I stood there in the kitchen for a while after Mrs. Tanaka left.
The coffee maker did its thing. Eight minutes, exactly like she said. I poured a cup into a mug that probably cost more than my monthly phone bill, because everything in this house existed on a different economic plane than the one I inhabited, and I drank it black while leaning against the marble island and thinking about the fact that the Valentine family housekeeper had just gone to bat for me against a woman who could buy my entire neighborhood and turn it into a parking garage.
The coffee was excellent. Of course it was.
My phone sat heavy in my pocket, buzzing every few minutes with whatever chaos the group chat had generated since I excused myself from the breakfast table approximately twelve minutes ago. Twelve minutes. That was all it had taken for the conversation to devolve from Sabrina winning Christmas through sheer cinematic weaponry to whatever fresh insanity they were cooking up now.
