The second espresso

The second espresso is when the actual reading starts. The first one was just to settle in.

The first one is a cup with a wet ring under it on the saucer, and a paragraph you have read three times. You shrug your coat off properly. You put your phone face-down. You let the room arrange itself around you.

The second one comes ten minutes later. It is the one you actually drink. By the time it is half gone, the page you have been losing for ten minutes finally stays still. The paragraph holds. You are inside the book.

We make heavy clothes for the bodies that sit in those chairs for an hour. The kind that don't ride up at the cuff when you reach for the cup. The kind that hold their shape after you've been folded into a corner table for the afternoon. The kind a stranger across the room registers as just well-made, in a colour they couldn't name, on someone reading.

The hoodie is the constant. The book changes every week.