Sleeping In
Ethan held the coffee grinder over the kitchen sink so it wouldn’t resonate through the counter-top—one, two, three seconds, all the way to thirty-one. Courtney was still in bed, comforter pulled up to her chin. She liked to see the grounds as fine as espresso.
The rest of their building was sleeping, too. It was a U-shaped building, squared off around a courtyard. The superintendent had staked out a half-dozen tomato plants in pots down in the courtyard. The plants were in shadow most of the day, but you had to work with what you had. In the kitchen windowsill across the ‘U’ from Ethan and Courtney, as usual on Saturdays and Sundays there was a bottle of antacid.
“Brenda Starr was out again last night.” Ethan brought Courtney her mug, half filled with coffee, half with one-percent milk, heated, with whole milk foam around the top.
They referred to the woman across the ‘U’ as Brenda Starr. She had red hair and once Ethan had seen her speaking into a Dictaphone.
“You notice her every weekend.” Courtney blew lightly across her foam.
“Do I?” Ethan liked teasing her. At first, he’d worried that she didn’t like teasing.
“Every weekend.”
“I hadn’t noticed I noticed,” Ethan said.
“You do.”
From then on, he did.
