“Think we’re in for a storm tonight,” says Janos in a moment, in a way that doesn’t tell me whether it’s a statement or a question.

I stop and try to feel the air. Here, inside the long, scarred-walled room, it’s cool and shifting. Changing. Changeable. A faint sourness of gas still hangs beneath the scent of fresh ground coffee. The open windows are gray. The sky beyond them, behind the trees, is too dark for midafternoon.

“Maybe,” I say.

“Oops,” says Janos, with a stagy twist of one hand. “This one is broken. We’ll have to eat it.”

He holds out half of a snapped biscotti. I take it. Give him another smile.

For the next hour Ike leaves every window and door open. The woods breathe into the Crow’s Nest, touching everything greedily but unable to carry any of it away. A work crew thumps into the kitchen. Heavy footsteps, the rasp of appliances pushed across the floor. Janos lets me help him take down the chairs from the tabletops, refill sugar canisters and stir-stick cups. It’s Friday. Which means Last Things. Which means the place will be packed, and soon.

People start showing up right at opening time. Janos plugs the steamer into its socket. He switches on the coffee machines. Dark streams pour into their carafes.

Ike strides back with a handwritten sign to tape to the register: Kitchen Closed Tonight. Then he steps over to the corner where I’m wiping the backs of the old wooden chairs.

“Here,” he says in his gruff voice. He holds out a folded twenty between his first and second fingers.

I don’t touch it. “You don’t have to pay me.”

“Come on,” he says. “I owe you for the help. And I don’t like being in debt.”

I still don’t touch the money. “Anybody would have told you about the leak,” I say. “If they knew.”

Ike narrows his eyes just a little. “I’m not paying you for that. I can’t, and I know it. I’m paying you for the prep work and cleaning you’ve done. Now, are you going to take this or am I going to have to mail it to your aunt?”

He sets the money on the table in front of me. Twenty dollars. I don’t know when I’ve had twenty dollars of my own to spend.

“One other thing,” says Ike, already stepping away. “That money is no good here.” He gives me the tiniest one-cornered smile. “Anybody who literally saves my ass gets their coffee for free.”

I pick up the money. There’s a second twenty folded inside the first.

I slide the bills into my pocket and smile at Ike’s disappearing back.

Janos has finished making flavored mochas for three freshmen girls when I walk up to the counter. He raises an eyebrow at me. He overhead everything.

“So,” he says, “what can I get for you, miss?”

“A cappuccino. Please.”

Janos gives a little bow. He turns to the steamer, packing espresso into the little basket, picking up the metal milk pitcher. When he’s not looking, I slip one of the twenties into the tip can.