The Customs of Spice

The warehouse hit Jennifer with a wall of smell before she even got through the door. Cloves, mostly, and pepper underneath it, the kind of thick air you could chew. She was twenty-eight, four years with customs, and she had inspected a lot of warehouses. Most of them smelled like cardboard and regret. This one smelled like a holiday dinner.

"Officer Halloway?" A man came toward her from between two towers of crates. He was forty-five, heavyset, wearing a batik shirt and a face that wanted very badly for today to be boring. "Rufus Anwar. I own the place. We got your notice. Everything's ready for you."

"Good," Jennifer said. She set her case down on the concrete and pulled out her clipboard. "I'll need the floor plan, the manifests for the last six months, and access to the back storage area."

"Yes, yes. My manager will take you around. Bree!"

Jennifer's pen stopped moving.

She knew that name. She had known that name very well for one strange semester, six years ago, when she was twenty-two and stupid in the best way. Then the name had gone into the drawer with the rest of college, and she had not opened that drawer in a long time.

Bree came around the corner of a crate stack and Jennifer's pen stopped entirely.

She was twenty-six now. Her hair was shorter than it had been, cut off at the jaw, and she had a warehouse vest over a white shirt, and she was smiling like she had just seen a lottery ticket on the floor.

"Well, hell," Bree said. "Jennifer Halloway."

"Hey, Bree!"

Rufus looked between them. "You two know each other?"

"College," Bree said. "Long story. She used to copy my notes."

"She copied mine," Jennifer said.

Bree laughed, and it was the same laugh, low and starting in the chest. Jennifer made herself look at the clipboard.

"Maps and everything," Rufus said, patting Bree on the shoulder like she was a good horse. "Bree runs the floor. Anything she says, it's like I said it. I have a meeting at the port office at eleven, so."

"We'll be fine," Bree said.

Rufus left through the loading door and the sound of his car coughing faded into the noise of the fans. The fans were everywhere, big industrial things bolted to the rafters, and they did not help with the smell so much as spread it around.

Another man appeared at the edge of Jennifer's vision. He was thirty, skinny, holding a coffee mug with a cartoon on it. He had the look of a man counting the minutes.

"That's Herbert," Bree said. "He's been here two years and he's never once been excited about anything."

"Nice to meet you," Herbert said, with no excitement.

"The vending machine in the inspection room is broken," Herbert said to Jennifer. "Fair warning. It eats coins. It ate two of mine yesterday and I filled out a complaint form about it, but I think Rufus just filed the form."

"It eats coins," Bree repeated, like this was important news.

"I need coffee," Herbert announced, to nobody in particular. "There's a place two blocks over. Do either of you want anything?"

Jennifer said no. Bree said no, thanks. Herbert put on a lanyard, which seemed like an odd thing to wear to get coffee, and left through the side door.

And then it was just the two of them and four thousand pounds of cloves.

"So," Bree said. "Inspection room's this way. You want the map first or the crates first?"

"Map first. Always map first."

"Figured."

The inspection room was a small office off the main floor, a desk, two chairs, a window with a view of a wall, and the vending machine standing in the corner like a haunted soldier. It hummed. On the wall there was a map, hand-drawn, the kind that took actual effort. Ink lines, careful lettering, little rectangles for the crate rows.

"Rufus had an artist friend do it," Bree said. "Cost him a bottle of rum. He complains about the price every time somebody compliments it."

Jennifer stepped close to it. The paper was pinned at the four corners and it bulged slightly in the middle, off the wall by an inch, like a sail.

"Back storage is here," Bree said, reaching past her to tap a corner of the map. Her arm went past Jennifer's shoulder, and Jennifer could feel the warmth of her, close enough that the fine hairs on her arm moved.

"And this row?" Jennifer tapped the middle of the map. Her hand brushed Bree's hand coming back down. Neither of them said anything about it. Jennifer looked at the map very hard.

"Pepper. The good stuff. The expensive stuff."

"Manifests say two hundred forty sacks."

"Manifests are honest, I counted them myself."

Jennifer stepped back and wrote something on her clipboard that she did not need to write. Then she made herself turn around and face Bree like a professional.

"So walk me through the floor."

"Happy to."

But Bree did not walk her through the floor. Bree took two steps toward the door, stopped, and turned around with an expression Jennifer remembered very well from a dorm room with a broken air conditioner.

"Actually, wait," Bree said. "It's a hundred degrees in this warehouse and I've been hauling sacks since six. Give me a second."

She pulled the vest off, dropped it on the desk, and then, looking Jennifer straight in the eye the whole time, pulled her shirt up over her head. Underneath she had a plain gray sports bra and a stomach with actual muscle on it now, arms that had clearly been lifting crates for a living. She stood there in the fan breeze, not hurrying, not covering up, just watching Jennifer watch her.

"It's hot," Bree said. "That's all this is."

"Sure it is."

"Six years, Jennifer. You still blush like a fire alarm."

"I do not blush like a fire alarm."

"You're doing it right now!"

Jennifer looked down at the clipboard. She was thirty seconds from telling this woman about the crates. Instead she heard herself say, "You look good. That's not an inspection comment."

"I know it's not," Bree said. She stayed where she was, arms loose, the fan moving the air between them. "I thought about you sometimes. Random times. Grocery store, once. I'd see some dumb cereal you liked and think, huh."

"You hated that cereal."

"I bought it anyway, twice. It was terrible."

Jennifer laughed and the professional distance she had been holding up all morning cracked right down the middle. She set the clipboard on the desk next to the vest. Bree did not come closer and Jennifer did not either, and somehow that made it worse, or better, or both.

"You're not with anybody," Bree said. It was half a question.

"No. You?"

"Not for a year."

Jennifer put her hand flat on the map paper, on the wall, because her hands needed somewhere to be. The paper was warm and gave a little under her palm. Then, slowly, she dragged her fingers down the length of it, across the little ink rectangles, feeling the paper drag under her touch while Bree watched her do it. It was a stupid thing to do. It was also somehow the boldest thing she had done all year.

"That's inventory," Bree said quietly.

"That's paper."

"Sure. And what am I?"

Jennifer looked at her. At the arms, the line of the sports bra, the jaw under the short hair, the face that had not changed as much as everything else had.

"Ask me for something," Jennifer said. "Because I'm not going to grab you in your own warehouse."

"I'm asking." Bree's voice went lower. "Come here."

Jennifer crossed the room. When she was a foot away Bree put one hand on her waist, slow, plainly, so Jennifer could see it coming the whole way. Then she leaned in and kissed her, and it was soft for about two seconds before it wasn't, and Jennifer's clipboard forgotten on the desk stopped mattering at all.

They ended up against the vending machine, which was the only wall without the map on it, Jennifer's back against the glass of the little snack window, Bree's hand flat on the machine above her shoulder. Somebody's granola bars stared at them through the glass.

Bree pulled back an inch. "Okay?"

"Okay. Yeah. Very okay."

"Good." She kissed her again, and this time Jennifer got a hand around Bree's bare back, just skin, warm and smooth and a little damp from the heat, and Bree made