Chapter 18
Harsk
It’s past four and the drum is at temperature, the chamber window the same small orange square it always is at this hour. The Diedrich hums steady against the wall behind me, and the harbor window past the cooling tray is black on black, nothing out there yet but the night.
I walked the six blocks from the bookstore in the dry the rain had left behind, and the apartment was dark because I didn’t bother with the lamp, only the shirt off the chair and back down the stairs before the roast. The Diedrich had been off three days, so the burner took its time coming up, like a cold machine.
Yemeni this morning. The burlap sits on the floor at my left foot, and I scoop eight pounds into the loader. The route runs light this Friday because Veshar has a hand short at the brewery, on the autumn cask.
The beans tip into the drum, the drum turns, and the burner cycles down as the cool mass hits the steel.
Boy, my grandmother says.
I don’t answer her. I sit on the stool by the cooling tray and let my right hand rest on the chamber latch without opening it yet.
At minute four I pull the trier. The cheeks have yellowed and the seam stayed pale, right where they should be, so I slide it home and leave the drum to its work.
At minute six the smell turns toward toast.
At seven and a half it turns toward bread.
At minute eight the timer beeps and a heartbeat later the small popping of first crack starts, which is the proper order of things.
I lean back on the stool.
Wednesday’s mark on the inventory pad on the desk reads almond, two cartons, MR, the cursive running the down-stroke a hair longer than the up-stroke, like hers. The lamp from the apartment upstairs is off. The other lamp, at the office door, is on.
The desk has the pencil in the seam, the notebook closed, the receipt roll in the corner.
The popping settles and the drum keeps on.
At ten and a half the smell shifts, cocoa nib coming up at the front of the nose, and the stool makes its small wood sound when I lean.
Second crack comes in then, two beans at first and a small run after, and the run answers itself, and for a count the fan is louder than the run, the chamber heat right for Yemeni.
My right hand stays on the latch.
The collar of the shirt carries the cinnamon she ate off her thumb at the counter at four, faint and sweet, sitting at the inside of the cloth against my throat, and the body is yes before I ask.
The rest of her sits in the chair across the room. The stool was the wrong stool for her and she used it anyway, and I don’t pick up the pencil.
The grandmother voice has nothing to say.
At minute eleven I pull the trier again.
The cheek of the bean is the brown of a working chocolate and the seam has closed, the second pop steady in the chamber, so I slide it home.
I pull the lever at eleven point two. The bowl takes the load.
The fan opens full, and I rake once. Cocoa at the front of the nose, dried date at the back. A good cup for the weekend.
I bag. YEMENI. OCT., small even letters that lean forward like Naskha’s, and I stand six bags on the bench by the back door in the order the route has always run.
The small shelf inside the back room doorway is waiting on its carafe.
I bring the little burlap up from under the desk and tip nine ounces into the hand grinder.
Bloom, then the pour, and the cone takes the second pour slow, like Yemeni does.
I cap the carafe and set it where the unlabeled glass has lived for years.
Through the back room doorway the office lamp throws the maroon arm of the chair at its angle, and the notebook on the desk has stayed closed since Monday at three.
Half an hour to open, with Bex coming in mid-morning and Maggie at six.
I take the apron off the hook and put it on, and the pencil is in the side pocket where my hand left it Monday. The Diedrich’s burner is at idle now, the chamber cooling back toward the room.
I wait out the seconds at the chamber door as I have waited them since the latch first gave, twelve years back, the breath held until the gear settles. The door closes and the latch sits.
Through to the front.
It’s 5:30 when I unlock the front and the harbor air comes in cold off the granite. The chalkboard reads VANILLA CARDAMOM. ALSO YEMENI. in the letters I set.
Two marina boys come in for drip. The dog walker with the lab. Korren at six on the stool at the end where he always sits.
Maggie at six.
Her apron is on between his and Bex’s on the hook before I have to think about the order of it. The ring on her right hand today is the pewter band. She doesn’t lift her chin at me. Her hand goes to the till for the float, and she counts it once.
She passes behind me at the line, and the sleeve doesn’t brush mine, the half inch left open on her side. Mine holds where it is.
“Morning,” I say.
She nods at the till, and the drawer slides.
That’s the whole of it on the floor. Annie ordered first, then Tom, and they asked for a flat white and a drip with room. Maggie at the till, voice up at the end of each name, and underneath it her mouth is a degree softer at the corners than the voice. I make the cups.
The line is four deep, and Maggie reads three names at the bar without looking up.
“Liana, iced,” she calls, except Liana isn’t in today.
The name comes out because the morning has the shape of a Friday and Liana is a Friday name, and Maggie catches it on the second syllable.
Her hand goes to the binder clip in her apron pocket and comes back without it. I move to the next ticket.
At eight the side bell goes. Bex.
Her apron comes off the hook with the wobble it has had since her first morning.
The shoes are new, white canvas, the toe stripe bright enough I read it under the hem at her shin.
She has worn gray sneakers since August, the ones with the seam gone at the small toe, and these new ones don’t have a seam to give yet.
“Morning, boss,” she says.
“Bex.”
Her phone is in the apron pocket on the right side instead of the left, and she turns it face down on the back counter when her hand comes off it. She pulls a flat white, the shot is good, and she sets the cup down. She doesn’t say Cool to the customer. She says it to the saucer.
Mid-morning she goes to the back room for a clean linen and is gone too long for the errand, and the back room is empty but for her.
A phone vibrates in three short pulses through the doorway, a thumb moves on a screen, and no voice comes with it.
She comes out with the linen on her shoulder and the phone back in the right pocket, and her eye doesn’t meet mine.
“All good?” I ask.
“Yeah.”
I don’t ask twice. Not for the floor yet.
At ten the cruller box comes in. Garza at the side door, Linnea’s pie tucked under the box.
“Bex’s mother sends one,” he says. “I know,” I tell him, and the box goes to the bar.
Bex looks at the box, her hand goes to the side of it once without lifting the lid, and the corners of her mouth fight it and don’t quite win.
Maggie comes past my left elbow on her way to the back, and the cardigan carries the cardamom on her thumb and the rain off the bookstore wall and one note under those. My weight comes a quarter inch toward her, and I take it back. She goes through to the back.
By noon Bex has been at the phone in the side pocket twice more, the hand inside the apron, never lifting it out. The new shoes have a dark line at the heel where she stepped in the alley puddle she’s learned to step around. The gray sneakers had the give for that. The new ones she watches.
She takes lunch, forty minutes, and comes back with the smell of a coffee on her sleeve that is not the coffee I roast. I let it be a noticing and not a thing. The voice at my left shoulder has been quiet since Monday at three.
The afternoon runs slow. Two pour-overs. A drip refill for Korren at two. A stranger who orders a flat white and leaves with it. Maggie at the chalkboard at three with the rag, Bex at the till with the float, counting it once.
At four I bag the route, six bags on the bench by the back door. VESHAR. VOSHEN. DELIA. GARZA. JUNE. BELL. The pencil goes back in the apron pocket. The carafe on the front shelf is at three-quarters, where Maggie left it at noon.
“Heading out,” I say.
“Mm.”
She doesn’t turn, the rag still in her hand at the chalkboard. Bex is at the till, her phone face down on the back counter, the new shoes at the foot of the stool.
I lift the bags. The back door is heavy, and my right hand stays on the frame.
The back door closes behind me at dusk, the bags on my left arm, the right hand off the frame.
Pine has the blue it gets at this hour. The first cold of the season is on the granite.
It’s the same route it has been every delivery day for fifteen years, the same six doors in the same order.
Tonight it isn’t the same route, because the man walking it is carrying the number in his mouth and Maggie six blocks back at the chalkboard.
The doors don’t know that and open the same.
Veshar at the brewery, the light over the bar on.
He is at the keg lift and doesn’t turn when I come in.
The bag goes on the corner of the bar, the four-pack of the autumn malt where it goes.
His hand brushes mine at the trade and lingers, and I don’t pull back.
He has felt it too. He looks at me a second too long for the trade, and he doesn’t ask.
I am the one who walks out wanting to be asked, which is new.