The Cafe Between Watches

A Friend Protocol vignette.

It was just past nine when Lev pulled into the parking lot. He sat for a moment with the engine off, watching the rain hit the windshield. His phone had buzzed three times in the last minute. He turned it face down on the passenger seat and got out of the car.

The cafe sat between two warehouses on the edge of the industrial zone. Most people who came here were truck drivers or hospital workers ending night shifts. The light from the windows was the color of old paper. Through the glass, Lev could see Andrei already in their booth, hunched over a coffee, looking at his hands.

A bell rang as Lev pushed the door open. The jukebox was playing something old and country, a woman singing about a town she had left behind. Sam looked up from behind the counter and lifted one finger in greeting. Sam had worked here for as long as Lev and Andrei had been coming, which was about four years now. He knew them by their orders and by the fact that they sometimes stayed too late.

Andrei looked up as Lev slid into the booth across from him.

“You look terrible,” Andrei said.

“You look worse.”

“I know.”

Sam appeared at the table with a coffee pot. He filled Lev’s cup without being asked. “Soup tonight is chicken,” he said. “Pie is apple.”

“Both,” Lev said. “Andrei?”

“Just the soup.”

Sam nodded and went back to the counter.

Lev wrapped his hands around the coffee cup. The warmth was the first kind thing that had happened to him in fourteen hours. The ransomware had hit the hospital network at six in the morning. By eight, three of the regional clinics were locked out of patient records. By noon, the company they both worked for had been called in, and Lev and Andrei had been on conference calls and triage queues since. Tomorrow at six, they would be back at it. Tonight they had three hours, maybe four, before sleep, and they had agreed to spend one of those hours here before driving the rest of the way home.

“How are we doing on the encryption analysis?” Andrei asked.

“Don’t.”

“Sorry.”

“I mean it. Not for an hour. I cannot.”

“Sorry. Yeah.”

Andrei picked up his coffee and put it down again without drinking. His eyes were red, and not just from screens. Lev had known him for nine years. He knew the difference.

“You wanted to talk,” Lev said.

Andrei nodded but didn’t say anything.

The song on the jukebox ended. There was a moment of silence, and then the next song began — a quiet guitar, and a man’s voice that Lev knew before the first word came clear of the speakers. Head Rolls Off. Frightened Rabbit.

Lev looked over at the jukebox and then back at Andrei. Andrei was already looking at him.

“I didn’t put it on,” Andrei said.

“I know. Sam did.”

Sam was wiping down a table near the window, not looking at them. He had been doing this for years. It was their song, and Sam knew what the song meant, even though they had never explained it to him in any direct way. Sam had been working at the cafe the night they first put the song on the jukebox themselves, the night after Scott Hutchison’s body had been found in the river, the night they had agreed that they were going to be different kinds of friends to each other. Sam had refilled their coffee three times that night without saying anything. The next time they came in, the song was on the jukebox. Sam had paid for it himself. They knew because they had asked the owner once, and the owner had told them, embarrassed, that it was Sam.

The song played, and the booth was quiet for a while.

“What’s going on,” Lev said.

Andrei looked at his hands. “I’m tired.”

“Yeah.”

“More tired than the incident.”

“Yeah,” Lev said. “I see that.”

Andrei nodded slowly. He picked up his coffee again. This time he drank.

“Can I tell you about the proposal?” Lev said. “I know it’s not the night for it. But I’ve been holding it for two weeks and Friday is Friday.”

“Yeah. Yeah, of course. Tell me.”

So Lev told him about the proposal. It was a redesign of how the company handled the early hours of a crisis call — the first ninety minutes, before the full team was assembled. Lev had been working on it for months. He believed that the current handoff process, which had been designed eight years ago, was leaving the people who called them in the worst moments of their working lives without a single human voice for too long. He had data. He had a model. He had a plan for how to test it without disrupting the existing workflow. Friday morning at ten, he would be presenting it to the leadership team. He had been rehearsing it in his head every night for a week.

“That’s the wrong approach,” Andrei said when Lev finished.

Lev waited.

“I mean it. You’re being naive. You don’t understand the politics. Marek isn’t going to back this. He’s going to see it as a critique of the playbook he wrote, and he’s going to make sure it dies. You’re going to walk in there Friday and embarrass yourself.”

Lev felt the temperature in his chest change.

“Andrei.”

“I’m being honest with you. This is what a friend does. I’m telling you that you don’t read the room well enough for this to land. You think because you have data, the data will speak for itself. It won’t. You are not as politically aware as you think you are, and this proposal is going to make you look like you don’t understand how the company actually works.”

The song was still playing. Lev took a slow breath and looked at the jukebox.

“Andrei,” he said again.

“What.”

“Hold on.”

Lev got up from the booth. He walked over to the jukebox. He looked at the menu of songs, found the one he wanted, fed in the coin, and pressed the buttons. Head Rolls Off was already playing, but he queued it up to play again.

He walked back to the booth and sat down.

Andrei was watching him.

“I want to come back to what you said,” Lev said. “But before I do, I want to make sure I’m hearing it right. Tell me if I have this. You’re saying the proposal is good but the timing is wrong. You’re saying I’m underestimating Marek and overestimating my own read of the leadership team. You’re saying you’ve watched me get blindsided in meetings before, and you’re worried I’m about to be blindsided in a bigger one. Is that what you’re saying?”

Andrei was quiet for a long moment.

“Yeah,” he said. “That’s part of what I’m saying.”

“Okay. The part about Marek — I want to think about that. I think you might be right. I haven’t tested the proposal against him directly, and you know him better than I do. So that’s worth me sitting with before Friday. Thank you.”

Andrei’s shoulders moved a little. Some kind of release.

“But I want to ask you something,” Lev said, “and I need you to hear it the way I’m asking it. Not as a counter.”

“Okay.”

“What you said about me — that I don’t read the room, that I’m naive, that I’m going to embarrass myself — that wasn’t about the proposal. That was about me. And I don’t think you meant to do that. But you did. And I want to know why.”

Andrei looked at the table. He didn’t say anything.

“How many stars are you on today,” Lev said. Quietly.

The song was beginning again. The opening notes. The guitar.

Andrei put his hands flat on the table on either side of his coffee cup. He looked at them.

“One,” he said.

“Okay.”

“I haven’t told you something.”

“Okay.”

“For a while.”

“Okay. Take your time.”

Sam came past with the soup. He set Andrei’s bowl down gently, and Lev’s bowl, and a small plate with the apple pie, and then he was gone again before anyone had to say anything.

Andrei looked at the soup.

“You remember I told you I went to a funeral in March.”

“Yes.”

“It was a guy named Petar. From before. From when I was using.”

Lev nodded slowly. He felt very still.

“He was the one who got me out, actually,” Andrei said. “He was a few years ahead of me. He was the one I called when I was ready to stop. He drove three hours to come get me. I never told you about him because I didn’t want him to be — I don’t know. I wanted that part of my life to be over. I wanted you to know me as the person I am now.”

“Yeah.”

“He died. Overdose. After eleven years clean. I went to the funeral. The travel was expensive. I missed a week of work — I told you I had the flu. I didn’t have the flu.”

“Andrei.”

“And after I got back, I — ” Andrei stopped. He picked up his spoon and put it down again. “I’m not okay. I haven’t been okay since March. And about a month ago I — I’m not — I’m not back where I was. I’m nowhere near where I was. But I’m not where I told you I am, either. And I have been carrying it, and I have not been able to figure out how to tell you.”

Lev did not say anything for a long time.

The song was at the part where the singer says he wants you to know that he wanted to live. Where the voice almost breaks. Lev had heard Head Rolls Off hundreds of times. He still could not get through it without something tightening in his chest.

“Andrei,” he said.

“Yeah.”

“That’s a five-goat conversation.”

Andrei made a sound that was almost a laugh, and almost not.

“Yeah,” he said. “I know.”

“We don’t have to have all of it tonight. We have an hour. We don’t even have to use the whole hour. But I’m here. And I’m not — I’m not going anywhere. And you don’t have to be coherent. You don’t have to know what you need. You just have to be here, and I’ll be here too, and we’ll figure it out.”

Andrei nodded. He was looking at the table.

“Eat your soup,” Lev said.

Andrei picked up his spoon. Lev picked up his. They ate in silence for a while. The song ended. Sam, behind the counter, did not put on another one. The cafe was quiet except for the rain on the windows.

After a while Andrei said, “I’m sorry about what I said. About the proposal. About you.”

“I know.”

“I don’t actually think you’re naive.”

“I know, Andrei.”

“I think your proposal is good. I think you should give it Friday.”

“Okay. We can talk about that later. Not tonight.”

“Okay.”

They ate. The rain kept on. Lev’s phone had buzzed twice more during the conversation; he had not looked at it. He would look at it in the car. He would handle whatever the next thing was. Tomorrow at six, they would be back at the hospital, working through the encrypted backups, listening to the IT director cry quietly in the conference room while they worked. They would do the work. They were both good at the work.

But the work was not the only thing.

After a while, Andrei said, “Can I tell you about Petar sometime? Not all at once. But — sometime.”

“Yeah,” Lev said. “I’d like that.”

Sam came by with the coffee pot and refilled both their cups. He looked at Lev for a moment, and Lev nodded once, and Sam nodded back, and went away.

The two men sat in the booth and finished their soup, and then their coffee, and then Lev paid for both of them, and they walked out into the rain together. In the parking lot Andrei stopped and put his arms around Lev, briefly, the way men do when they cannot say what they are saying. Then they got into their separate cars and drove home through the wet streets, to sleep for a few hours before the morning.