‘You ready?’ Luciano came through the swing doors, casting his eye over the cups, the colourful poster of the coffee flavour wheel and the box of synthetic scent tubes. He smiled at Sally under the table, who thumped her tail on the floor in return.
‘Almost. Just need the grounds.’
‘I’ll get them.’ He ran three lots of beans through the grinder and returned with small plates holding pyramids of coffee. He hummed quietly, the most relaxed Gabby had seen him, and she quietly rejoiced at finally breaking through his barriers. He tipped a portion of grounds into each cup then pulled out his tatty notebook from the back pocket of his jeans. ‘Let’s do this.’ His enthusiasm was contagious.
First, they assessed the dry matter, looking at the size of the grounds and their colour, with some nearly black and others the colour of treacle. Then they stood side by side at the bench, in front of the first of the three cups, and assumed the cupping position with their hands behind their backs. Luciano went first, bending at the waist, his nose over the cup, sniffing rapidly in and out like a dog, the standard way to inhale the aromas. Gabby followed, doing the same, feeling slightly silly as she always did. But when she closed her eyes, the aromas bloomed like fireworks through her nose and she could see them in her mind like colours. A smile broke over her lips.
It was working! She made some notes and they repeated the process for the next two cups. ‘You did a great job with these,’ she said. She carefully poured a small amount of just-boiled water into each white cup, over the grounds. They ‘broke’ the coffee – using spoons to push back and forth across the top of the cup. Then they ‘cleaned’ each cup, removing the froth and any floating bits, like skimming of the surface of soup.
‘Let’s start,’ Luciano said. ‘Ladies first.’
Gabby began at the first cup, using her spoon to lift small amounts of coffee to her lips and slurping it in as loudly as possible, to oxygenate the liquid and release more flavours. ‘Mm, good,’ she said. She continued onto the second and third cups, with Luciano following her, slurping each one. They each paused a moment to write notes, then started over with the first one. This time, with the coffee cooling, the flavours had developed just that little bit more. Gabby adjusted her notes for the second blend. Luciano did the same.
When Luciano had finished writing, Gabby spoke. ‘Shall we share what we’ve written?’
‘Ladies first,’ he repeated, grinning.
He grinned!
‘All right. I’ll start with Moody Munchkins. This is a sweeter, darker roast with a strong brown-syrup flavour, with hazelnut and malt the predominant notes, but also accents of vanilla and even smoke.’
Luciano lifted his chin, seemingly surprised but also impressed. ‘That’s exactly what I wrote.’ He handed over his notebook so she could check his inky writing.
She couldn’t help but smile with satisfaction. Although she knew her nose was special, she’d still been anxious to show Luciano what she could do. ‘Okay, let’s look at Vanishing Wizards. This is a complex roast, one that has retained acidic, fruity attributes of cherries and peaches, but also warmer spice notes of cinnamon.’
Luciano ran his hand through his hair and rubbed the back of his head. ‘Same,’ he said. ‘Though I also noted clove.’
‘Clove?’
He shrugged, as if not wanting to appear to be challenging her too much.
Gabby slurped the blend once more, swishing it around her mouth, tasting again. ‘I agree there’s something else, but I would say it was anise.’
‘Anise?’ He went to the large, laminated flavour wheel on the table and studied the picture. Gabby went to the sensory profile kit and pulled out a tube of anise and a tube of clove. She handed them both to Luciano and he slurped more coffee, swallowed and opened first the tube of clove, waving it under his nose, then the tube of anise. He stilled. His eyes flicked to hers. ‘You’re right; it’s anise.’
Gabby nodded silently, holding back her triumphant grin as much as she could, trying to be cool. ‘They’re very close. It’s an easy mistake,’ she said generously. ‘Shall we look at the last?’
‘Yes.’ He replaced the tubes into the kit.
‘Okay, Flying Monkeys is an exciting blend, I think, with definite floral notes of rose and jasmine, and a fresh apple chaser,’ she said, thoroughly enjoying herself now.
Luciano just stared at her. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘You’re right. You are one hundred per cent right. How did you … I mean, where did you learn …’
‘Oh,’ she said, vaguely. ‘It’s just a bit of a gift.’
He squinted at her as though trying to figure her out, and she suddenly felt self-conscious and vulnerable. This gift was a complicated thing and she wasn’t sure she should share where it had come from.
‘This has been great fun,’ she said, carrying the cups to the sink to be washed.
‘It has,’ he agreed. ‘I rarely come across someone who can match my cupping expertise.’
She turned away from the sink to face him.
‘Or my arrogance,’ he said, closing one eye, appalled at himself.
She laughed.
‘Sorry, that made me sound like a right tool.’
‘It’s okay. You are gifted.’ They stared at each other a moment and it was as though the ground beneath Gabby’s feet shifted. This attraction to Luciano was problematic on many levels, yet the feelings brought with them fresh hope. Hope for a future she was almost too scared to consider.
‘Well,’ he said, ‘I guess I better get back to work.’ He moved towards a bag of the Flying Monkeys blend and lifted out a scoop of beans.
‘Wait – I was thinking we should begin checking out some other cafes around the city. What are you doing for lunch?’ She heard the words coming from her mouth but could hardly believe she’d uttered them. Still, she ploughed on. ‘Can I shout you a bite to eat and a coffee somewhere?’
He paused, holding the scoop, and considered her a moment. ‘Okay.’
‘Great.’
‘Do you like seafood?’
‘If it’s cooked, yes.’
‘Have you been to Bar Carlo?’ he asked, tipping the beans back into the bag.
‘Not yet.’
A ten-minute cab ride got them there easily. Bar Carlo sat in Meyers Place, a somewhat dingy laneway of concrete, corrugated iron and roller doors, off Little Collins Street in the CBD. In contrast, the interior was dark but warm. Rustic charcoal-coloured wooden tables and soft lighting took the edge off the colour scheme of black, red and white. Living greenery softened the industrial edges of the space. They eased their way through patrons propped on stools at tables and at the bar, past rows of amber, orange and golden liqueurs illuminated behind the bartender, and found a seat at the back.
‘Is this a favourite of yours?’ she asked, studying the menu, which oozed Italian charm. She saw cicchetti – savoury snacks served on boards and plates – being delivered to others around them, and her mouth watered at the sight of the cured meats with crostini or bread rolls, figs, prosciutto, olives, cheeses and pastries.
‘I love this city for its authentic Italian food,’ he said, studying the chalkboard nearby. ‘My mamma’s face lights up whenever she connects with other Italians. I grew up spending a lot of time in these eateries.’
‘Were you born in Melbourne?’ she asked, putting her menu clipboard down.
He nodded. ‘My parents migrated here with their parents after the war.’
‘Have you been to Italy?’
‘Many times. There is so much family there. You can’t escape them,’ he said, with a small, amused smile that said, What can you do? ‘Everyone wants to show you the best of Italy.’
‘Sounds wonderful,’ she said, dreaming of sun-drenched valleys, Roman architecture and mountains of food, glorious food. ‘I’d love to go.’
‘You should,’ he said. ‘It’s the birthplace of the Australian coffee scene.’
‘Unfortunately, travel is more complicated for me t
han for most people. The potential for illness and so on.’
And just like that, reality hit. His face fell. ‘Oh, of course.’
Silence lingered between them.
‘How did you first get into roasting coffee?’ she asked, changing the topic.
‘Just one of those things, growing up with so many foodies around. One thing led to another. I was a barista first, then a friend decided to start a boutique roasting gig in his parents’ backyard and I helped him out. He taught me the basics and I got hooked. I worked my way around, did a course, started attending conferences. It’s very much a learn-on-the-job skill.’
‘But there’s real art in it,’ she said. ‘There is skill you can learn but then there’s another level of something like intuition that comes into play.’ She could see him soaking up her appreciation and his shoulders visibly relaxed.
‘What about you? Who taught you to taste?’ he said. ‘That’s quite a nose you’ve got there.’
‘Surprised?’
‘A little, to be honest. I guess I thought you were more of a businesswoman than an artisan.’
Gabby noticed how much his assessment of her pleased her. Was it just her feeling this vibe between them? She was decades out of practice. ‘Well, it’s an odd thing, something I haven’t actually shared with anyone else.’
He cocked his head, intrigued. ‘Go on.’
‘It’s a bit out there,’ she confessed. ‘Do you think you can handle it?’
‘Okay, you have to tell me now.’
‘All right. Soon after my transplant, lying in the hospital bed, a strange thing happened.’
Luciano rested his elbows on the table, watching her intently. She wasn’t totally sure why she was sharing this, except perhaps because of the weird flashes that had been happening lately, and that she needed to tell someone and she didn’t want to upset anyone in her family. She’d once tried to talk to Lottie about this when it first happened, but her mother either hadn’t believed her or didn’t want to know.
‘I was lying there, a mainline in my chest and six lots of drips running into me, and I was suddenly overcome by an aroma. It was intense and it was some sort of food. It made me think of my childhood but I couldn’t pick it. I decided it must have been something they were serving for lunch and thought no more about it, just accepted it as one more hospital odour among the antibacterial soaps, iodine and disinfectant. But it came every day, in waves.’
She paused, remembering that it made her feel calm, but in a totally different way from the sedatives the doctors kept her on, which just made her feel numb to what was, in reality, genuine horror that her heart – her very own heart, the very core of her – had been ripped out and a stranger’s sewn into her chest.
‘But after I went home to my parents’, the aroma followed me.’ She had Luciano’s undivided attention, the chatter and bustle in Bar Carlo fading to the background. ‘I knew what the smell was.’
‘What was it?’
‘Hotdogs.’
‘Hotdogs?’
‘I’d probably eaten a hotdog twice in my life, both times when I was a kid. The combined aroma of fried onions, warm bread rolls and the sharp tang of tomato sauce was clear. But I hadn’t eaten one in thirty years.’
‘Was it a craving?’ he asked.
She shook her head. ‘No. I suddenly knew, with crystal clarity, that it wasn’t my memory I was experiencing. It was someone else’s. It was his.’
To her relief, Luciano didn’t look at her like she was crazy. Instead, he looked utterly intrigued. ‘Your donor’s?’
‘Yes.’
The owner of that memory was a man. She’d felt it in her bones. She felt it, physically, in her chest, this strong, muscular heart beating away.
‘It was frightening. I wanted to escape. But where could I go? He was inside me. He would go wherever I went. So, I increased my sedatives, hoping to block the feeling of his presence. But it was short-lived and selfish; my children needed me to be present for them. I wanted to be present for them – it was the whole reason I’d been through the heart transplant ordeal in the first place. I stopped the sedatives and steeled myself for an onslaught of insights into his life. I just wanted to get them over with, to face the monster in the house, so to speak.’
‘What happened?’
She shrugged. ‘They didn’t come. The insights stayed away, and day by day I grew more confident that everything I’d experienced had either been in my mind or had been induced by the barrage of medications. I got on with life – taking the kids to school, going to physiotherapy, watching swimming carnivals and music eisteddfods, taking medications, visiting the hospital. The aroma of hotdogs never came back. But I was left with something else – a gift. Inexplicably, I’d developed a sommelier’s nose.’
Luciano held her gaze.
She shrugged, unable to explain it any more now than she could back then. ‘That’s what you saw in action today.’
10
Krystal pulled the cling wrap tightly around the Vegemite-and-cheese sandwiches and tucked them alongside apples and crackers into the lunch boxes – a red Spider-Man one for Jasper and a blue PJ Masks one for Olly. It was the first day back at school and she was running late. She opened the fridge to put the butter away and spied the half-empty bottle of white wine in the door. She had drunk the first half by herself last night once the kids were in bed and now she felt shame creeping up her body. But why? She pulled out the bottle and read the label. Seven-point-seven standard drinks in a bottle, so she’d had about three and a half drinks. That wasn’t too bad, was it? Lots of people in this country drank that or more on a daily basis. She put the bottle back and shut the door.
‘Jasper, can you go and change into your school pants, please?’ she called. The boys were slumped on the couch eating breakfast – cornflakes for both, but cow’s milk for Jasper and soy milk for Olly, who was dairy intolerant. When he was a baby, Krystal only had to put a drop of milk on his cheek for him to break out in nasty eczema.
She took the boys’ water bottles from the draining rack on the sink and filled them, her eye darting to the clock. She had the morning ritual down to within minutes and knew they weren’t going to make it, which meant she’d be late for work too.
Jasper brought both bowls to the sink, still wearing pyjama pants.
‘Jasper, pants!’
‘All right,’ he grizzled, in a tone she really should have picked him up on but simply didn’t have the time or mental space for this morning. Her mind was well and truly busy elsewhere.
Gabriella McPhee has Evan’s heart.
Or maybe she didn’t. Krystal had to confess that it was just possible that she wanted to know for sure where Evan’s heart was, wanted it so much that she might be leaping to conclusions. According to the newspaper, Gabriella’s transplant date was one day after Evan died – but then, it had been nearly midnight when she’d signed the papers. His heart couldn’t have got to Gabriella until the next calendar day, especially because he was in Sydney.
Sydney.
The very word conjured up dark and monstrous images in her mind.
She’d known the organs could be flown anywhere in the country, or even over to New Zealand. It was kind of poetic that it had ended up back here in Melbourne; almost as if he’d wanted to come home.
That was, if it was his heart.
She would go back to The Tin Man this afternoon after she finished work at the school. Roxy was taking the boys home with her, which she and Krystal often did to give each other an afternoon off, so her boys wouldn’t think anything was wrong. She had to go back and see Gabriella.
She rinsed the breakfast bowls, thinking about the scar that ran down Gabriella’s chest, imagining what it might look like, wondering if it was straight or jagged, an ugly purple or fine white. She wanted to see it. It would be an exquisite horror, a breath taking pain, to see the line, the incision, and know that Evan’s heart was just there, centimetres below. Krystal craved that pa
in. It was sick, clearly. Probably something like deliberately cutting herself with a knife.
‘Olly, it’s time to go,’ she said, turning off the television, then held out a hand to him to encourage him up. Her youngest wasn’t always compliant with the idea of day care. ‘It’s soccer day,’ she said, inspiring him.
‘Soccer! I wub soccer!’
‘I know!’ she said, smiling widely. ‘Let’s go.’
He rolled off the couch and walked towards the front door, where Jasper was already waiting, thankfully wearing his long navy school pants. He was playing with the door, repeatedly opening it a fraction and letting it bang back into place. Krystal groaned at the noise but ignored it.
She cast an eye up at the clock again. Shit. She cursed herself for letting her mind drift, for allowing herself to obsess over Gabriella McPhee and all the memories she brought back to life.
‘Okay, let’s go,’ she said, grabbing her keys off the side table. The elevator dinged. ‘Quick, the lift is here!’ She bustled the boys out into the hall and the heavy front door banged shut behind them.
After seeing Jasper to his classroom, Krystal hurried into the administration office.
‘Sorry!’ she said, breathless. She tossed her leather backpack to the ground, and sat down quickly in her chair.
Janice looked up from her own workstation, opened her mouth as if about to call her out for her lateness, but then closed it again. Krystal knew she’d been employed in this role as a bit of a charity case, some sort of social service from the school to one of their own – the widowed, single mother of a child in their care. She wasn’t afraid of hard work. She’d spent years working as a cleaner, waitress, checkout operator or delivery woman before she’d landed her job at Cinque, where she’d met Evan. It had actually been the position of cleaner she’d applied for here at the school. But the principal saw something else in her.
The Gift of Life Page 9
