Sixty-one

Matt didn’t seem surprised by my words, but I was outraged by his unruffled reply. Sitting back in his kitchen chair, he sipped his coffee and said—

“It’s just a building, Clare.”

“I can’t believe you think that! Why would he even want the building? What good would it do him?”

“He says it’s the start of a strategy to lift the Driftwood image in the bigger cities, one community at a time. He says his franchise shops are all too slick and modern. He wants to improve the optics of his brand by opening next-level shops in older historic structures to make them look as though they’ve been part of those neighborhoods for years.”

“He wants to buy our legacy? Like we’re a sepia filter he can slap on a photo that he took an hour ago to make people think it has historic value?”

“Regardless of the reason,” Matt said, “he knows we need the money. He’s aware of the recent dramatic drop in our foot traffic—”

“He knows that, does he? Well, no surprise there! He’s been using spies for years to rip off our seasonal menus!”

Matt reached across the table and touched my hand. “Listen to me—”

“No.” I pulled away. “You listen to me. You’re talking about selling my home. Our daughter’s inheritance. Why? Cody doesn’t want to buy a legacy. I don’t believe what he told you. The man is doing what all big fish companies do. Eat up their competition. Our roastery is going to compete with him in an even bigger way, and he wants to nip that coffee bloom in the bud. He’s threatened by our plans, so he came up with his own—an offer to cut our own throats.”

“You’re overreacting. You don’t know all the particulars of the deal—”

“I know Cody Wood! And this isn’t about business. It’s about his giant ego. He wants to erase the identity of the quality competitor who shows him up. The one he can’t hope to compete with. Don’t you see? If we make this deal with him, instead of staying independent, most of our income will come through Driftwood, and Cody will control us—and he can finish us off and shut us down anytime he likes.”

“It doesn’t have to be like that. We can put protections in our contract. And he’s offering us the kind of money some corporations pay to buy an entire brand and all its assets. All Cody wants is to go into partnership to nationally distribute our Village Blend beans and buy our landmark building…”

My nightmare vision was actually coming true: our Village Blend with a DRIFTWOOD sign flashing in big, bold, Las Vegas neon!

Meanwhile, Matt kept droning on. “We’ll still be the Village Blend. We can set up shop anywhere we want. There are so many hot neighborhoods in this city. What about a modern shop in Hudson Yards? Or the Financial District? Or Williamsburg, Brooklyn? There are some amazing real estate opportunities in Long Island City—”

“Why not Boise, Idaho?” I said. “Or Tokyo? How about Barcelona? Or Bavaria? We can serve Octoberfest beer and outfit Tuck and Dante in lederhosen!”

“Stop it, Clare—”

“Does the century-old history of the Village Blend mean nothing to you? The bohemian legacy, the artists and creators who embraced our shop like a second home, the roots your own mother and father planted in a rich, vibrant community. It’s not the Village Blend if it isn’t in Greenwich Village!”

Matt sighed. “Fine. We’ll find a vacant storefront somewhere else in the Village. It will be a smaller footprint because you won’t need a roasting room when our new roastery is up and running. You can design the space from the ground up, in any style that suits your fancy, any décor you want—”

I furiously shook my head. “I don’t understand what brought this on!”

“You brought it on yourself, when you told me about the drastic decline in foot traffic. That’s when I finally agreed to the meeting.”

“What do you mean finally?”

“I never told you, but Cody has been pestering me for a deal for some time—”

“We don’t need him, Matt. We can pull out of this slump ourselves. The Writer’s Block Lounge might be the thing that turns it all around for our retail business.”

“Or it might not.”

“I only told you about our troubles to be up front and honest with my business partner. I think I deserve the same consideration. You had no intention of telling me about Cody’s offer, did you?”

“Not true. Eventually—”

“Eventually, I would have found out. But that’s not how a partnership should function, is it? You kept secrets from me when we were married partners, and it was devastating. Now we’re business partners, and you’re doing the same thing—”

“Don’t do that. Leave our past in the past—”

“How can I, when you’re acting like the old Matt from our past? Keeping secrets, going behind my back, ghosting me. You need to respect me as your partner!”

Matt fell silent after that. Finally, he shifted in his seat and admitted—

“You’re not wrong. I was avoiding you. I’m sorry, okay? But I needed time to think things through.”

“What things? The deal?”

Matt sighed. “This roastery I’m building is a financial risk. Remember the coffee rust in Central America? In Guatemala, in Honduras, and even in Costa Rica—all those farmers I’d bought from lost their livelihood, their land—and that was in the last ten years.”

“I remember.”

“My mother still talks about the 1975 frost that killed two-thirds of the coffee crop in Brazil. Half the world’s crop was destroyed, and prices skyrocketed. If something like that happens again, we could go bankrupt. And the worst part is that I have absolutely no control over it.”

I stared him down. “Is that really your biggest worry? The uncertainties of coffee agribiz?”

“It’s more than that. I mean, yeah, you told me about your financial troubles three hours before Cody called me again. I might not have listened otherwise; in fact, I probably would have hung up on the SOB. But between your bad news about the shop’s foot traffic and the bloating construction costs for the roastery…”

“We both understand the risks.”

“I don’t think you do, and it’s a subject that’s been torturing me lately.”

“Torturing?” I sat back. “Why? You haven’t shared anything like this with me.”

“No, I haven’t.”

“Well, I’m your business partner, pal. If something about the business is bothering you, I’m the one to tell.”

Matt took a breath. “I guess it would be a relief to get it off my chest.”

“Okay, then. Start talking.”