He thanks me for two years of coffee.

He names four specific mornings, one of which I remember and three of which I do not, which was the first indication I had of the difference in scale between what those five minutes were to me and what they were to him.

One of the three is from the January of 2023, and it is a day on which, according to him, I stood there for nine minutes because I had a dentist’s appointment and had already told work I would be late.

Nine minutes.