,” I say to the kitchen, which is the only one awake enough to take notes.
“The keys are in the bowl by the door. The apron is already at Finley’s, so I don’t have to be a hero about it.
I have not eaten anything yet and I am going to make peace with that for the next two hours like a functional adult and not a woman running on candle fumes. ”
I take the keys, and on the way out my thumb does the pocket check it’s decided is mandatory now: a binder clip, a cinnamon receipt, a half pencil, a single small silver earring whose match left the building months ago.
I pat the pocket once and let myself out the side door, which the brick props open until I close it behind me with my hip.
It’s two storefronts to work, and the sidewalk is slick with overnight marine layer.
Across Main the chain’s plywood is holding at the same dark green it held last night, the green somebody got paid to call the color of authenticity.
I give it the four seconds it takes to walk past, which is exactly three seconds more than it’s earned.
“Okay,” I tell the back door of Finley’s while I find the right key, “the brass one is the back key. I am cataloging the contents of my own pockets out loud on a Saturday, and there is no one to hear it, which is either character or a cry for help.”
The brass key turns, and the back room smells like the Costa Rica. Harsk is at the grinder with his apron on and his sleeves pushed to the elbow, and he doesn’t turn around because he heard the back door same as he hears everything.
“Morning,” he says.
“Sleeves up already.” It comes out before I can decide whether it’s a greeting or an accusation, and it lands somewhere warm in the middle.
I hang my coat on the hook between his and the empty one we keep for Bex, and I take the apron down off the peg.
The twist is still in the strap from last night where neither of us bothered to fix it.
I’m not fixing it now. I tie the second knot over the twist and let it be a feature.
The pocket inventory moves from coat to apron under my thumb in the order I lined it up at the table, and the pearl taps the back counter once when the last one lands.
“The till float is in the safe.”
It is, on the second shelf where it always is, and I carry the bag up front.
Fifteen mugs sit in two rows on the rack above the espresso group.
The third in the back row tips if you breathe on it.
I touch the rim and set it true. Two hundred in twenties, sixty in fives, forty in ones, a roll of quarters.
I count it twice because the firm taught me to count cash twice and that’s one of maybe three things the firm taught me I’m keeping. I slide the slip under the drawer.
“The carafes are above the drip station. The filters are down to three, and there’s a fresh box in the back, which I am going to go get before the filter situation becomes a problem.”
I go get the fresh box, and the back door opens behind me as I come back through, and Harsk has the dahlias tucked under his left arm.
Brown paper at the stems, a twist of twine, the burgundy at the tips going gold down at the heart of each one.
He sets them on the front counter by the till and doesn’t say what they are or why they’re here.
I look at them. I have not been in a room with cut flowers I didn’t buy myself in eleven years, and I am not going to do anything about that right now, with my hands full of filters.
So I don’t say thank you, and I land the new tin on the shelf above the drip station, and on the way back to the carafe rack I nod at him once.
He nods once back, and the grinder finishes in the back room and goes quiet.
The first carafe comes down off the rack, the pearl taps the wood once when I set it on the laminate, and out the front window the light is the gray the marine layer makes right before it lifts.
The cup is at my station before I’ve finished the eight steps over to it, black, one sugar, the spoon laid on the linen where he set it.
I drink the first inch standing up, because that’s the deal we have now that nobody negotiated.
The spoon goes up off the linen and back down without a sound.
I nod at him, and he nods back without turning.
The chalkboard on the easel by the front door still says TOMORROW: COSTA RICA POUR OVER.
SMALL BLACK ONE SUGAR AVAILABLE. in my block letters over the ghost of his pencil.
I wrote it yesterday and Saturday is the day I was writing it for, which means tomorrow has gone and made itself today while I wasn’t watching.
I take the chalk off the lip of the easel and wipe TOMORROW with the side of my hand, then write TODAY over the pencil ghost. My letters lean back four degrees off true and they’re still too tall for the board.
They’re always too tall for the board. I’ve stopped fighting it.
The dahlias are on the front counter by the till. I’ve looked twice. I am not looking a third time before six.
At six the back door opens and Garza is through it with the cruller box balanced across both forearms. “Maggie.” “Garza, the usual?” Eighteen, by twos. The bell jar comes off the stand. He nods and goes back out.
A minute later Korren’s at the door in the forestry coat, his paper folded once down the center, and the cup is on the wood before he’s all the way to the counter.
“Korren.” He nods, sets his five folded once down the center on the wood, and he carries the paper to the window bar.
Monday’s article is still out there, the one about the chain, and Korren reads half of it, turns the page, drinks the rest, folds the paper closed, and nods on his way out.
The bell goes behind him. I pick the five up off the wood and drop it in the tip jar, where it has been pretending to be a tip for fifteen years and we both let it.
Bex comes in next, wearing the canvas apron her mother bought her.
“Hey.” “Bex.” She ties the second strap without looking down at it, which took me three weeks and which she had on day one.
Her mother dropped her at the curb again.
I’ve waved at that windshield twice now.
One of these days, it’s coming in for a coffee.
Bex goes onto the espresso, Harsk takes the back with the pour-over kettle, and the geometry of the place locks in.
Annie and Tom are at the wood ordering drip black and drip black with room, and Bex pours both clean.
The marina kids roll through and clear out having spent four dollars between five of them.
The carafe at the window bar runs dry and Harsk refills it without asking which one.
There are two couples I’ve never seen at the window bar with the article open in front of them, and both buy a cruller, and both take a loyalty card.
I have four cards left in my apron pocket, and I have been counting them down since seven like a woman watching her own ammunition.
I have been rehearsing this since the candle was full.
The lull comes. Harsk is back at the carafe shelf with the spent grounds and a clean filter cone, and I walk back to him with the half pencil in my hand and the speech loaded in my chest.
“Three things,” I say.
He looks at me.
“First. I made twenty loyalty cards Tuesday night. Four are left in my pocket. They’re working.
I want twenty more this morning. Second.
Finley’s needs an Instagram account. I’ll set one up off June’s wifi at lunch.
The first post is a picture I’ll take this morning: your hand on the espresso machine, captioned same beans since 2011.
That line does ninety percent of the work, and you’ve already done it for fifteen years.
Third. The chalkboard on the easel blocks the door.
People in line can’t read it from the counter anyway. I want it on the side wall.”
I keep my hand off the pearl ring, which is its own kind of discipline.
He sets the filter cone on the shelf. His eye goes to the bench by the back door where the binder is, then to the front window, then to the espresso machine.
“Do it.”
The speech I’ve been writing in my head for an hour gets answered in two words out of someone else’s mouth, and the pearl taps nothing because my hand is at my side.
“Yes,” I say.
He goes to the back for the second bag of Costa Rica, and I take the binder to the carafe shelf and sketch the next twenty cards on the back of an order pad while the espresso group hisses its way through Bex’s morning.
FINLEY’S FRIEND. Ten boxes. Tenth cup free, on the house, with thanks.
My letters lean back four. I’ve got fourteen drawn before the morning rush is fully done.