Three Days in Town, and the Barista Already Knew My Order novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: Day Three
On her third morning in Barton the barista sets her order down before she speaks and a third note on the cup; at the counter she writes back: what time do you close?
Three days in town, and the barista already knew my order.
My order was a large dark roast with an extra shot, black.
I had said it out loud exactly once, on Monday, to the old woman at the register.
She had yelled it over her shoulder, and the barista had nodded without looking up from the machine.
On Wednesday at 6:40 in the morning, the cup was waiting on the counter before I had the door closed behind me.
The café was warm and smelled like bread.
A stack of black pipe ran up through the ceiling from the woodstove, and it ticked as it heated.
There were six stools and a pastry case.
One old man sat at the corner stool, where he had sat on Monday and Tuesday.
There was a note on my cup.
It was written in black marker on the cardboard sleeve, in small square capitals.
"You looked at the maple twice. It's local. Trust me."
On Monday I had stood at the register waiting.
I had looked at the jugs of syrup on the shelf, and I had looked again.
That was the whole thing.
Somebody had watched me do it.
The Monday cup had said, "The hill road ices first. Go slow."
That was fair, because I had told the old woman I was renting on Lamphere Hill Road.
The Tuesday cup was a surprise, because the Stovepipe is closed on Tuesdays.
It had been sitting on the front step of the town office at a quarter to eight, lid on, still warm.
"The creemee stand closes Columbus Day. Go before."
I am thirty-one years old.
I have been engaged, and I have been left, and I had never once been handed a coffee that knew where I lived.
So now it was Wednesday, and I walked to the counter, and he turned around from the espresso machine.
Etienne, the old woman had called him.
He was tall, with dark hair so full of flour it looked gray at the front, and gray-green eyes.
A burn scar across the inside of his left wrist.
He could not have been much past twenty.
"Morning," he said.
"Morning."
That was all, which was how it had gone for three days.
I put my hand around the cup.
His hand was already there, and it did not leave.
His fingers stayed over mine for a second, then another.
His thumb came down on the inside of my wrist, right where the pulse is.
It was warm and rough from the oven.
I felt my own pulse knock against it, and I know he felt it too, because he looked down at his own thumb.
Then he took his hand back and turned to wipe down a steam wand that was already clean.
His ears had gone red all the way to the tips.
The oven, I told myself.
He'd been up since four, baking.
It was hot back there.
I carried the cup to the stool next to the old man and sat down, because my knees had stopped holding me up.
My phone was face up on the counter.
A voicemail from Kevin had been sitting on it since Sunday night, unplayed, the little red number beside it.
I turned the phone over.
"You're the new clerk," the old man said, without looking at me.
"I am."
"Good. The last one was a crook."
"I haven't stolen anything yet," I said.
"Early days." He drank his coffee.
Then he nodded at the cup in my hand. "The note thing. Don't let it go to your head."
I turned the cup around in my fingers. "What note thing?"
"Etienne does that for every new face," he said. "It's how we know who's new."
Something in my chest dropped about an inch.
It was not much of a drop.
I still felt it.
Every new face, I thought, and of course it was.
A kind kid with a marker and a town that liked to welcome people.
I had a job, a drafty house, a car with the wrong plates.
A man in Worcester who thought I would be home by Christmas.
At the register the old woman was counting out change for the mail carrier.
She was not looking at us at all, which is how I knew she was listening.
Etienne was at the far end of the counter now, with his back to the room.
His ears were still red.
I could see them from where I sat.
I had spent three days telling myself that red ears were the oven.
I looked at the sleeve of my cup again, at his small square capitals.
He had left the marker uncapped on the counter next to the napkins.
Then I made a decision I had not planned to make.
I picked up the marker.
Under his line, in my own handwriting, which is bad, I wrote: What time do you close?
I got up, walked down the counter, and slid the cup across to him between the milk pitchers.
He read it.
I watched him read it once, and then again.
He did not look up for a long time.
When he did, the dimple on his left side had come out, and the red had spread from his ears down to his collar.
He took the marker out of my hand, turned the cup around, and wrote under my question: 3.
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