Chapter 16 #2
My jaw works once, and Maggie waits through the working of it. She has been waiting through it this way since the second week.
“The ren-keva palette.”
“Yes,” she says. “Honey. Cardamom or chipped clove would be perfect, or whatever you happen to have upstairs.”
“I have a quarter pound of the clove. Auntie’s. From the Friday before last.”
“That is enough for the chalkboard line.”
“Yes.”
“Hot. Not iced. Iced is the chain’s.”
“Hot.”
Her palm has not lifted from the corner of the desk, because she is not done.
“There is the holiday.”
“Yes.”
“Three weeks out. I went to Auntie yesterday for the order numbers.” Her thumb moves across the desk corner. “The ren-voshen. She has the clay pots, the small ones, single-serving.”
I watch her thumb. She has the order numbers from Auntie’s own hand, which is more than enough.
“Preorder.”
“Single-serving. Picked up at her counter the Wednesday before. Ten dollars a unit, forty the first week. We split with her.”
“Voshen’s name first on the sign.”
“Hers first.”
“Yes.”
The grandmother voice does not speak. She waits at the elbow with her hands folded.
“There is one more,” I say.
She lifts her eyes.
“Veshar.”
The mouth-corner does the thing.
“The brewery,” she says.
“A cask. The autumn solstice. He has run a ren-keva-spiced malt for the festival twice now, and the third year is this year.” The slow pull.
“If he poured it through a press at his bar, the bean on his side for the day. The Pour Decisions line. He gets the festival foot traffic, and we get the cask crossover.”
She is quiet a beat.
“Two partners.”
“Yes.”
“Not one storefront answering them. Three.”
“Mm.”
We are in the office together like we have not been before, and I do not stand yet. The chair makes the sound, and I let it.
“We are at the edge,” I say.
“Yes.”
“We have four weeks.”
“I know.”
She does not say more, and she does not name the chain again. The work is sitting between us on the page next to the saucer.
I close the notebook and set my hand flat on the cover. She looks at the hand and does not look long.
“Four forty-five chalkboard?”
“Four forty-five,” she says.
“Block letters.”
“Yours. Inside the lines for the price.”
“Alright.”
She steps back, and the six inches becomes ten and then becomes the doorway. The saucer with the half cruller stays on the desk. She does not look at me on the way out, and she is back on the floor before I have heard the doorway clear behind her.
Good, the grandmother voice says.
The lamp is on and the chair is where it has been, and I sit with the closed cover under my hand for a minute and forty seconds by the lamp shadow. The ren-keva clove is upstairs on the second shelf, and the honey is in the small jar Auntie sent in September.
The cruller goes in three bites at the desk, and the taste is Friday morning and today both.
The closed notebook stays closed. I stand, and I go up for the clove.
By the small clock above the stove, the window over the harbor is dark at the lower edge and the headland is the cleaner dark above that. The kettle is on the back burner with the flame low.
Maggie is at the table.
She came up on her own. She has been up here twice since the night of the bonfire. The third time sits on the threshold under us both. She stays where she is and I stay where I am.
The clove is on the counter where I set it down Saturday afternoon, a quarter pound in brown paper folded twice at the top, the date in pencil on the seam. Auntie. Fri before last.
“It looks like a clove.”
“Mm.”
“I thought it would look more like a clove.”
“It is the chipped kind. Auntie does the pestle work in the morning.”
“Of course she does.”
The kettle has another two minutes, and I count to four in orcish under my breath at the burner. The count is for the water, not for me.
Maggie has her elbows on the table. The apron is off and the cardigan is on, and the cuff is down at her knuckle.
I could go to the chair next to her, the one Auntie sat in once, the August she came up for the new gasket.
I go to the kettle.
The step takes my weight through the floorboard that has creaked in the middle of the kitchen for fifteen years, and her eyes lift to the sound and to me. She does not say anything. She watches.
The kettle clicks, and I lift it off the burner and let it stand forty-five seconds on the trivet so the boil is past. I count the forty-five with my hand on the handle and not on the table.
“Honey is in the cupboard.”
“Found it.”
She slides the small jar Auntie sent in September down the table without looking up. Her thumb is at the lid, and her thumb does not turn it.
Two cups come down from the shelf. Hers is the one with the chip on the inside of the foot and mine is the plain one, and that choosing has been done since the morning after.
The clove paper crackles when I unfold it. Honey, cardamom, and the chipped clove sitting in the cup like a thing that has waited.
I am not looking at her. The not-looking arrives across the table, and she lets it sit.
“Four forty-five tomorrow.”
“Mm.”
“Block letters.”
“Yes.”
“I will bring the chalk up.”
“Alright.”
Her cuff slides back from her knuckle when she shifts the elbow. The thin nickel band is on her finger today. The chipped silver is in her pocket. I have seen her thumb that pocket twice tonight without taking it out.
The water goes into the cups slow, down the side, to lift the honey first and not pin it to the bottom.
The kitchen has gone quiet, and the harbor through the window is dark all the way down.
“Harsk.”
“Yes.”
“The cups are good.”
“Yes.”
She does not say more. She has the cup in both hands, and the steam is at her chin.
I sit, though not in the chair next to her. I take the other end, the chair that is mine, with the six inches of wood between us, and I set my hand flat on the wood. The hand is open and at rest, not reaching for hers.
She looks at the hand once. She does not look long.
“Tomorrow is going to be a day.”
“It is.”
“Sleep is the next thing.”
“Mm.”
She gets up with the cup in one hand and the saucer in the other. Her pace around the table is her own. She does not pass behind me. She comes to my side. Her hip stops at the edge of the table and her free hand tugs the cardigan cuff down.
“Office,” she says.
“After you go.”
“Alright.”
She does not bend down and I do not stand up. Her cup goes to the small sink on the way out, and the saucer with the chip stays in her hand, because the chip is hers and it is going down with her to the floor.
At the door at the top of the stairs she half-turns so her shoulder is still in the room. The cuff is at her knuckle again.
“Harsk.”
“Yes.”
“You can keep what you are carrying up here.”
I look at her.
She goes down. The stairs creak at seven and eleven, and the lower door at the prep room clicks.
The clock above the stove reads 7:31. The clove paper is folded back like Auntie folded it, and the honey jar lid is on fingertip-tight, like she left it.
The pencil is in my apron pocket. The light upstairs is the small one over the table, and the office below is dark.
I get the key off the belt.
The key in the lock at the office door turns quiet, like it has for fifteen years. I put the lamp on at the cord and sit, and the maroon arm is cold.
The notebook is closed with the pencil on top of it, where I left them. The chalkboard out front is inked, Voshen has the pots at her counter, and Veshar gets the call Wednesday. The chain put its sign up.
There is the spend on the placemat, the number I held back from the page. I let it stand in the room a minute. My palm flat on the cover keeps the page closed.
Outside on Main a single car goes by slow, and the headlights wash the front window once and pass.
Enough, then.
Six blocks west, the light over her table is on. The alarm upstairs is set for 4:30.
I get up and take the pencil to the apron pocket. The lamp goes off at the cord. The key is in my hand.