Chapter 4 #2
The whole exchange has run forty seconds. Maggie has wiped the wand twice and shown Bex the trick with the angle on the pitcher, and Bex has said Cool one more time, and Maggie has not looked up.
Somewhere in the next hour her cup goes empty at her elbow, and I top it without comment when I have the kettle in my hand for a drip order anyway.
The cup comes back down on the cherry wood under her palm.
She doesn’t thank me. She doesn’t look up.
But her hand closes around the warm cup for a second before she sets it back to work, and I let that be enough.
Liana comes in at noon, like every noon of the four years she has lived up the hill, in the vet’s coat with dog hair on the cuff. “Iced coffee.”
“Liana.”
I have it built before she gets to the counter, and she pays with the card she always pays with. Then she turns toward the steamer station.
She looks at Maggie. Then at me. Then at Maggie again, and back to me.
The look is not a smile, exactly. It is the thing that arrives just before a smile, when a person has gotten a piece of information about the world and is rearranging the rest of the picture around it.
Then it does become a smile, quick and certain, like she has settled a small private bet.
She does not say anything. She picks up the iced coffee and goes back out the door.
Maggie comes around the counter with the linen on her shoulder. “Who was that?”
“Liana. Vet up the hill. Noon every day.”
“Huh.” The honey is out of her voice, and she is looking at the door. “She looked at me like she knew something I didn’t know.”
“She does.”
I do not elaborate. I take the dirty cups off the four-top by the window and carry them through to the back.
When I come out, Maggie is at the till counting bills with both hands and Bex is wiping the wand without being asked. The three aprons hang at the back hook, the three coffee cups sit at three different stations, and the bell over the door rings once when no one walks in.
The lull is in and the clock has slowed to the middle-of-day pace. Two of the two-tops are empty. The third holds the older man who comes in on Fridays with the crossword. Bex is in the back with the case of milk.
Maggie takes her apron strap off the second knot, leaves the apron on, and comes around the counter to the window bar with her empty cup in her left hand.
There are four stools, and she takes the second from the end.
She sets the cup down in front of her and turns the rim with her thumb until the chip is at six o’clock, and she does not look up.
The window faces Main Street, and the plywood across the street is exactly in the line her eye has settled on. The green and white sign went up at the corner of the lot on Thursday.
The kettle comes off the warmer. The crossword man holds up a finger for a refill. I come out from behind the counter and start the pass, swinging by the window bar on the way. The path does not need adjusting, and I do not adjust it.
The cup at her elbow is the empty one. I tip the kettle over it, the same pour as any pour, bloom and the count to twenty.
Her hand is on the rim, has been on the rim since she sat down, and she does not move it.
I do not move it for her. She covers the rim with her palm in the half second the pour finishes, thumb on the chip at six o’clock.
My hand leaves the kettle handle in the same beat.
Two motions, one motion, and neither hand touches the other.
I do not look at her. I keep moving. The kettle goes to the crossword man’s cup, bloom, twenty, pour, forty, and he nods at the paper without looking up. I set his cup beside his elbow and turn back through the counter, and on the pass back I do not look at the window bar.
The pour has a weight today it did not have yesterday. My hand stays on the handle a moment longer than the pour needs.
Behind me at the bar there is the small sound of the ceramic settling back down on the wood under her palm.
Her shoulders come down. I catch it from the corner of my eye as I set the kettle back on the warmer.
I do not turn. She does not say thank you.
The honey does not come in. The corners do not pull up for the cup like they pull up for every customer who walks through that door.
She lifts it, drinks, and sets it back down with the chip at six o’clock.
The bell over the door does not ring.
The grandmother voice in my head says, in the soft Orcish she uses when she is pleased and does not intend to make a thing of it, Hm. I do not answer her.
I wipe the grouphead. The crossword man turns the page. At the window bar Maggie drinks the next inch.
At five on the nose I cross the floor, flip the bolt, and turn the sign so OPEN faces the wood and CLOSED faces the street. The bell stays where it is.
At the back bar Maggie is wiping the steam wand, and she hangs it, unties her apron, and hangs the apron by the strap on the back hook. Three aprons now, hers in the middle, the strap twisted at the top. She does not untwist it either.
I bring the till drawer to the counter and count it down.
Twenties in a stack of six and a stack of three, tens at eight, fives at eleven, ones in two leaning rows of fourteen.
I count it twice, once for the day and once for myself, and the float goes back into the drawer in its envelope and the rest goes into the deposit bag.
I write the number on the slip with the pencil from my apron pocket. 1,224.
Last Tuesday’s slip is the top sheet in the binder clip on the corner shelf. 1,420. The pencil hovers and then writes Fri Oct 16 under the new number. Two hundred down. I say nothing.
Across Main Street through the front glass the plywood stands as it has stood since Thursday, green and white, COMING SOON, with six lengths of orange tape on the chain link at the corner of the lot.
Six weeks, marked off in a hand that is not mine.
For the second it takes to fold the slip, the billboard and the slip in my hand sit in the same line of sight.
Then I fold the slip and it goes in the bag and the zipper closes over both of them.
“Tomorrow?” Maggie says behind me, lifting her coat off the hook.
“Saturday.”
“Right. Same time.”
“Six.”
Presso has come down off the back counter and is sitting at the locked front door, her half ear flicking at nothing. The deposit bag is in my hand, the aprons are three on the hook, and the plywood is across the street.