Cider Mill Crush

The cider mill sat at the end of a gravel road, all stone walls and a big barn door painted red. Greg had been talking about this tasting for two weeks. His promotion to head caterer was basically signed, he said. Just needed to nail the event.

"I still don't see why I have to drive the van," I said. Lola here. Thirty-two, married eight years, amateur baker, general passenger in my life.

"Because it's my van and I want my hands free for the drive," Greg said. "Also you need the practice."

He had me there. I got my license late and then never drove. So there I was, thirty-two years old, behind the wheel of a catering van I barely knew, aimed at a working cider mill in rural New Zealand.

The lot was empty. Wide open. Should have been easy.

"Pull in on the left," Greg said, phone in his lap, checking his email again.

I pulled in on the left. The problem was the left had a barn door in it. Big red door, older than both of us. I saw it about half a second before we hit it, and I hit the brake instead of the gas, which Greg tells me was the correct instinct, but the van still lurched and stopped about a foot shy of the wood.

A man came out of the mill at a jog. Older guy, fifty-one maybe, gray at the temples, sleeves rolled up. He waved both arms like he was landing a plane.

"Whoa, whoa, easy. That's my door." He came around to my window. "You alright in there?"

"She's fine," Greg said from the passenger seat. "First time driving in a while."

"It's been three years," I said through the glass.

"Three years," the man repeated. He looked at me, then at the van, then at the door. "Well. You missed it by a foot. I've seen worse."

"Greg," Greg said, putting his hand out the window. "I booked the tasting. You must be the caretaker."

"Ricky Marsh, that's me." He shook Greg's hand, then leaned down to my window. "And you're the driver, apparently."

"Lola. His wife."

"Pleasure, Lola. Come in, the cider's pressed two days ago and it's good."

We parked properly the second time, at an angle Ricky directed with two fingers, and went inside. The pressing room smelled like apples, sharp and sweet. There was a tasting bar along one wall, long windows looking back out at the lot and the orchard rows beyond.

Ricky poured three glasses. He moved around the mill like he owned it, which in a way he did, or at least he lived in it. There was a loft upstairs, he said, small apartment, he'd been the caretaker since March. Before that he was a dialect coach for a theater company in Wellington.

"They let me go last winter," he said. "Budget cuts. Whole voice department, gone."

"That's rough," Greg said.

"It was a job. I drink cider now." He raised his glass. "Better benefits."

I liked him right away. He talked with his hands and he didn't fill silence just to fill it.

Greg was doing his thing, asking about volume, about apples per batch, taking notes on his phone for the event. I drifted along the windows with my cider. Out in the lot, the van sat there looking smug, parked fine now but the morning still sitting in my chest. That lurch. My foot on the wrong pedal, a whole half second of it.

"Those are our barrels for the parking test," Ricky said, coming to stand next to me.

"Sorry?"

He nodded out the window. Two big oak barrels sat in the middle of the lot, maybe eight meters apart.

"Every autumn the tour buses come through. Drivers park between those. I watch them do it about forty times a day, September through May." He sipped. "You want to learn? I could teach you. Lot's empty, van's here, weather's holding."

"Oh, I don't think..."

"You nearly took out a historic barn door, love. That's practically a formal application."

I laughed. Greg looked over from the bar.

"Ricky's offering to teach me to park," I called.

Greg thought about it for maybe four seconds. I watched him do the math. Nervous wife plus empty lot plus one mildly bored caretaker equaled a better afternoon than listening to apple yield numbers.

"Go on then," he said. "I'll sit here and do the supplier stuff. Take your time."

So we went out.

Ricky walked me around the van first. That was already more than anyone had ever done. He pointed at the mirrors, at the bonnet, at the wheels.

"You sit too far forward," he said when I got in. "Scoot back. Good. Now the seat's yours, not the road's."

I adjusted the seat. He leaned in the open window on my left, forearms on the door frame.

"Clutch down, first gear. Slow off the clutch. The van's heavy, it'll forgive you."

It forgave me. We crawled around the lot in a big oval and I only stalled once. Ricky talked the whole time, easy, unhurried. He'd taught actors to talk in nine accents, he said, and one nervous wife was nothing.

"Stop here. Now, the barrels. See the gap?"

"See it, yes. Fit in it, no!"

"We'll see." He came around and got in the passenger side without asking, which felt suddenly different, a person in the car with me instead of a voice at the window. He smelled like apples and engine grease. "Parallel parking between two barrels. Hardest thing they never taught you, because you never learned it."

He talked me in. Back up, straighten, cut the wheel. I got in crooked and we did it four more times. On the fifth try the van slid between the barrels like it belonged there and I whooped, actually whooped, both hands on the wheel.

"There it is," Ricky said, and he was grinning.

Through the tasting room glass I could see Greg at the bar, laptop open, not looking at it. Looking at us.

We did it twice more, then Ricky said, "Last one. Pull out, drive the loop, come back in. Same as before."

It was not the same as before. I don't know what my foot did. I meant brake and I got gas, and the van jumped forward while Ricky was leaning over to point at something on the dash, and his chest came against mine across the center console. Not hard. Just a bump, both of us pressed up quick and then apart, and the van rolled to a stop crooked between the barrels and the engine ticked.

"Oh my god," I said. "Sorry. Sorry."

"Bit fast on the exit," Ricky said. He was laughing though, one hand still braced on the dash. "That's a chest bump. I haven't had one of those since university."

"I was reaching for the brake and my foot just..."

"They do that. Everyone's foot does that once. Now you've done it in an empty lot instead of a bus queue." He looked over at me. "You're fine. Van's fine. Door remains unhit."

I was laughing by then too, that shaky after-adrenaline laugh, and I could feel my face hot. We sat there a second while it drained out of both of us.

Inside, Greg had come around to the window side of the bar. I could see him watching, cider glass in hand, and I wondered how much of the chest bump he'd caught. Probably all of it. The glass was right there.

We came in and Ricky poured me a second cider without asking, which felt earned.

"Your wife's got decent hands," he told Greg. "Foot needs work. Hands are good."

"He nearly flattened me on the last one," I said.

"Her foot went for the gas instead of the brake. Classic. Happens to every student."

Greg laughed, but I caught him looking at me. At my face, I mean. I touched my cheek and it was still flushed, hot from the laugh and the lurch and the chest bump, whatever that had been. He took a slow sip of cider and didn't say anything about it.

"We should feed this man," Greg said instead. "I've got the van. I've got food in the van. Ricky, you've got a kitchen upstairs?"

"I've got a two-burner and opinions about them."

"Dinner, then. On me. Consider it hazard pay for the barn door."

Ricky looked at me, then at Greg, then back. "Hazard pay," he said. "Alright. I'll take it."

I don't know why that made my cheeks go hotter.

"You've got glasses, I assume," Greg said. "Caretaker of a cider mill."

"Six glasses and one of them's chipped."

"Lola gets the chipped one. She's the driver." Greg held the door open. "Come on. Upstairs. I make a very good chicken."

We went up the outside stairs to the loft. It was small and clean, bed in the corner, kettle, two-burner, a rack of tools, and a window looking down on the red barn door and the whole orchard. It smelled like apples up there too. Everything here did.

Greg got out the food while Ricky lined up glasses on a plank table. Six glasses. The chipped one went to me, like he promised. Greg poured for all three of