Flaw
the cafe
till: open. 06:30.
long black: 10.80 (was 10.60).
noticed: 0 of 0.Dev had a theory, and the theory was the cafe.
"Every Saturday," he said. "Something's different every Saturday. Last week the muffins were smaller."
"Were they?" Mina said.
"By a bite."
"Did you measure the bite?"
"I don't need to measure a bite. I know a bite." He leaned in, low, so the counter would not hear. "Someone's running something on us."
Sal had forty minutes before the queue opened and had spent ten of them on a toastie. "Everyone's running something on you. That's most jobs."
"Not a job. A person. Somebody who sits there and decides."
"Why does it have to be a person?" Mina said.
"Because a system's no fun. You can't hate a system. You need a face."
"Says who?"
"Every film ever made."
Mina did not look up. She was reading something, and her thumb kept going.
"The man who built our screen," Sal said, "was the kindest man in the building. Brought soup in for whoever was sick. Built the thing that keeps ninety-four in a hundred coming back."
"The almost," Dev said.
"You've seen it?" said Mina.
"Everyone's seen it."
"Warm colour," Sal said. "Bar at ninety-four. One more thing."
"I've never applied for anything in my life," Dev said.
"Who said applied?" Mina said.
Dev drank his coffee.
"Anyway," Sal said. "Kind man, cruel screen. Doesn't make him a villain. Contradiction is what makes a person real."
Dev put the cup down. "That's a line."
"It's a sentence."
"That's a line. Say it again, slower."
Sal did not say it again, slower.
"Like a flaw in a stone?" Mina said, still on her phone.
Dev turned his whole chair and held up a hand, because he had one coming. "So we're all stones, and the flaws are where the light gets..."
They waited.
"Is that one finished?" Mina said.
"It was going somewhere."
"Where?"
He did not know where. He picked the cup back up.
"Other way round, anyway," Sal said.
"What is?"
"Flaw. It meant a flake first. Snow. Then a fault in a person, fifteen-eighties. Stones got the word about twenty years after. People had flaws first."
Mina had it on her screen before the sentence was finished.
"Fifteen-eighties," she said.
"I checked," Sal said. "I always check."
The door went. A man with a bike helmet under his arm came to the counter, read the board, and paid before he was asked.
"Long black's gone up," he said, and went to wait by the window.
Behind the till, Gus picked up a pencil and wrote something small in a notebook.
Dev saw it. He saw the pencil, the notebook, the board above the machine, one number newer than the rest. He saw it all at once, the way the last ten minutes of a film shows you what was there the whole time, and there was his theory, in an apron, wiping the wand.
"Mina."
"What?"
Gus looked over. Mild. The pencil was already back by the till.
All Dev had to do was get up and ask what the notebook was for.
He did not ask. Something about the twenty cents. How small it was. How carefully the number had been written back in. A villain would have gone for a dollar.
"What?" Mina said again.
"Nothing."
"That's the face," said Sal.
"There's no face."
Sal looked at the time, stood, and put the plate on the counter on the way past. Twenty minutes to the queue. Eight almosts before lunch, and one plain no somewhere in there, if anyone came in and asked for one to Sal's face.
Dev went up for another long black. He read the board first, which he did not usually do. He put down ten dollars and eighty cents. Gus looked at the twenty.
"Gone up," Dev said.
"This morning," said Gus, and wrote a two.
Dev sat back down. Mina was scrolling again.
"People had flaws first," he said, trying it. "The stones copied us."
"Is that yours?"
"It's Sal's. Rearranged."
"Then it's Sal's."
He wrote it on a napkin anyway, and folded it, and put it in his pocket with the others.
the cafe
till: close. 15:40.
long black: 10.80 (was 10.60).
noticed: 2 of 38.
tomorrow: muffin.