Sideways (2 page)

“You don’t like this Rochioli Pinot?” I asked.

The dark-headed one shook her head again.

“Really?” I sipped and took another spin around the block. “I think it’s close to dazzling.”

Jerry the dentist, face florid from having already traipsed through the lineup several times, butted in. “I don’t think it’s that dazzling,” he contended, hoping to curry favor with women I didn’t think would give him the time of day. They all smiled at him and I drifted away for a second and final time. Ten minutes later he had the darkheaded one buttonholed against the wall and—more appallingly—she seemed fascinated by his ineloquent winespeak.

Dispirited, I kept returning to the Rochioli as if to a trusted friend. As the rep poured me more, Carl sidled over to solicit my opinion. I barraged him with hyperbolic hosannas, reaching deep for the metaphors and the polysyllabics, which always made him chuckle.

“You’re right,” he said, after I had finished reeling off my lyrical account, the wine liberating my tongue to new heights of glibness. “Absolutely first-rate Pinot.”

“How was Spain?” I asked.

“Excellent,” he said. “Had a great time.”

“Drink any good Riojas and Riberas?”

“Yeah, some really tasty ones.” He winked, then filled me in about a big feast at a winery where they roasted lambs over flaming vine cuttings.

While listening to Carl’s chronicle of his Spain trip, I bypassed the Merlot and reached for the Zin, not wanting the rep to think I was hogging the Pinot. I refilled Carl with a scandalously healthy splash that drew an admonitory stare from the rep. We clinked glasses and laughed, delighting in our naughtiness.

Then Carl bent close to my ear and whispered, “Woman in the black shirt and blond hair is checking you out.”

I shot a furtive glance in the direction Carl was indicating.

“They don’t like the Rochioli,” I told Carl. “I can’t date a woman who doesn’t like Pinot. That’s like getting involved with someone who’s disgusted by oral sex.”

Carl laughed. “How long’s it been since you’ve had a girlfriend?”

“I can’t remember. A while.” I sipped the Zin. It was spicy and full-bodied, but it didn’t transport me. “But it’s been a welcome break. I can feel the creative juices starting to flow again.”

Carl screwed his face up in disbelief. Suffering months without sex was unimaginable to him. Indiscriminate in his own tastes, he often came to the Friday tastings accompanied by the lees of womankind. “Maybe it’s time to reevaluate the pleasures of Merlot,” Carl suggested, tipping his head toward our three novices.

“I’m not going to journey from the sublime to the pedestrian for a phone number,” I said, shaking my head. “What’s the deal with Jerry?” I noticed that the dentist was still locked in conversation with the dark-headed one.

“Flatters them, doesn’t put them down for not liking Pinot,” Carl affectionately criticized me.

“Imagine getting a root canal from that guy.” I affectedly staggered in place, imitating a drunk. “He’s probably one of those drill-and-fillers who anesthetizes his patients and then feels them up in the chair.”

Carl laughed, goading me on. We loved the mordant humor that the combination of wine and gossip evoked in both of us.

Eekoo edged into our cabal, his Riedel Sommeliers glass cradled in his hand like the Hope Diamond. “What do you think of the Farrells?” he said, his speech hobbled by the series of tasting events he had strung together beginning early in the day.

“Rochioli is nice,” I said.

He sipped the wine from his bulbous stemware and worked it professionally around in his mouth. “Not as good as the ’99 Kistler.”

Carl and I rolled our eyes at the same time. Of course, nobody but Eekoo could find—let alone, afford—the ’99 Kistler, so the reference was a no-win one-upmanship, but we humorously tolerated his elitism all the same.

“Heard you were taking a little trip,” Eekoo said to me, blinking like a gargoyle through the thick lenses of his glasses.

“My friend Jack’s getting married a week from Sunday. We’re going to do a little Santa Ynez wine tour.”

“Ah,” Eekoo said, smiling benignly as if recalling fond memories of just such a trip.

“Where
is
Jack?” Carl suddenly wondered.

I glanced at my watch. “Should be here pretty soon. You know Jack, he’s always late.”

“I miss that guy. Haven’t seen him here in quite a while.”

“His fiancée is holding him to the straight and narrow. That’s what happens when you get into a
real
relationship.”

Carl tilted his head back and laughed. Eekoo shot his arm between us in pursuit of one of the bottles, but his aim was off and he sent the Sonoma Pinot crashing to the cement floor. The explosion of glass produced a collective hush for a moment, but the silence was quickly swamped

At the sound of shattering glass, Graham, the balding, barrel-chested proprietor, broke away from the cash register and strode toward us. “You animals,” he boomed, squatting down to help the rep clean up the mess. It wasn’t the first time and he was armed and ready with dustpan and brush.

“We’ve almost killed the Rochioli Pinot,” I said. “Open another bottle.”

Graham rose on the other side of the partition. He had a large, bowling-ball-shaped face created exclusively to intimidate. “This is a tasting, Miles, not a public service.”

“Without us, you’d be in Chapter 11.”

“If you didn’t get so sideways on Fridays you might be on the last chapter of that novel of yours.”

I smiled and pointed my finger at him. Touché. He returned the gesture.

“Come on. Open another bottle,” I urged.

“Yeah,” Carl said. “More people are coming.”

Graham shook his head in mock disgust. He didn’t like the Friday tastings, but he tolerated them because they were good for business. At their conclusion, the oenophiles, their wallets liberated in direct proportion to the amount of wine they had consumed, were usually in the mood to carry on elsewhere and would ring up extravagant purchases, sometimes solely to impress one another.

As Graham finished sweeping up the broken glass, arms reached indiscriminately for the remaining bottles. The Farrell rep, realizing that she had lost control, quickly filled a glass of the Rochioli for herself and hoarded it in her corner. Graham, aspiring to be the wine mensch of

The rep looked stricken for a moment, but she reluctantly reached down and unzipped her wine satchel and emerged with a second bottle. Raucous, but genial, cheers welcomed the sound of its uncorking. Glasses were refreshed all around and the
ooh
-ing and
aah
-ing started all over again.

Soon, I felt a warm glow spread through me. Voices overlapped and muddled into one another. As evening crept up on us, the light grew soft and the faces shadowed. Then, as if entering through the backdoor of a dream, Dani, a statuesque Aussie with a runner’s physique—graphic designer by profession—came bounding down the back stairs, her braless breasts rising and falling inside a tight, midriff-revealing T-shirt. She circled into The Bullpen, a smile on her ruddy, sunburned face, eager to sample.

“Dani,” I called out, happy to see my favorite regular.

“Miles!” She shoehorned her way through the throng and greeted me with a tight hug. With so much woman pressed against me, I nearly fainted. When she finally released me I had the presence of mind to right a clean glass and fill it half full of the second Chardonnay from a new, cold bottle the rep had also uncorked.

“I’m taking you right to the Allen Vineyard. None of this mediocre wine for you,” I said.

“Oh, you are, are you?” she said, cocking her head coquettishly. She accepted the glass, took a sip, closed her eyes gently for a moment, and savored the wine. “Thanks, Miles. I needed that.”

“My pleasure.”

Carl, inebriated enough now to test the waters, had drifted over and was making small talk with the blond
laughed
at what the dentist was saying. I turned away. A wobbly Eekoo was staring bleary-eyed over Malibu Jim’s shoulder at his laptop, critiquing his wine-tasting notes, stabbing a finger—which Jim kept shooing away—at his screen. The Farrell rep, having long since worn out her function as a pourer and explicator of Gary’s winemaking methodologies, retreated deeper into her corner with a second—full (!)—glass of the Rochioli, resigned now to the pleasurable fact that she might as well get looped with the rest of us. The Bullpen had, in its inimitable way, collectively reduced our zeitgeist to a tribal low common denominator.

I leaned into Dani’s apple red face. “Do you think it’s unreasonable not to want to date anyone who doesn’t like Pinot? It’s the burning question for me this afternoon.”

“Who’s that?” Dani asked, her antennae tuned now to the horde in The Bullpen. She grabbed a fistful of my shirt and maneuvered me over to the bottles so we wouldn’t have to keep reaching through the crowd to refresh our glasses.

“Dark-haired one over there talking to Jerry,” I said, nodding in their direction.

Dani squinted and glanced over my shoulder. She shrugged. “You’re too critical, Miles.”

“Someone’s got to have standards around here.”

She laughed and we touched glasses. “Where’s Jack?”

“Should be here any minute.” I reflexively checked my watch. An hour had disappeared like the flare of a match.
Have to slow down
, I cautioned myself.

“Are you leaving from here?” Dani asked. Her voice sounded a little like it was trying to reach me from underwater.

“Yeah. I’m getting an early start.” I raised my glass to the impending trip, the promising news from my agent, and the feeling of warmth that had by now blanketed me. “I’m taking a week off and doing nothing but tasting wines and breathing fresh air.”

“Sounds like fun. Wish I could come.”

“When are you and Roger getting married?” I asked, referring to her handsome investment banker fiancé.

“This December.”

“Really? That’s great.” I tried to offer my congratulations with conviction, but even I could faintly make out a tinge of disappointment in my voice. Maybe I was infatuated with Dani because the only times I ever interacted with her were when I had a wine buzz going, but even on paper she was something special: wine lover, athlete, gourmet cook; what more could a guy want?

“Yeah,” she was saying, her words coming back into my consciousness, “we’re going to take the plunge.” Without looking, she reached around for more of the Rochioli and topped both of us off, eliciting a snort of disdain from the beleaguered rep. We ignored her and carried on.

“Like this Pinot, Dani?”

“Mm hm.” Dani made a face that underscored her pleasure. Her attention was drawn over my shoulder again. “Some woman keeps looking over here.”

“Really?” I didn’t bother to look. “Probably because she thinks I’m with you, her interest has rekindled.” I stole a quick glance at the blonde Carl was chatting up. “Carl’ll try to seduce her with his ’97 Caymus Special Selection. If
premiers crus
Bordeaux.”

Dani threw back her head of short auburn hair and laughed hard. “So, what’s happening with your novel?”

“Thirty-five rejections and counting. They just keep pouring in.”

“No,” Dani empathized.

“But thirty-six might be the charm. Just spoke to my agent. Editor at some small publishing house expressed serious interest. He’s passing it upstairs to the buttonpushers as we drink.”

“I want to read it,” Dani insisted, a weekly refrain she never followed up on.

“She’s got a good feeling this time,” I said.

Dani bent closer to me until our faces were almost touching. Her breath smelled piquantly of wine and stinky French cheeses. I misinterpreted her gesture and turned my mouth toward hers for the kiss that I delusively thought she was offering.

“He’s going for the kill,” she whispered instead, thwarting me mid-kiss.

I threw a backward glance and glimpsed Jerry the dentist brushing the dark-headed woman’s hair back off her forehead and gazing into her eyes in a way that could only be described as adoringly. Next to them, roly-poly Carl appeared to be making headway with her blond cohort. I flashed to a vision of a frolicking foursome, whisked off to Carl’s nearby condo to partake of his small, but wellstocked, cellar. As if it hadn’t been clear already, now it was a fait accompli that I was out of the picture. No doubt Jerry had already informed his mark that I was a chronically unemployed writer, which was usually about all it took to get desirable women to steer clear of me at all

I turned back to Dani, shaking my head scornfully. “Amount of wine those guys have been drinking, I doubt either of them could get an erection.”

Dani poured off more of the Rochioli, filling our small tasting glasses to the rim, before the others could get their mitts on it. As the tastings drew to a close, and the bottles grew depleted, selfishness became the common mantra of the afternoon.

“I’m happy for you and Roger,” I heard myself say. “But if it doesn’t work out, I want you to call me, okay?”

Dani dipped her head to one side and smiled.

“I’m serious,” I blundered on, aware that I was spewing drunken nonsense, feeling that cavernous loneliness welling up in me again but oblivious of the consequences and determined to hurtle forward with abandon.

Dani placed a sympathetic hand on my shoulder. Then, unexpectedly, she planted her lips on mine and held them there for what seemed like an eternity. I felt her tongue hot and moist inside my mouth. It wasn’t an affectionate kiss, but rather a showy display to flout propriety and draw attention.

From behind me, a chorus of rowdy, counterfeit hoorays erupted. On cue, Dani unstuck herself and chased the kiss with the last of her Rochioli. In one movement, she reached indiscriminately into the field of dead bottles to grab one that had anything sloshing around on the bottom. She fished out the Allen Chard, veering recklessly backward in the order—my girl! I held out my glass and she topped me off. I was light-headed from the wine, the unexpected

I was eager for Jack to arrive and call it a tasting when, out of nowhere, Jerry the cavity filler directed something at me he probably intended as a harmless joke. I didn’t exactly catch all of it, what with the riot of competing voices and my diminishing auditory faculties, but I was in a mood just askew enough, inspired by the swell of laughter that followed his remark, to whirl around and retort: “Where’s your wife this week, Jerry? We miss her.”