Chapter four

Morning ritual

Jane’s daily commute was a slow walk down steep stairs, with a sharp left at the landing.  French doors served as the office front.  The room where she conducted business began life as a proper sitting room in the early 1900s, hosting the good people of North Texas.  Jane liked to imagine real sit-downs in her parlor.  Talk about the heat, about the town expanding, about politics.  Talk about what was happening in rival Dallas just 30 miles to the east or about the opening of the Interurban Trolley route between the two cities.  Townspeople must have been especially abuzz about the 24-story Farmers & Mechanics National Bank built around 1920.  For many years Fort Worth held the bragging rights for the tallest building in the entire state of Texas. Dallas folks had to be spittin' green.  Jane could almost hear the gloating of Fort Worth’s finest. 

          The parlor-turned-office now entertained two to three employees on any given day.  Truth is, topics of conversation had not changed all that much.  Close your eyes and it could just as well be 1920: It’s hot outside, elections are adding to the heat and the city just keeps expanding.  The rivalry between Cowtown and Big D, too, had not changed really in 100 years, although transportation between the two cities had improved.  Interstate Highways 30 and 20 as well as Amtrak and Trinity Railway Express long replaced the old trolley system. 
          Jane superstitiously counted the stairs as she descended, typically 6 a.m. each day.  When the count hit 16, Jane was facing the double front doors.  Taking a right at the bottom of the stairs, the window tops of the wooden doors let in enough light to lead Jane down a short hallway that fed into the kitchen.  She didn’t need light to get around the small island and to the counter beyond where the coffee pot sat.  Coffee was an important part of her early morning ritual.  Jane’s preferences leaned toward strong, black coffee.  Not the watery Midwest version she was weaned on as a child, the kind you can see though.  She also didn’t believe in ruining coffee by adding milk or sugar.
           After the coffee was started, Jane’s ritual demanded she disarm the security alarm.   She didn’t like it to stay on during the day.  Just at night.  She had the pleasure of meeting local fire fighters from the neighborhood station when a friend accidentally set it off.  Jane had not responded quickly enough to catch the phone call from the security company and chaos ensued.  Disarming the alarm in the morning before others could set it off revealed more about Jane’s anxiety level than it did about her common sense.  But it was now in the routine, so that was that.  Jane walked back through the hallway toward the front doors, anticipating the velvet greeting on her bare feet from the 1918 Marta Maas Fjetterstromug flat weave.  A splurge Jane had never regretted. At the front door, Jane punched in the security code on the keypad, watching the lighted digital words change from "on" to "off."  Jane never missed the irony of that daily morning affirmation.  Satisfied, she returned to the kitchen to wait for her coffee.
          It used to be that Jane never waited for her morning coffee.  David would bring it to her in bed every morning.  Now, she occasionally allowed the smell of coffee brewing to take her back to those days, back to when she would wake to that sweet aroma which made her feel loved.  And for just a few seconds, she could be happily transported back in time.  Not too long or Jane might lose control of the new routine.  Jane might just plain lose control.  To make sure that didn't happen, Jane's new routine included one concrete and solid rule: never drink coffee in bed.