Chapter 60: Quote II
The bookies doorway was the only 2 feet of pavement on that road out of the wind, so that’s where he rang her from.
Wedged into the tiled reveal with fag ends stubbed out along the bottom and a laminated coupon peeling off the glass by his ear.
Every time somebody went in, the heat came out over him with the noise, the fan over the door and the fruit machine cycling its attract loop and a race going on 4 screens with the sound off while one bloke told another one watch this, watch, watch.
Sandra picked up on the 5th ring.
Behind her: a grinder going, the bang bang of a portafilter getting knocked out, cups down on saucers, somebody shouting two eggs on brown.
That noise. Not the counter, not the machine. That’s what I’m buying.
He read the 3 numbers out.
"First one’s having you," Sandra said. "9 minutes, cash, no certificate. He’ll do you a lash-up and be uncontactable by March."
"That’s what I thought."
"Third’s about the going rate, but he was an hour late to a job he wanted. So what’s he like once he’s got your money?" Somebody said something and she said two secs, love, it’s on. "Second one’s dear because he’s telling you what’s actually wrong. Which is annoying, because it means it is."
"Take the £11,400."
"Take the £11,400. In writing. Thirds, and not a penny up front." A pause. "And when your machine trips the board at half 8 with 9 people stood waiting, that’s your name gone in one morning round here."
"Sandra."
"What."
"Why are you helping me?"
Long enough that he thought the line had gone. A tray went over at her end, CLATTER, a small ironic cheer went up, and she waited it out.
"Because somebody did it for me in 1994," she said. "And she’s dead now, so I can’t pay her back, can I."
Click.
He wrote THIRDS against his own knee and underlined it twice, rubbed out the £6,000 he’d guessed at, put £11,400 over the top.
£57,000 became £62,400.
His hands had gone useless with the cold and it came out looking like a kid had written it.
Something else’ll go wrong.
£65,000 then.
Behind him the door went and a man came out counting a slip and said "’scuse me, mate," and Danny got out of his own doorway and went back to work.
The shop had a smell he’d stopped noticing until he came in from the cold and got it fresh.
Old fryer fat gone up into the plaster, and cold brick under that, and something sweetish off the drain in the back kitchen that Errol had sniffed once and gone mm about in a way Danny had not enjoyed.
The ceiling was the problem.
He was up the ladder with his thumbnail in it, trying to work out plaster or artex or something worse, when Keisha rang. The aluminium was cold enough through his jeans that he kept shifting his knee off it.
"Sandra gave me your number." No hello at all. "You’ve bought the corner on the sunny side."
"That’s right."
"And you’ve never run a café."
"Never."
"Right." Behind her a steam wand going, SHHHHKKK, then cutting out. Somebody asking for oat, somebody else saying we’ve only got the barista one, is that all right?
"Hold on." Muffled, off the phone: yeah, 2 secs, I’m on my break, I am literally on my break. Then back. "What’s your concept?"
My what?
"Sorry?"
"Your concept. Speciality? Third wave? Or is it a caff? Because they’re not the same shop, people think they are, and then they open something that’s neither and shut in a year."
Danny looked down the ladder at his own floor, at the lino curling at the edge by the hatch and the grey dust in a drift against the skirting where he’d swept it and never picked it up.
"It’s a caff," he said.
"6 o’clock start. Tea in mugs. Bacon roll. Toasted teacakes, because there’s a woman who came here every Thursday for 16 years and hasn’t had anywhere to go since it shut."
Out the front window the 63 pulled in and knelt with a hiss. "But the coffee’s good. Properly good. Everywhere round here that does a decent flat white shuts at 4 and charges £4 for it, and the blokes coming off nights can’t get one anywhere."
The steam wand stopped on her end.
"Say that again."
He said it again.
"Who told you to say that?"
"Nobody."
"Hm."
She’s coming.
Half a second before she spoke, and he’d had it off her the way he’d have had it off a face behind a door.
"What beans?"
"Don’t know."
"What roaster?"
"Don’t know."
"Machine?"
"Don’t know. Sandra says don’t skimp."
"What’s your menu?"
He opened his mouth and shut it.
"Haven’t got one."
"No," Keisha said. "You haven’t." A bus went past on her end. "Right. I’m coming to look. Saturday, 10. Promising nothing. And don’t buy a machine before I’ve seen where that counter’s going, because if it’s where I think it is you’ll drop 90 seconds on every order and you’ll lose the 8:15 rush inside a fortnight."
"It’s going by the window."
"Which way’s the machine facing?"
"Don’t know."
"No. You don’t."
Click.
He came down the ladder with his knee gone dead and stood on the lino stamping it while the road went past outside.
He locked up at 4:10 with his hands too cold to feel the key. Clunk.
Ray was pulling the shutter down next door. Rattle-rattle-CRASH.
"Night, Danny."
"Night, Ray."
The scooter seat had gone hard from sitting out since 7. Engine caught second time and settled into that flat rattle it did under 30, and the bars were freezing through his gloves before the end of the road.
November. Half 4. Light already gone.
Up through Bermondsey with everything lit. Chicken shop extractor over a doorway, thick enough to taste through the helmet. A bloke outside a Costcutter doing two languages at once on speakerphone.
Music out of a car with the window down in November, doof, doof, doof, driver not bothered who minded, and a train going over the viaduct with all its windows lit and full of people looking at nothing.
His visor fogged at every red light. He cracked it and the cold came straight in at his eyes.