Chapter 4
Harsk
The roast went down at five, and the cooling tray is cool to the back of my wrist and the bagged sacks are stacked in their two rows of three on the bench by the back door.
YEMENI. OCT., six small even labels leaning forward in a hurry I am not.
Friday is delivery day, and I have the route in my head.
Garza at seven, then the brewery, then the florist, then Auntie Voshen, then the four storefronts up the block, and last stop the Bell House.
The harbor window at the back of the roaster room has gone from charcoal to pewter while I worked, and the marine layer out past the glass is thinking about lifting. It will not lift today. It never does on the heavy Fridays, and this one is heavy.
I bring the small burlap up from the cabinet under the desk, Yemeni this week, dried apricot and old book at the lip, and I grind nine ounces and pour the carafe.
The bloom holds longer than the gauge says, Yemeni in heavy harbor air.
Boy, the grandmother voice says, without being called.
I do not answer her this morning. I cap the lid and set it on the small shelf inside the back-room doorway, where the unlabeled glass has lived for fifteen years.
Then I turn to the desk, and the morning stops being only mine.
The apron on the back hook beside my own is the canvas color of brown paper, and it has hung there since yesterday afternoon, when she took it off without folding it and hung it by the strap.
The strap is twisted at the top. I do not untwist it.
The hook has held one apron for fifteen years, and now it holds two.
On the corner of the desk is the cup from yesterday, small and empty, a thin ring of coffee gone to syrup at the bottom and a little sugar dried at the rim. I carry it through to the front, rinse it under the bar tap, dry it with the linen, and hang it on the rack above the wand.
The inventory sheet is open on the desk under the lamp where I left it, my block letters down the left side, and a third of the way down there is a single line in her cursive that was not there when I locked up.
hazelnut, swapped 7:42, MR. The pencil is lying in the crease where she set it.
I do not amend the line, and I do not move the pencil.
The framed photo is at my left shoulder when I straighten. Naskha at seventy in the brown sweater, the burgundy awning of the older Finley’s behind her.
Boy.
“I am working,” I tell the photo through the doorway, in English, because she does not get to manage my morning from inside a frame.
I go through to the front. “Morning, you,” I tell the machine, and I run the blank shot and dump it.
The chalkboard for today is already written and out on the easel from last night’s hour.
TODAY: YEMENI POUR-OVER. NO PUMPKIN. The block letters came out too tall for the board.
They always do, no matter how I plan them.
Presso flicks her half ear once at the air and resettles.
I take a small cup from the rack, the rinsed one, and I set it on the back bar where her station is.
Black with one sugar, stirred twice. The spoon goes on the linen beside it, and I set the cup just to the left of the till, where her hand will fall when she ties off her apron at the second knot.
Then I turn back to the grinder and leave it where it sits.
I count the cups on the rack and the float in the till, and the pour-over kit is set up for the eight a.m. drip the kids from the marina come in for. The chalkboard is out, the blank shot is dumped, the carafe is on the shelf. Everything is where a Friday wants it.
The bell over the door does not ring.
The marine layer at the front window has thinned at the harbor edge, gone pale where the sun is working at it without much hurry. The OPEN sign went out at 5:30. Across the street the chain link stands in front of dark plywood at this hour, and I keep my eyes on the curb.
I wipe the steam wand. Her step will come down the sidewalk in two minutes, and I will be at the grinder when it does, because there is no reason for me to be watching the door.
Her step comes down the sidewalk on the nose. The grinder is going under my hand, and I do not turn.
The bell over the door rings once. “Morning,” I say, into the burr.
“Morning.”
The apron strap snaps at the second knot. A small pause holds at the back bar, a beat. Then the ceramic taps the cherry wood once, soft, and settles.
“Thank you,” she says, to the cup, I think, and not to me.
I do not answer that. I tap the grind out into the basket.
When I look up she is at the steamer station with the cup at her elbow and the rim already half down. The honey is not in her voice yet. Her mouth is at rest. She catches me looking, and the corners come up. “What’s good today?”
“Yemeni.”
“Yemeni it is.”
She ties the apron strap the rest of the way, twists it, and leaves it twisted.
The boots come in, outside since four, sawdust on the cuff. Korren follows, forestry coat, paper under his arm. He does not look at the chalkboard. He has not looked at the chalkboard in fifteen years.
“Korren.”
He nods.
I have the cup down and the kettle to temperature before he reaches the counter.
Drip black, bloom, the count to twenty, pour to forty, the second pour slow and even on the spiral.
The cup goes across the wood. He sets a five on the surface, folded once down the center, and slides it toward me with the side of his thumb. I do not look at it.
He opens the paper and drinks half. He turns the page and drinks the rest. He folds the paper and nods on his way out.
“Korren.”
The bell rings, and the five is still folded on the wood. I pick it up without looking and drop it in the tip jar. I have been doing this since I stopped knowing how to take it to his face.
At the steamer station the milk pitcher is in Maggie’s hand exactly where it was when Korren walked in, because she remembers it. She pours, wipes the wand with the linen, and sets the pitcher down with care, like someone trying not to be the loud one in the room.
“Did he say anything?”
“No.”
Her mouth pulls up at the corners. “Have you two known each other long?”
“Yes. Fifteen years.”
She opens her mouth, then closes it, and picks up her cup and drinks the next inch of it instead.
Bex comes in in a hooded jacket two sizes too big for her, hair pulled back, gray-green at the temples where the half-orc shows. She is taller than Maggie by half a foot, and she is not smiling and she is not not smiling.
“Hey,” she says.
I tip my chin at the back hook. “Apron’s the canvas one.”
She goes around the counter, takes the canvas apron off the hook, and ties it without looking at the knot. The hook holds three aprons now where for fifteen years it held one, and it holds all three of them without comment.
Maggie comes around with both hands out. “Hi! I’m Maggie, we are so glad to have you, Bex, welcome to the team, the morning rush is in about an hour but Harsk and I will walk you through everything, the register’s pretty intuitive once you get the—”
“Cool,” Bex says.
She keeps going for half a second on momentum, then catches up to the room. “—pastry case. Right. Cool.” She turns to the till and runs her thumb along the edge of the drawer, and the corners of her mouth fight a real smile and lose.
I show Bex the pastry case and the till. The steamer stays mine. “Floor and cups today. Steamer next week.”
“Cool.”
She has said one word twice and hey once, which is more than Korren says in a week.
Delia comes in in a coat I have watched her wear for nine Octobers. “Harsk.”
“Delia.”
She stops two steps inside the door. She looks at Maggie behind the counter, then at me, then back at Maggie. “Oh. About time. A face that smiles. Harsk, you look like a man who needed someone to do the smiling.”
I do not respond.
Delia turns the whole of herself toward Maggie. “Honey. I’m Delia. I’m next door at the florist. Tea, not coffee. Espresso is an assault on the digestive system and I am not in my twenties anymore. Earl Grey, hot, slice of lemon if you can manage it. He’ll tell you I’m a customer. I’m a neighbor.”
The honey comes in at full volume on contact. “Oh my gosh, Delia, hi, it is so good to meet you, Earl Grey with lemon coming right up.”
And the smile cracks, just for a half second. The corners hold, but underneath them the muscle that has been working since open lets go, and a real smile comes up through the cracks of the other one, small and surprised at itself. Then the honey is back in her voice, and Maggie is at the kettle.
Delia catches my eye over the counter. It’s the same Wednesday-Friday catch from nine Octobers. She does not say anything.
I pour her a small cup of hot water for the lemon, because Maggie will not know to do that yet, and I set it down next to where the tea cup will go. Delia’s mouth does the thing it does when it is amused.
Olmar comes in at quarter past nine, sideways through the door because he does not fit straight through it, six foot eight in the Bell House coat. “Harsk.”
“Olmar.”
I have the coffee poured before he sets his elbow on the wood. Drip black, no sugar. He drinks the first inch standing up and lets out a breath I have heard him let out a hundred mornings.
His eyes go to Maggie at the steamer, who is showing Bex how to wipe the wand, and then they come back to me.
“The orc women who used to ask about you,” he says, low.
“Yes. They’ve gone quiet.”
He drinks another inch and looks at Maggie again. His upper lip shifts where it rests against the tusks, the closest Olmar comes to approving of a thing. “Alright.”
My chin lifts a quarter inch.
He finishes the cup standing up. “Hattie says hi.” He sets the empty cup down and goes back through the door sideways.