Chapter 10
Harsk
The burlap is on the floor at my left foot, and I scoop the green by the kilo into the loader, eight pounds today, because Monday is the smaller batch. The beans tip into the drum and the drum turns, and the burner cycles down as the cool mass hits the steel.
The trier comes out at minute four, pale at the seam where it should be, and at minute eleven the green tumbles into the cooling bowl as brown while the fan engages. Currant at the front of the nose, cocoa at the back. A Monday coffee.
I bag the roast into four small brown paper sacks and letter each one in pencil, the small letters leaning forward, BURUNDI. OCT., and I line the four bags up by the back door.
Then I bring the small burlap up from the cabinet under the desk, not the Burundi but the Yirgacheffe this morning, jasmine and lemon peel at the lip when I open the seam. It was Naskha’s favorite the last summer she could still taste it.
I grind nine ounces and brew the carafe. I have brewed it this way every morning for fifteen years, the bloom holding a half breath longer than the gauge says it should because the harbor is heavy.
The grandmother voice arrives without being called. Boy. I do not answer her.
I cap the lid and set the carafe on the small shelf inside the back room doorway, where the unlabeled glass has lived for fifteen years. The shelf shows from the front when the back room door is open, and no one has ever asked.
Two scoops, boy. Not three.
“I know,” I say, in English, to no one.
There are three aprons on the back hooks now. Mine, and the canvas one the color of brown paper beside it with the strap twisted at the top, two days old and still twisted, and Bex’s on the third hook. I do not untwist the strap.
I go through to the front of house, where the espresso machine is awake before I am.
“Morning, you,” I say, and run a blank shot to clean the line, twenty-five seconds, crema the color of brown butter, and I dump it.
The chalkboard sits on the side wall in the bracket now, because the wall is where it lives these days. I take a piece of chalk from the tin to the left of the till and write in block letters too tall for the board.
TODAY: BURUNDI POUR-OVER. CURRANT AND COCOA.
I price the cup in pencil at the bottom corner. There is chalk dust on the side of my thumb, and I leave it.
The dahlias are still on the counter beside the till, the burgundy at the petal tip gone half a shade toward bronze, three days now since Saturday, and I have not moved them.
I carry the glass to the back sink and run the water cool until the stems sit clean, and I set the glass back beside the till.
The bowl of FINLEY’S FRIEND stickers is on the low ledge under the window where she left it Saturday.
Presso is asleep on the back counter.
I take a small cup from the rack, the rinsed one from Saturday, and I set it on the back bar where her station is. Black, one sugar, stirred twice, the spoon on the linen beside it.
The marine layer at the front window has gone from charcoal to pewter at the top of the glass, the chain across Main Street is dark plywood at this hour, and I let it stay at the edge of the glass where it belongs.
I wipe the steam wand. The back room door stands open behind me, and the unlabeled glass on the shelf catches what little light comes in from the alley side.
Her step will come down the sidewalk in four minutes, and I will be at the grinder when it does.
Her step comes down the sidewalk for the sixteenth morning, and then the bell.
She is in the doorway with the coat coming off the right shoulder first, and the ring on her right hand is the nickel band, plain and cool against the wood when her hand comes to rest on the counter. Monday.
“Morning,” she says.
My chin lifts a quarter inch. The grinder ticks under my palm.
The coat goes onto the hook and the apron comes off the second hook, the twist still at the strap from Saturday, and she does not fix it. She ties the second knot. Her hand finds the cup without looking. Black, one sugar, the spoon on the linen where I set it. She drinks the first inch standing up.
I am at the grinder with the Burundi in the hopper, and the wrist remembers the gear. The grinder cycles down and I wipe the burr collar.
She nods at me, and I nod without turning.
She walks the apron pocket inventory across the back counter and her hand stops at the second knot. Her chin lifts a beat, and her eye goes through the open back room door.
The carafe is on the shelf inside the doorway, the Yirgacheffe at the temperature I keep it, and the light from the alley window catches the glass at the seam where the unlabeled paper would be if there were one.
She looks at the carafe, then at me, then back at the carafe.
I am at the grinder, and I do not turn.
She does not say anything for four breaths. The kettle hisses once, low, between burner cycles. Presso shifts on the back counter. The bell over the door does not ring.
“What’s that one?”
The question is curious, the voice that asked, on a Saturday afternoon, Three things, with a half pencil in her hand.
The sentence it’s nothing is in my mouth in the shape of fifteen years of having rehearsed it, and it does not come out.
The grinder is quiet. The kettle hisses low. She is looking at me, and I do not stop her.
She walks to the back room, five steps from the espresso machine, and she steps through the doorway and lifts the carafe.
The glass is cool, the same carafe I have lifted for fifteen years cool in her hand, and she takes a small cup from the rack on the shelf, the rinsed one from Saturday, the one I set down for her this morning and have not poured into.
She pours half an ounce, holding the carafe in her right hand with the shelf at her left, and she does not set it back yet.
She drinks without saying a word, and her face doesn’t move. No smile at the corners, no shift in her chin. She holds the cup. She drinks the rest of the half ounce, then sets the cup back in her hands.
She does not speak for four breaths, and then five.
Boy, the grandmother voice says, in Orcish, in my head. She has said it every morning since the door opened in October.
I do not answer her.
I know where she is in the room without looking at her, and I keep my eyes on the burr.
The framed photo at my left shoulder catches the alley light through the open back room door, and Naskha is in it, looking at the camera while I look at her, the angle the same it has been since 2003, her hand on my elbow and the light on the brown sweater.
The scent comes closer than it has come. Warm paper and beach grass.
She poured from the carafe I poured this morning and drank from the cup I rinsed Saturday, and the half ounce is in her body now, thirty seconds, maybe forty, still happening.
She looks up.
“This is the best thing I have ever drunk in my entire life.”
The sentence is flat and declarative.
I do not have an answer. My left hand is on the espresso group and my right hand is at my side.
“We are putting this on the menu.”
“That stays in back.”
“Yes.”
The exchange runs in single words, soft, and the door is not closing.
“What’s it called?”
“Nothing.”
It is the answer I have rehearsed for fifteen years, and the first time I have said it aloud.
“Then I’ll name it.”
I do not stop her. I do not say you cannot and I do not say give it back, and my hand stays at my side.
The kettle hisses. Presso watches.
The carafe is in her right hand and the cup with the half ounce gone is in her left, and she does not move yet, looking at the carafe with the half pencil in her apron pocket at her hip and the thinking in her face, her chin down a beat from her natural carry.
She is naming it, and I am letting her.
She walks out of the back room and steps through the doorway with the carafe in her right hand, but she does not walk to the shelf. She passes the shelf and walks the five steps from the back room threshold to the front counter and sets the carafe on the wood beside the till.
The dahlias are on the counter at her right hand, the bronze at the petal tip darker than it was and the carafe is beside them now, the glass catching the gray from the front window.
She sets the cup beside the carafe.
She does not say anything, and I do not move the carafe back.
The shelf inside the back room doorway is empty for the first time in fifteen years. I don’t look at it long.
I go to the espresso machine. The chalkboard out front in the bracket on the side wall reads TODAY: BURUNDI POUR-OVER.
CURRANT AND COCOA, the letters still too tall for the board, the price in pencil at the bottom corner.
The crema on the line shot is the color of brown butter.
I dump it. Then I pull the first espresso of the day, twenty-five seconds, nine bars on the gauge where I left it last night.
The cup goes on the saucer.
Maggie is at the front counter with the half pencil out of her apron pocket, looking at the carafe and not writing yet, her left palm flat on the wood beside the till and the nickel band on the wood under her hand.
The sentence I have not said for fifteen years stays said. The carafe is on the front counter.
I wipe the steam wand.
Maggie picks the half pencil up off the wood.
“Tonight,” she says, “I am going to think about what to call it.”
“Alright.”
She nods once and does not look up.
The chalk has lost its bronze now that the light’s up enough to find it. The board is at her back, the dahlias are at her right hand, and the carafe is between them.
The bell over the door rings once, and no one walks in.
I take a clean cup off the rack and set it at my left elbow. The grinder is at temperature, the pour-over kettle is at temperature, the Burundi is in the hopper, and I wait out the seconds before the morning’s first customer.
The carafe is on the front counter.