THE request was so simple, and yet it struck such fear in my heart.
"I'd love a cup of coffee, if you've got one," said the electrician, on being offered tea.
He had no reason to think this was a big deal. Countless North American households have a pot of coffee constantly on the go. Many have fancier machines that whip up fabulous espressos on demand. We live in Vancouver, for God's sake - ours is a latte-fuelled economy.
Yet for some reason, it never occurs to me that the workmen whom I desperately need to fix whatever it is should be able to expect a basic thing like a cup of coffee, not to mention ready access to the utility outlets in the basement. Whenever they turn up and have a few minutes to kill while waiting for my husband, I stupidly offer them tea. Do I think I live on Coronation Street?
Lest they aren't thoroughly convinced of my laxness and ineptitude at that point, I proceed to apologize all the way down to the basement and all the way back up again for the heaps of dirty laundry in the laundry room, the Christmas ornaments and random bits of Halloween costumes still massed on its counters in July, and the hellish mess in general.
We're slobs. I'm not proud of it; that's just the way it is. A friend (a kindly therapist by trade) once gently corrected this routine assertion of mine with the remark: "You're bohemians." Deeply flattering and completely untrue, that may be the best compliment I've ever received because it excuses everything.
I do pride myself on being a decent host, though. It's just that making coffee is my Achilles heel. Neither Stanley nor I drink the stuff, and I've never been able to master this allegedly moron-proof task.
I couldn't admit that to the nice, clean electrician, however. He had already braved a visit to the laundry room. While he was down there I had guilty visions of damp brassieres and worn-out underpants staring him in the face as he tried to pry away the stand-up freezer blocking the electrical panel.
"Oh, of course I can make coffee," I said uncertainly, and left him to his work.
"S---," I muttered to my numerous kitchen implements. "I can't make coffee. Who am I trying to kid?" But, like the good host, I soldiered on.
I knew my usual coffeemaking technique wasn't going to serve me well. I have a French press in the basement that I haul out for houseguests. I buy beans with some vaunted cachet just before they arrive. In the morning, I plunk the French press down in front of them, point at the grinder and the kettle, and back slowly out of the room.
I couldn't do that this time. Lord. Did I even have any coffee? I remembered the Cuban beans a friend had brought me recently, which I had stashed in the freezer for just such an occasion, and retrieved them.
Now I had to locate the grinder. As usual, it reeked of toasted cumin, which is what it usually pulverizes at our house - cumin, coriander or peppercorns. To me, it smelled delicious, like a taqueria. Yet I wasn't entirely confident that people like their Joe to taste like Jose.
"What does Martha Stewart say about cleaning a coffee grinder again?" I mused. Remembering, I grabbed a piece of bread and ground it in the device to soak up the cumin. The grinder now smelled like cut-rate fajitas, but there was nothing I could do about that. I tossed in some coffee (how much was correct? Oh well, whatever) and ground the beans into a soot-like chocolate-coloured mass.
I stared at it.
"Now what?" I asked nobody in particular. God bless the Internet, I thought hastily, and charged upstairs to my office to look up how to use a French press.
There I found out that making a cup of coffee was a 16-step process, including the part where you stirred the grounds in the base of the French press with a chopstick, which sounded suspiciously like an ethnic clash to me. There was water-boiling involved - "I can do that," I told myself with false bravado - as well as coffee ground measuring and water measuring and steeping and stirring and pressing and then, finally, pouring.
Unbelievably, within the space of 30 minutes, I was able to accomplish all this. I proudly presented the coffee, with the requested milk and sugar (stirred in!), to the electrician, who by this time was wrapping up his task.
I undercut my tremendous achievement somewhat by telling him I didn't really know how to make coffee and had had to look it up on the Internet.
He tried not to seem astonished, politely took a sip and pronounced it "perfect." When he left, though, I noticed the cup remained half full. Or was it half-empty?
Either way, I blame those Cuban beans.
kate@katezimmerman.ca
