Letters from the Cooperage

I was thirty-four that fall, on sabbatical from my software job, and I had planned exactly none of what happened. I want to be upfront about that, because people assume travel romances are planned. Mine started with a dead car battery on the Peljesac Peninsula in late November.

The whole coast was shut down for the season. Orebic had maybe a dozen people left in it, and the ferry came twice a day whether you needed it or not. I had borrowed a Fiat from a friend in Zagreb, and the Fiat decided to die on the road above the harbor pilot station, of all places. There was one lit window. That was the entire town for me that night.

* * *

Byron turned out to be the only cooper in the region, working out of the old pilot station. He fixed barrels for the wineries, and he was thirty-seven, big in the forearms, quiet in a way that made me talk twice as much as usual. He waited with me for the tow driver, who took ninety minutes, and we ended up sitting in the station's common room because it was freezing outside.

That's where I noticed the houseplant. Dead. Completely dead, brown and leaning out of its pot like it had given up in August. I could not stop looking at it. When I got home to my rented flat in town, I wrote him a letter, because that was apparently the kind of person I was becoming.

* * *

Byron,

You probably don't remember the exact plant, but the pilot station has a windowsill in the common room with a dead thing in a blue pot on it. I noticed it while we waited for the tow, and I have thought about it more than I have thought about some jobs I have held for years.

Here is my question, and I promise I am not being cute. Someone kept that plant alive for a while. You can tell by the pot, someone bought a pot. Then at some point they stopped, or they left, or they decided a dead plant on the sill looked maritime. Which is it? Do you know the history of the plant? You seem to be a man who would know the history of the plant.

The rental guy says my Fiat needs a new battery and possibly a new everything, so I will be in town a while. That is not a hint. Or it is a small hint.

Tiffany

P.S. Your rakija is better than the stuff they sell at the ferry dock. That is also not a hint.

* * *

He wrote back on paper, actual paper, and left it in the station's mail slot with my name on it, which I found out later was his system for everything. The letter smelled faintly like oak shavings.

Tiffany,

I remember the plant exactly. It belonged to the pilot who worked here before me. He watered it on a schedule, wrote the schedule on a card, taped it inside the cupboard. Then he retired to Split and forgot plants exist. I have not removed it because removing it feels like an event.

The history of the plant: bought in 2009, healthy until roughly 2015, ceremonial since.

Your car has terrible timing and so do you. November. Everything closes in November. You picked the one month where the only entertainment in town is a cooper, a tow driver named Davor who tells the same three stories, and a dead plant.

Which brings me to last week. The winery up the hill brought me four barrels with stave damage, and I had to repair one while you sat in my workshop because the tow made you late for your ferry and you had two hours to kill. You watched me the entire time. I noticed. A man notices when a woman in a good coat watches him drive hoops onto a barrel for forty minutes.

I tightened the second hoop and you asked if it was like a belt. I said yes, a belt for a fat wooden man. You laughed at a bad joke about barrel hoops, which tells me either you were being polite or your standards are very low.

Come by again. I will be here. The plant will also be here.

Byron

* * *

I read that letter four times. Then I wrote back, because apparently my standards were that low and I was fine with it.

Byron,

I have to confess something. The day you fixed the barrel, I did not have two hours to kill. The tow driver dropped me early. I sat in the common room on purpose and I lingered on purpose and I read the same three pages of my book for forty minutes while listening to your hammer, because the hammer sounded like something I wanted to be near.

That is an embarrassing sentence and I am sending it anyway.

I lingered hoping you would finish early. You finished late. I forgive you.

Tiffany

P.S. It was a good coat. Thank you for noticing.

* * *

His next letter was shorter, and it did something to my chest that I did not have a word for.

Tiffany,

You waited on purpose. I am going to sit with that for a while.

Here is my confession to balance yours. I saw the dead plant moment and I thought, this woman looks at dying things and wants to know their story. That is when I started hoping the repair would take longer than it did. I could have finished in twenty minutes. I tightened that hoop like it was going on a submarine.

Also, the shelf. I have to tell you about the shelf.

Byron

* * *

We had been writing for a month by then. The ferry crews knew the mail slot system, the woman at the bakery knew, probably the dead plant knew. So when he finally mentioned the shelf, I knew he was working up to asking me something, and I was right.

Byron,

You cannot just say "also, the shelf" and stop there. That is a cliffhanger in a letter, which is a crime.

Tiffany

* * *

He answered the next day, and this one he did not leave in the slot. He handed it to me at the door of the workshop, which I had come to on purpose, again, wearing the coat, again.

"Read it here," he said. "I want to watch."

I stood under the lamp by his bench and read.

Tiffany,

The shelf is above the workbench, chest height, where I keep the rakija. The evening you waited, the repair was done and I got two glasses down and you reached for the bottle at the same time I did. Our hands ended up on the same bottle. I had never touched you before that. Four weeks of letters and one dead plant and a barrel, and the first contact was both of us reaching for plum brandy like two people at a wedding.

I did not move my hand. You did not move yours. We stood there like idiots for what I would guess was five seconds, maybe six, holding a bottle between us.

Then you said, "Well, one of us has to pour."

And I said, "I was here first."

And you said, "You absolutely were not."

And then you laughed, and I stopped caring about who poured.

I have been slow to trust since a thing that ended four years ago, and I am telling you that plainly so you know the speed of my letters was not rudeness. But I have decided the plant stays on the sill. Someone should keep things alive around here.

Byron

* * *

I folded the letter and Byron was watching me the way I had watched him drive the hoops, and the workshop smelled like oak shavings and hot iron and