Five hundred cups.

He drank five hundred cups of that and thanked me three times for every single one.

I took it back to the cart.

Binta looked at the full cup and reached for a fresh one and said, “Another black?”

And I said, “No.

Could you put some sweet cream in this one?”

She did it without saying anything, which I appreciated.

And I went back to the ledge and sat down on the cold concrete with a cup of coffee that was, at last, mine, and I stayed there.