I hadn’t expected him to order coffee.

No one ever did.

I’d been working the midday shift at Charlie Goodnights for a week by then. In fact, hardly anyone bothered to stop by the bar on Hillsborough Street before 7:00 pm. My shift ended at 8:00.

Mostly I spent my time setting up the bar in preparation for the late-night rush of college students from NC State, stocking the beer cabinets, refilling the popcorn maker.

I hadn’t really noticed the coffee, to tell you the truth.

I could smell it, competing with the stale beer from the draft tap overflow bins and the rancid buttery smell of popcorn.

I don’t think anyone had brewed a fresh pot for several days.

“It’s not fresh,” I told him.

“I don’t care,” he said. “I need the caffeine.”

He had a northern accent. Not quite New Jersey. Maybe New York?

He pulled a magazine out from the satchel he had set on the bar stool next to him—The Economist—and started to thumb through it.

I set the mug of pitch-black coffee in front of him.

“Cream and sugar?”

“Black’s fine,” he said and took a swig.

“On second thought, I’ll take some cream.”

I pulled the cup-sized metal pitcher out of the small refrigerator behind me, placed it on the bar next to the coffee, searched out a clean spoon, and then went back to washing and drying beer mugs.

“I haven’t seen you here before,” he said, eyeing me.

His dark eyes were bright, a bit intense, and strangely inviting.

“I just started last week,” I said.

“How’d you pull this shift?” he asked. “Don’t you die of boredom here?”

“I don’t mind. I like the quiet.”

Before I knew it, I was telling him about my work schedule, my job delivering pizza on the days I didn’t work at Charlie Goodnights, my mornings reading to the visually-impaired state employee.

“Why so many jobs?”

“I’m trying to raise money for graduate school.”

“What’s your subject?” he asked, as he continued to thumb through his magazine. Probably he expected something like nursing or education.

“Japanese literature.”

He looked up sharply, shutting the magazine with a snap.

“Japanese? I didn’t know they taught that here.”

“They don’t.”

His eyes were framed by aviator-shaped glasses. Bedroom eyes. They were large and slightly droopy, kind of like Dustin Hoffman’s. He had Hoffman’s sly smirk, too, and thick black hair that curled behind his ears and over his collar.

For fun I had him guess where I had been admitted. He went down the list of local schools, and at each name I shook my head.

“Okay. I give up. Where?”

“Columbia.”

“New York, Columbia?” his dark eyebrows shot up in surprise.

“Yes.”

“Wow. I’m impressed.”

“Really?”

“I’ve been in Raleigh for two years now and you’re the first person I’ve met who’s even mentioned Columbia.”

It turned out, he was from Allentown, Pennsylvania and was just finishing his Masters degree in Economics at NC State.

He had the kind of confidence and directness typical of a “Yankee.” In some people, it turns me off. But I found his bravado appealing.

He pulled a pen and notebook out of his satchel, tore out a scrap of paper and wrote something down. He folded the paper, set it on the bar, and handed me a $5 bill. I turned to the register to make change.

“Keep it,” he said. “And here’s another tip.” He tapped the folded scrap, picked up his satchel, and sauntered to the door.

I unfolded the paper. “This is the best tip you’ll ever get: Go out with me.”

When I looked up, he had gone.

I took his advice, though. Two days later I met him at the bell tower on campus, and we strolled together down Hillsborough Street. We were all the way to the Capitol before I realized how far we’d gone.

After that, he took me to movies, to dinners, to his boarding house on Bloodworth Street. When the summer of 1978 came to an end, he took me to New York.

Originally, my brother, Luke, had planned to drive the Chevy Nova to the city and drop me off. We were both nervous about the excursion. How would we find my dormitory, where would he park? There were so many unknowns.

Dennis was on his way to take a teaching position at Shippensburg College in Pennsylvania.

“It’s not far from the city,” he said. “I can drive you there.”

I trusted him and his swagger. Dennis was not afraid of anything.

We loaded his car with my suitcases; I still had the red vinyl ones I had gotten as a high school graduation present. I had two boxes of the books, all accumulated in college: Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance—which all the incoming students had had to read— the collected works of Chaucer, The Complete Works of William Shakespeare, Mishima Yukio’s tetralogy, The Sea of Fertility (in translation), and more.

“Do you need all these books?”

“I think so.”

Dennis urged me to limit what I packed. The dorm room would be miniscule, he explained. He balked at the old “Persian rug” I dragged out to the car. I had gotten the rug from an older dorm mate at St. Andrews after she graduated. I inherited her dorm room, too. I enjoyed the warm sophistication the carpet lent the linoleum floors.

“I can keep it for you,” he offered when I hesitated to part with the rug.

And off we went to the big city, to more dates, to visits with his parents, and to marriage.

The tip Dennis gave me that afternoon at Charlie Goodnights paid off.