The Nearest Heart

Priya Anand does not believe in grand openings. She believes in correct openings — the right number of people, the right amount of coffee, exactly enough occasion without turning the occasion into the point. If it rises to the adjective "grand" then that's fine by her, but she shall not force it. She shall set up the conditions under which it could succeed, and then launch it.

The Bloom opens on a crisp Friday afternoon the first day of October with approximately fifteen people, all of whom were specifically invited, none of whom were told to bring anything, and all of whom are drinking something that was made with care.

Emmy and Juliet arrive at half past three.

#

The space: clean lines, warm light, the pour-over equipment arranged on the back counter with the particular aesthetic of something that is both tool and statement. The menu is posted near the door — small, exactly right, the kind of menu that has been thought about rather than assembled. Four filter options, two espresso drinks, nothing that doesn't have a reason. Those seeking fast drip coffee, to buzz in and buzz out of the shop in a hurry, do have an option, but it is not encouraged. Priya believes that making a pour-over in front of her customers, allowing them to see the process and be a participant in it, will endear them to a more relaxed pace of coffee shop life. And while she understands that from time to time we all get in a hurry (and will not be the business owner who turns these poor souls away), she hopes to inspire a bit less of that hurriedness. It is actually Juliet & Emmy who she thanks for this — their morning routine even on work mornings is inspirational.

The smell of The Bloom is the smell of coffee made correctly, which is a specific smell distinct from the smell of coffee made adequately, and Emmy, who has been learning the difference since March, can now identify it without thinking. Juliet, on her arm, appears in her element as they walk through the door. Emmy smiles as she sees a view into Juliet paradise — a sturdy coffee option right next door to a well stocked philosophy section.

Priya is behind the counter when they come in. She is wearing the expression of someone who is exactly where they are supposed to be — not a performed ease, the actual thing. She has been in various versions of this space in Emmy's imagination for months: the fit-out, the equipment arriving, the hire, the license, the signage. Here it is. Here she is.

"It's right," Emmy says, when Priya looks at her.

Priya gives her the one-nod that means: yes, I know, don't make it a thing. The nod though is not cold, it implies a thanks as well as an acknowledgment. For all of her confidence, Priya seeks the connection of others just like anyone else.

"The equipment," Juliet says, looking at the counter. Not a compliment, exactly. An observation. Priya follows her gaze.

"The kettle is the same model," Priya says.

"I know," Juliet says. Something passes between them — the particular exchange of people who speak the same technical language and occasionally like to confirm this — and then it's done and they accept their coffees and step aside to let the space do its work. Briefly. They then proceed to discuss grinders, employee training steps, bean sourcing, and several other things that Emmy does not need to be mentally present for. Instead she steps back and watches her friend and her wife connect over shared ground.

#

Mags comes at four.

She comes through the front door of The Bloom with the unhurried quality of someone who has watched this space be various things over the years and is now assessing its latest version. She looks at the counter, recalling all of the various notions that had been on it when it was home to a yarn shop. She looks at the menu, noting that the short-lived gastropub also had hung their menu off the same hooks. One can even still see the steampunk inspiration of them. She accepts the cup that Priya offers and drinks it standing near the window. A window that had once rivaled her own when this space had been a fashion boutique. As she stands there, she looks out at the street — her street, next door — with the expression of someone taking a measurement. She hopes that her and Priya may be neighbors for a long time. The street needs stability.

"It's proper," she says finally, which in Mags's register is not faint praise.

"Thank you," Priya says.

Mags finishes the coffee. She sets the cup down with the deliberate care she gives to things made well. "Good neighbor," she says — to Priya, but also apparently to the room in general — and returns to the bookshop without further ceremony.

Emmy looks at Juliet.

"High praise," Juliet says.

"The highest," Emmy agrees.

#

Rob arrives at quarter past four with his jacket and his notebook and the particular Rob energy of someone who is entering a space for the first time and has not yet decided what to make of it. He had been told that Emmy & Juliet would be there forty-five minutes earlier, and he had promised to arrive around the same time. But Rob is carried upon his own Rob timetable. Bursting through the door, he looks around — the equipment, the menu, the people — and his eyes find Emmy and Juliet and he makes his way over with the ease of someone arriving at a known point in an unknown room.

"This is great," he says.

"Don't touch anything," Emmy says.

"I wasn't going to—"

"You were going to touch the kettle."

Rob looks at the kettle. The kettle is beautiful. Rob's hand has not moved, but the hand has considered. "I wasn't going to touch it," he says.

They get him a coffee. He drinks it with the quality of someone who has been in their house enough Wednesdays to have developed genuine opinions about pour-over, and his opinions are visible on his face: this is good; Priya's coffee is possibly better than Juliet's.

He does not say this. He is not entirely unaware of what room he is in. He doesn't exactly fear his sister-in-law, but he does feel she is better as an ally.

#

The error happens about twenty minutes later, when Rob is standing near the counter watching Priya make a second round and feeling, apparently, that he has something to contribute. Rob hasn't ever been explicitly accused of mansplaining, but he's come close in an "ask a question to set up a contribution" way.

"Do you use boiling water?" he asks. Genuinely curious. The tone of someone who has picked up enough to ask follow-up questions and not yet enough to know which follow-up questions to avoid.

Priya sets down the kettle. She turns to look at him with the specific expression of someone who has heard this question before and has a prepared answer and does not soften the answer for the sake of the asker's feelings.

"Ninety-three to ninety-six degrees Celsius," she says. "Not boiling. Boiling is a hundred degrees and it burns the grounds — you get bitter, over-extracted flavor. The misconception persists because people assume hotter equals better extraction, but extraction efficiency isn't linear with temperature. The sweet spot is just off the boil. Every time."

Rob is quiet for a moment. If he had a line loaded up and ready to use, something about Priya's response has disarmed it.

So he does not say oh I knew that. He does not redirect, or soften the correction with a joke, or perform any of the social maneuvers that people perform when they have said the wrong thing in front of someone who knows the right thing. He looks at her steadily and he says: "I didn't know that. What happens above ninety-six?"

A fraction of a beat. Not long. The length of someone registering a thing they did not expect.

"The phenolic compounds break down," Priya says. "You lose the floral notes. The coffee tastes flat." She picks up the kettle again. "Why?"

"I want to understand it," Rob says. "Not just know it."

This pleases his host. "I knew there was a good reason to invite you beyond being my friend's brother," she replies.

He had his notebook out by the time she begins explaining. He had finished writing as she finished her compliment.

Emmy, on the other side of the room, is watching Juliet examine the menu. She is also watching, in her peripheral vision, the counter, and what is happening at the counter. She says nothing. She drinks her coffee. She files it in the way she files certain things: carefully, without comment, in the specific folder that she is becoming increasingly aware is filling up.

"Good coffee," she says to Juliet.

"Yes," Juliet says, still reading the menu.

#

The afternoon: the October light doing what October light does to a street that has been gathering warmth since June — giving it back at a slant, the particular gold of a late-year afternoon that knows it is one of the last ones. The two shops next to each other, both lit, both occupied, the bookshop's bay window with its autumn display and The Bloom's clean front and the people moving between them with the ease of people in a place that has been thought about.

Emmy stands at the window for a moment with her second coffee and looks at it: Marlowe Street on a Friday in October. Mags's bookshop. The Bloom. The florist with its opinions about seasonal flowers. The people she loves on the same street at the same time. Tomorrow Juliet turns twenty-one. Monday Emmy turns twenty-three.

She thinks about toast. Not for the first time this week.

The thought arrives and she lets it arrive. It goes next to the other thing she has been turning over — the resolution she made lying in the dark after Sunday's conversation, the file that is getting specific, the choice she knows she will have to make about how to proceed. She is not ready yet. But she is closer.

Rob is still at the counter. Priya is explaining something about grind size. He is writing it down.

Emmy turns away from the window.

"Ready?" Juliet says, from her elbow.

"Almost," Emmy says. She looks at the room once more — the whole of it, the people and the equipment and the October light coming through and Priya in her space and Rob at the counter with his notebook — and she thinks: this is what it looks like when things are becoming what they're going to be.

"Now," she says, taking Juliet's arm. "Let's go."

* * *