The Last Good Coffee Before Morning

The espresso machine at Eternal Grounds wheezed like it had consumption, which was weirdly appropriate given the place used to be a funeral home. Not "converted into luxury condos" funeral home. Not "tastefully repurposed into a wellness center" funeral home. Actual "we still found embalming fluid in the basement storage and the owner said 'eh, it's probably fine'" funeral home, now serving overpriced lattes to insomniacs and shift workers in a neighborhood where the Victorian architecture sagged under the weight of bad renovations and the ghosts of better business decisions.

I'm Devon, and at 3 AM on a Tuesday, I was the only thing standing between the coffee-drinking public and complete darkness, except for the guy in the corner booth who might be Death.

Or dying.

Or just really into black turtlenecks.

He'd been coming in every night for two weeks, always ordered an Americano, always sat in the booth underneath the original crown molding that looked like it was contemplating just giving up and falling. Never touched his phone. Never read a book. Just sat there in the dim amber light from the sconces we'd never bothered to rewire properly, watching the rain turn the street outside into something from a Bogart film if Bogart films had more broken streetlights and fewer moral certainties.

"You ever gonna drink that?" I asked, wiping down his table for the third time that shift, because what else was I going to do—my philosophy degree from a state school wasn't using itself.

He looked up. His eyes were the color of rain over concrete. "I'm considering it."

"It's been an hour. Coffee's cold. Physics did that, not me."

"Physics is rarely personal." He smiled slightly. "Though I appreciate the disclaimer."

The thing about working graveyard shift—and yes, I'm aware of the irony given our location—is that you develop a certain immunity to weird. Last week, a woman came in and ordered a cappuccino for her dead husband's ashes, which she had in a Tupperware container because "the urn was too fancy for everyday use." I made the cappuccino. She left a good tip. This is just Tuesday in a city where the weird is civic identity and the architecture remembers things it shouldn't.

But this guy. This guy was different-weird. The kind of weird that made the back of my neck prickle, like when you're a kid and you're absolutely certain something's watching you from the closet, except I'm twenty-seven and the closet is a converted embalming room that we now use for storage.

"So what's your deal?" I asked, because customer service be damned, it was three in the morning and I was pretty sure I was legally insane from caffeine at this point. "You scoping the place out for a robbery? Because I'll level with you, the most valuable thing in here is this espresso machine, and honestly, you'd be doing me a favor."

"I'm waiting for someone," he said.

"Yeah? They know you're waiting, or is this a romantic stalking situation? Because I've seen every rom-com made between 1989 and 2004, and I gotta tell you, the grand gesture thing never looks as cute in real life."

"They'll know when they arrive." He pushed the cold Americano toward me. "Could I trouble you for a fresh one?"

"You didn't drink the first one."

"I wasn't ready then."

I stared at him. He stared back. Outside, the rain kept falling like it had opinions about our conversation and they were all negative. The neon "OPEN" sign in the window flickered its slow death rattle, casting his face in alternating shadow and chemical red.

"One fresh Americano for the mysterious stranger with zero explanation forthcoming," I said. "This is exactly how every horror movie I've ever seen starts, and I'm the charming sidekick who gets killed first to establish stakes."

"You won't be killed," he said, and something about the way he said it made my spine turn to ice water and philosophy.

The night got weirder from there.

At 3:45 AM, a woman walked in wearing a vintage wedding dress that had probably been white sometime during the Eisenhower administration. Now it was the color of old bones and regret. She looked at the guy in the corner—let's call him Skeletor, because my brain had officially run out of better coping mechanisms—and then looked at me.

"Is there a waiting list?" she asked.

"For coffee? No. For existential clarity? I'm on year seven, so probably."

She didn't smile. Just walked over and sat across from Skeletor. They didn't speak. They just sat there, both of them watching each other like they were waiting for someone to blink first, or last, or in a way that meant something.

I made her an Americano without asking. When I brought it over, Skeletor slid his fresh cup toward her instead.

"I wasn't ready," he said to her.

"Nobody ever is," she replied.

And then she drank the coffee in one long pull, stood up, and walked toward the back of the shop. Toward the storage room. Toward what used to be the embalming room but was now just a door we kept locked because the hinges screamed and nobody wanted to deal with that at three in the morning.

Except the door wasn't locked.

She walked through it and didn't come back.

I looked at Skeletor. He was watching me now with something that might have been sympathy if sympathy came wrapped in inevitability and a five-hundred-dollar sweater.

"What the fuck," I said, which wasn't my most articulate moment but felt appropriate given the circumstances.

"You should sit down, Devon."

"How do you know my name?"

"It's on your name tag."

"Oh. Right. Fuck." I sat down across from him, because my legs had apparently decided they were done with the whole standing thing. "Who was she?"

"Someone who was waiting."

"Cool, cool, very helpful, definitely not cryptic at all. This is fine. This is a normal Tuesday. I'm not having a psychotic break fueled by too much espresso and the slow realization that my life choices have led me to work nights in a converted funeral home. This is all very reasonable."

He almost smiled. "You're taking this better than most."

"Oh, I'm absolutely losing my shit internally. But I saw The Sixth Sense like eight times, and I've watched every episode of Buffy twice, and I grew up in a city where the supernatural is basically middle management in the weirdness hierarchy. So. Yeah." I rubbed my face. "Are you Death?"

"That's a complicated question."

"It's actually a yes or no question. Like, definitionally."

"Is it?" He leaned forward. The light hit his face differently, and for just a second he looked impossibly old and impossibly young and impossibly sad. "If I'm the last thought before letting go, am I Death? If I'm the moment you realize you're ready to stop fighting, am I Death? If I'm just someone who sits with people while they figure out what comes next, am I Death, or am I just... patient?"

"Jesus Christ," I muttered.

"He doesn't work nights," Skeletor said, and the bastard had the audacity to look pleased with himself.

I got up and made myself an espresso because fuck it, I was already having a supernatural episode, might as well have palpitations too. The machine hissed and groaned, and I watched the coffee pour out thick and black like it was trying to tell me something about the nature of existence. Probably that existence needed better maintenance.

"So let me get this straight," I said, staying behind the counter because it felt safer, even though safety was clearly a concept that had left the building around the same time as the wedding dress lady. "People come here to... what? Die? Move on? Get one last mediocre coffee before the great whatever?"

"The coffee isn't mediocre," Skeletor said. "It's the last good thing they'll taste. That matters more than you think."

"Oh good, pressure. Love that. Really helpful for my ongoing anxiety about whether I'm wasting my life serving beverages to people who could get the same thing at literally any other establishment with fewer ghosts."

"You're not wasting your life."

"Says the guy who might be a metaphysical concept in a turtleneck."

"I'm definitely in a turtleneck," he confirmed.

We looked at each other across the dim, Victorian decay of a coffee shop that smelled like espresso and old wood and something else, something underneath it all that might have been time running out or just the pipes. Outside, the rain kept falling. The neon kept dying. The city kept being itself—weird and accepting and beautiful in its rot.

"Why here?" I asked finally. "Why this place?"

"Because it used to be where people came at the end," he said. "The building remembers. Buildings always do. And because you're here."

"Me?"

"You make good coffee. You're kind. You don't ask too many questions." He paused. "Usually."

"Okay, but I'm asking now. Am I dying? Is that what this is? Did I have a stroke and this is my brain misfiring while I'm actually face-down in the espresso machine?"

"You're not dying."

"Then what am I doing?"

He stood up then, and I realized I'd never seen him stand before. He was tall. Taller than seemed reasonable. Or maybe it was just the shadows and the way the light didn't quite reach him properly.

"You're choosing," he said. "The door at the back. You can go through it, or you can stay. But you should know that if you go through it, you'll understand everything. And if you stay, you'll have to live with not knowing."

"That's not a choice, that's a psychological torture device."

"Yes," he agreed. "Most real choices are."

I looked at the door. It was old wood, probably original to the building. Someone had painted it beige at some point, but the paint was peeling now, showing older colors underneath—green, cream, a reddish brown that might have been the original stain or might have been something else. The hinges definitely screamed. I knew that for a fact because I'd tried to open it once during my first week and decided that whatever was in there could stay in there forever.

But now it was cracked open, just slightly. And through the crack, I could see... light? Darkness? Something that was neither and both?

"What happens if I go through?" I asked.

"I don't know. It's different for everyone."

"What happens if I stay?"

"The sun comes up. You go home. You come back tomorrow night. Everything continues exactly as it was, except now you know the door is there."

"That's not comforting."

"No," he said gently. "But it's honest."

I'm still standing here, behind the counter of Eternal Grounds, espresso machine wheezing behind me like it's placing bets on what I'll do. Skeletor is back in his booth, waiting with the patience of someone who has infinite amounts of it, or maybe none left at all. The door is still open. The rain is still falling. The neon is still dying its slow, flickering death.

And I can't tell you what I'm going to do.

Because the truth is, I make good coffee in a converted funeral home at three in the morning in a city that's beautiful in its decay, and people come here at the end of something, and maybe that matters. Maybe that's enough. Maybe I'm supposed to be the guy who stays on this side of the door and makes sure there's one last good thing before whatever comes next.

Or maybe I'm supposed to walk through.

The espresso machine hisses. The rain falls. The door stays open, just a crack, showing me light or darkness or something that's neither and both.

Skeletor catches my eye. Doesn't speak. Just waits.

And I—

Well.

I guess you'll have to decide what you'd do.

Me? I'm still choosing.

The sun will come up eventually. It always does. Even in a city where the weird is civic identity and the architecture remembers things it shouldn't, even in a converted funeral home where the door to somewhere else stays open at three in the morning, even when you're a barista with a philosophy degree who makes the last good coffee before morning.

The sun will come up.

But right now, it's still dark.

And the door is still open.

And I'm still here.