Chapter 10 #2
It is 1:14 now. The lunch rush is gone and the bell has not rung in twelve minutes, and Presso is on the back counter with her front paws tucked under her chest, the kettle at the low temperature I keep it between pours.
The carafe is on the front counter beside the till, the dahlias at its right, the bronze at the petal tip darkened since this morning, day three from Saturday.
The chalkboard on the side wall in the bracket still reads TODAY: BURUNDI POUR-OVER.
CURRANT AND COCOA, because I have not changed the letters, the price in pencil at the bottom corner.
Maggie is at the front counter with the case-study binder open, the half pencil in her right hand and the nickel band on her right index finger.
Monday. The apron strap has the twist in it I did not see her fix this morning and have not seen her fix all day.
She is writing, and I am not looking at what she is writing.
A woman in a canvas jacket came in for a small drip. A man in a green hat ordered a single espresso. Both are gone now, back to their afternoons. The bell does not ring.
I am at the grinder with the Burundi in the hopper, and I tip a fresh dose into the cup on the scale, eighteen grams, and set the cup back at the chute and run the grinder.
The grinder does not run.
The motor stutters at the second click and the burr collar locks, and the chute holds and the cup does not fill, a bean wedged at the burr.
The curse comes out of me quiet, under my breath, out loud.
I have not let one out in front of anyone in fifteen years.
Maggie’s pencil stops. She doesn’t look up. Her chin stays where it is, the pencil resting at the line she was on, breath held a quarter beat. Then the pencil moves again. Presso’s half ear flicks at the grinder, once.
My hand stays at the dial. The slip happened, and the slip is in the room. Boy, the grandmother voice says, from somewhere over my left shoulder, the tone not surprised. I keep my eye on the burr.
I switch the grinder off at the dial and the motor goes quiet, and I lift the hopper.
The bean sits at the right of the burr, where the angle catches it.
I pinch it out with my thumb and the pad of my index finger.
One breath across the collar. The hopper goes back.
The chute clears. I dial the grinder back on.
It runs. Eighteen grams into the cup, and the chute clears.
I take the dose to the espresso machine. The tamp is even, the portafilter locks into the group on the half turn, the shot lands at twenty-four seconds, the crema the color of brown butter. The cup goes on the saucer, and I set the saucer on the bar towel at my left elbow.
The shot is for the practice I take on the slow afternoons, and I will drink it standing at the espresso machine. It is the third one this week.
Maggie’s pencil has not stopped again. She is on the second page of her case-study spread, the one she opened and turned and I have not asked what she is writing, because the binder is hers.
She writes one more sentence and the binder closes under her hand, and the half pencil goes into the apron pocket at her right hip.
She picks up the carafe and pours a quarter ounce into the cup beside it, the cup she drank the half ounce out of this morning.
She drinks it standing at the counter and sets it back where it was. She does not look at me.
I drink the espresso. Bright at the front, cocoa at the back: the Burundi at this dose on a slow Monday.
The bell does not ring. Maggie opens the binder again with the carafe on the front counter beside her hand.
The marine layer is back at the front window, the gray thickened against the glass since two, the kind of gray that comes once you can feel the dusk under it. The pour-over kettle is at idle and the grinder is off at the dial, and Presso is asleep on the back counter with her chin on her front paw.
The bell rings. A woman in a wool cap I have seen a few times this fall, a small drip to go.
She sets her coins on the wood and lifts her cup without looking at the carafe beside the till, and she has not noticed it is in a place it has not been before.
I am glad of that, and I am not glad of it. The door closes behind her.
The bell rings once more. A man in a tan jacket for an espresso, and he drinks it standing, the cup back on the saucer, a dollar onto the wood. He nods at me without raising his voice. I nod back. The door closes.
Maggie is at the front counter with the case-study binder open under her left palm, the nickel band on her right index finger and the half pencil in her right hand. She writes one more line, then closes the binder, and her hand rests on the cover.
She does not say what she has written, and I do not ask.
Day three for the dahlias, the bronze at the petal tip gone darker than it was.
The side wall bracket still reads TODAY: BURUNDI POUR-OVER.
CURRANT AND COCOA, and I leave the letters where they are, because tomorrow’s special will be Burundi again.
Maggie has written what she is going to write somewhere I am not looking.
At five she lifts the binder and the half pencil goes into her apron pocket at her right hip. She unties the apron at the second knot, one shoulder strap off and then the other, and walks it to the third hook on the back wall.
Her hand stops at the twist in the strap, the one that has been in it since Saturday morning, and she works the loop straight with her thumb and forefinger, slow and careful, two days of not fixing it gone in three seconds. She hangs the apron flat on the hook, and the strap lies clean.
She turns at the back door. “I have it,” she says, quiet, the voice from the back room at the threshold. “I’ll write it tomorrow.”
“Whenever you have it,” I say.
She does not say what it is, and I do not ask.
The back door closes behind her, and the alley light through the small window over the sink dims as her step goes past it and up Pine, three seconds, maybe four.
I wipe the steam wand. The grounds go into the bin, a bar towel along the lip of the espresso group, and the pressure gauge sits at nine where I left it at four. I turn the boiler down for the night. Presso lifts her chin from her paw and puts it back without opening her eye.
The till takes nine minutes. The cash drawer goes into the safe. The pencil stub on the desk goes back into the cup with the others.
The chalkboard is on the side wall. The dahlias are on the counter at the right of the till. The carafe is on the front counter, beside them, where she set it this morning, and I do not move it.
The bell over the door does not ring.