The burrs finally gave out on a Friday.
Takeshi had been listening to the grinder's warning for three weeksâthe thin metallic whine that appeared every twenty or thirty shots, barely audible under the espresso machine's hiss, the refrigerator's hum, the general noise of a morning cafe. He'd noted it. Added it to the list. The list lived in the back of his mind in a section labeled *Things That Will Cost Money*, a section that had grown so crowded the items had started bleeding into each other.
At 7:52 AM, mid-pull for the second table's order, the grinder made a sound like something small being stepped on and stopped.
He tried the switch twice. Then a third time, because that was what you did.
Nothing.
---
Kenji came in from the back carrying a tray of clean cups. He looked at Takeshi. He looked at the grinder. He set the cups down very carefully.
"How bad?"
"I don't know yet."
Takeshi pulled the hopper off and turned the unit over on the counter. The undercarriage was dark with grounds, the burr ring coated in old coffee oil that had gone from brown to black. He'd been cleaning itâmonthly, as recommendedâbut at some point in the last several months, monthly had become *when I can get to it*, and he hadn't gotten to it since before Yuki died.
"Burrs," he said. "Maybe the motor."
"I'll call Nishimura-san." Kenji was already reaching for his phone. Nishimura ran the equipment repair shop two streets over, a man of approximately sixty who communicated primarily through sharp exhales and the word *hmm*.
"He'll want to come in person."
"Then I'll ask him to come in person." Kenji turned away to make the call, which was its own kind of mercy. Watching Takeshi do nothing while someone solved a problem for him was uncomfortable for both of them.
Table two got americanos instead. The couple accepted this with the polite resignation of people who were only here for the quiet, not the coffee. Takeshi thanked them and returned to the counter.
---
The morning moved around the broken grinder the way water moves around a stone.
Mr. Watanabe arrived at 7:14, as always. His newspaper was tucked under his left arm. He looked at the grinder sitting on the back counter, separated from its usual position, hopper off and innards exposed.
"Equipment trouble."
"The burrs," Takeshi said.
"Hmm." He settled into his chair. "I had a watch repaired once. The repairman said: the mechanism fails when it's overdue attention. He meant the watch."
Takeshi brought his coffee. Mr. Watanabe returned to the weather page.
The regular 8:30 crowd thinned to the 10:00 crowd thinned to the early lunch stragglers. Nishimura arrived at 11:15 with a canvas bag and the expression of a doctor called to a scene he'd been expecting for some time. He said nothing for the first four minutes while he examined the grinder, producing only a series of small soundsâclicks of his tongue, the occasional sharp exhale.
"Motor is fine," he said finally.
"That's something."
"Burrs are finished. The cleaning scheduleâ" He turned the burr ring over in his hands. "When did you last deep-clean this?"
Takeshi didn't answer immediately. Nishimura looked at him over his glasses.
"Before March," Takeshi said. March was when Yuki had gone to the hospital for what they thought was a respiratory infection. She hadn't come home.
Nishimura set the burr ring down on the counter. "I'll have replacement burrs by next week. I can leave you a hand grinder in the meantime. It'll slow you down."
"That's fine."
"It won't make good espresso."
"I know."
The old repairman looked at him for a momentâthe same look Takeshi had seen from the pediatrician, from the school secretary, from the man at the bank who handled their accounts. The look that said *I know what happened* and *I don't know what to say about it* and *I'm going to keep going with the transaction as though neither of us noticed I was looking at you like that*.
"Next week," Nishimura said, and repacked his bag.
---
The hand grinder sat on the counter like an accusation.
It was a good hand grinderâNishimura had lent him one of the better models, a quiet acknowledgment of the situation that required no words. But good or not, hand-ground coffee at cafe volume was slow work. Each order took longer. The line backed up once, briefly, around noon, before the lunch crowd dispersed and left the cafe to its afternoon quiet.
Kenji handled the counter without complaint. He'd been doing this for ten years, longer than some of the regulars had been coming in. He knew which tasks to pick up before being asked, which problems to solve invisibly, andâcruciallyâwhen to leave Takeshi alone with whatever was going on behind his eyes.
What was going on behind Takeshi's eyes: a number.
Forty thousand yen. Replacement burrs. Which meant the equipment fund, which meant the equipment fund was now empty, which meant when the refrigeration unit started making its occasional shudderâa sound Takeshi had also been cataloguing, also adding to the listâhe would have nothing to draw on.
He ground coffee by hand and thought about money and didn't think about the cultural showcase, because he had made a note of the cultural showcaseâ4:00 PM, Hana's schoolâand the note was in his phone and his phone was in his pocket and he was at the cafe and the cafe needed him here, needed him present, and it was only 1:30 and there was plenty of time.
---
At 2:15, a woman called to ask about renting the cafe for a private event.
She had a pleasant voice and a clear idea of what she wanted. A birthday dinner for twelve, late March, the back section if possible, she'd seen photos online and the atmosphere was exactly right.
"We don't do private events," Takeshi said.
A pause. "I saw on your websiteâ"
"The website is out of date." He paused. "I apologize. We changed our offerings last year."
They hadn't changed their offerings last year. They had simply stopped having the capacity to manage private events after Yuki died, because Yuki had been the one who managed themâthe planning, the special menus, the particular warmth she'd brought to the room when it was full of someone else's celebration. Without her, the logistics of a private event were a problem he hadn't found the bottom of.
The woman thanked him and hung up.
Takeshi stood behind the counter, dish towel in hand, and looked at the hand grinder.
He should update the website. The website still had a photograph of the display case that Yuki had taken herself, the pastry selection arranged with the care of someone who understood that how things looked was part of how they tasted. The display case currently held a careful arrangement of purchased items that were, he thought, adequate. Not hers. Adequate.
He should update the website.
He had been saying this since April.
---
At 3:40, his phone buzzed.
He was in the back doing inventory, counting coffee bags with the methodical focus of someone using the task as a lid to hold everything down. The buzz registered. He thought: *the note. The showcase. 4:00.* He thought: *I have twenty minutes, I could close early, Kenji could close, Kenji has done it before.*
Then: the 4:00 PM order that was supposed to be picked up, the corporate account that always paid late but always paid, the inventory that wasn't going to count itself.
He pressed the phone face-down against the shelf.
*After this*, he thought. *I'll check after this.*
---
The inventory took until 4:30.
He knew, when he picked the phone back up, that it was already over. He had known since 4:05 and chosen to keep counting coffee bags anyway, and that knowing and that choosing were the same thing, and both of them would require answering for later.
No calls. No messages. Just the calendar notification he'd dismissed without reading.
He set the phone back in his pocket and went out to help Kenji wipe down the tables for the afternoon slowdown.
The cafe was quiet. Outside, the light had shifted to the flat gray of mid-afternoon, the particular light that reminded him of nothing in particular and everything at once. Two customers at separate tables. The refrigeration unit running its usual hum plus the occasional shudder that he was cataloguing, adding to the list.
"Go home," Kenji said, not looking up from the table he was wiping. "I can close."
"I'll stay."
Kenji straightened and looked at him directly, which he rarely did. "You've been standing in one place for twenty minutes. Go home."
Takeshi looked at the counter. The hand grinder. The display case with its adequate arrangement.
"I'll stay," he said.
Kenji went back to wiping tables. He knew where the walls were.
---
Hana walked through the front door at 5:03.
She didn't look at him. She was still in her school uniform, her bag hanging from one shoulder, her hair pulled back the way she wore it when she was trying to look older than sixteen. She walked to the counter and picked up a glass of water without askingâshe'd been doing this since she was small, the cafe had always been hers as much as hisâand drank half of it standing up.
Then she set the glass down and went through the back door without a word.
Takeshi watched the door close.
"There was a showcase at her school today," Kenji said, quietly, from somewhere behind him. He was facing the window, ostensibly organizing the condiment station. "I saw it on the calendar last week. She was in it."
Takeshi said nothing.
The condiment station required no further organization. Kenji finished whatever he was doing and carried the tray to the back.
Takeshi stood at the counter. The cafe door had a small window at eye level, wire-reinforced glass, the kind that let light through but blurred everything outside into shapes. Through it, the street was a soft gray movement of shadowsâpeople walking home, a bicycle, the last afternoon light thinning out.
He picked up the dish towel.
He started wiping the counter, slowly, in circles, the way he always did when he didn't know what else to do with his hands.
