When I finished milking the goat, I secured the lid on the pail and set it aside on a higher shelf with the other pails of milk. Agnesa untied the goat and walked her down the other side of the platform and into the pen with the other goats. She came back and said, “Grab two pails. Follow me.”
We carried the pails of milk to her barn. There was a room off of the entrance that was incredibly clean and tidy, but she shook her head when I got close. “Boots off. Jacket too.” She gestured for me to put my pails of milk on a stainless steel table and then stripped out of her jacket. “Hang yours up there on the hook.”
After tugging off the boots, I placed my jacket on the hook and joined her at the sink in the white tiled room to wash my hands. When we were clean, she motioned for me to join her at the table where she had placed all of the sealed milk pails. “So, we are going to filter the milk and transfer it to some sterilized jars. Then, we put the milk in the refrigerator so it can chill quickly.”
Fascinated by the process, I worked quietly next to her, taking in the proficient way she handled everything. A metal contraption fit inside the opening of a glass jar and the milk was poured into it. As the milk dripped through a filter, all of the errant bits of hair and dirt were trapped. What ended up in the jar was pristine, smooth milk.
“Does it separate like cow’s milk?” I crouched down to see the milk swirling into the jar. “The fat and the watery milk, I mean.”
“No.” She gave the filter a little shake to get the last of the milk through it. “If you check the refrigerator, the cow’s milk I processed this morning is on the top shelf. You can see the difference.”
Curious, I opened the refrigerator and inspected the cool jars of cow’s milk. The milk was a slightly whiter color and looked thinner than the goat’s milk. Already, the milk had started to separate with the cream floating to the top. “Why is different?”
“Goat’s milk is naturally homogenized,” she explained while screwing a lid onto a jar. She handed me the processed jar. “If you want to separate the cream from the milk, you have to mechanically separate it.”
“Like with blood samples in a centrifuge?” I put the jar of milk on an empty shelf and closed the refrigerator door.
She laughed. “Yes. Exactly like that.”
As I joined her at the table to help with the rest of the milk, I asked, “Do you know what cottagecore is?”
She shot me a funny look. “The girls in the flowery dresses gathering flowers and vegetables and petting cows on Instagram?”
“Um, well, yeah that.” I laughed at her apt description.
“What about it?”
“Maybe you could advertise your farm as a guest house that offers a legit cottagecore experience.”
“No.”
“I’m just saying,” I continued insistently, “that I would have missed out on this incredible experience if I hadn’t stumbled across your puppy. This has been hands-down the best part of my entire Europe trip.”
She eyed me as if I had lost my mind. “Sloshing through mud puddles to clean chicken shit and getting bit by a goose is the best part of your trip?”
“Okay, so, maybe not the goose part,” I agreed, “but the rest of it? Absolutely. I mean, you taught me how to milk a goat! You gave me a science lesson on homogenized milk. You’ve shown me how much work goes into a farm. This is something people would pay good money to experience.”
“I don’t like people,” she grumbled.
“You like me.”
She dramatically harrumphed. “I did.”
“Fair enough.”
We worked quietly for a few moments before she sighed and asked, “Just how much are we talking about per night?”
I smiled triumphantly and bumped her hip with mine. “Considering how nice your guest room is? Probably double what the other guest houses charge. And! You also get free labor out of your guests!”
“That is a good point,” she muttered, still not fully convinced. “The internet is an issue, though. It’s hard to share photo of yourself feeding chickens and milking goats without it.”
“True.” I deflated at that realization. I hadn’t been able to send a text or email at all last night or this morning. “Maybe there’s a way to boost your signal?”
“Well,” she said, reaching for another lid, “I have been considering joining some neighbors who are trying to get together enough interest in a satellite tower for our side of the mountain.” She screwed the lid on tightly. “It might be worth it.”
“Or you sell the experience as off the grid,” I suggested. “Skip the internet issues altogether.”
“That’s an idea.” She stowed the last of the milk in the refrigerator. “Get your boots and jacket. We’ll workshop this on the way out to check on the sheep.”
Feeling excited by the prospect of helping Agnesa start a new venture, I hustled to hop back into my boots and jacket. The directions the café teenager had given me fell out of my pocket, and Agnesa picked it up. She read the note from the old man and chortled.
“Do I even want to know what he wrote?” I asked while zipping up my jacket.
“He says you’re strange and stubborn like me, and I should let you stay the night so you don’t fall down the mountain in the dark and break your neck.”
“Aw, sweet guy,” I remarked sarcastically.
“He’s my uncle,” she explained, handing back the note. “My mother’s oldest brother,” she clarified. “He’s always been like that.”
“Crotchety?”
She laughed. “Yes.”
Agnesa looped her arm through mine. “Let me tell you about the time he stole two of my goats to pay back a debt my father owed him from when they were twelve-years-old...”
Chapter Four
Seated behind his desk at the jewel in his strip club empire, Besian scrolled down through the month’s accounts. Maesha and her team of CPAs handled the payroll and taxes and accounting for his legitimate businesses, but he still liked to keep his fingers on the pulse of things. He liked to see what was coming in and what was going out on a daily basis.
He picked up his ceramic mug and sipped his coffee. The caffeine was the only thing keeping him going tonight. All day, he had been on his feet. He had started at Ben’s shop where he had given orders to shore up their defenses and clear out anything questionable for the inevitable shakedown. After that, there had been a tense meeting with Nikolai and some of the other underworld dons. He’d skipped lunch in favor of a handful of antacids and a bottle of Gatorade.
Then, he had met up with his bookies, sent out the collections crews and scheduled the next big poker night for his underground casino. He had managed a simple dinner in the silence of his apartment before starting the rounds of his clubs. There was always something had to be handled. Dancers fighting about stage time. Bouncers treating customers too roughly. Bartenders dipping into the take. Customers touching the girls who didn’t want to be touched or being fucking perverts to the ones who allowed it.
“It’s open,” he called out when someone knocked on the door.
“Boss?” Marcos, the club’s top bouncer, poked his head through the door. “Uh, you got a visitor.”