After Hours

The day shift lets go of us like a hand opening. Coats on hooks, boots by the mat, somebody's laugh dying out in the yard. Everyone goes home except the aging cave.

Down the stairs, the first thing I see is the aging brush. It waits on the rail where she left it, bristles still damp, holding the shape of her grip.

The stairs wind down through wet stone, and each step cools the day off me — the yard, the van, the delivery notes — until only the night version of me is left, the one who knows how to be quiet.

The ammonia and the wet stone stick in my throat, thicker than in the day. With the fans off, the cave breathes on its own. Water beads on the yellow bulbs and lets go, one drop at a time, somewhere behind the racks. White mold has climbed the far wall in the dark, patient as frost.

Cheese wheels line the wooden shelves, row after row, rinds white as paper. Inside, they're not ready yet. Everything down here is a matter of waiting longer than you meant to.

Ihyeon stands between the racks. In daylight she is an apprentice — she fetches, she notes, she defers. Under these lamps she is something else. More cheesemaker than apprentice. She reads a rind the way other people read a face.

People say she married well. People say it like a blessing.

White work coat. Short nails, clean, unpolished, practical. Her bangs have come loose and lie wet against her forehead. The cave holds its humidity. Tonight it holds hers too.

"Just wipe the white mold."

That's all she says. Not an order. Not an invitation, either. A sentence with the door left open.

The work should have ended with the day. The day is hours gone. She will not put the brush down.

I could walk out the iron door — up the stairs, into the cold honest night. On the clipboard by the door, a humidity log waits with my name beside tonight's date. Two numbers. A signature. Nothing else.

The iron door is three steps up and one decision away. I count the steps the way you count anything you're afraid of wanting.

I pick up the second brush.

We work the same aisle, wheels turning under our hands, and the aisle was not built for two. Her shoulder finds mine and stays there. The brush tip pushes the white powder aside in slow arcs, and under it the rind is gold, alive, breathing through its skin.

Her short nails make it easier to see — she picks a seam of mold off the shelf's edge with her thumbnail, flicks it away. I watch her hands too long. She notices me noticing. Neither of us stops.

"You wipe like you're apologizing to it," she says.
"Should I apologize?"
"No. It likes the attention."
"Show me," I say.

She does — her hand over mine on the handle, steering the bristles in one long slow circle. Her chin near my ear. The count of her breath. If the mold needed this much teaching, I would fail it on purpose.

The fans are off. The only sounds left are bristles on rind and the two of us breathing through our mouths — because the air is thick now, or because of something else entirely.

Her coat brushes my wrist when she reaches across me. Somewhere above, a drop lets go of a bulb and lands without echoing.

"My husband's farm is in another valley," she says. To the cheese. To the wall. To no one. "You can't hear anything there. Not even the fans."

The ring is still on her finger. I look at it. Then at the mold. Then I make myself look at the mold.

Continue this scene in Cave →

For a second, neither of us moves. The iron door is still three steps up. I don't take them. Whatever Ihyeon sees in my face, she must like it — her hand comes up, and the nearest lamp goes down to a coal.

"You keep looking at the door," she says.
"I'm not."
"Good."

She takes the brush out of my hand. Her fingers close over mine, and for a moment we are both just holding one brush in the dark, the way people hold on to a reason not to move.

"Put it down," she says.

I put it down. The stone takes my weight. Or hers. Hard to say who leans first.

Her mouth finds mine in the half-dark, and it isn't gentle, and it isn't rushed either. Her teeth catch my lower lip. Wet bangs stick to my chin. Somewhere by our feet, the aging brush finally hits the stone — the one thing she would not put down, put down.

The cave hums with all the water it holds. The yellow lamps make one small warm country out of two racks and an aisle, and I stop keeping a log of anything.

The Log

On the clipboard by the iron door, tonight's line is still empty. Two numbers and a signature, patient as the frost on the far wall.

Ihyeon's hair has dried by now, or the cave has taken the wet from it. She leans into me, tired in a way that has nothing to do with cheese. Behind us, a drop of water lets go of a bulb and lands. Neither of us moves to write it down.

Somewhere upstairs, a car passes on the road between valleys — headlights sweeping the stairwell, then gone.

There will be a morning. There always is. The trucks will come, the fans will start, someone will read this log and find two honest numbers missing where tonight should be.

The lamps stay yellow. The rinds keep what they know. Morning is a whole valley away.