The buzz of the alarm wakes me at 7:45, like every other morning. I hit snooze and drift back to a half sleep, thinking about the five applications I have to submit that day, or perhaps the five I submitted the day before. I wake back up at 7:54 to the alarm. Snooze again. I scroll on my phone until the alarm buzzes again. 8:03. Time to get up.
The cabin is quiet. The only sound is the gentle hum of the refrigerator in the next room. I open the dark red curtains to look out toward the pond. The wind sends a shimmer of a wave across the placid surface. Branches on the trees in varying states of October senescence sway in the wind. The leaves are changing slowly, each tree on its own path in the long march toward winter.
My grandma’s cabin in the Catskills is the latest retreat on my job hunt. The last few months have been one battle after another. Laid off from the software engineering job I’d had for the past five years in May. 2 months severance. Applications, preparations for interviews that don’t materialize, and infiltrating behind enemy lines—networking. Severance expired in July. The fight continues. A war of attrition against my savings until my lease expires in September. With morale low, circumstance necessitates a change in tactics. A brief redoubt at my parents’ in Westchester. Mom offers me peanut butter and jelly, just like I used to have for breakfast in high school. The sandwich is fine, and my morale plummets. I need to wage a new campaign.
I freshen up in the bathroom and go to the kitchen. I begin the morning coffee ritual, perfected over the years each morning before work. I set the electric goose-neck kettle to 200°F. Next, I start the grinder and hear the loud whir of the machine crushing the Guatemalan artisanal coffee beans. I pull out the scale, place my Chemex pour-over coffee maker on it, and place the filter in the neck of the Chemex. The beans have finished grinding, and I see the kettle has worked up to 150°F. I zero the scale with the Chemex and add precisely 20 grams of the beans. I catch a whiff of the beans’ caramel notes and floral hints. Zero the scale again. The kettle beeps to tell me its job is complete, the water is 200°F. I set the timer on my phone and begin the pour.
First, the bloom. 50 grams of water in the first 30 seconds. This releases the carbon dioxide from the beans to allow for an even extraction of the coffee’s full flavor profile. The bloom is the hardest part. Even with the gooseneck kettle, it takes a certain subtlety of the wrist to not overpour.
Once the timer hits 30 seconds, it’s time for the main pour. I lift the kettle slightly higher and widen the circle, letting the stream fall in a slow spiral from the center to the edge of the grounds and back again. The bed of coffee in the filter breathes up and down as the water passes through it. Small bubbles form and quickly pop on the coarse brown bed of coffee. I keep the flow steady as the scale climbs in even increments. When the number reaches three hundred grams, I stop and set the kettle down.
The coffee pools in the base of the Chemex, the color settling into a dense, dark brown as the last of the water drains hrough. Steam rises briefly and thins. The smell is nutty and rich, with a hint of bitterness.
I remove the filter and pour the coffee into one of my grandma’s mugs. It has a watercolor picture of ducks swimming on it. I take the cup to my mouth. When I taste it, the coffee is slightly bitter. This shouldn’t be.
I’d perfected my pour over the past five years. It’d been my daily pre-work ritual since I came back from the vacation in Costa Rica. We’d gone to the coffee finca, and there the guide showed us how to do a pour over with their beans, which we could buy from the gift shop, naturally. Since then, it was how I started the day.
I check the grinder setting, the kettle’s thermometer, and the scale again. All are correct. It must be the beans, a bad roast of beans.
I take another couple sips. The bitterness lingers and penetrates my tongue. I’ll buy another bag after I submit my five applications for the day and practice three coding problems.
I pull out my laptop and sit at the cabin’s sturdy wooden dining room table to work. I check the laptop’s clock, 8:30am. Well on track for a productive day. I open my job search spreadsheet and start browsing for positions. No jobs that are a good fit that aren’t at companies that I haven’t already applied to and it’s now 9:25 and the bitter still lingers in my mouth and a headache is setting in from not enough caffeine. This will not do. I open a new browser tab and search for “artisanal coffee shops”. The only one within a 1 hour drive that is at least 4 stars is Hemlock Cafe, 35 minutes away. I have to go and get a cappuccino and a new bag of beans.
I pop a stick of gum, which starts to take care of the bitterness, and drive to the Hemlock Cafe. The multicolored trees blur past the windshield, their colors uneven and fading.
Hemlock Cafe sits just off the main road, a low, dark building with a small gravel lot and a wooden sign hung from chains. Inside, it smells of espresso and wood. The walls are varnished pine, the floor concrete. A chalkboard lists the drinks, with the origins of the beans written beneath each one. There are only three tables, all empty, and a bar running the length of the counter. The only staff present is the barista, a woman in a black apron who stands scrolling on her phone. On her apron a name tag reads “Jen”.
I order a cappuccino with oat milk and a bag of house beans, a blended roast called “Late Season”. Under the name, the description of the roast is “Rich, Dark, and Holding on.”
Jen asks if I want it ground, and I say no with a smile that says, “Please, I grind my own beans.” The drink comes quickly with a flower in the foam. I take a sip standing at the counter. It is hot, rich, and clean. Adequate, without the harsh bitterness from my morning’s pour over. I nod in approval to the barista, pay, and leave.
I drive back and return at 11:30am. Once again, I open my laptop and return to work. Since it’s a late start, I only manage to submit two applications and practice the three coding problems. I tell myself that I’ll do better the next day. New day, new beans.
The next morning, the alarm goes off at 7:45. Snooze, scroll, bathroom, and coffee routine. I open the bag of “Late Season” that I got at the coffee shop yesterday. It does indeed smell rich and dark. Let’s hold on and see how it tastes. I grind, boil, weigh, time, and pour. I remove the filter and pour the coffee into one of my grandma’s mugs. This mug has a watercolor-style picture of pink daisies.
The coffee is dark and clear in the mug. I sip. The bitterness is still there, immediate and just like yesterday. The taste covers my tongue. I take another sip, and catch a few notes of cocoa and something faintly sweet, but it’s overwhelmed by that same bitterness. I continue to take a few sips from the mug, hoping the taste will go away. Again it lingers, coating my tongue and refusing to thin. With every sip, the bitterness increases, and all other notes recede.
Yet, my work must continue. I open my laptop to begin working despite the sensation consuming my mouth. I check my email, nothing worth opening. 8:33am. I open the spreadsheet where I’ve collected all my open applications and where I am in the pipeline on each. I am nowhere in any of the pipelines. I try to focus on the screen, but the taste pulls my attention back to my mouth. I swallow a few times, then go to the bathroom. I brush my teeth carefully, longer than usual, until the mint burns at the corners of my gums. When I rinse and spit, the bitterness is still there, dulled but intact.
Back in the kitchen, I open a drawer and take out a stick of gum. I chew it slowly, waiting for the peppermint to take hold. It helps, but not enough. The bitterness settles underneath it, unchanged.
I sit back down at the table and open the laptop to look at the clock. 9:05. I won’t get anything done like this, so I close the computer.
I grab my keys and jacket and head for the door and plug Hemlock Cafe into my phone’s GPS. I follow the route, passing the same thinning trees and uneven piles of leaves at the edge of the road. By the time I pull into the gravel lot, the bitterness has faded.
Inside Hemlock Cafe, Jen stands behind the counter scrolling. She looks up and nods when she sees me. I order another cappuccino. It is hot and smooth, without the bitterness that had so consumed me earlier. I finish it before I’m back in my car.
On the way back home, I stop at the local supermarket. I must arm for war. I must break this bitter curse that is ruining my focus. First, I find half a dozen bags of decent looking coffees, a bag of Dunkin pre-ground Original Blend, a jar of Folgers, and a bottle of Nescafe if all else fails.
After grabbing a deli sandwich on the way back, I’m home by 1:15. I manage to submit two more applications on the day before closing the laptop as the sun sets over the pond. The sun drops behind the trees, and the pond dims from a blue to silver to a dark gray.
The alarm goes off at 7:45. I don’t snooze. I’m awake, staring at the ceiling. Time for the battle.
I go straight to the kitchen and pull out the first bag from yesterday’s haul. Colombian medium roast. I grind, boil, weigh, time, and pour with the precision of ritual. The coffee pools in the Chemex, dark and promising. I pour it into the mug with the ducks.
The first sip hits my tongue, and the bitterness is immediate, stronger than before. I set the mug down and go to the bathroom. I brush my teeth for two full minutes, scrubbing hard at the back of my tongue. I spit and rinse. The bitterness remains.
Back to the kitchen, I dump the rest of the duck mug into the sink and start again. French roast this time, darker, bolder. The grinder whirs, then the kettle beeps. Pour, wait, pour. I invert the Chemex into the daisy mug.
The bitterness is worse. It spreads across my tongue before I can even swallow, coating the roof of my mouth. I take three more sips, each one confirming what I already know. I brush my teeth again and the mint burns, the bitterness lingers.
Ethiopian blend. Kenyan AA. Sumatran Midnight. Bolivian Sunrise. The Dunkin grounds. Each pour is more bitter than the last, though I know it shouldn’t be possible that bitterness compounds across separate batches.
After each attempt, I brush my teeth and tongue. My gums become bloody and raw; my tongue burns. I spit pink foam into the sink and the metallic taste of blood merges with the bitterness.
I crouch down and open the cabinet under the sink, pushing aside old dish soap and sponges until I find what I’m looking for—a Mr. Coffee machine, probably twenty years old. I rinse it out, fill the reservoir with water, and scoop the Folgers into a filter. The machine gurgles and hisses as coffee drips into the pot, thin and dark.
I pour a cup. I sense the bitterness before the brown liquid even touches my lips. My body anticipates the bitterness now, conjuring it before it arrives. The taste is there when I take a sip, as strong and inescapable as the carefully bloomed, precisely timed pour overs that I’d previously perfected.
Only one option remains. I unscrew the Nescafe jar with shaking hands. I look inside at the dull chemical pellets of instant coffee. I heat water in the kettle and turn it off after 30 seconds. No need to wait for 200°F for this. I dump a spoonful of the instant coffee into a mug. The water hits the instant coffee, which dissolves in the water to form a thin, brown, defeated brew.
I sip. The bitterness floods my mouth, washing away the residual taste of blood. I add a teaspoon of sugar from the pantry. Stir, sip, bitter, another teaspoon, another. By the eighth spoonful of sugar, the coffee thickens to look like brown pus in the cup. The bitterness and the sweet combine with each other, creating something worse than either alone.
I set the mug down on the counter and go back to the bathroom. I brush my teeth again, harder this time, the bristles scraping against my gums until I taste more blood than toothpaste. The sink is streaked with pink when I spit. The bitterness doesn’t budge.
I don’t need my GPS to go back to Hemlock Cafe this time. As I drive down the road I think the trees are more bare than yesterday, more bare than the day before.
Inside Hemlock Cafe, Jen is on her phone. She looks up when I enter and I see a look of recognition flicker across her face. “Cappuccino?” she asks with a light smile.
I nod and raise the corners of my mouth into a closed-lip grin, afraid to show her my bloody teeth and gums.
Jen works the machine and I watch the espresso pour, dark and even. I smell the rich aromata of the expresso. She steams the milk, then pours the espresso in, making a heart in the foam. I quickly snatch the cup from her hands before she can set it on the counter, eager to rid my mouth of the bitterness. I grab with too much haste, so a bit of the cappuccino splashes out of the cup. The heart in the foam is no longer recognizable as such.
I lift the paper cup to my lips and take the first sip. Bitter.