The coffee was white. The cup was white. The kitchen was white.

John Strap sat at the table and drank the coffee. He was forty-two years old. He had been divorced for three years. His ex-wife Sue had died eleven years ago in a car accident. A truck driver fell asleep at the wheel. That was the news report. That was the end of it.

The kitchen light was on. The table was wood. Outside, it was morning.

Frank Alcesti came in at eight. He was fifty. He had been working at the logistics company for twenty-three years. He had known John for fifteen. They had never been friends. They had been something close to friends. Something that existed in the space between coworkers who had shared a break room and a microwave and a thousand mornings that all looked the same.

"Morning," Frank said.

"Morning," John said.

Frank poured himself coffee. Sat down. Looked at the table. Looked at John. John was looking at something on the other side of the window. Something that wasn't there.

"Your drawer's open," Frank said.

John looked down. His desk drawer was open a crack. Inside, there was a photograph. A ring. A book. Sue's things. John had not closed the drawer. He never closed the drawer.

"Thanks," John said. He closed it. Opened it again. Closed it again. The motion was mechanical. Repetitive. Like a man winding a watch that had stopped working years ago.

Frank drank his coffee. The coffee was bad. It was always bad. The company used the cheapest blend they could find, and the coffee machine had been broken for six months and nobody had bothered to fix it.

That was the thing about working at a small logistics company in Youngstown, Ohio. Nothing got fixed. Nothing got replaced. You just kept going.

---

Fisher was the boss. His name was Mr. Fisher. He was fifty-eight, bald, and cared about two things: quarterly reports and keeping his employees in line. He was not a cruel man. He was not a kind man. He was a man who had spent thirty-five years learning how to be neither cruel nor kind, because both of those things got in the way of efficiency.

He called Frank into his office at ten on a Tuesday.

"Alcesti," he said. "Sit down."

Frank sat. Fisher sat behind his desk, hands folded, looking at a spreadsheet he was not reading.

"I got a call from London," Fisher said. "Sue had a cousin. Or a niece. The family tree is tangled. She works at a gas station near Croydon. She looks like Sue."

Frank felt something move in his chest. Not hope. Not dread. Something in between.

"So?" he said.

"So I thought you might want to meet her. For Mr. Strap's sake."

Frank looked at Fisher. Fisher looked at the spreadsheet. The fluorescent light above them hummed.

"Why me?" Frank said.

"Because you're his friend. And because I don't want to deal with him if he goes through another episode."

Frank nodded. He stood up. He went back to his desk. He told John.

"Okay," John said.

That was all. Okay. Not excitement. Not fear. Just okay. Like Fisher had told him the lunch menu had changed.

---

They flew to London on a Wednesday. The flight was six hours. John slept most of it. Frank watched him sleep. John's mouth was slightly open. His breathing was shallow. He looked like a man who had forgotten how to rest.

The woman's name was Marie. She was twenty-six. She worked at a gas station off the A23 near Croydon. She had dark hair and dark eyes and a face that occupied the same emotional space as Sue's face without being identical to it. No two faces are identical. That's not how faces work.

They met at a cafe near Croydon station. Marie arrived five minutes late. She apologized. John said it was fine. They sat down. Marie ordered tea. John ordered coffee. The coffee was bad. It was always bad in London too.

Marie talked about the gas station. About the customers. About London. About how she had never understood why her family kept calling her Sue's cousin like it was a destiny instead of a coincidence.

John listened. He drank his coffee. He looked at Marie. He looked away. He looked back.

"You're not her," he said.

Marie stopped talking. She looked at him. She had known this would happen. He could see it in her face. Not anger. Not sadness. Just knowing.

"I know," she said.

John nodded. He picked up his coffee. Put it down. It was cold. He picked it up again. Put it down again.

"I'm sorry," he said.

"It's alright," Marie said. "I get it."

Frank sat across from them, saying nothing. Watching. Always watching. That was the job.

---

They flew back to New York the next day. John was quiet the whole flight. Quieter than usual, which was saying something. Frank watched him stare out the window at the clouds and wondered what he was thinking.

Probably nothing. That was the thing about John. He didn't think. He processed. He calculated. He predicted. But he didn't think. Thinking required feeling, and John had given up feeling eleven years ago.

When they landed, Frank drove John back to his apartment in Youngstown. They sat in the car for a moment after Frank had parked it, the engine ticking as it cooled, the parking lot empty except for their car and the fluorescent light humming overhead.

"Thank you," John said.

"For what?"

"For going. For seeing her."

Frank nodded. He opened the car door. Stepped out. Walked to the building entrance. Turned back.

John was still sitting in the car, looking up at the windows. Frank knew there was a drawer in John's office, slightly open, containing a photograph and a ring and a book with a cracked spine.

Some doors you can't push open yourself. You need someone else to walk through them first.

Frank went inside. John stayed in the car.

---

The next morning, Frank came to the office at seven. John was already there. He was sitting at his desk, looking at his screen, typing numbers into spreadsheets. The kind of numbers that meant nothing and everything. The kind of numbers that kept a man going when there was nothing else to keep him going.

Frank made coffee. The coffee was bad. He poured himself a cup. Sat down at his desk. Opened his notebook. Wrote down the numbers for the day's shipments.

Outside, the sky was gray. The parking lot was empty. The fluorescent light hummed.

John stood up. Walked to the window. Looked out at the parking lot. Looked at nothing.

Frank wrote down more numbers. The pen scratched against the paper. The fluorescent light hummed.

The coffee machine gurgled. The coffee was bad. It was always bad.

John turned from the window. Sat down at his desk. Opened his drawer. Looked at the photograph. Closed the drawer. Opened it again. Closed it again.

Frank wrote down more numbers.

The sky was gray. The parking lot was empty. The fluorescent light hummed.

Somewhere, a phone rang. Nobody answered it.

Frank's coffee cup was empty. He set it down on the desk. The cup was white. The desk was gray. The fluorescent light hummed.

He stood up. Walked to the coffee machine. Filled the cup again. The coffee was bad. It was always bad.

He sat down. Drank it. The coffee was hot. It burned his tongue. He didn't care.

Outside, the sky was still gray. The parking lot was still empty. The fluorescent light was still humming.

The day had just begun.