The Nearest Heart

The decision is made the way a lot of decisions are made in the Hartwell-Calloway house when non-residents are involved — Priya suggests it, Emmy says yes before fully understanding what she's agreed to, and then it is happening. In this case: Priya will teach Emmy the pour-over. Properly. With the Chemex, which Priya has been watching Emmy fail to engage with for two years, and which she has apparently decided cannot continue without intervention. Why this bothers Priya to the level of action, when Emmy's own pour-over-obsessed wife doesn't seem to mind, is unclear.

"You live with someone who makes perfect coffee every morning," Priya says, on the phone, on a Wednesday. "And you have never once tried to learn it. This is a waste."

"I have the coffee made for me," Emmy says. "That's different from not learning. Coffee is part of Juliet's love language. I would be depriving her of a great joy should I learn it."

"That's a polite way to say 'I don't have to and I don't wanna', Emmy."

"It is," Emmy says with a grin. "I'm the end user. Juliet's the practitioner."

"Emmy." The tone of someone who has been patient for some time. "I'll come Saturday."

#

Saturday: Priya at the kitchen table with her phone open to her notes, because Priya brings notes to coffee lessons. Juliet at the counter with the Chemex and the kettle and the particular expression of someone who has already identified three ways this is going to go wrong and is deciding whether to say so. Juliet was the one who introduced Priya to pour-overs, and in some way feels torn between allowing her pupil to stand on her own, or helping correct fundamental misunderstandings before someone gets burned. Perhaps literally. But Juliet notices that Priya has apparently gotten way more into coffee than Juliet had instructed, and she is intrigued. Emmy stands between them, genuinely, entirely willing to learn. After all, she gets coffee out of the deal.

"The bloom first," Priya says. "The most important step. And also the most skipped."

"What is the bloom?" Emmy asks.

Priya opens her mouth. Juliet, from the counter, says: "The first pour — just enough water to wet the grounds. You hold there for thirty seconds before continuing. The grounds release CO2. If you skip it, the gas creates channels in the brew and the extraction is uneven."

"What she said," Priya says, without any apparent irritation at being preempted. In fact she looks at Juliet with the specific expression of someone who has just confirmed a hypothesis about a person. "Exactly what she said."

Emmy looks between them. "You two are going to be a problem, aren't you."

"Yes," they say, at the same time, and then do not look at each other.

#

Emmy's first attempt at the bloom: the water goes in and the grounds do something wrong in a way that is difficult to precisely diagnose. Too fast, probably. Too much at once. Juliet, from the table where she has retreated to her seminar notes, does not look up.

"That's — " Priya starts.

"I know," Emmy says.

"You went too—"

"I know."

"The grounds need to—"

"Priya. I freaking know." She looks at the Chemex. Steadies her breathing. Psyches herself up for the battle. "Let me try again."

She tries again. The second attempt is better — marginally — in the way that slightly less wrong is better than more wrong. The bloom does something that could be described as a bloom if one were generous.

"Good," Priya says. This is not a lie, exactly. It is the specific version of 'good' that professionals give to correct effort rather than correct execution.

From the table, without looking up, Juliet says: "Better."

Emmy turns to look at her. "Better than what?"

"Better than the first one."

"That's not — that's such a minimal — "

"It is a fact," Juliet says.

Priya has one hand over her mouth. Emmy decides not to ask why.

#

By the third attempt Emmy can reliably produce the bloom. The kettle height still needs work, and the second pour has a tendency to wander, but the fundamental rhythm — the pause, the wait, the continuation — is beginning to be hers in the way that things are hers when she has done them three times and found the shape of them. Emmy is a quick study, perceptive, and good at working with people. This somewhat extends to working with coffee beans. The important element is always the amount of effort Emmy is willing to put in. She taught Juliet how to be a woman in a weekend, more or less, because she was very motivated.

"The pause," Priya says, when Emmy looks at the timer and then at the Chemex with the expression of someone wondering why they're not allowed to continue. "Don't skip it. That's the mistake everyone makes. You can see it's working, so you want to help it along. But if you help it along you've introduced your own variables and now you're not making the coffee, you're interfering with it."

"It seems like the same thing," Emmy says.

"It isn't." Priya is looking at the Chemex rather than at Emmy, in the particular way of someone who is not looking directly at an idea because they want to phrase it correctly. "It's not a delay or inaction, Emmy — it's a purposeful pause to allow action to take place without your direct involvement."

At the table, Juliet goes still.

It is a very small stillness — not the working-stillness, not the thinking-stillness, but the other one, the one that means something has arrived and is being received. She does not look up from her notes. She sets down her pen with the particular care of someone who has decided to be very deliberate about the next thing her hands do.

Emmy is looking at the Chemex. She does not see any of this.

Priya is looking at the Chemex. She does not see any of this.

"Wait for the bloom to stop rising," Priya says, and continues the lesson.

#

The coffee, when it arrives, is better than Emmy's previous coffee and worse than Juliet's. This is a fair result. Emmy drinks it with the specific satisfaction of someone who made a thing work through repetition, which is a different quality of satisfaction from drinking something perfect.

"It'll get better," Priya says.

"I know," Emmy says. "Most things do."

Juliet has retrieved her pen and returned to her notes. She accepts a cup of what Emmy has made without asking what it is and drinks it without comment, which, Emmy will later tell Priya, is Juliet's version of a standing ovation.

They move to the living room because the kitchen table is not large enough for three people and seminar notes and the particular arrangement that emerges when Priya and Emmy are in the same space — something conversational, slightly expansive, not requiring a table. Juliet brings her notes and finds the floor.

The afternoon: easy and specific, the way afternoons are when they're made of good people and no particular agenda. Priya mentions The Bloom — not as an announcement, as an update. She's in the fit-out phase, she says. The equipment is arriving next week. She found someone to run the espresso bar so she can focus on the filter program. Marlowe Street, next to Mags's.

"So it's really happening?" Juliet says with a bemused smile. Priya has been talking about a business venture for some time, and she'd mentioned a coffee shop. Until today, Juliet had just felt it was one of many possible businesses for the young entrepreneur, and hadn't heard it was this far along in development. The desire to teach someone how to make a good pour-over is clear; this is a skill Priya will need when she hires employees.

"Yes," Priya replies. "I pulled the trigger a few weeks ago with the lease and loan but haven't publicized it much. I don't think even Emmy believed me."

Emmy politely smiles. Emmy hadn't quite believed her. Emmy hadn't bothered to tell Juliet. Emmy will likely be teased about this from Hartwell-Calloway House's reigning coffee queen.

The location mentioned, next to Mags's, was scouted by Emmy, and Emmy still thinks it is the best possible location, and in taking every possible avenue toward reminding the world of her excellent real estate skills, says so.

"Mags approved," Priya says.

"Mags doesn't approve of most things," Juliet says.

"Exactly," Priya says. "I expect you two will help launch the location to great success."

"We wouldn't miss it," Juliet confirms.

At some point Emmy glances at the wall while Priya and Juliet discuss the finer points of the fitting out of The Bloom. She lingers on the wedding photograph, the bare space around it. The second time she's glanced at it this way and been quietly nowhere about it. The space is still a question and the question is still open. Priya notices Emmy's glance because Priya notices most things.

"Have you decided?" she asks, about the wall.

"No," Emmy says.

"We've discussed a tapestry," Juliet says, from the floor.

"And paint," Emmy says.

"And doing nothing," Juliet says. "Which is not deciding."

"It's provisional," Emmy says.

Priya looks at the wall. She looks at the photograph — the two of them in August light, mid-laugh at something Gerald said. "It's a good photograph," she says. "Whatever you put around it has to live up to that."

"That's the problem," Emmy says.

Priya looks at her — a very brief look, the kind Priya gives things when she's thinking something she's decided not to say — and then she looks back at the wall and nods and the subject moves on, as the wall always does.

#

Priya leaves at five, in the specific way Priya leaves things: cleanly, without trailing off, with the impression of someone who had a plan for the day and has executed it. She hugs Emmy and she looks at Juliet — the look they have now, the one that has been developing since the first philosophy session and is becoming its own thing — and says "same time next month, and tell me when to stop correcting her kettle height."

"I'll tell you when there's nothing left to correct," Juliet says.

"That might be a while," Emmy says.

"I know," Juliet says. "I am patient."

The door closes. The house returns to its two-person quality. Emmy stands at the kitchen door for a moment in the late afternoon light — the August light, longer than it has any right to be this late, coming through the back garden window and catching the Chemex on the counter.

"Do you actually think it'll get better?" Emmy says.

"The coffee?"

"Yes."

Juliet, settling back on the sofa with her notes, considers this with genuine honesty. "You understood the bloom," she says. "On the third try. That's not nothing."

"It's not the coffee, though."

"Not yet," Juliet says, and turns a page, before casually adding "My coffee could still use some improvement."

Emmy smiles, picks up her own reading and joins her. The August afternoon does its work through the window. The pour-over things sit on the counter, waiting for next time.

* * *