A Meeting on Neutral Ground

Arthur Penn's office had been decorated with such careful neutrality — beige walls, gray carpet, a single plant that was unmistakably plastic — that it seemed purpose-built for negotiations between people who could not stand each other.

Dani arrived three minutes early and took the chair closest to the door — a strategic position ensuring a quick exit if necessary. Theo showed up a minute late, which she suspected was calculated: late enough to avoid looking desperate, late enough to make her wait.

"Marlowe," he said, sitting across from her with the air of a man arriving for important business negotiations, not a meeting with the neighbor whose chalkboard had, just yesterday, declared his coffee an instrument of self-flagellation.

"Cassidy," she answered in the same tone.

Arthur Penn, a man in his fifties with the look of someone who'd seen too many meetings like this one to be surprised by anything, handed each of them a folder.

"So," he began, "basic logistics. The shared kitchen occupies the former storage space between your two floors. It'll be fitted with a single commercial espresso machine — new, better than what either of you had separately — a shared walk-in fridge, and a unified dry storage system. You'll coordinate the kitchen schedule between yourselves."

"Coordinate between ourselves," Dani repeated, in the tone of someone being asked to coordinate a property division after a divorce that never technically happened.

"My morning bake starts at five," Theo said. "I assume that's not up for discussion."

"My bake also starts at five," Dani said. "Technically I was first. I have witnesses."

"You have one regular who occasionally confuses morning with evening."

"Don't you dare bring Harold into this."

Arthur Penn looked at them both over his glasses with the expression of a man beginning to understand exactly why merging these two leases had taken the building owner so long to approve.

"Perhaps," he said carefully, "a rotating schedule would help. Even days, the kitchen is yours first, Ms. Marlowe. Odd days, yours, Mr. Cassidy. Assuming mutual courtesy, of course."

"Mutual courtesy," Theo said. "Interesting concept."

"You've got quite the vocabulary for a man who last month papered his happy-hour flyer directly over mine," Dani said.

"That was an accident. Wind."

"Wind that neatly taped your flyer exactly on top of mine, using, and I quote a witness, 'suspiciously too much tape for an accident.'"

Theo opened his mouth, clearly ready to defend himself, then thought better of it and gave her a smile instead that was, against all logic, almost charming. Dani hated herself for noticing.

"Fine," he said. "Even-odd. Deal. But the espresso machine is shared, and I'm insisting it gets cleaned after every shift, not left," — he gave her a pointed look — "the way some people leave milk foam crusted on it overnight."

"That happened once."

"Three times, according to my barista."

"Your barista exaggerates because you pay him in loyalty croissants."

"I don't pay anyone in croissants. Croissants are sacred."

Arthur Penn quietly closed his folder, apparently deciding his further participation was unnecessary, and that the two of them would manage to finish each other off perfectly well without him.

"The transition happens Monday," he said, standing. "Construction finishes the partition by the weekend. I wish you both… a productive collaboration."

Dani and Theo walked out at the same moment, getting briefly stuck shoulder to shoulder in the doorway, and both stepped back with equal haste, as if the accidental contact were a fire alarm.

"See you Monday, Marlowe," Theo said, already retreating toward his own shop.

"Don't expect me to be happy about it," she called after him.

"Wasn't expecting anything. I'm used to disappointment."

Dani snorted — louder than intended — and tried very hard not to notice that the corners of her own mouth had betrayed her, tugging upward the whole walk back to her café.