Chapter 12
Harsk
“Don’t start,” I say.
The third burr engages. The dose lands clean. The grinder makes the sound it’s supposed to make. I tamp.
“Thank you.”
The pull comes up at nine bars, and the crema lands the color of brown butter at twenty-four seconds. I dump the line shot and run the second pull, because the second pull is the customer’s.
Korren has been on the stool at the end of the counter since six, black coffee, double pour, his third refill warm in front of him. He hasn’t said a word in forty-eight minutes, and he doesn’t need to.
Bex is on the espresso machine to my left, second week now, and she’s a fast learner. Her hands shake at the tamp on busy mornings, and she doesn’t know I’ve clocked the shake, or that the shake is fine. It stops twenty minutes into the rush every time.
The bell rings. It’s Delia, tea and not coffee. “Hm,” I say, which closes that exchange the same as it does every Saturday. She lifts her chin a degree at Maggie up at the till and carries the tin she brings on Saturdays to the two-top by the window.
Maggie is already in, apron on, the strap she ties first tied first, her sleeves pushed to the elbow. The ring on her right hand this morning is a pearl I haven’t seen before, on the ring finger, the band thin gold and the pearl small. The body is learning the rotation faster than the mouth would.
She looks up, and I look up, and neither of us says anything. I tilt the cup in my hand toward the rack, and she nods once and turns back to the till. That’s how we do Saturday. We worked it out the second Saturday she was here without ever working it out.
The carafe is on the front counter where she left it Tuesday, the lid on, the neck of it catching the light from the window. I haven’t touched it since Tuesday. She set it there, and I leave it there.
I count to four in orcish in my head, like Naskha taught me at the stove. The grandmother voice doesn’t say anything. She’s been interested in the morning since October.
The bell rings, two at once, then three. The rush is going to land at a quarter past seven and run until ten thirty, and I’ve done this for fifteen years.
Across Main through the front window, the chain has a banner half taped to its doorframe, green and white.
A man in a navy parka with a lanyard around his neck and a clipboard in his left hand stands in front of the plywood, pointing at something on the clipboard while a woman in a chain apron tapes the other end of the banner and says something back to him.
The banner sags. He sees me through the glass and doesn’t lift a hand.
My hand stays at the steam wand, and I turn back to the counter.
The line is six deep.
Bex pulls a shot and it goes long, the gauge showing it before her face does, thirty-two seconds with the water through the grounds too long.
She’s put the cup under the wrong group, the inside one where I keep the four-ounce ceramic for the cortados, and the line ticket is a double cappuccino in the eight-ounce.
She freezes for half a second. Her hand goes to the tamp, and then her hand stops.
The line is six deep and the bell rings again. The customer at the front of it is the man in the green raincoat whose name I haven’t learned yet, and he’s looking at his phone and hasn’t noticed.
I step over. The four-ounce comes out from under the group in my left hand and onto the saucer at the side, and a fresh eight-ounce comes off the warmer with my right.
The grouphead runs empty. Redose, tamp, pull, twenty-five seconds, clean.
The milk steams. Bex tips the pitcher at the wrist, finds the right depth, and the microfoam lands in a clean swirl.
I pour. The art comes out a tulip. It’s not my best tulip, but it’s a tulip.
I set the cup at the line. The man in the green raincoat looks up and says “Thanks,” and carries it to the two-top.
Bex is looking at the floor with her shoulders up at her ears, the next ticket already in her hand. It’s a flat white.
I don’t look at her. The four-ounce comes off the side saucer in my left hand and back under the inside group where it belongs, and the gauge clears. My hand goes to the back of her wrist for half a second, not a grip, just the contact, and then off.
“You’re learning.”
I say it to the line and not to her. The man at the head of the line is looking at his phone again. Korren on the stool doesn’t turn his head, but his shoulder eases down half an inch, the shoulder he’s been holding, because he’s the only one who heard where the words landed.
Bex breathes out, her hand goes to the tamp, and the tamp engages.
The next ticket on the spike is a pour-over, the Sumatran today. I dose, I bloom at thirty seconds, I pour in three stages, and I count it through like Naskha taught me.
The rush lands. The bell rings six times in twelve minutes, and Maggie at the till is in the gear I’ve watched her be in nineteen Saturdays now.
The PR voice on, the smile landing, every name known.
“Garza. Yes, I grabbed crullers, and the bag is up there.” “Liana. The iced. Coming.” “Pat. Hi. The decaf is the same as the regular, but I won’t tell anyone if you don’t.
” She’s good at this, better at it than she was three weeks ago, and I don’t say so.
The chain across the street has finished the banner.
The man in the navy parka is on his phone now, walking the curb, checking something, and the plywood is gone from the side of the doorframe.
The glass is going in this week, Olmar said Friday at the porch.
It’ll go in by Wednesday, and the grand opening is the Tuesday after the Tuesday after that.
The navy parka man doesn’t go in any file. His shoulder turns a degree toward the plywood and stops. The next ticket comes off the spike.
By nine the rush has loosened, and I pull a cup for myself.
I don’t touch the carafe, because the carafe is hers and it lives where she put it.
A Yemeni single shot comes off the second basket, and I drink it standing.
Maggie comes past my elbow on her way to the back for a fresh bag of beans for the grinder, and her hip brushes the counter at my left, the counter and not me.
I don’t move my feet, though my weight tips toward her on its own before I take it back.
At the back doorway she turns, and her eyes go to the carafe on the front counter and then to me, and neither of us says anything. She goes into the back.
The grandmother voice says the count again, in orcish, the four beats she set at the stove. I’m at four, and I stop at four. The work is the work, and the work is enough for now.
The bell rings. A new customer steps to the counter. Bex pulls the shot, and it’s good. I move to the next ticket.
It’s 5:31, and the bell has been quiet for nine minutes.
The last customer was the same man in the green raincoat whose name I haven’t learned, and he walked out with a half pound of the Sumatran in a brown bag and a thanks over his shoulder.
The door closed behind him and the bell rang once.
I locked the door and let the lock click into the frame like it clicks every Saturday.
Bex went home at five, and Korren was gone by three.
Maggie is at the till with the drawer open in front of her, counting the twenties in a stack against the inside of her left wrist, her lips moving. The PR voice isn’t on, because the room is empty and there’s no one to put it on for. She’s just counting.
She wipes down the steamer, then the first grouphead, then the second. The pull gauge sits at nine bars where I left it. I turn the machine off at the breaker like I turn it off every Saturday, and the pilot light on the burner under the small back urn ticks once as it cools.
The carafe is on the front counter where it’s been since Tuesday.
I look at it and don’t move for a second.
Then I pick it up, the neck of it sitting in my right hand where it has sat for fifteen years, and I carry it across the floor to the two-top by the side wall, the one under the chalkboard where it says THE QUIET POUR.
HONEY AND PAPER. in the block letters I wrote this morning.
I set it down in the middle of the table with the lid still on, and I don’t say anything.
Maggie looks up from the drawer. She finishes the stack of twenties without breaking the count, closes the drawer, crosses the floor with her apron still on, and sits down at the two-top. The carafe is between us.
She looks at it, and she looks at me. The smile isn’t on.
The mouth is its own mouth, the chin its own chin.
She’s been here nineteen days, and I haven’t seen her face arrive at the front of itself like this before, the gear off and her come with it.
Her shoulders aren’t back; they’re down. She’s shorter sitting than I expected.
“Two cups,” I say.
The warmer behind the counter keeps the small white ones with the gold rim on the third row of the second shelf, and I bring two.
One goes in front of her and one in front of me.
The pour is at the right angle and the carafe at the right weight, and each cup takes four ounces because that’s what fits in the cup.
The cups go warm under our hands, and we don’t say anything for thirty seconds.
She drinks first. She closes her eyes for a half second like she did the first morning, and then she opens them, and I drink.
My jaw works once. I have a thing to say that I haven’t said in fifteen years, and the body knows the saying is coming before the mouth gets there.
I set the cup down and look at the photo behind the espresso machine, in its frame, on its shelf, at my left shoulder if I were standing at the grouphead and at her right side from where she’s sitting now.
I haven’t pointed at it, and I don’t point at it now.
“The photo,” I say.