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The corners of Erin’s lips rose slightly. "If you're willing to learn, that's all I need. Does the trade for an apartment interest you?"
"Yeah. I've been looking, but most places that I can afford aren't places I want to live. I'd be okay living out here; it's not too far away from town, and it's pretty quiet."
Erin tilted her head and shrugged one shoulder. "There is a lot of highway noise, especially if you have the windows open. The apartment, and the rest of the building, has air conditioning and gas heat. There's also a propane fireplace."
"Wow. Nice." Nobody jumped on the deal? There had to be a catch...
"It is." Erin nodded sharply. "Tell you what—let's see how you get along with Izzy first. if you feel like this is something you can do, I'll show you the apartment. Then we'll discuss salary and compensation. Work for you?" She rose.
"Sure. But..." Ryan swallowed hard. I do not want to do this. Especially with Erin Moore. But better to get it over with before they continued or he met another employee, like Izzy.
Erin sank into her chair, her pretty face pinched. "But?"
Shoot. She obviously expected him to turn her down flat or ask for more money than she could afford or something. He couldn't disappoint her—she’d had too much already. He swallowed again and wiped his right palm on his jeans. "I... it's easier to show you, I guess."
Ryan put his left arm on the table, unfastened the cuff of his green Kelly's shirt, and pulled it up above his elbow. He wore his "polite" flesh-colored prosthetic today. At a glance, it looked like his other hand, except it didn't move. It wasn't particularly functional, but he could push with it, and he could hook it into the steering wheel on his car, or the Kelly's truck, so it worked well enough for the auto parts store most of the time. But he bet it wouldn't work at a coffee shop. He let his eyes rise to Erin’s face, his shoulders rising with them.
Double shoot. Erin's eyes were enormous and horrified. He'd hoped she might understand... Ryan reached for the sleeve to pull it back down, but she put up her hand to stop him. She reached, resting her hand on his residual arm, above the prosthesis. "Ryan, I'm so sorry. I didn't know. I lost touch with Michael's old crews when I left McChord, but somebody should have told me about this." Her pretty hazel eyes were shiny, and she blinked rapidly, soft lips pressing together. "Does it hurt?"
She was touching him, touching his cut-off arm? Not recoiling in horror? Upset for him, not with him? Wait, she'd asked a question. "N-n-not usually. Sometimes. It depends."
"I'm so sorry. So..." Erin gazed at his arm and shivered. She took in a big breath and slid her hand off his arm. "But you can drive a truck and deliver parts, so you ought to be able to run an espresso machine. Might take a few modifications, but hey, mechanics here." Erin pointed between the two of them. "We can do that. No problem." Her smile seemed a bit forced but determined.
She still wanted him for the job? And wasn't going to ask how it happened? He ought to answer her question, rather than stare in amazement. "Uh, sure. I don't know anything about how they work."
"Let's go look." Slapping both hands against the table, Erin stood and strode behind the counter.
He followed, a little dazed and confused at her sympathy and her quick dismissal of his damage. He pulled the sleeve down and fastened it.
"This is Izzy, our Italian espresso maker." Erin ran a hand over the shiny silver metal of the yard-long, complicated-looking machine.
Ryan almost laughed—Izzy was a machine, not a person. Erin didn’t seem to notice; she continued explaining. "Izzy can be a little temperamental sometimes, but he makes a mean espresso. The first key is the right grind. We have a very good burr grinder here." She patted a big, black cylinder that narrowed into a funnel sitting on the counter beside the espresso machine. "It's already set for the best grind for these beans and Izzy. If we change roasters in the future, we might adjust, but that's not anything you need to worry about right now."
She flicked her fingers. "Anyway, Izzy works by forcing high pressure steam through finely-ground coffee. The coffee goes in these filters." She picked up a shallow silver bowl attached to a thick black handle. "Load your filter like this." She held the bowl of the small, round filter under the burr grinder and flicked a lever. Coffee poured out, piling high. "Then pack it down with a twisting motion." She put the filter on the counter, picked up a small, dumbbell-looking thing, and poised it above the pile of coffee.
Erin looked at the filter for a few seconds, then at his arm, frowning, and back at the filter. "Now, this might be tricky. We could build a jig to hold the filter so you could pack it properly. Or, mmm, do you have other prosthetics that you could use to hold the filter while you bear down and twist?"
They weren't anything anyone wanted to see. "Maybe. I have others, one with a mechanical-looking grasper that might work better, but it tends to freak people out."
"Really?" She looked up at him, frowning. Then she rolled her eyes. "Idiots. People are idiots. I'm sorry, that sucks."
He still couldn't wrap his head around the idea that she wasn't freaking out about the missing arm. "Yeah, it does sometimes."
Erin shook her head sharply. "But a jig to hold the filter, fastened to the counter, would be easy enough. Then you take the packed filter and bring it up to the machine, where it seats with a twist. Izzy puts out a lot of pressure, so you have to make sure it's seated properly, or it will blow the filter out on your foot, hard, and send steam and coffee flying everywhere. But, once you get used to it, most people do this step one-handed." She demonstrated.
"Okay."
"Then you put these shot glasses below the spouts in the filter and flip the switch, and beautiful espresso comes out." She raised her voice over the hissing noise. "Now, I put a double in. I never bother with a single, because there's always a use for another shot, even if a particular customer only wants one. Which rarely happens." She grinned. "People love their coffee. As you see, we can run two filters at a time, so we can have four shots ready to go."
"People drink that much?"
Erin laughed. "Oh, yeah. Some of our regulars want quad-quads, which is four shots of espresso poured into our largest drip coffee."
"I'd jitter for a week." Ryan shuddered.
"Me too, but to each his own." Erin shrugged. "Most hot coffee drinks also take foamed milk. The amount of foam to milk is critical for each drink. Cappuccino is mostly foam, and a latte is mostly milk, with a little foam on top. Customers can order whole or skim milk or cream even. There's a bunch of different styles; I've got a guide. The foaming wand—" Erin patted a long, skinny silver thing attached toward the end of the machine "—shoots steam down into the milk. You get out a foaming pitcher, attach a thermometer to it, raise it up onto the wand, then open the valve here. The motion is circular, and you move the wand from the bottom to the top. The higher up and longer you hold it in the milk, the more foam. And it must reach the correct temperature for food safety." Erin demonstrated.
Which explained the loud screeching noise in most coffee shops. He'd never paid attention before, just got black coffee and got out.
