Chapter 19
Maggie
It’s barely light on a Saturday and I’ve come in through the back, which I left on the latch behind me.
The alley is still in the blue it goes before anybody on Main has turned a key, my hair damp at the nape from the walk across the headland in a cold that moved in overnight.
The pearl on the thin gold band slides on my right hand before the apron goes on and the second strap is tied.
I tie the second strap behind my back without looking.
The pearl ring is what Saturday is, and this Saturday is the morning after the Friday Harsk came down off the porch at the Bell House and walked the four blocks home.
I don’t know about the porch. I know the walk back came late, because the carafe on the front shelf is sitting a quarter inch wrong.
The carafe.
It’s on the back counter where it always is at this hour on a Saturday, the unlabeled one, the private one, the one he set out for me my second week here and that I’ve stopped pretending I don’t look for.
Three-quarters full, lid on. The lid is screwed down further than usual.
Most mornings the threads give at the second knuckle’s worth of turn.
This morning they don’t give until the third, which is the kind of thing I track now, it turns out.
I don’t lift it yet.
He’s at the back counter, and he’s been there since before I came in, which is also normal, except the normal this morning is half a degree off the normal on a Tuesday or a Wednesday or any other day of the week.
His back’s to me at the grinder, the brown apron on, the strap crossing left of his spine like it always does, his weight on the right foot.
He fills the cased opening. I’m at the side of the prep counter, pulling my apron straight.
I keep pulling, longer than the apron needs.
He doesn’t turn.
That’s the thing.
Maggie, careful, I think, somewhere behind my sternum, and then nothing follows the careful, because I don’t have a file for it. The back door clicked when I came in like it’s clicked since my first morning, and the first thing his neck does at that sound, every day, is the small turn toward it.
The turn didn’t happen.
I tie the strap. I put my left palm flat on the steel of the prep counter like I put it flat on the bookstore counter that Thursday afternoon when I was about to say a thing I hadn’t said before, and the cold of the steel is the cold the bookstore counter was.
The palm presses down, so I take it back.
Okay. First, the strap is tied. Second, the chalkboard wants the Costa Rica written over the Yemeni before open, and I’m the one who’ll write it, because he wrote ALSO YEMENI yesterday and his good pencil is in the apron pocket at the back counter, and getting it would mean crossing the foot and a half of wood between us and asking him for it.
Third, the bell is going to ring like it’s rung on every Saturday since my second one, and Korren is going to come in, and the cup is going to be on the saucer with the chip on the inside of the foot before he reaches the counter, and that saucer is mine to set out.
The list runs.
I cross to the back counter.
I don’t cross like I crossed yesterday and I don’t cross like I’ve crossed for thirty-some Saturdays.
I cross with the question of why he hasn’t turned around sitting high under my collarbone, a weight I haven’t had to carry across this floor before.
The carafe is at the back. He’s at the grinder.
There’s a foot and a half of wood between the carafe and where his hand sits at the bin, and he doesn’t look up.
I lift the carafe. The lid doesn’t give at the first turn.
I don’t say his name. I don’t say hey. Second turn and the threads agree, and the lid comes off, and there’s three-quarters of cold coffee inside, yesterday’s at a guess, this morning’s not set yet.
I pour the cold inch into the sink and rinse it and put it back where it lives, lid on, fingertip tight.
He doesn’t look up.
He’s not pretending not to. He’s doing the thing he does at the grinder when the grinder is the thing he’s doing, the bin open, the scoop in his right hand, counting under his breath in a language I don’t know and have learned to recognize the shape of, one of the small private sounds he makes before anybody’s at the bar.
The counting’s there this morning. It’s just that his shoulders aren’t the shoulders that are about to turn.
The set of him between the shoulder blades says not yet, and I read it, and I don’t ask it anything.
So I take the cinnamon-and-cardamom canister down off the shelf at my elbow and I shake the warming pot two ticks past where I shook it on Friday, because the milk on a Saturday wants the spice a half tick further forward, and that half tick is the work, and I am at work.
The bell over the front door hasn’t rung.
I’ve got nineteen minutes, and I am not going to spend them on a carafe lid.
The chalkboard turns over. I take the chalk off the lip of the easel and crouch in front of his ALSO YEMENI, those block letters always two characters too tall for the board, and I press the eraser pad over it until the dust of his pencil and yesterday’s chalk comes off onto the heel of my hand.
The Costa Rica goes up in my own letters, smaller, on the line he leaves for me out of habit.
COSTA RICA. ALSO DECAF. I’m using the dustier piece of chalk because the good piece is in his apron pocket, and I don’t go get the good piece. I write with what’s here.
The board goes back on the easel and I stand. The bell still hasn’t rung. The fog at the window is the color it goes on a Saturday in November when the harbor has decided to commit to the whole thing. Two minutes, maybe four, and then the bell rings.
Korren’s in the heavy jacket, the wool cap, the boots that have already done the haul to the docks. He gives me his usual two nods from the door, one at the chin and one at the room.
“Korren.”
“Maggie.”
The pour’s on the saucer before he reaches the counter, double, black, the white cup with the wide rim.
I set the saucer on the wood. He sets the five on the wood.
The five doesn’t stay, because Korren has never once put a five away on any morning I’ve worked here.
My voice came on at Korren and went off again at Maggie.
The saucer crosses the wood and he lifts the cup to his mouth.
I turn to put the canister back.
Harsk has stepped around to the grouphead in the time between Korren’s nod and Korren’s first sip, the grouphead in his right hand, the cloth in his left, and he hasn’t looked at me.
The cup that went across the wood went across the wood between us by my hand alone.
On a Tuesday I’d have asked him to slide Korren’s saucer down.
It lives in the corner closest to him. This morning I held the little pause where I’d ask, and didn’t.
The bell rings again.
It’s the woman from the bluff, the paper folded under her arm, the navy hat she wears for the walk down.
My voice goes up the half step it needs.
The smile lands at the corners first. Cardamom flat white, twelve ounces, the Saturday she comes in for.
The portafilter locks, the shot pulls, the milk foams, the cup goes across.
The saucer touches her palm and not Harsk’s, because she’s at the counter and he’s at the grouphead, and the spot on the floor where his elbow and my forearm have brushed in passing on other Saturdays stays empty between us this one.
The damp four-top gets pumpkin, cardamom, and a decaf oat. Brown-coat man takes a drip with no room. Before seven, two flat whites with cinnamon at the rim land in front of the sisters, because one always slides hers across.
Maggie.
It’s my own voice. The italic is small.
I’m at the steam wand, jug in my left hand.
The wand hisses. The foam comes up bright when my hands stop thinking.
The tension from Korren stayed. It stayed at the woman from the bluff, at the hikers, at the man who wanted his pumpkin sweeter.
Small things stack. The stack sits behind my collarbone, right where the apron strap crosses.
Bex comes in for the late half of the shift, the green stone on her hand catching the light off the front window.
The two women from the Bell House are in for their Saturday flat whites.
A stranger in a navy fleece rings the bell.
My voice slides into its work register, the smile lifts at the corners, and I push the cardamom across. Twelve ounces, hot, for here.
Across the counter Harsk slides the saucer down to me a small turn like he’s slid it for thirty-some Saturdays. His sleeve brushes my apron like it does every Saturday. He pauses before he lifts back to the grouphead.
It isn’t the same.
His hand goes back a half count slower than yesterday, and mine takes the saucer a half count slower than yesterday, and neither of us names the half count, and neither of us looks up.
The bell rings. The cup goes across the wood.
The smile lands at the corners of my mouth for the man at the window two-top and drops off again when I turn back.
By noon the room has worked the room. The till is full, the chalkboard is right, the carafe at the back is down to half. The half a degree I’ve been carrying since the chalk went up is the size it was and bigger, because a small thing gets bigger when it’s had four hours to be carried.
I untie the second strap.
Apron on the hook, keys out of the pocket and into my left hand. I don’t look at the back counter on my way out.
I push the door. The bell rings. November noon is colder than the room.