The Spite Spread

The parking lot at Willow Creek Farmers Market was already half full by seven in the morning, and I was already sweating through my blouse by the time I found the admin trailer. August in this county is a personal insult. My boss, Tate, had called me into his office Thursday and said, and I quote, "Staci, the board wants a compliance presence at the market this season. You're detailed." Detailed. Like a chair to a corner. Two weeks after I got passed over for the regional coordinator job, they send me to count tomato scales in a dirt lot.

I want it noted I did not cry in the car. Much.

The trailer was a beige tin can parked behind the honey stall, with a hand-painted sign that said OFFICE in letters that had been red at some point in the previous decade. I knocked and pushed the door open and there was a man sitting on a desk that was not his, eating a peach over a trash can.

"You're dripping on the filing cabinet," I said.

He looked up. He was maybe forty-eight, forearms like a guy who hauls crates for a living, reading glasses pushed up on his head. "It's my trailer. I can drip where I want." He took another bite. "You lost?"

"Staci Mercer. County board. I'm the new compliance coordinator for the market." I held out the folder like it was a warrant.

He wiped his hand on his jeans, took the folder, and did not open it. "Robbie Ferro. Vendor liaison. Been running this market eleven years." He set the folder down under a roll of tape, which I took as a statement. "You want coffee? The pot in here is terrible but it's hot."

"I want to start with vendor file audits."

"There it is," he said, and went back to his peach.

"There what is?"

"Corporate voice. You've got one. I could hear it coming up the gravel." He tossed the pit in the trash and finally looked at me straight. "Look, Staci. Every couple years the board sends somebody out with a clipboard, and every couple years that person either melts or joins us. Your predecessor, Jo, she lasted nine days. Then she started selling salsa."

"I'm not Jo."

"Nobody's Jo," he said, and I swear he got a little misty about it.

I took the folder back off the desk. "Rule 14-C. All scales certified. Rule 14-D. All produce lots traceable to a farm of origin. Rule 15-A, signage pricing must match register pricing. I'll be walking the rows."

"Today's Saturday," he said, like that meant something to normal people.

"Peak traffic. Best day to observe irregularities."

He laughed. Actually laughed, deep in the chest. "Irregularities. God. Okay. Walk your rows. I'll be over by the Oakwood block if you need bail money."

I did not need his sarcasm, but I did need the vendor map, which he gave me after making me sign a laminated sheet that said I would not hold the market responsible for sunburn. That should have told me everything about this place.

The first two hours were exactly what I expected. A candle guy had no permit. A woman selling "organic" peaches had an invoice from a regular orchard forty miles off. Every time I wrote something down, somebody hollered for Robbie, and every time Robbie materialized out of the crowd like a magician and smoothed it over with a handshake and a joke, and the vendor would look at me like I was the health inspector from a cartoon.

By nine I was back at the trailer with a full legal pad and a sunburn starting on the back of my neck, and that's when I heard the shouting.

It came from the stall at the end of the third row, and it was two men going at it about, as far as I could make out, a pallet of squash. I got there to find a big guy in a seed company polo jabbing a finger at a shorter guy in an apron, and Robbie already wedged between them talking fast.

"Saul. Saul. Breathe. Delgado didn't take your squash."

"There's forty cases missing, Ferro!"

"And I'll find them. That's my job. That's what I do." Robbie had a hand flat on Saul's chest like he was holding back a dog. "Not in front of customers, yeah?"

"Miss clipboard over there taking notes?" Saul said, and I did write something down, out of spite, just to watch his face.

"Okay," Robbie said, and turned to me, and his voice dropped into something almost reasonable. "The replacement pallet got misdelivered. It's in the supply closet behind the ice trailer. I need to verify the count before I tell this man his squash are alive. You want to witness it? Witness it. Two sets of eyes, board will love that."

"I'll bring the manifest," I said, and I want to admit here that I was a little too eager about it, the way you get when you finally get handed actual work.

The supply closet behind the ice trailer was not a closet so much as a coffin with shelves. It was maybe four feet wide and crammed with extension cords, a stack of folding chairs, boxes of sandwich boards, and the missing pallet of squash, which did indeed exist, sitting there in its shrink wrap like a smug witness. The door only latched open with a hook, and when Robbie unhooked it to let us in and it swung shut behind us, we discovered the latch on the inside was broken.

"Great," he said, and tried the knob. The knob turned. The door did not move. "Somebody leans a chair against this from outside, it sticks. It's a known issue."

"A known issue." I had the manifest in one hand and no room to lift it. "This is a fire hazard. That's going in the report."

"Add it to the pile." He wedged himself sideways past a shelf to get to the pallet, and there was no version of that where we didn't touch. His back pressed along my front, and I put a hand flat on the door behind me and pretended that was a strategy. He smelled like sunscreen and peach, which I counted as the day's one pleasant fact.

"Forty-two cases," he said, counting out loud with a finger on the wrap. "Saul's short was forty. Somebody ordered extra."

"Who signs for deliveries?"

"Whoever's closest and it's usually me, which is why this is funny and not a crime." He turned to face me, which in that space meant we were about four inches apart, chest to chest, and neither of us had anywhere to go. "You're blushing. It's a hundred degrees in here, that's all that is."

"It's a hundred degrees in here," I agreed. "That's all that is."

He held out his hand. "Manifest."

I handed it over, and our fingers did the thing where they take an extra half second, and I will not describe it further because I have some dignity, or I did at eleven-fifteen that morning. He checked the numbers, nodding.

"Delgado's stuff, plus two cases of somebody's honeycrisp. I'll sort it out. Saul gets his squash, nobody swings at anybody, and you," he said, tapping the manifest against my clipboard, "get to write down that I solved it in under ten minutes. That's a good entry for you, right? Solved. Solving."

"You want a gold star?"

"I've earned several," he said, and knocked on the door with the flat of his fist, three solid whacks, and hollered, "DENNIS. The chair. Move the chair."

There was a muffled "sorry, boss" and daylight fell in, and Robbie stepped back and out, and I followed, and the whole time my brain was doing something unhelpful, which was noticing that the man was built like a workbench and had read my numbers without his glasses.

"Staci." He stopped in the sun and turned around. "Truce till lunch. After lunch you can cite me for the latch."

"I'm citing you for the latch now."

"Sure," he said, walking backwards toward the rows. "Write it small, though. Page is getting full."

I stood there holding my clipboard like an idiot, and then I went and found Saul and told him his squash were accounted for, and he grunted at me like I'd personally delivered them, which I guess in a way I had. It was not even noon yet and I already knew this assignment was going to go sideways. I just didn't know yet which direction.

The market closed at three and by four the lot was mostly trucks and tire marks. I stayed in the trailer to do the write-up, because if I went back to the hotel I'd have to think about my life, and I'd had enough thinking for one Saturday.

I had a bottle of cheap rosé from the gas station and a plastic cup, and I was on cup number two, sitting on the desk chair with my shoes off, when the door opened without a knock.

"Door was unlocked," Robbie said.

"It's after hours."

"Yeah, I know. I can see the parking lot from my truck." He came in anyway, holding a paper bag. "Brought you dinner. Tamales. Delgado's wife makes too many every week, it's a whole thing."

"I don't want your tamales."

"Then I'll eat them." He set the bag on the counter and looked at the wine bottle. "Started without me."

"It's not a party, Robbie, it's a hostage situation."

"Sit down, Staci."

"I am sitting."

He sat on the edge of the counter across from me, and we looked at each other, and I took a drink because I needed somewhere to put my face.

"You wrote nine pages today," he said.

"You counted."

"Jo wrote a page. Jo lasted nine days and then she quit to sell salsa, and that page was mostly about how nice everyone was." He leaned back on his hands. "You're going to get me shut down."

"Your vendors are going to get you shut down. I'm just the one writing it down. There's a difference."

"Is there."

"Yes. And the latch on that closet is still broken, by the way, and it's a fire code violation, and I filed it at four o'clock."

"I know. Dennis told me. Dennis reads your reports now, apparently. We're all fans." He took the wine bottle off the desk and poured some into his palm, drank it like a shot, which was so gross I almost laughed. "Here's my thing, and I'm only saying it once. Eleven years I've run this market. I know every vendor by name, I know who waters down the honey and who's good for a bad check and whose kid needs a ride home. You come in with a binder and nine pages, and what comes out the other end? Fines. Paperwork. Half these guys pack up and go to the Oakwood lot instead, and this place dies, and the county gets a nice empty field."

"That's not my call. Tate handed me a mandate."

"Tate." He said the name like it tasted bad. "Tate sits in an office with a window. I'm out here in August with no AC and a man who stores squash in a fire hazard."

"You're the one who stores squash in a fire hazard."

"I know that." He was up off the counter now, and so was I, and we were two feet apart in a trailer the size of a bathroom. "I know that, Staci. You think I don't know every single thing wrong with this place? I've been filing requests to fix that latch for six years. Six. It's not about knowing, it's about nobody giving a damn until somebody with a clipboard shows up."

"I was passed over," I said, and it came out before I could stop it, which is what the wine is for, I guess. "Two weeks ago. Regional coordinator. I trained the guy who got it. So now I get shipped out here to be the villain at a vegetable fair, and you're the one who gets to be beloved, and I get to be the clipboard. That's the whole situation."

We stood there breathing at each other. The little fridge hummed. Somewhere outside a truck door slammed.

"You'd be good at regional," he said, finally, and quieter.

"Don't do that."

"Do what?"

"Be decent at me. It messes up my whole system."

He laughed, one short breath through his nose, and then neither of us moved for a second, and the air in that trailer got very thick and very stupid.

"Okay, I'm going to say something," he said. "You can file it if you want."

"File it."

"I've been thinking about the supply closet all afternoon and it wasn't about the latch."

"Robbie."

"Yeah."

"You're forty-eight."

"You're forty-four, I saw your file, I can read. I've got glasses and everything." He pushed them up on his head where they already were. "So that's a no?"

I looked at him. Sweaty, sunburnt, tamale money on the counter, eleven years of this market in his face. It was a terrible idea and I'd had exactly enough wine to not care.

"It's not a no. It's a yes, actually, and we're both going to regret it, so come here before I change my mind."

He crossed the trailer in one step and I said, "Wait, kiss me first, I need to actually agree to this on purpose," and he said, "asking permission, that's new for you," and I said, "Robbie, I swear," and he kissed me, and the kiss was the argument from that morning continued by other means. His hand came up into my hair and I grabbed his shirt at the front and pulled, and we hit the edge of the desk hard enough to slide the blotter.

"Desk folds out," he said against my mouth.

"Then fold it out."

He got it down in about four seconds, which told me he'd done that move before, and I decided not to hold it against him. He got my blouse untucked and I got his shirt off, and the man was built like a workbench under there too, all forearms and chest hair, and I put my hands flat on him just to confirm.

"Condom," I said. "I don't know you."

"Wallet. Back pocket. There's a story there about optimism but I'll tell it later."

He got it on and I got my pants off and we got down to it, and I'm not going to pretty this up. It was fast and it was rough and it was angry in a way that felt great. He sat me up on the edge of the desk and pushed into me and I grabbed the desk edge with both hands and said a word the board would