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“I can see that.” She decided to make herself useful, so she lit the heater, and checked the water level in the percolator. There were a couple of inches left. “How many cups will you drink?”
“Two or three.”
“Same here. Pass me three bottles of water, and it can be heating while we go downstairs.”
He did better than that; he not only pulled three bottles of water from the case of water sitting on the floor, he rooted around and pulled out a bag of ground coffee. There was even a scoop inside the half-empty bag. She opened the bag and took a deep breath; just breathing in the aroma of the coffee was a pleasure. She was a by-the-numbers kind of coffeemaker, so she began doing math in her head, mumbling to herself as she did so. “Three bottles at sixteen-point-nine ounces … fifty point seven … add six … divide by five … eleven something … divide by two—”
“What the hell are you doing?” he asked incredulously, staring at her with a kind of horrified, I-don’t-believe-it expression.
“Figuring out how many scoops of coffee to use.” Wasn’t it obvious? She frowned at him. She’d specifically mentioned the bottles, so what else would she have been doing?
“Multiplying and dividing?”
“Well, how do you do it?” She crossed her arms, both feeling and sounding defensive.
“I put in the water, and I dump in how much coffee I think I’ll need.”
“How does it taste?”
He blew out a breath. “Sometimes it tastes pretty good,” he said cautiously.
“I get better results than ‘sometimes’ with my method.”
“But you need a fu—a damn calculator to figure it out!”
“Oh, really?” Ostentatiously, she looked around. “I don’t believe I see one, and I was doing just fine.” She couldn’t believe it. He’d just caught himself before he said fucking, and substituted damn. When was the last time he’d bothered to moderate his language? Huh. She was beginning to have a little fun.
“So what’s this magic formula?” he demanded after a few seconds, when she simply sat there looking at him, her head cocked a little as if she were waiting.
“Figure out how many ounces of water you have and divide by five—”
“Why?”
“Because, for reasons unknown to mankind, coffeemakers figure a cup of coffee is five ounces, rather than eight.”
“Bullshit.”
“No, it’s true. Haven’t you ever measured water into a coffeemaker and noticed it doesn’t match?”
“I don’t pay attention to shit like that. But this isn’t a coffeemaker. It’s a percolator.”
“But the scoops seem to be based on how much coffee you need for five ounces, so it doesn’t matter. Then the type of grind makes a difference—”
“I don’t want to hear it. You’re making this way too complicated.”
“I make good coffee.” She was beginning to feel a little indignant on behalf of her coffeemaking skills.
“So you say. I haven’t seen any proof yet. Finish with this mathematical thing.” He was glaring at her as if she’d told him there was no Santa Claus.
“If the grind is coarse, then you need to use a little bit more; if it’s fine, a little less. This looks like a medium grind, but the scoop looks big, so I’m estimating two cups for each scoop of coffee. Therefore, after I divide the ounces of water by five, I divide that answer by two, and that gives me how many scoops of coffee I need.”
Still looking like a thundercloud, he pointed at the percolator. “All right, get the coffee going. This had better be good.”
“Or what?” she taunted. “You’ll strip me of my coffee privileges, and risk death by dismemberment?”
“Just make the damn coffee!”
“Do you like it strong, weak, or medium?”
