The Captionist and the Roaster

The spider plant was dead. I want to be accurate here, it had been dead since August, and my ex-husband Ross had left it behind when she moved out two years ago, but somehow tonight, on a rainy Tuesday in November, I was standing in my living room in Glasgow holding the pot like it had something to say to me.

"Thirty-four years old," I told the plant. "Roasting coffee for a living, talking to a dead plant. That's where we are."

I'm Wade, by the way. I roast coffee. Small batch, garage setup, the whole hipster tragedy of it. Divorced at thirty-two, and since then my social life had mostly been my phone and a man I'd never met.

My phone buzzed. Voicemail. Larry.

"Wade! Wade, it's Larry, pick up, pick up." He was breathing hard, walking fast, you could hear it. "The conference is off. The whole thing. The venue flooded, the actual venue, there's two feet of water in the main hall and the fire brigade won't let anyone in. Sixty delegates, Wade. I've got sixty delegates and nowhere to put them and I've already paid the captioner and the caterers and I'm standing outside yours, actually, I'm literally outside your building right now, so if you're home, open the door, because I'm going to sit on your step like a stray dog otherwise."

I opened the door. That's the kind of friend I am, apparently.

"Larry," I said. "It's raining sideways. Get in."

"Thank you, thank you, I owe you my life." He came in shedding water like a retriever. Larry's thirty-three, works in accessibility organising, which is a real job even though it sounds made up. "I'll sleep on the couch, I'll sleep on the floor, I'll sleep in the garage with your roaster."

"The couch is fine. What happened?"

"Pipes. Upstairs pipes, burst in the night, nobody noticed till the ceiling came down on the registration desk." He started unloading bags from the hallway. "So I've moved the whole thing to a hotel out by the retail park for tomorrow, smaller, it's fine, it's a disaster but it's fine, and meanwhile I need somewhere to land tonight and I brought a guest, is that okay? I brought a guest."

"Who's the guest?"

"The captioner. Douglas. The one I'd booked for the conference, he's here for it anyway, he'd already travelled up from Manchester, and I couldn't just leave him at a bus stop." Larry was saying all this while still coming through the door, and behind him came a man I recognised instantly, and my whole evening changed shape.

Douglas Byrd. Thirty-one, slender, forearms covered in tattoos, kind eyes, the exact kind eyes I'd been typing paragraphs at for three weeks under the name Rory.

He didn't know me as Wade. He knew me as Rory, twenty-six, "aspiring stand-up comedian," a persona I'd built one bored night and then kept feeding because he was funny and warm and kept replying.

"Oh," I said. It came out as a noise.

"This is Wade," Larry said. "Wade, Douglas. Wade roasts coffee, Douglas does live captioning, you two are going to be best friends by morning or I'll eat my lanyard."

"Hi," Douglas said, and shook my hand, and looked right at me, and there was nothing in his face. Nothing at all. He had no idea. "Thanks for having me, Larry basically kidnapped me off the street."

"Larry basically did," I agreed. My voice did something strange on the second word.

"I'll get the curry," Larry announced. "There's an Indian place two streets over. Wade, your usual? Douglas, you eat curry?"

"I would commit crimes for a good saag paneer," Douglas said.

Larry left. And then it was me and Douglas in my living room, and the dead spider plant on the windowsill judging me.

"That's a coffee setup?" Douglas asked, nodding at the dining table, where I'd left my sample station out.

"Yeah. Sample roaster, trays, the lot. I do cuppings for clients here when I'm too lazy to go to the shop."

"So you're serious about coffee."

"Serious as a heart attack." I pulled out a chair. "Sit, you're soaked."

"Only my shoulders. Larry walks fast." He sat and peeled off his jacket and I got a proper look at the tattoos, the ones I'd seen in photos, the ones I'd typed compliments about. "You okay? You look a bit pale."

"Long day," I said. "Roasting does that."

"Wade?" Larry's voice carried from the hallway, phone at his ear, already at the curry place. "Large saag paneer, two rice, garlic naan, and the lamb thing Wade pretends he doesn't order every time."

"Twice a week," I called back. "Minimum."

Douglas laughed at that, an easy laugh, and I thought, oh no. Oh no, this is worse than I thought. He's actually lovely in person.

Over the curry, it got worse. Much worse.

"So how do you two know each other?" Douglas asked, tearing a naan.

"Co-working space," I said. "Larry rented a desk next to mine for a year and talked the entire time."

"He did talk the entire time," Douglas agreed.

"I built a business out of talking," Larry said, mouth full. "That's networking."

"I do events, so I know the type," Douglas said. "Actually, funny thing, I've been talking to a stand-up comedian online for a few weeks. When Larry said he knew a guy in Glasgow who was funny, I thought for a second it might be the same bloke."

The saag paneer turned to concrete in my mouth.

"A comedian," I managed.

"Yeah. Rory. Met him on that app, the one for chatting, not the dating one, well, sort of the dating one." Douglas shrugged, easy as anything. "He's twenty-six, says he's breaking into stand-up, works in a coffee shop to pay the bills. We've been messaging every night. He's really funny. Great texter, you know? Some people can't text."

"Some people can't," I agreed faintly.

"What's he like?" Larry asked. "I want to meet him."

"Oh, you'd like him. He's got this bit about decaf drinkers he does, all in text obviously, but it kills me." Douglas grinned. "He works in coffee, which is funny, because I don't know anything about coffee. I drink tea like a normal person."

"What a coincidence," I said.

"Right? I keep meaning to ask him actual coffee questions so I sound less thick."

"So," Larry said, pointing his fork at me. "Wade. Former husband, current garage full of coffee machinery. Tell Douglas about the roaster."

"The roaster," I said. "It's a roaster. It roasts."

"He's being modest. He's got a wholesale list as long as your arm," Larry said. "Anyway, Douglas, tell Wade what you do, since he was too rude to ask."

"I caption live events," Douglas said. "Deaf and hard-of-hearing delegates, conferences, theatre sometimes. Someone speaks, I type it near enough instantly, they read it on a screen. It's more fun than it sounds."

"That sounds genuinely hard," I said, and meant it, and hated that I meant it, because everything I said to this man in person was true and everything I'd said to him online was not.

"It is and it isn't. You get fast. You get so fast you stop thinking about it." He nudged the naan towards me. "Anyway, sorry, Larry's disaster has got me working tomorrow instead of heading home, so I'm sleeping on your couch as well apparently. I hope that's okay. Larry said it was okay."

"Larry said it was okay," I echoed.

"It's a big couch," Larry said.

I stood up, holding my plate. "I'll get more rice. There's rice. Kitchen. Excuse me."

In the kitchen I stood at the counter and looked at my phone and there it was, the thread, Rory and Douglas, last message from him at nine this morning: *you'd better be real, rory. One day i'm turning up in glasgow and demanding that decaf bit in person.*

"Brilliant," I whispered to the kettle. "Absolutely brilliant."

From the living room, Douglas's voice, warm and easy: "Wade? You still alive in there?"

"One second," I called. "Rice situation. Complicated."

I put my forehead against the fridge and thought about how exactly a person explains that he's twenty-six the way rivers are twenty-six, meaning not at all.

"Wade!" Larry shouted. "Cucumber raita or no?"

"Yes," I said. "To all of it."

I had until the rice was warm to figure out what to say. I gave myself till the rice was warm, and then I gave myself till the rice was cold, and then Douglas appeared in the kitchen doorway holding two beers and said, "Right, which one of us is going to say it first?"

"You're going to have to narrow it down," I said, taking a beer anyway.

"Rory," Douglas said. "The comedian. The twenty-six-year-old comedian." He held his phone out flat, like a serving tray. On it was a photo I'd sent him last week, a shot of my garage roaster with the drum open and beans spilling out amber. "Rory sent me this. Said it was his work."

"Ah," I said.

"Ah," he agreed.

We stood there in my kitchen, two grown men holding beers, and neither of us drank.

"Say something, Wade."

"Okay. So." I put the beer on the counter. "Rory is me. I'm Rory. Rory doesn't exist, or rather, Rory is the part of me I invented, and the age and the