walk-in cooler

the walk-in cooler hums one note. tonight it changed notes and i'm the only one who heard.

the new kid was standing by the milk, holding a clipboard against their chest. i asked if they had touched the cooler and they said no, then they asked if the cooler was supposed to sound like that. it was supposed to sound like one note. i had corrected this detail three times already, to the night manager, to the new kid, and to the cooler by putting my hand on its door.

there were thirty-seven yogurt cups on the shelf. i counted them because the new note rose whenever i looked away. nothing was missing. one cup had a dent shaped like a thumb, but that was not the problem. the problem was the sound had moved from behind the fan to the wall beside the mustard.

i unplugged the cooler for six seconds. the new kid said, "should we tell somebody?" i told them the cooler was not somebody. when i plugged it back in, the old note came back, and the new kid wrote something on the clipboard. i asked what it was. they said it was a count.

the manager arrived with the maintenance number and stood there listening. nobody heard anything except the one note. she said the cooler sounded normal. i told her normal was not the same as one note, which made her look at the clipboard and then at me.

before we left, i counted the yogurt cups again. there were thirty-seven. i corrected the new kid when they called it a hum. it was a note.