It is 9:14 on a Tuesday in May, and the espresso machine is venting, and Walter is on his second drip coffee, and across the street the dogwood at the edge of St. Francis Memorial has bloomed.

I had not known it was a dogwood until Walter told me, last spring. He had said, "That's a nice dogwood," and I had said, "Oh," and that had been the entire correction. This year I knew it on sight.

The branches are still mostly bare, the way dogwoods are — they bloom in stages, hesitant — but the white blossoms have opened along the lower limbs, with their small pink corners. I think about this tree every spring now, which is one of the things Walter has done to me without meaning to.

The shop is quiet. The brass bell has been silent for fourteen minutes, which is rare for a Tuesday but not unheard of in the second hour after the morning rush. Patricia's corner table is empty — Patricia comes Wednesdays. The student table is empty. The book exchange shelf is gently rearranged, the way it always is by the time I open up; one of the regulars, I don't know which one, has been quietly reorganizing it for months.

Walter is on the second stool from the end. He always sits on the second stool from the end, because the end stool wobbles and Walter does not approve of wobbling.[^1] His coffee is in a mug, not a paper cup, because Walter is here for at least an hour. He has the Tribune folded next to him on the counter. He is not reading it. He is looking out the front window at the dogwood.

I am restocking mugs, which is what I do when there is nothing else to do. I pull one down from the high shelf, dry it, set it on the edge of the dish rack, reach for another. The mug I just set down teeters. My hand catches it without looking, the way a person's hand will catch their own coffee from the passenger seat when the driver brakes — which is a thing I have started noticing about my hands, that they sometimes know things my head has not yet been told.

Walter, looking out the window, says: "Helen used to say dogwood was the only tree with the decency to bloom on time."

He doesn't turn his head when he says it. He doesn't expect a response. He says it the way some people whistle.

I set the mug on its row. I put my dishtowel back on my shoulder. I look out the window with him.

A robin comes down out of the branches and lands on the church sign and stays there long enough to consider its options.

"What about the other trees?" I say. I am asking it the way Walter said his thing — without expecting a response.

"Late," Walter says. "All of them. She had opinions." He turns his head, finally, and the corner of his mouth does the thing it does, the very small thing, that I have come to understand is Walter's full-spectrum grin. "I told her not all of them could bloom in April. She said I was making excuses for them."

I laugh. It is a very small laugh, the right size for the morning. He goes back to looking at the tree.

We watch the dogwood for another while. I do not know how long. Time gets loose in May, especially when the bell isn't ringing.

A man jogs by the front window with a Labrador. The Labrador stops to sniff something on the sidewalk. The man waits, looking at his phone. The Labrador and the man both move on.

Walter finishes his coffee.

He has a way of finishing a cup of coffee that is itself a small ceremony. He turns the mug a quarter-turn, looks at the bottom, taps the rim once with his index finger, drinks the last sip. Then, with the same finger, he draws a smiley face in the residue at the bottom of the mug.

I have only known what this means since the day I learned Helen had drawn one on his lunch bag every day for forty-three years. I had not known, before that, that Walter was the one being drawn for. I had thought he was just doing it. I had not known he was answering.

He slides the cup across the counter to me. He does not turn it around so I can see the smiley face. He doesn't have to. We both know it's there.

"Same time next week," he says.

"Same time next week," I say.

He puts his folded Tribune under his arm. He pulls his cap down. He nods at the dogwood, like a colleague leaving a meeting, and walks out the front door, and the bell rings, and he is gone.

I stand at the counter with his cup.

The dogwood is still there. The robin has come back. Light is moving across the floor of the shop in the slow way it moves in early May, when the sun is figuring out where it's supposed to be again after the long argument of winter.

I pick up Walter's cup. The smiley face is small and lopsided. I rinse the cup, slowly. I put it on the rack with the other clean mugs.

I expect there will be a Wednesday.

I am, at thirty, just learning how to.

[^1]: I have offered to fix the wobbly stool seven times. Walter has, seven times, said: "Then where would I sit on Mondays."