Written as part of a story, originally, I am thinking this could make a nice armature for an essay.
Karda walked across the living room, past the island into the kitchen. She turned on the machine to warm up, and busied herself – yes, here are the beans, I hope they’re not too old, and here are the cups. She poked among them, looking for birds, and pulled two out. She dumped the beans into the grinder that, according to Theodore, cost as much as the espresso machine. She hit the button, and the whir of the grinder took her back in time to so many mornings where it signaled that Theodore was up and about. She slid the tray out of the grinder and tapped the coffee into the portafilter. She gently tamped it down. She could hear Theodore in her memory: “Don’t use too much pressure when you tamp – you need to get the grind right. Soft is the way to go; brute force doesn’t get good results.”
A soft rising whistle – Theodore said it was a leak in the boiler – alerted her that the machine was almost up to temperature. She twisted in the portafilter, watched for the heating light to go out, and flipped the switch. The pump throbbed, groaning as it forced the water through the puck of grounds, pouring out twin brown streams of espresso into two demitasses. She shut off the pump, and was pleased to see the velvety brown foam – Theodore called it crema – floating atop the espresso, a sign that it was well-brewed. With a small feeling of victory, she carried them back to living room and set a cup in front of Dexter. “Thank you, thank you.” He held it up, eyes closed, inhaling. “Yes, perfect.” He held the cup higher, and opened his eyes. “Ah, the thrush cup. Look at him there. Half hidden among the vines, with a berry in his mouth. You can almost see him move. And you’ve got the goldfinch cup. See, it’s hanging upside down, ready to pluck seeds out of the heart of a sunflower. We’d take espresso in the morning together, sometimes, out on the terrace, with birdsong in the background. Sometimes,” he leaned forwards confidentially, “it seemed like the birds on the cups were singing too.”
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