…cup of coffee. Mr. Hargrove got up off the floor and ran. I’d never seen him run. He took the stairs instead of the elevator, two at a time, and I followed him all the way down to the lobby. The man in the oversized jacket was sitting on our leather bench, holding his cap in his lap. Mr. Hargrove stopped in front of him and said, in a voice I’d never heard him use, “Sal?”
The old man smiled. “You got old, kid.”
Our VP was still standing at the desk. Mr. Hargrove didn’t even look at him. He sat down on the bench next to the old man and told us, right there in the lobby, why a napkin had put him on the floor. “In 1987, I was nineteen and sleeping in my car. Sal owned a diner on Fifth Street. Every night for eight months, I sat at table six with one cup of coffee, and every night, Sal brought me a plate of food I never ordered and never paid for. When I finally got my first real job, I came in to pay him back. He wouldn’t take it. He said, ‘You still owe me a cup of coffee. Buy it when you can afford a good one.’”
Sal shrugged. “The diner closed in 2019. My wife passed last year. I saw your picture in the business section. I thought maybe it was time to collect that coffee.” He looked down at his jacket. “It’s my son-in-law’s. Mine are all too big now.”
Mr. Hargrove turned to our VP. “Bring the car around,” he said quietly. “And clear my afternoon. And the rest of the week.” The VP, who had called our lobby a soup kitchen twenty minutes earlier, went pale and hurried to the door himself.
They went for coffee. It turned into lunch, then dinner. The next Monday, a memo went out to the whole company. Mr. Hargrove had started a fund for small restaurant owners who feed people for free. It was called Table Six. Sal is its first board member. He comes in every Thursday in a new jacket that actually fits, and Mr. Hargrove brings him a cup of coffee himself. A good one.
