by David Abrams (bio at end of story)
He was grinding the beans when she entered the kitchen so he didn’t hear the first part of her question.
“â€â€?this morning?”
The beans clattered to a halt. He turned and saw she was already dressed. His bathrobe now felt superfluous, even presumptuous.
“What? I didn’tâ€â€?”
“I said, ‘How are you this morning?’”
What a question. How could he be? How should he be? Why would she think he was anything but giddy and confused? What a question to answer while standing in a knee-length bathrobe in the middle of the kitchen at 8 a.m., cold early light pouring in through the window.
“I’m fine.” Fine. What an oatmeal word. “You?”
“I don’t know.” The words came out slowly, like she was tasting each one as it passed over her tongue. Her face was rumpled, but her hair was combed. She put her arms across her breasts which were now holstered in bra, shielded by sweater, soon to be completely hidden by coat when she walked out the door into the frost-nipped January morning. He’d had a speech all plannedâ€â€?about how they could call in sick, making separate phone calls spaced fifteen minutes apart, then spend the rest of the day doing whatever they choseâ€â€?but now that speech didn’t seem like such a good idea. She was already dressed.
“I’m making coffee,” he said, not knowing what else to say.
“So I heard.”
“I hope I didn’t wake you.”
“No, I was awake when you got out of bed.”
“You were? I didn’t know. Here I was trying to be quiet.”
“I just didn’t open my eyes.” She cinched her arms across those breasts. “I think we needâ€â€?”
“Coffee.” He said it quickly, overlapping her voice. “Yes, we need a little of the good ole jav.” He shook the grounds into the filter and the smellâ€â€?the scent of morning and the dozens of possibilities it containedâ€â€?rose to him and he inhaled deeply. “Smell that?” he asked. “I love the smell of Colombian in the morning. Smells like…victory.”
He almost got a laugh out of her with that one.
She pulled out a chair and sat down at the table. So. She was sitting down. That was a good sign. It smelled like…coffee.
He added the pot of water, flicked the button, then waited for the first gurgles before he turned to face her. He didn’t sit down. He couldn’t. Not yet.
“So,” he said.
“So,” she said.
“Where does this leave us?”
“Nowhere, I guess.”
“Liar. Big fat liar. Little Dory’s caught her pants on fire.”
She smiled at that one, even though he had to admit it was a poor choice of words.
“You’re right,” she said. “We’re somewhere.”
Behind him, the coffee gurgled and trickled.
“Starting to smell good,” she said. “What is it?”
“Tanzanian Peaberry. I get it down at the Daily Grindâ€â€?half-pound of beans every fourth day. Guy behind the counter tells me this is primo stuff. Says the beans are hand-picked by this little guy the color of coffee itself.”
“Does he have a burro and call himself Juan Valdez?”
Ah, so now she was trying her hand at the funnies. He smiled. “Didn’t say. Just said the beans were picked with all the care and love in the world.”
They were quiet then because he’d said the word, however casually. They listened to the water going into the pot. It sounded like Juan Valdez urinating into a puddle.
He decided to sit down.
“I’m not very good at this,” he said.
“Neither am I. Obviously.”
“No, no,” he said. “You’re doing fine. It’s me.”
He laced his fingers together and put them under his chin. He tried to plot the path his next words might take. Here they were, two strangersâ€â€?okay, not true; more than strangers, co-workers, two people who’d exchanged morning pleasantries, who’d dropped phone messages on the other’s desk, who’d worked side-by-side for nine months but never once touched skin-to-skin…until last night. So here they were, she in sweater, he in bathrobe, in a kitchen filling with the musk of coffee. So much was resting on his next words. He opened his mouth.
And then, an incredible moment: she opened her mouth, too.
Dory said, “Last nightâ€â€?” and Vincent said, “Last nightâ€â€?” and both of their “last nights” collided in the air above the kitchen table. They stopped, then laughed together. It was like something straight out of the moviesâ€â€?one of those magical, scripted moments where two lives turn on a dime. It’s the part where the actress and the actor exchange dialogue which cuts through all their mistakes and misunderstandings and finally the scales fall from their eyes and they can see they were made for each other, the part where first their eyes meet and then their lips, the part where the music swells and people in the audience gasp and some of them might even start to cry because now they know it’s all going to work out just fine between the actor and the actress, the part just before “The End” which is really “The Beginning.”
And so, it was fine. Everything was just fine. Neither of them had to say anything else, both of them knew what followed “Last nightâ€â€?”. He knew where the path of his words would take him and she realized that, despite the worry and doubt she’d felt when getting dressed, she would, in the end, go down that same path with him. With those two wordsâ€â€?four words, reallyâ€â€?it was as if they’d known each other for nine years, not nine months or, more to the point, nine hours.
The coffee maker groaned one final time, and huffed a cloud of steam from the place where everything is brewed. Then all was silent in the kitchen.
He unlaced his fingers, discovering they’d been clenched tighter than he thought, and rose from the table to pour the cups of coffee. He chose the plain blue mugs, the ones without the logos or cartoons or pictures of dead composers. None of that this morning. Just the blank blue mugs.
He brought the coffee to her and set it down. He wanted to touch her, perhaps graze her shoulder with his fingertips, but didn’t. Not yet. Later. Perhaps sooner than later. He sat back down with his mug. They faced each other like that, each of them thinking about what had happened between themâ€â€?not just in the last nine minutes, nor even in the last nine hours, but in the last nine months.
He sipped the coffee, testing it gingerly with his lips. She did the same.
“How do you like the coffee?” he asked.
“It’s good.” She smiled. “You?”
“Mine’s good. Not too strong, not too weak.”
“Just right.”
“Yeah,” he agreed. “Just right.”
© David Abrams. All Rights Reserved.
$100 Finalist - Good Morning by David Abrams
Stories and essays by David Abrams have appeared in Esquire, Greensboro Review, The North Dakota Review, Fish Stories and other literary quarterlies. One of his stories, “Providence,” was included as 100 Other Distinguished Stories of 1998 in the 1999 Best American Stories, edited by Amy Tan. Since September 1999, he has written film and book reviews for the website www.epinions.com under the pseudonym “Grouch.â€Â? Mr. Abrams lives with his wife and three children in Anchorage, Alaska.
