Fenig came to visit, saying he was in a coffee-drinking mood. I
looked around the room for coffee. I looked everywhere without results.
Then I looked for cups. There were no clean cups. All the cups were in
the sink, sitting inside each other. I looked around for sugar. I tried
to find a clean spoon in the drawer of the small cabinet. The drawer was
full of string, buttons and penny postage stamps. I began to sweat, a
mean animal odor soaking my clothes. I hunted around for a saucer but
there wasn't a single one anywhere, clean or dirty. Fenig liked his
coffee black, so there was no need to look for cream, milk or
half-and-half. . . .
. . . I got on my knees and looked in the cabinet space under the sink for
some sign of a coffee can. But what sign? Either the coffee can would be
there or it wouldn't. There was no sign involved. I kept at it,
determined to conduct an intelligent search. The idea of coffee was
overpowering. Finding it and brewing it. Feeling the thick liquid wash
down my throat and divide itself into tributaries and attenuated falls.
If I could find a clean spoon, the coffee might turn up next. My shirt
felt heavy and wet, sticking to my back. There was still hope of locating
a trace of sugar somewhere in the room - a lump stuck in the bottom of the
box, some brownish fossils to be scraped off the sides of the sugar bowl,
assuming the box and sugar bowl existed. Given this or even part of it, I
might then find coffee or at least a saucer that might lead to coffee.
signs that serve no purpose are logically meaningless, according to
something I'd read once and tried to remember. I had it wrong but that
didn't matter. I was a votary and dupe of superstition. If I could find
the box of sugar, it would lead me to a clean spoon. Spoon secured, named
and agreed on, we pursue the formal concept to its inevitable end, which
is coffee. . . .
There is no need to look for cream, milk or half-and-half (I
repeated to myself). Fenig likes his coffee black. There is no need to
look for cream, milk or half-and-half.
From Great Jones Street by Don DeLillo.