The smell of coffee
“Back again,” Alice said, her voice void of any enthusiasm. She looked down at her tired kettle, sighed, rubbed her eyes, and flicked the switch. “We can do this” she said, trying to muster some conviction.
The orange light was her kettle’s answer. The weak beam telling her that it would be working away preparing her coffee. It was the answer she needed.
Turning away from the kettle, Alice rested her heavy head on the cold refrigerator door. Her mind already travelling back to her laptop, and the paper she was writing. She didn’t know for how much longer she could keep going. It wasn’t only about staying awake, although that was challenging enough: Alice needed well-articulated arguments for why her company needed the grant funding. Not her company of course. Not in that sense. If it had been her company, they would never have been in this fix in the first place. No, this was all Charles and Tom’s doing.
That, however, offered her no comfort. It was her job after all to clean up their mess.
Behind her, the kettle growled as it boiled her water. It was a familiar sound. The kettle was her midnight companion. A co-conspirator to her life, from dawn to… well, dawn again. Her one source of strength. But how much longer could this little machine keep her going.
Alice banged her head gently against the fridge. Once, twice. Why she did this, she didn’t know. Banging her head against a cold, unyielding refrigerator wasn’t going to wake her up. Neither was it going to finish the work for her.
I am going mad, aren’t I, Alice thought, not mustering the energy to give this self-accusation any real consideration.
Click. The kettle was done.
Turning around Alice realised, annoyed, that she hadn’t cleaned the cafetiere she had used earlier. Hurrying over to the sink, she felt the kettle judging her, telling her that she could have done all this whilst it had boiled her water. She ignored it.
The cold water felt refreshing on her skin, as she quickly turned all the content into the sink and rinsed the cafetiere. Shaking it briefly, not wanting to stain a clean kitchen towel, she returned to her impatient kettle.
“Mind your own business,” she told the kettle sternly as she grabbed the glass container with the ground coffee.
She threw one laden tablespoon into the cafetiere, then another. She wrinkled her nose. This was going to be a strong coffee. A third? No, that was excessive, even for her.
Pouring the water over the ground coffee beans, Alice allowed herself to enjoy the moment. The smell of coffee rose from the small cafetiere into the whole kitchen. It spread as a sheet of calmness, of peaceful mornings and freshly baked bread. Of hope, of new beginnings and the sort of renewed energy only a night’s sleep could bring. It would be gone any moment.
Alice sighed. She grabbed the same mug she had used earlier. The black liquid poured into her white, soulless mug, the text written with big letters across the front mocking her with its accuracy: “But first, coffee”.
Not even waiting for the hot water to cool, she gulped down the first mouthfuls. Whyyyyy, she thought as she felt the coffee burn her throat on its journey to her stomach, just why couldn’t coffee taste the way it smelled?
This is just another writing exercise — the coffee exercise — where one is meant to describe how a character makes a drink — e.g., coffee, so you learn more about the character. I am sure I could focus even more on the coffee in this exercise — to show more and tell less, but somehow I wanted to give Alice the space.
