Page 75 of Why Cheese?
“Everyone else in the retinue thought he was a pompous ass, flailing his piety around to impress the Lord. But he’d do it in the middle of the night. Sneak out to take a piss, drop to his knees, and I wondered why.”
They saw it. Everyone always sees it. Doesn’t matter how hard I…how hard he tried to hide it. They still found out.
“I try to stop,” I cry out. “I really do. Locks, they’re the worst. Sometimes, in the kitchen, I wash my hands five times after handling meat. But the voices are always there telling me if I don’t lock up, if I don’t do it enough then…”Oh no.All of that slipped from my lips. I touch them as if I can reel back in the damning words. “I’m sorry.”
“What for?” Cheddy asks, hurling me for a loop.
“For being wrong?”
“You’re not wrong.” He tips back and openly stares down my body. “You’re real right from where I’m standing.”
“That’s, um…” I boil under my apron—the apron with nothing but my underwear on underneath. That reminder causes me to gulp just as Cheddy leans clear over me. He slaps a palm to the wall so his grinning face is almost on mine.
“If I said you were beautiful would you take up arms against me?” he whispers.
My body reads all of his intentions, then my ears filter his words. “What?”
“I want to—”
“Roq’s asking for you, Violette.” Brie comes out of the dark to tell me.
“—fuck you!” Cheddy shouts, undeterred by the arrival of one of his friends. “Hey, Brie.”
“Hi. So, should I tell him…?” Brie waves a hand out to the main room.
Placing a hand on Cheddy’s heaving and scarred chest, I tell Brie, “I’m coming.” Then I stare into Cheddy’s eyes. “You’ll have to wait.” I give the tiniest of pushes, and he stumbles back looking half drunk.
“Awe, but I’m bad at that,” he complains as I slip after Brie to find Roq and Cam both staring at the vats.
“It’s fine,” Cam says.
“No, it’s off by… Look at this!” Roq shakes a tiny strip of colored paper in front of Cam’s eyes. The man’s response is to roll them and sigh. At my arrival, Roq spins around. “Where were you? The milk is—”
“Fine,” Cam interrupts. “It’s good. Ready to go. For god’s sake man, not everything needs to be perfect.”
That’s clearly not what Roq wants to hear. He snarls and hurls the tiny paper at the wall where it sticks to a brick. “You are—”
“Petulant? Capricious? Slippery? Indolent?”
Roq snorts and turns away. “Exhausting,” he says, before honing in on me. “You. Violette.” His tone softens with my name, and he picks up a small bottle. “The next stage is the rennet. This will bind the milk together to help create curd. Please add all of this into that vat.”
“Okay. Rennet. What is rennet?” I take the bottle and climb up my little step stool.
“Here it comes.” Cam leans his ass against a table as Roq launches into a dissertation on rennet, where it comes from, how it works, and the amounts needed for a multitude of varying cheeses. It goes on for so long the words slip from my brain. I keep nodding, hoping he’ll stop, but Roq’s in his own world. At least he looks happy there.
He’s so excited to talk about the right rennet ratio, his glasses start to fog up. I’m trying to remember what he last said when he stops and looks at me.Oh no.Was it a question? Getting nervous, my body tries to relax as if that will save me.
Just as I’m about to rest my elbow on the lip of the vat, Roq grabs my whole arm. “Don’t disturb the rennet. One small shake could ruin the entire batch.”
“Okay,” I mumble, my legs quivering so badly the three stairs grow into a million. “Can someone get me down?”
“Gladly.” Cam glides in past Roq and scoops his arms around my waist. Like a gentleman helping a lady from her coach, he hefts me up and carries me across the room to one of the tables. I land next to a pile of the metal molds left drying. At least there’s no chance of me accidentally hitting the vat from here.
“How long do we have to wait for the rennet?” I ask.
“Another hour,” Roq answers. He drags his chair over, sits down, and stares at the vats. “I have to protect them from these fools.”
“These fools don’t much care what you’re going to do with your milk.” Cam sweeps his palm over my shoulder and toys with the back of the apron behind my neck. “We have our own tall cool glass to delight us.”
