Chapter 21 #2
“Don’t argue with me, Russo.” She’s known my last name since the second time I walked in, and she sets her elbows down like she’s settling in to stay.
I pour. Harsk roasted at four this morning and the back counter still smells of the second crack, and the back-room door is open the inch he keeps it open in the afternoons, and through it comes the soft click of a pencil being set down.
The bell rings again, and it’s Korren in the afternoon, which is how I know his back is bothering him. He nods. I’ve got the cup poured before he reaches the counter, the half step in my throat smoothing it through. “Korren, extra hot today?”
“Please.” He sets a five on the wood. I pretend not to see it, like I always pretend not to see it, and he drifts off to the window bar with his back to me.
Dottie taps her thumbnail against the rim of her cup, three times.
“How’s our Harsk?”
“He’s good.”
“Yeah? Because I told my girl on the phone this morning, I have not seen that man on Main in a month, and that is not a Harsk thing. Steady as a clock, that one, for the longest time.” She looks at me over the cup like a woman looks across her own counter when she’s caught something and is checking whether the catching is hers alone. “He’s good?”
“He is.”
“That’s good, honey, because I told Veshar over at the brewery, he made his decision back when, and he kept his word with himself, and now look at the man across the counter from your girl, I said, and Veshar grunted at me, and you know I take a grunt as a full side of the conversation.
All those years ago he made himself a thing, and now he’s gone and unmade it—”
My throat goes shallow above the apron knot.
I’m still holding the carafe. The bell doesn’t ring. From the back room there’s the small dry sound of a notebook page turning, which means Harsk is in the receipts and not in the room.
Dottie lowers her cup an inch and looks at me over the rim. Forty years of faces across her own counter have taught her the exact second a face gets told a thing it didn’t already know.
“Oh, honey.” The cup goes flat to the wood. “Oh, he hasn’t—”
She stops.
The contractions are coming faster. The half step is still up. The carafe is heavier than it was and I don’t let it shake. Dottie’s hand comes off her cup and lands flat on the counter.
“I—” She tries again. “I assumed.”
Olmar knew. Auntie knew. Veshar knew. Dottie’s girl on the phone this morning knew. The thought arrives flat and even. Six years of public weather, and everybody in this town read it but me.
“Refill on the house, Dottie.” The voice goes up the half step it goes up. The honey drops in, lands at the corners and finishes in the middle. “The second one’s free because the cash drawer’s decided to forgive me.”
“Sweetheart—”
“You’ve still got a few minutes.” I pour. The carafe is steady because I am making it steady. My left palm goes flat against the steamer where the metal still holds heat off the last pull. “Tell your girl the cardamom’s in. Tell her Friday.”
“Maggie.”
“It’s okay, Dottie.” It is not okay. The half step climbs another notch, the honey doubles, the contractions multiply faster than the room could possibly need them.
Dottie shapes a sentence she decides not to say. She drinks the refill in two long pulls instead. The thumbnail doesn’t tap. She puts a five in the tip jar and a one on the wood and says, “I’ll see you, honey,” and the bell rings on her way out.
The back-room pencil starts moving again. My right hand goes into the apron pocket where my right hand goes when there isn’t a next thing. The half pencil is there. Beside it sits the single small silver earring. From the Bell House, a matchbook completes the row.
Three.
The apron strap sits where it always sits, the half step is still up, and I take the next order.
A while later the half step in my throat still hasn’t come down, because I put it on for Dottie at three and I have not been able to find the switch to turn it off, and now it’s running like a faucet runs when the washer’s gone, a notch above where it lives, the contractions coming faster than the room could possibly need them.
Korren left after the window bar. The foghorn hasn’t come in yet.
I’m at the steamer with the empty carafe in my left hand and my right hand in the apron pocket where my right hand goes, and the back-room door is open the inch he keeps it open, and through the gap I can hear the pencil, which means Harsk is in the receipts and not out here, which means I’m alone with a voice I can’t turn off.
The bell rings.
The man who comes in is charcoal, no tie, collar open one button, the kind of expensive that wants you to do the math on it.
His hair is cut short and squared off at the top.
I’ve made him a flat white twice now. He said good both times.
Eleven days ago he walked in with squared hair and a gold-edged card and a name’s Greg, and I had him pinned before he reached the counter.
The brightness in my throat snapped three notches over baseline and the little fire in me turned inward and hot.
“Maggie.” He says it before he reaches the counter, easy, like we go way back. “There she is.”
“Greg.” The voice goes up the rest of the way. “What can I get you?”
“Flat white. You remember.” He sets the card on the wood at my elbow, gold on the edges, and it catches the window.
“I wanted to introduce myself properly. We’ll be neighbors across the street in two weeks.
” He says neighbors like the word entertains him.
“Good little market up here. Underserved. People have been driving forty minutes for a decent cup.”
“Forty minutes.” I’ve got the portafilter in my hand. The half step is at the top of its range now and I genuinely cannot tell anymore whether it’s landing or whether it’s stopped meaning anything, like a word stops meaning anything when you’ve said it forty times. “Imagine.”
“I read your stuff, by the way.” He’s smiling, and it’s a real smile, which is the part that doesn’t fit anywhere.
“Small world. I sat the review panel for the Main Street Champion thing a few years back, second round. Russo Strategy. We’ve got a name in common, somebody on the panel, a contact in the city.
He sent your deck over.” A small laugh, comfortable. “Hell of a deck.”
I don’t hear the pencil in the back anymore.
I don’t hear it stop, exactly. It just isn’t there to hear.
There’s the place where the small dry sound lives and there’s nothing in the place, and the not-hearing reaches me a half second ahead of the words, like the cold off the harbor window reaches the heel of my hand before I’ve decided to feel it.
“A positioning framework for intentional growth.” Greg laughs again, like the words are a joke the two of us are standing inside together.
“I’ll be honest, when I saw whose case study it was, I thought, well, there it is.
You don’t often get to read the other side’s homework before the bell rings.
So. Head to head, then.” He taps the card once. “May the best cup win.”
The doorway to the back room fills.
Harsk comes out with clean cups stacked on a tray, his right hand flat under the bottom one.
He’s two steps past the door before the man at my counter finishes the sentence.
I watch it reach him. I watch it cross the width of the room and find him with the tray still in his hands.
He doesn’t drop the tray. I want to say that first, because for half a second I think he might, and he doesn’t.
His hand stays flat under the bottom cup. The cups don’t move.
He goes still.
It isn’t the stillness of a man who hasn’t understood.
I’ve watched him not understand a thing before, the math on a customer’s odd order, a line of mine that lands sideways, and there’s a particular move he makes, a held second while it sorts, his head tipping a single degree.
This isn’t that, because there’s no tip and no sorting.
His face bypasses the sorting and lands on the far side of it, somewhere finished, somewhere with nothing left in it to wait on, and I understand, standing here with the portafilter in my hand, that he has it.
The whole of it. He’s not going to ask me what Greg means.
He’s not going to turn to me with a crease between his eyes and give me the second where I could say let me, because there’s no second coming.
He read the page in one pass. He always does.
The flat white. I haven’t started the flat white. The steamer is hissing at nothing.
He doesn’t look at me, and that’s the thing my body catches before any of the rest of it lands: he’s looking at the room, and the room doesn’t include me.
His eyes go to the counter, the wood, the card with the gold on it, the man in the suit, the door to the back.
His eyes go everywhere a pair of eyes can go in a small café in the slow part of the afternoon.
They do not come to my face. I’ve spent nine weeks reading the half second when they do.
Now there’s the place where the flicker lives, and there’s nothing in the place.