3: Outside in

My friends, my guests, welcome back to Café Blablabla. I’m your host, Adrienne Anderson. Let’s see where we left off…

I sank into the canvas sling of my chair and pondered the situation. “The Remains of the Day is a profoundly compelling portrait of the perfect English butler and of his fading, insular world in postwar England…” went the back cover. Not exactly a huge help. The Vanderpeel office said Martine wanted me to incorporate something about a pantry into the cafe design. Cryptic as usual. Everything with her is such a wild goose chase. What the client wants the client gets, I suppose. I spun my espresso cup around its saucer and turned to a random page –

As I remember, it was one morning a little while after my father and Miss Kenton had joined the staff, I had been in my pantry, sitting at the table, when I heard –

A knock on the glass interrupted the morning stillness. I peeked through the paper to see a van roll to a stop beyond the sidewalk garden. The word VIPER was painted on the side: Vlad and Walter, here with the new windows. Early as usual. They wiped their boots on the grass mat as I propped the door open with a sandbag.

“So. You want where?”

“Let’s start near the shop end, not the cafe,” I said. “Though I suppose it doesn’t really matter, they’re all getting replaced. Whatever you think is best.”

I returned to my book –

– when I heard a knock on my door. I recall I was a little taken aback when Miss Kenton opened the door and entered before I had bidden her to do so. She came in holding a vase of large flowers and said with a –

“Sign here,” Vlad held out the work order on a clipboard.

“There’s no way you’re done,” I said.

I put down the book and peeled back the film on one of the new panes.

“No, no, no…this is all wrong. These are backwards! The mirror side is supposed to face out! Don’t you have the plans?”

Across the glass my eyes darted to Vlad’s, two black dots hovering over my shoulder. In the pristine reflection I couldn’t have seen more clearly how the slowness of his own shrug, the attempt to care, caused him a discomfort bordering on pain. Out of sight, a pen clicked.

“Bird laws. No mirrors outside.”

He zigzagged a glossy fingernail where he wanted me to sign.

Through the open door I heard leaves rustling and the echoes of the morning mail tram's bell. Ahead of the rising sun its amber headlights melted the boulevard's everlingering mist.

“Got it,” said Walter, game as always, wheeling the bin out to collect our drop. How could these two be so different. How can they even co-exist? Why could Vlad not just...retire, disappear?

It was another package with an Amsterdam postmark and a slip of paper tucked into the folds. I slid Vlad’s clipboard into his waiting hands and flipped the parcel over to find the customs declaration: fitness manual. Value $800. Martine.

“Body by Schopenhauer,” I rolled my eyes. “Not today.”

Or ever, I thought as I tossed it in the outgoing bin along with the tumbleweeds of window paper Walter was gathering from the floor. We’ll roll it all down to The Maw when they open.

The steam wand hissed. I hadn’t even noticed Otto slither in. The chef wasn’t far behind. She heaved a bag from the market on to the counter. It smelled like hot rain on a car engine. Cumin branches again? Still in her resin phase? No, something more perfumed than that. It was pine.

She spiked the receipt and began to unpack. Otto had turned from the espresso machine to the hearth and was arranging kindling on the oven floor with the care of an ikebana master, judging each placement just so. A tip of one arm, a few crumpled newsletters, a match dragged across the brick – the paper crackled to life and the words traveled up the chimney and across the city.

My god, we open in an hour.

“Mirrors,” nodded the chef, miming a curtsy to the VIPER van pulling away from the curb as she buttoned the side of her apron.

“Well, it wasn’t supposed to be like this…”

She had already turned without letting me finish and began to write the first menu item on the board:

PINESCONES

I picked up The Remains. I guess it’s time to build a kitchen.