PART 2 — THE CUP SLEEVE
Mr. Larsen reached into his cardigan with his good hand and brought out a coffee-stained paper cup sleeve, soft and worn, and set it on the table.
I come into a little shop on 6th Avenue every morning, he said slowly, his words still a little uneven from the stroke. Same girl, same smile, for years. This past January I did not come in for three days.
Most people would have shrugged. She did not. She remembered an old man who never missed his morning, and after her shift she drove to my apartment, knocked, and when I did not answer she got the manager to open the door. She found me on my kitchen floor. I had been there a long time.
The barista Richard mocked for drawing hearts in lattes was the only person in the world who noticed an old man had gone quiet, and she is the reason he lived.
The paramedics said another day and I would be gone, Mr. Larsen said. He turned the cup sleeve over. On the back, in her handwriting, were the words she wrote on his cup every single morning. See you tomorrow, Mr. L.
Richard, who had his coffee flown in from Kenya, could not look at his own father.
Kristen just passed the stuffing and said she only thought it was strange he had missed three mornings. But the old man held up that cup sleeve and said it was not strange to her. It was him. She saw him.
My daughter spells the names wrong on the cups, her uncle had joked. One January she noticed an empty chair and saved your fathers life. That is the girl behind the counter.