One Saturday when she was eight and Danny had just turned ten, they ate out in a coffee shop for the first time by themselves. They had gone with their mother to her office at the university’s Child Language Lab. The plan was for them to play or read quietly for half an hour until Danny’s friend Dante’s dad could pick them up for T-shirt Basketball at the Y. But Dante’s dad texted to say sorry he couldn’t do it because Dante was having a reaction to a tree nut, so the kids were going to have to stay at the language lab for three whole hours, and they hadn’t brought activities to fill three whole hours. So their mother said she would take them to the new coffee shop downstairs and see if they would allow the kids to stay by themselves while she finished up what she needed to do in the office.
The coffee shop was called Memuzin, and the man there was named Wasim. Wasim said, “Sure, sure. No problem, no problem. I have a daughter myself this age.” Their mother gave him her phone number, and she gave Danny a ten-dollar bill, and then she hesitated and gave him another ten-dollar bill, and smiled at everyone quickly, one of her anxious flicker-smiles with the dent between her eyebrows, and then the kids stood watching the back of her gray wool coat disappear and listening to the bell attached to the door, which kept jingling after she was out of sight.
Wasim said, “Hey, hey, kids. Whatever you want. You let me know.”
So Danny and Annamae went to the counter, where each took a paper menu to study. Annamae practiced tendus while she read. Eventually, Danny ordered falafel and chocolate milk and Annamae ordered a bagel and hibiscus tea.
“You don’t even know what that is,” said Danny.
“Yes,” said Annamae, going into elevé.
“How do you know?”
“This is when you’re being so annoying, Danny.”
“No, but how?”
He was good at being annoying, but Annamae was good at being silent.
Having their pick of tables, they sat at the one nearest the window. Annamae stuck Coco under her thigh and thought how terrible it would be if all the company she had was Danny.
Wasim brought their food and drinks. Annamae’s tea was in a glass cup, on a glass saucer, and it was the red of cough syrup. Danny looked like he was trying not to appear jealous. It was steaming hot, so she dipped her spoon in to taste it. It wasn’t any good, but there was a dish of sugar packets on the table. She stirred in five packets, and by then it was cool enough and sweet enough to drink.
Outside, the clouds that had been massing all morning turned sooty and jagged, and all the awnings started whipping, and in a matter of seconds it went from not raining to a downpour. It looked like someone was flinging handfuls of pearls on the asphalt and against the coffee shop window. Wasim came out from behind the counter and stood watching with them, his hands on his hips. When they turned to look at him, he just grinned and shook his head, as if to say, What a planet! The downpour lasted only a few minutes. Then it turned into regular rain, and Wasim went back behind the counter, and Annamae and Danny ate their food and drank their drinks and watched the cars go through the sudden puddles and send up crashing wings of water. It became a kind of game, waiting for cars to go through. They didn’t say anything; it just became a game without their talking about it. They each knew the other was rooting for the same thing. Finally a bus came down the avenue and it went through a puddle and flung up a wave so big that it lashed against their window, and the two of them looked at each other with so much glee.
Soon after that, their mother came back to get them, unexpectedly early and with a real smile. “I had a cancellation, so that’s it—we’re done for the day.” She still let Danny be the one to pay, using the two ten-dollar bills she’d given him. She watched him do all the math himself and count out the tip, and then they left, and it wasn’t until they were almost home on the subway that Annamae realized she didn’t have Coco.