Silk - Caitlin R. Kiernan [11]
Tonight, Friday morning already, the Bean was quiet; there’d be a little rush toward dawn, when the clubs along Twenty-first Street emptied out and the rave crowd, sweatsticky and half of them sizzling on ecstasy, wandered in. But so far, things had been calm, lots of Nina Simone and Alison Moyet sighing through the stereo and a handful of night owls sipping at their pale lattés, hardback books or laptop computers open on the tables in front of them. One conversation toward the back, a black woman and two men with gray beards and pipes, smoke like burning cherries and occasional laughter. And Russell, stomping someone’s ass at chess across the bar.
Daria finished setting out the careful rows of freshly washed mugs and glasses on top of the big silver Lavazza espresso machine, squat mugs the color of old cream and the crystal demitasse like cups from a child’s tea party. The Lavazza was sleek and utterly modern, efficient Italian engineering, none of those antique Willy Wonka contraptions at the Bean. She’d heard enough gripes and horror stories from baristas who’d worked with those funky old brass octopuses to be thankful that Claire had insisted on function over flash. Daria never had any trouble with the Lavazza, except once or twice when someone else had forgotten to turn the thing back on after cleaning it and she’d had to stand around waiting for the boiler to build up steam, watching the pressure gauge’s slow creep into the red as orders backed up and people began to grumble and complain.
“Hey, Daria,” Bunky shouted at her from the register. “Make this guy a double with lemon.” Bunky Tolbert was the worst sort of slacker, scab-kneed board weasel, late more often than not, and Daria couldn’t believe Russell hadn’t fired his ass, that he’d actually hired him in the first place.
The “guy” was tall and lanky, expensive suit that hung off his shoulders like scarecrow rags, and she thought immediately of Keith, of the shitty, spiritless excuse for a rehearsal and the way that he’d finally just packed up his guitar, not a word, and left her and Mort and Theo in Baby Heaven.
Daria nodded, removed the filter and banged it upside-down over the dump bin until the old grounds fell out as a nearly solid disc, miniature hockey puck of spent espresso. She rinsed the filter clean beneath the scalding jet on the far right side of the machine and scooped a cup’s worth of the fine black powder from the can on the countertop. The espresso flowed from the scooper like liquid midnight, dry fluid so perfectly dark, so smooth, it seemed to steal the dim coffeehouse light, to breathe it alive and exhale velvet caffeine fumes.
Daria added a second scoop and packed it down with the plastic tamper, slid the filter back into the machine and punched the “double” button above the brewer. She glanced at the register, and the scarecrow was counting out the dollar-fifty for his drink in quarters and dimes and nickels, a handful of change spilled on the bar and his long fingers pushing coin after coin across the wood to Bunky. He didn’t really look anything like Keith, too healthy despite his thinness, much too alive. Sometimes she thought the only part of Keith that had survived the junk was his eyes, his strange granite eyes trapped in there alone, and that everything else was just clumsy puppet tricks with string and shadow.
The espresso drained from the brewer’s jets, twin golden streams, smooth as blood from an open vein; Daria caught the steaming coffee in a demitasse, waiting for the machine to finish. In the glass, the liquid was as black as the powder had been, black as pitch, and the layer of nut-brown créma thick and firm enough to support sugar crystals. She took a strip of lemon peel from a plastic container and rubbed it around the rim, then passed the glass to Bunky and the scarecrow carried it away.
Daria looked up at the huge Royal Crown Cola clock, vintage plastic glowing like a full moon above the fridge, and the shelves crowded