“You should be. Marchetti’s been here twice and got the chip mug both times.”
“Does he know?”
“He suspects. He keeps looking at the mug like it owes him a favor.”
I drink. The coffee is dark and slightly sweet and specific to this apartment and this morning and this man in the gold light. He leans against the counter across from me and drinks his coffee and looks at me over the rim.
“You’re quiet,” he says. “Quieter than yesterday.”
“I’m drinking.”
“You’re thinking.”
“I’m always thinking.”
“You’re thinking less. I can see it. You look different this morning.” He tilts his head. “Slower.”
“My mornings in Munich have a shape,” I say. The sentence starts before I decide to say it. “Alarm at six forty-five. Coffee from the machine, black, the same machine for four years. Route to the training ground, same streets, same order. The man at the café near the bridge knows my cortado and the time I walk in and the time I walk out. Four years and he doesn’t know my name. He knows the order. That’s all he knows about me. He doesn’t call me Tuesday, or sunshine, or honey.” I drink. The coffee is better than the café near the bridge. “This morning you gave me the good mug.”
He doesn’t say anything for a few seconds. “The good mug is available to you anytime,” he says.
“That’s a significant offer.”
“I’m a significant person.”
We drink in silence a few more minutes
“Your bookshelf,” I say.
“What about it?”
“How many books?”
He glances toward the bedroom. “On the shelf? Maybe thirty. More on my phone.” He sips. “Tomáš thinks I own twelve books.”
The name lands in the kitchen the way a sound arrives from another room. Present. Not close. He says it without flinching and I hear it without the floor dropping and we both drink our coffee.
“Have you read all of them?”
“Most. Some twice. There’s one I’ve read four times.”
“Four times?”
“A hockey romance. The main character doesn’t say the thing for two hundred pages and then he says it and every time I reread it I already know he’s going to say it and every time it still gets me.” He wraps both hands around his mug. “The waiting’s the point. The two hundred pages of not saying it. The reader knows from page three what he’s going to say. The whole book’s about the gap between knowing and saying.”
The words settle. The kitchen is quiet.
“What does he say?” I ask.
“I can’t tell you. It’d ruin the two hundred pages.”
“You could lend it to me.”
He looks at me over his coffee with the full attention of a person trying to hold every detail of a moment.
“You want to read one of my books?” he asks.
“Is that strange?”
