He let himself have three full seconds of it. Then she turned. She saw him. The same smile arrived. The one from the first morning.
The one that was not the boardroom smile or the press conference smile or even the warm, careful smile she wore in public when she was being genuinely kind. This was the other one. The older one, the one that arrived before she could decide whether or not to produce it. The one that was just hers, unmistakable and unmanaged. She tilted her head.
Were you watching me? She said. He looked at the stove. He looked at the coffee situation. He looked back at her.
I was watching you stir my coffee again, he said. She looked down at the spoon in her hand with the expression of someone who has been caught at something they would prefer to believe they were not doing. I wasn't stirring, she said. I You were stirring. I was checking the consistency with a spoon.
That's what spoons are for. Not in a percolator. You're very opinionated about coffee. You've been making it wrong for 8 months. She set the spoon down with great dignity.
I've been making it my way for 8 months. Your way produces smoke twice. She said the smoke happened twice. You've mentioned it approximately 40 times because it was memorable. She crossed her arms and looked at him with the particular expression she wore when she was deciding whether to argue or laugh.
And he had learned over 8 months that she almost always laughed. Though she never let it happen without a fight, she laughed. The real one, the unguarded one that arrived before she could curate it. It filled his kitchen completely and then settled into the warm, ordinary air of a Saturday morning, and she looked slightly surprised by it the way she still sometimes did, as though each time she was briefly astonished that this was still a thing she could do, he came to the stove. She stepped aside, the same gracious mock flourish she had used the first time, and he took the percolator and assessed the damage and determined it was recoverable and adjusted the heat and started fresh.
She leaned against the counter beside him. They stood in companionable silence for a moment. The committee meeting went well this week, she said. It did. Guadalupe's proposal for the direct flag system.
It's good. It needs one more revision on the timeline, but the structure is right. She's remarkable. She's been remarkable for 6 years. He said, "She just finally has somewhere for it to go."