Various Flavors of Coffee by Anthony Capella Read Free Book Online Page A

other affairs to attend to. You two carry on.” I was to discover that this was typical of him—he was unable to persevere at any task for more than an hour or so; the consequence, in part, of having so many calls upon his time, but also because he was predisposed to the excitement of novelty. Now he strode to the door and pulled it open. “Jenks?” he called. “Jenks, where are you?”
    Then he was gone.
    I looked at Emily. She kept her gaze on her pad. “I have been trying,” I said softly, “to fix in my mind a word which would describe the precise color of your eyes.”
    She stiffened, and I saw a little color rise in her cheeks as she bent over her notebook.
    “They too are a kind of gray,” I suggested. “But brighter, I think, than charcoal or Cornish slate.”
    There was a moment’s silence.Then she said,“We should continue, Mr.Wallis.We have much to do.”
    “Of course. In any case, it is not a question that should be hurried. I shall need to give the matter much further thought.”
    “Please, do not do so on my account.” There was a hint of ice in her voice.“There is no need to put yourself to the trouble.”
    “No, it will be a pleasure.”
    “But perhaps in the meantime, we might return our thoughts to the color of these beans.”
    “You are a hard taskmaster, Miss Pinker.”
    “I am merely aware that the task before us is a considerable one.” “Considerable, perhaps, but not irksome,” I said gallantly. “No
    labor could be tedious in such company.”
    “But I fear I am becoming a distraction to you.” The hint of ice had become positively arctic.“Perhaps I should see if Mr. Jenks or Mr. Simmons is free to take my place—”
    “No need,” I said hastily.“I will attend to my duties all the more conscientiously because you have commanded it.”
    We stared at the heaps of gray-green raw beans. Neither of us, I am sure, was thinking about coffee. I stole another glance at her.
    “Whereas the color of your cheeks,” I said,“puts me in mind of the ripening of an apple—”
    “Mr. Wallis.” She slammed her pad forcefully on the table. “If my cheeks have color in them, it is because I am angry at you for continuing to tease me like this.”
    “Then I apologize. I meant no harm. Quite the reverse, in fact.” “But you must see,” she said in a low, urgent voice,“that you are putting me in an impossible position. If I leave the room, my father will want to know why, and then he will dismiss you, and the Guide will not get written, and that is a responsibility I do not want. Yet if I stay, I am effectively at your mercy, and from your conduct so far this morning I cannot help but suspect you will
    take advantage of that to tease me even more.”
    “I swear on my honor that I shall do no such thing.” “You must promise to disregard my sex entirely.”
    “I had thought you too modern to shrink like a violet from a perfectly natural attraction on my part. However, if you prefer it I shall in future try to think of you as if you were a boy.”
    She gave me a suspicious look, but lifted her pencil over her pad. “These beans . . .” I picked up a handful and closed my fist around them, shaking them. “We might compare their color to
    leaves.”
    “In what way?”
    “New leaf is pale green. Summer leaf, of course, is darker.
    Autumn leaf is more like the paler, more yellow beans.” “Very well.” She wrote it down.
    “And so we come to aroma. For that, I think, we must prepare some samples.”
    “I will light the burner.”
    She busied herself boiling water, and I watched her. I had been wrong when I considered that those Rational garments of hers did not flatter her. Rather, the absence of a corset, whilst it might deprive her of the voluptuous silhouette which until recently had been the fashion, allowed one to appreciate what her natural shape would be—in other words, her naked figure. She was slender: bony, some might say. Even her haunches, as she leaned