The Night Baker's Rehearsal

I want to tell you I walked into that tea house with dignity. I want to, but you'd smell the lie. What I actually did was stand outside in the rain for four whole minutes, arguing with myself like I was insane.

Jeri, forty-two years old, a nurse with two decades of bedpans and night shifts behind her, and I could not make my feet move through a door.

Pride has a particular quality. It's heavy. It sits in your chest like a wet cat and it does not want to be put down, even when putting it down would make your life so much easier.

Carlton had called me that afternoon. Voice all stiff and formal. "Jeri. I need an extra pair of hands for the dress rehearsal tonight. Just professional courtesy. Nothing more."

Nothing more. Sure. Six years since we'd dated, back when I was thirty-six and he was thirty-eight and I baked nights at his shop. Six years and neither of us had said a word about why it ended, and now here he was asking for "professional courtesy."

I said yes. Of course I said yes. Because I'm an idiot with a soft spot, and also because I figured he'd humiliate himself at this rehearsal and I'd get to watch.

So. The rain. The door. My hand on the handle.

The barometer got me through it, honestly. Carlton has this old brass barometer mounted by the entrance, has had it for years, insists it "sets the mood" for guests. Setting falling, needle wobbling. I read it twice, straightened my coat, and told myself a nurse who can face a code blue can face an ex-boyfriend in a kimono.

I pushed the door open.

The main room was set up for the ceremony, and I'll give him this, it looked gorgeous. Tatami laid out clean. The kettle already murmuring on the brazier. Lanterns low and warm. Trains rumbled past outside, that deep late-night Yokohama rumble that gets into your bones.

And there was Carlton. Forty-four, silver coming in at his temples, wearing a charcoal kimono that probably cost more than my car. He was kneeling at the tea mat with a ladle, looking like a man about to perform surgery with a soup spoon.

"You came," he said. Like he hadn't believed I would.

"You called. I came." I set my bag down. "Where do you want me?"

"Anywhere. Everywhere. Just... watch me run it once, tell me what looks wrong."

Okay, I thought. This can be professional. This can be completely, boringly professional.

He started the pour.

Now, I've watched him pour tea a thousand times. Smooth, quiet, elegant. The man could pour tea in his sleep. But something about knowing I was watching must have gotten into his head, because his wrist turned at the wrong angle and the ladle tipped and a whole ribbon of hot water went straight down the front of that beautiful kimono.

He froze. Sat there kneeling, soaked from collar to knee, water pooling on the tatami, face going a remarkable shade of red.

I held it in. I honestly tried. Then my hand went to my mouth but the laugh came out through my fingers anyway, a snort, a full ugly honk, and once it started there was no stopping it.

"Stop," he said, but his mouth was twitching.

"I'm sorry. I'm sorry!" I was bent over, wheezing. "It's just, you looked so serious, and then..."

"I looked dignified."

"You looked like a statue that got peed on by a very polite ghost!"

And that broke him. He started laughing too, big helpless laughs, still kneeling in his own puddle, and I thought, oh no. Oh no, I remember this. I remember laughing with this man until my sides hurt, and this is exactly how it started last time.

I made myself straighten up. Pride, remember. Wet cat.

* * *

We got him blotted down with a tea towel and started again, and that's when the arguing started. Because of course it did.

"The sweets come before the water is drawn," he said. "That's the order."

"No, it isn't. I watched you do this a hundred times when I worked here. Sweets, then the bowl gets wiped, then you draw the water."

"That was the seasonal form. This is the formal one."

"Carlton. I stacked the sweet trays for you for two years. I know the order."

"You stacked trays, Jeri. You didn't perform."

Ouch. Fair, but ouch. I picked up the tray of wagashi to demonstrate, red and white bean sweets arranged in little rows, and I was so busy glaring at him that I didn't watch my elbow.

The tray tipped. The whole tray.

Sweets went everywhere. Rolled under the tea table, bounced off a cushion, one skittered all the way to the doorway like it was trying to escape. A pink one landed in the middle of the tatami and just sat there, shameless.

There was a silence.

"Okay," I said. "That one's on me."

He pressed his lips together. I could see him fighting it. "The pink one," he managed, "is in a formal bow."

"Don't. Don't you dare make me laugh again, I just got my dignity back."

"You had dignity?"

I threw a cushion at him. He caught it. We were grinning at each other like two fools, and the rain kept coming down and the trains kept rumbling, and I had to turn away and fuss with the sweets tray so I didn't do anything stupid.

* * *

The whisking demonstration was next. He wanted to show me the proper form so I could hold the chasen correctly during the real rehearsal. Fine. Harmless. What could go wrong with a bamboo whisk?

Everything, it turns out.

He scooped the matcha, added the water, raised the whisk, and launched into his lecture. "The wrist stays loose. Loose but controlled. Like this, you see, the motion comes from..."

A tickle in his nose. I saw it happen. I saw his eyes water and his nostrils flare and I thought, no, don't you dare.

"Achoo!"

Directly into the bowl. Full commitment. Green powder went up in a little cloud and settled back down onto the foam like the world's saddest snowfall.

I sat down on the tatami because standing was no longer possible. I laughed until my eyes leaked, real tears, the kind that ruin your mascara.

"You're crying," he said, holding the ruined bowl.

"You sneezed in the tea. You're supposed to be this solemn tea master and you sneezed in the tea."

"Nobody needs to know."

"Everyone will know. The whole district will know. 'The tea house owner, lovely man, terrible with pollen!'"

He set the bowl down and started laughing again, and I noticed he was watching me laugh with an expression I remembered all too well.