Клео Коул - Espresso Shot

The drip coffeemaker stank of mildew. It probably hadn’t been cleaned since the Carter administration. And the beans on the counter were nearly as old. The French roast was a quality Arabica, purchased from the Whole Foods Market in the basement. The beans might have been okay if the vacuum bag hadn’t been left wide open (air and light being the enemies of freshness). I sniffed the shrunken black gravel and gagged at the level of bitterness.

Great.

Nunzio was an Italian artist, born and raised in a country with over 200,000 espresso bars and a century-old tradition of serious java making. If I served him this swill, he’d probably spit it out right in front of me.

I considered my options and had a thought.

“Terri, you have a product closet here, don’t you?” (I remembered Matt scoring a few choice items when Breanne invited him to peruse the thing.)

“That’s right,” Terri said. “It’s down the hall.”

“Show me.”

It took me all of three minutes to dig among the straightening wands, kitchen appliances, shower attachments, and exercise devices to find a home espresso maker, sent gratis to the magazine in hopes of getting a mention in Trend ’s Hot Products page. As a bonus, I even found a set of espresso cups and a serving tray. Terri helped me carry everything to the break room, where I hurriedly set it up.

“Do you know where Bouchon Bakery is, Terri?”

“You’re kidding, right? Everyone in this building knows where it is: right downstairs in the lobby shops, follow the smell of warm croissants.”

I fished out some cash (after all, if Bree could buy me a $900 outfit, the least I could do was spring for some decent joe). “Go down to the bakery’s take-out counter and buy a package of their whole bean coffee—”

“Their what?”

“Bouchon doesn’t just peddle éclairs and tartlets. They sell freshly roasted coffee beans in small bags. Ask for whole bean. Not preground and not decaffeinated.”

“Whole bean. Not decaf. Got it,” Terri said, giving me a team-player thumbs-up.

Bouchon Bakery was run by Thomas Keller, one of the greatest American chefs alive. And the coffee beans I’d just sprung for weren’t only served at the man’s bakery twenty-two floors below me, they were artisan roasted by the same woman-owned company that provided the coffees for Keller’s French Laundry in California and his Per Se in New York, two of the finest restaurants in the country.

No home espresso unit could summon the level of heat and pressure of a professional machine. But the premium Bouchon beans would help overcome the limitations of the method. Even if the home machine extracted half of what was present, I figured I’d get some magnificent, mood-altering cups for Nunzio.

Terri was gone and back in under ten minutes. “Nunzio’s arrived, Clare. He’s been escorted to Breanne’s office already. I better get back there.”

As Terri raced off, I opened the bag of magic beans and went to work.

The Bouchon House Blend smelled heavenly: woody and sweetly dark, like caramelized nuts with traces of cocoa and spice. It was primarily a Sumatra Golden Pawani mixed with African and Latin American beans. I ground them fine, packed them into the portafilter, secured the handle, and started the pull.

While the test cup was extracting, I grabbed a lemon from the fridge and used a small knife from a cupboard to artfully corkscrew the rind. Then I reached for the first cup and tasted it.

The roast method was Viennese, which brought out the tropical wood nuances in the beans while preserving a wallop of caffeine punch. The taste profile included a hint of citrus and berry with a heavy spice finish.

Not bad!

I drew four new espressos, placed a tiny, perfect lemon rind curl on the edge of each demitasse, and set the small cups and saucers on the serving tray. Then I hoisted the tray onto my shoulder and headed down the hall.

I found Terri pacing in front of Breanne’s office. The double doors were closed, but I could hear muffled voices from the other side.

“Careful,” she whispered. “Nunzio’s in a really foul mood, and Monica hasn’t come back from the art department. The profile pages should have been here five minutes ago. See, I told you Monica can’t be trusted.”

“Open the door for me, Terri.”

She did and stood aside. Then I strode in.

Walking into Breanne’s corner office was like stepping onto a giant magic carpet floating high above Manhattan. Two of the four walls consisted of unbreakable glass. Far below me, traffic looped Christopher Columbus’s statue in a diorama of matchbox cars. Stretching out before me, the tops of Central Park’s trees sprouted newly green buds all the way to the horizon line.

If this were my office, no work would ever get done. I’d just stare out the floor-to-ceiling windows all day with a sketch pad in my lap, continually reframing the views—uptown and downtown and crosstown.

Breanne wasn’t looking at any of these sights. She was sitting tensely behind her massive glass desk, having obvious issues with the brooding sculptor, who was sprawled across the geometric lines of the art deco chair in front of her.

In his late thirties, Nunzio was clad in black Armani with a plain white T-shirt beneath. He’d chosen a fitted size, I noticed, snug enough to reveal his well-developed body. His long, wavy ebony hair was tied into an ink-black ponytail.

“Ah, at last,” Breanne said, her smile tense, her blue eyes almost pleading as she waved me in.

Holding the tray with one hand, I set my first shot in front of the editor-in-chief then turned to her jet-lagged guest. Nunzio had a broad, forceful face, not unlike the chiseled marble monument to the intrepid Italian mariner twenty-two floors below. His dark eyes were half-closed, and he barely glanced at me as I handed him one of the three remaining espresso cups.

When I’d first come through the door, Breanne had been telling him all about her wedding plans. Nunzio didn’t appear to be listening. As she resumed her chattering, the man’s large hand lifted my tiny cup to his Roman nose. He sniffed once, grunted, and downed the shot in a single gulp.

His heavy, half-closed eyelids lifted a fraction. “Mmmmm.”

While Bree continued talking, I took the empty demitasse and saucer, placed them on my tray, and handed him a second espresso. He glanced at me briefly, then one corner of his frowning mouth lifted slightly.

“Grazie,” he said.

“Prego,” I whispered.

He sipped this one slowly until it was finished. While he did, I found myself studying his hands. The man was a hardworking artisan on the rise, and his hands were amazingly muscular. I noticed thick calluses on the pads of his fingers and thumbs, wondered what his workshop looked like, what he was molding these days.

He noticed me noticing him, and his head tilted slightly. Then his artist’s gaze moved subtly down my body and up again. “Very nice,” he murmured in Italian. He drained his second cup and held it out to me.

“You’d like to offer me something more, signorina ?”

Again he’d used Italian. The tone was suggestive. I ignored it. Averting my focus downward, I placed his empty demitasse back on my tray and held out the final espresso. Nunzio intentionally overreached, moving his hand beyond the cup. His long, callused fingers lightly brushed my wrist then moved down, tickling the outside edge of my hand before taking possession of the saucer.

The contact was not subtle. The caress was deliberate and a little bit shocking. When I glanced up, his liquid-brown eyes locked on to my startled green ones. Then his lips lifted in private amusement. Obviously, the sculptor had caught me admiring his hands, so he’d decided to let me feel them, too.