The clamshell wouldn't open cleanly so he used his keys, and a shard of plastic skittered across the laminate and landed in the dish rack. The machine was the color of a manila envelope. He filled the reservoir from the bathroom tap because the kitchen faucet had that slow drip we'd been ignoring since October. The receipt curled out of the bag and touched the counter, and I read the price upside down without meaning to.
The Pale Cup That Started It All
The pump made a sound like a word it couldn't finish, and then hot water hit the backsplash and ran down behind the spice rack. I stood there holding a dish towel. The cord was still warm when I wrapped it around the body, once - twice, the plug end tucking under like I was putting something to bed. The recycling bin had a torn cereal box in it and a wine bottle from his birthday, and I set the machine on top and the lid wouldn't close all the way, just rested there at an angle. Four months, almost to the week.
The one at Goodwill had a piece of masking tape on the side with 79¢ crossed out and 6. 00 written under it in ballpoint - and the switch was just a switch, orange when on, nothing else. I carried it home in a paper bag that got soft at the bottom from the rain. Five years later the switch is still orange every morning, the carafe still fogs up the same way, and the cord has a small scuff near the plug where I once caught it with the vacuum - I keep meaning to tape it and never do. It has never made a sound it wasn't supposed to make.
The grinder sits on the sill between a dead succulent and the salt shaker that lost its mate - hand-crank, wood handle worn smooth on one side where my palm always lands. I count by feel now - twelve turns, a pause, six more - the apartment filling up with something dark and almost sweet before the water has even started to rattle the kettle. The grounds come out the color of good dirt, or river mud after rain - and I tap them into the filter with two fingers the way my grandmother tapped ash. What comes out of that six-dollar machine is nothing like that first cup. I've no good explanation for it, and I've stopped needing one.
The Six-Dollar Machine on the Windowsill
A woman at the counter of the café on Delancey stopped me once and asked what I used, because I had said something, I forget what, and I told her: six dollars - Goodwill, a hand-crank from the hardware store. She looked at the hand-crank part the way people look at you when you've said something in the wrong language. She had a machine at home the size of a small refrigerator, chrome, with a screen on the front that showed the temperature of the water to one decimal place, and she went to that café every morning anyway - the paper cup leaving a ring on her leather bag. I watched her tip a dollar into the jar. The jar had a sticker on it - a cartoon sun, the kind kindergartners draw, spiky all the way around.
My brother visited in March and stood in the kitchen doorway watching me count the crank turns, and he had that look he gets, the one he wore when I bought the futon at a yard sale and it turned out to be fine. He pulled out his phone and showed me a machine he was thinking about - the listing page, and I could see in the photo it had a clock on it and a setting for bloom time and a small stainless reservoir you were supposed to descale every thirty days. I told him the grinder cost eleven dollars and he put the phone back in his pocket without saying anything, the way you set down a glass you've decided not to finish. He drank two cups and held the second one a little longer than the first. On the train home he texted me the word good, just that, lowercase - no period.
My mother called in April wanting to know what was wrong with her coffee, and I asked her to describe it, and she said it tasted like the waiting room at the DMV smells. She had bought something new, she said - a good one, she said - and I asked how much and she said never mind how much - and I knew from that. The box was still in the recycling when I visited, and I could read the price through the crinkled plastic window on the label, the kind of number that comes with a before-price crossed out in red, and next to it a photo of a steaming cup with the steam airbrushed into a little heart. We drove to the place on Route 9 with the red awning and she ordered a large and held it with both hands in the parking lot, her rings clicking against the paper - the lid not quite seated, a thin dark thread running down the side. She never mentioned the new machine again and neither did I, and the next time I came it was on the counter still, the cord wound up with a twist tie, a grocery list sitting on top of it in her handwriting.
Disclaimer
This article is for general informational purposes only and doesn't constitute professional - financial, medical, or legal advice. Consult a qualified professional about your specific situation.
