Dennis's hand was already on the handle before he checked his watch, which read 7:08, which was the same as yesterday. The newspaper under his arm still had its rubber band on. Through the fogged glass he could see a white mug already sitting at the fourth stool from the left, steam coming off it, nobody in the seat yet.
He settled onto the fourth stool and the electrical tape caught his coat the same way it always did. Carla set the mug down without looking - the way you'd set a key in a lock you know by feel, and said, "Roy burned the rye again, so. " Dennis unfolded the paper and smoothed the crease against the counter and didn't answer, because there was nothing to answer - and she was already gone.
Tuesday after Tuesday the laminated menu stayed behind the napkin holder where Carla had pushed it in March. She'd stopped asking about the eggs. His coat went on the same hook, the third one, the one with the crack in the plastic where somebody had hung something too heavy, and she'd have the pot tilted before he'd finished unwinding his scarf.
He got the coat off somehow and hung it crooked on the third hook and didn't fix it. Carla watched the door to the kitchen for a moment, then watched the counter - then went and got the bread. The ticket she wrote out said *the usual* and nothing else, and she put it face-down under the sugar caddy where Roy wouldn't see the price she hadn't written.
The toast had a dark stripe across one corner where the element ran hot. He put both hands around the mug and the radio above the pass-through was doing the weather, same voice it always was, and the kid in the back booth dropped a fork and nobody picked it up right away. His shoulders went down and he looked at the stripe on the toast like he was deciding something, and then he wasn't deciding anything - and the steam came up around his face.
He left the rubber band on the counter beside the mug, coiled where he'd slipped it off and never gotten around to using it for anything. The four singles lay flat, pressed down at the corners the way you'd press a letter you meant. Carla came around with the pot and saw the toast, the torn corner, and set the pot down for a moment without pouring anything. Then she picked up the rubber band and put it in her apron pocket and went back to the kitchen.
The hook was still crooked when he came back Wednesday - coat hanging the same slant, and Carla had left the rubber band coiled on the counter in exactly the spot where he always set down his keys.
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Dennis's hand was already on the handle before he checked his watch, which read 7:08, which was the same as yesterday. The newspaper under his arm still had its rubber band on. Through the fogged glass he could see a white mug already sitting at the fourth stool from the left, steam coming off it - nobody in the seat yet.
He settled onto the fourth stool and the electrical tape caught his coat the same way it always did.
The following Thursday he came in at 7:11 and Carla had already moved the mug three stools down, where the morning light came through the window and sat on the counter like a warm hand, and when he looked at her she shrugged one shoulder toward the glass and said, "Sun," and he moved without a word and settled onto the seventh stool and the light fell across the back of his hands and he left it there.
He came in on a Friday once with his left hand wrapped in a dish towel - two fingers taped together with the white medical kind, and sat down without saying anything about it. Carla set the mug down and then set a straw beside it, still in the paper sleeve, without looking at his hand or at him. The straw sat there between them. He picked it up after a moment and turned it end over end and then set it back down, and she went to check on the kid in the back booth - and that was all there was to it.
Carla came in on a Tuesday with her hair cut short, the kind of short that changes a face, and Dennis looked up from the paper and then looked back down at the paper and after a moment said, "Hm," the way you'd say it about a headline - and she set the pot down and touched the back of her neck where the hair used to be and said, "Roy didn't notice either," and went to get the bread.
He brought two newspapers one morning, set the second one flat on the stool beside him without explanation, and when the young woman in the green coat came through the door at 7:22 and looked around at the stools - Carla tilted her head toward the second paper and the woman sat down next to it like she'd been expected.
He came in the morning after the ice storm, coat dark at the shoulders from where he'd stood outside the hardware store waiting for them to open, and sat down and the mug was already there but she'd put a folded paper towel under it to soak the ring, because the counter had gone soft in that spot from the heat, and beside the mug she'd left the rubber band from Wednesday's newspaper - the one he'd set down and forgotten, coiled in the same place she always left it now. He looked at it for a moment. He didn't pick it up. He smoothed the paper towel flat with two fingers instead, the way you'd straighten a thing that was already straight, and left it there under the mug like it had been his idea.
Carla was out sick on a Thursday and the man who filled in had a mustache and didn't know about the fourth stool or the seventh one or any of it, and he set the mug down at the far end near the register and said - "Anywhere you like," and Dennis stood at the counter for a moment with his coat still on and his newspaper still banded and looked at the empty fourth stool and then at the mug at the far end and then sat on the fourth stool anyway and left the mug where it was.
