On the House
by Emily Kiernan

Mark was behind the counter at Java Time that day, which pleased no one because while he was a nice guy (the first thing anyone said about him: just the nicest guy), he was also a remedial person with the dopey goodness of a golden retriever—symbolically golden, a retriever who has never suffered—an affect that permeated every facet of his work, from the quality of his soy-milk foams (flaccid), to the strength of his drip coffee (burnt), so we all endured an internal clench when we saw him, though no one, previously, had clenched with such unmediated extravagence as Jesse on the fabled day when he discovered Brittney Kern post (and also pre) coitally in bed with Danny Miller following one of Brittney’s infamous pool parties, to which Jesse had not been invited on account of his still-delicate, sub-ninety-day sobriety and the inevitability of drunken debauches at a Brittany party, which caused more than a few of us to question the wisdom of this particular relationship at this particular time…