Sideways (7 page)

“Miles. Haven’t seen you in a while.” Cheryl smiled, revealing nicotine-stained teeth. “Up to play some golf?”

“Golf. Wine tasting. The whole nine yards.” I swept my arm extravagantly toward Jack, both of us looking a little worse for wear after a day without showering and shaving. “This is my friend, Jack. It’s his first time up here. He’s getting married next week.”

“Congratulations,” Cheryl said.

“Jack, this is Cheryl.”

“Cheryl! What’s a beautiful woman like you doing working in a dead-end job like this? You should be in the movies.”

Cheryl flushed in response.

I cringed and shook my head. “He says that to every woman,” I said deliberately so she wouldn’t fall for his fulsome flattery.

“So, where’s the wedding?” Cheryl asked. “I want to come. I love weddings.”

“Up in Paso Robles,” I answered. “Week from Sunday. Why don’t you join us? I need a date.”

“Absolutely,” Jack said, shambling forward and resting his forearms on the counter.

“Is it going to be a big wedding?” Cheryl asked.

“A gala event,” I said. “Beaucoup bucks on both sides. No expense spared. Fabulous wines, sparkling and still, selected

“Oh, I love big weddings,” Cheryl said. Then her face soured. “But I work weekends.”

“Well, if you can get off, you’re welcome to join us,” I said. “Anyway, we need a room. Jack’ll take care of it. His plastic still works. I’ve got to make a phone call.”

I circled around a dividing wall to an annex off the lobby where the pay phones were located. Hunched on a stool, I dialed the calling card number and punched in a long PIN that I read off the back of a business card. There were no messages. When I returned to the lobby, Jack had trespassed far over the counter and was now about a foot from Cheryl’s face, blatantly flirting.

“Well,” she was saying, “they’ve got masseuses over in Solvang who will come here, if
that
’s what you’re looking for.”

“Yeah,” Jack said. “Something like that.” He rotated his handsome head in an exaggerated circle. “Neck’s killing me. Killing me.”

Cheryl gestured to a nearby display rack. “There are brochures over there,” she said.

“Thank you. You’ve been very helpful, Cheryl.” Jack lumbered over to the rack and indiscriminately gorged himself on a raft of promotional materials.

“Let’s go,” I said sharply to Jack. “I need a shower.”

“All right, all right,” Jack replied. “See you, Cheryl. If you change your mind about dinner, give us a ring.”

“Bye, guys.” She waved enthusiastically. “Have fun.”

We drove around to the back of the motel to find our room. Cheryl naturally assumed I wanted to be as far away as possible from the thunderous semis that roared back and forth all night on the 101.

The second-floor room itself was an uninspired space: two queens, wallpaper depicting seascapes patterned with drifting gulls and leaping dolphins, a noisy air conditioner that would desiccate my sinuses, a spitting shower nozzle designed by a sadistic product engineer to discourage theft, a blurry television with a Spartan channel selection—bolted to the dresser—the standard-issue abridged Bible with phone numbers scribbled inside the cover, some stationery, and a single Windmill Inn Bic pen. Not exactly the Four Seasons, but serviceable.

“They’re not going to do what you think they’re going to do,” I pointed out, as we entered our room with the first load of luggage.

“You’re telling me,” Jack said, throwing his suitcase on the dresser, “that if I get a masseuse over here she’s not going to suggest exploring other possibilities when I mention the almighty dollar? Bullshit, pardner, they’re not going to come to the party.”

Shaking my head, I shuffled back out to the 4Runner and collected the rest of my gear. High-flying jets from nearby Vandenberg Air Force Base discharged orange contrails against the twilit sky. It was dismaying to suddenly realize that Jack seemed hell-bent on the obvious, and I was beginning to grow uneasy that I wouldn’t be able to corral him.

When I returned to the room, I found Jack sprawled on the bed, riffling through the brochures from the lobby. He found one that caused his eyes to widen. He thrust it out

“It’s not Vegas, Jack. It’s Solvang. A picturesque little tourist trap with Danish shops selling kuchen and clogs. Mostly old people who have long ago lost interest in what’s stirring below their belts.” I brandished a finger back at him. “And I don’t want to get nabbed in some local sting operation targeting goats like you.”

Jack bulled ahead. “We get ’em over here, we take it a step at a time.”

“No. No, not
we
. I’m not interested. I don’t pay for sex. Never have, never will.”

“Open a bottle, will you?” Jack requested, wanting to change the subject because I was wrecking the mood.

I rummaged around in one of the boxes and fished out a La Rinconada.

Jack produced a corkscrew and fired it underhanded at me. I grasped the air, but missed, and it smacked into the wall behind me.

“Bull
shit
you were an All-Star shortstop and hit .450.” He laughed.

“I wasn’t drinking back then.”

Jack howled with laughter.

I opened the La Rinconada, poured us two glasses in my Burgundy stemware, and held out one to Jack.

He plucked it from my hand and raised it in a toast. “Here’s to one last week of insanity.”

I didn’t say anything.

“And thanks for coming and all that other good shit,” he added, taking a healthy quaff.

“No problem,” I said.

We sipped the wine in silence for a few moments, that blackberry nose and hint of leather on the back palate

“I’m starving,” Jack said all of a sudden. “Where’re we eating?”

We showered, shaved, and dressed, then went to the Hitching Post, a local institution on 246, a busy, accident-riddled, rural highway that crossed the 101, snaking west to Lompoc and east to Solvang. We prudently opted to walk the short distance there, fearing the local sheriffs who often parked outside the popular watering holes waiting for tottering prey. There was a fall chill in the air and the night sky, so sublimely different from L.A.’s, was littered with a jigsaw of stars. We jabbered about the Lakers and Tiger Woods while walking over.

The Hitching Post is a nut-brown, wood-framed, windowless building whose location is inconspicuously marked by a small yellow neon sign. As we approached, smoke from the wood-burning barbecue pierced our nostrils with enticing aromas of grilling steaks and other guilty pleasures.

At first glance, the Hitching Post resembles any other chophouse with its cheerless décor and typical fare. But on closer inspection one realizes that they’ve incorporated the local wine milieu into their operation, marrying all those slabs of beef with a variety of artisanal Pinot Noirs. The wines were overpriced for what they were—thin, lacking in strength—but where else could you get a decent glass of wine and a hamburger in a small town?

Inside, we strode past the hostess into the cocktail lounge, a low-ceilinged, wood-paneled room with a small L-shaped bar and a television mounted on the wall in the far corner over the kitchen entrance. Charlie, the Samoan bartender with his three inner tubes of a stomach barely

“Hey, Miles, how’re you doing?” Charlie said, extending his hand across the bar. “Haven’t seen you in a while.”

I took his hand. It was a damp, bear-sized paw that you didn’t really grasp so much as cower inside of. “Not bad,” I replied. “Been busy.”

“When’s that book of yours coming out?” he asked, releasing my hand. “Everyone here’s dying to read it.”

“Soon, Charlie, soon,” I answered, as a buried memory of a drunken night some months ago, when lies poured as abundantly as the Pinot, struggled to surface.

“How about a couple of glasses of Pinot?” Charlie asked.

“You read my mind, big fella,” I said, brightening. “How’s the ’99 Bien Nacido?”

“Want a taste?”

“Yeah, give us a taste, would you?”

Charlie slid two Burgundy glasses out from the overhead rack and set them in front of Jack and me. He uncorked a fresh bottle of the ’99 Bien Nacido on a commercial cork extractor with one powerful pistonlike action and poured a sizable, glad-to-see-you-again sample in each glass. “Tell me what you think.”

I swirled the wine in the glass, sat back on my stool, sniffed the wine, then gestured to Jack. “Oh, this is my friend, Jack. He’s getting married next week.”

“Oh, yeah? Congratulations. Now, I guess the only thing you have to look forward to is divorce.” Charlie laughed at his own remark.

“One step at a time,” Jack said, sipping his wine.

Charlie pointed a chubby finger at my glass. “What do you think?”

Jack faced me with arched eyebrows, awaiting the verdict.

“Tighter than a nun’s asshole, but decent concentration. Let’s drink to its future. Pour us a couple.”

“Mm,” Jack said. “Nice. You’re right, not as big as the La Rinconada, but delectable nonetheless.”

“Actually, it’s disappointing at ten dollars a glass,” I whispered to Jack. “I just didn’t want to offend him. We’ll drink much better wines this week, I promise you.”

Charlie filled the squat bottoms of our Burgundy glasses, emptying half the bottle in the process and endearing us to him for the evening.

“Thank you, Charlie,” I said. “Guess we’ll look at a couple of menus.”

“Going to eat at the bar tonight?”

“Might as well be close to the source.”

Charlie chuckled as he reached under the bar and produced two menus. Then he lumbered over to serve a middle-aged couple who had the appearance of golfers seeking solace from a bad day at the course.

As Jack and I studied our menus, I couldn’t help stating the obvious: “God, it feels good to be out of that viper pit, L.A.”

“Amen, brother,” Jack concurred. “Amen.”

Something caught his attention and he slowly lifted his head over the menu. I followed the angle of his straying eyes. At the far end of the bar, a tall, strikingly beautiful woman with brunette hair cascading over broad shoulders, in an eye-catching black cocktail dress, appeared with a drinks tray and recited an order to Charlie. She was the

“Check it out,” Jack whispered to me, nodding in the waitress’s direction.

“That’s Maya,” I said tonelessly.

Jack jerked his head in my direction, surprised. “You know her?”

“Yeah.” To prove it, I held up my wineglass and toasted Maya. She responded with a half smile and a quick upward nod of her head.

Jack looked at me again, stunned. “You know that chick?”

“Yeah, I know her. I told you, I come up here all the time. This is the only place I eat. And sometimes I stay late. And the staff often drinks after hours here because there’s no other better place to go.”

“Why don’t you go for her? She’s dynamite.”

“Don’t get too excited. She’s married. Check out the rock and the accompanying band.”

Jack leaned forward and narrowed his eyes, telescoping in on her hand.

“Left hand, ring finger,” I deadpanned.

“Fuck you.”

“Get used to it.”

“Yeah yeah yeah.”

“Well?” I challenged.

Jack sipped his wine. “That don’t mean shit. When Babs was maître d’ at the Ivy a long time ago she wore a big ol’ engagement ring just to prevent aggressive fucks from hitting on her. And do you think that stopped them? Hell no. Jack tipped his wineglass toward where Maya had left an empty space. “So, how do you know she’s really married?”

I turned back to my glass of wine, cradled it with both hands, and stared into it reflectively. “It was right after my divorce. We kind of got down one night after hours here at the bar.”

“And she told you about her husband?”

“Yeah. She followed some older lit professor out here to UC Santa Barbara from Vermont or someplace and was going to get her MFA, but things weren’t too cool between them. She admitted they were having problems but that they were working on them.”

“What kind of problems?”

“I don’t remember. Charismatic liberal arts professor. Nubile young students with stars in their eyes who think men their own age come too quickly. It doesn’t take much of an imagination to figure out being married to one of those guys is rolling the dice. But they must’ve worked it out if she’s still wearing her jewelry.”

Jack bent toward me, intensely interested. “When was this that you got down with her?”

“I don’t know. Year or so ago. Why?”

“If she’s married to a UC professor, what’s she doing working in a place like this?”

“Because she stands proud. She gets free Pinot. She doesn’t want to sit at home. I don’t know.”

“She’s probably divorced now just like you. A lot can happen in a year.” Jack sat up on his stool and leaned across the bar. “I’m going to ask the bartender.”

“No, don’t do that, please,” I pleaded, grabbing him by the shirt and yanking him back onto his stool.

“Why?”

“Why? Because. He’ll tell her that we were asking, and I don’t want her to know that.”

“Well, how’re you going to find out?”

“I don’t
want
to find out! If she wants me to find out, she’ll tell me. It’s not like she’s lacking for men. She’s got a whole restaurant full of them drooling over her every night.”

Jack sipped his Pinot some more and considered my words, shaking his head slowly in disbelief. He approached the prospect of making Maya’s acquaintance from another angle: “So, what’d you get down about, besides her boring, philandering husband—probably now ex?”

“I don’t remember. I was pretty framed.”

“She probably was, too,” Jack said with a glint in his eyes.

“Oh, that chick is crazy about wine, no argument there.”

“So, come on. What’d you talk about?”

“She likes Pinot, and she knows quite a bit about wine. We probably talked a lot about the local wineries, I don’t know.”

“There you go,” Jack said, throwing up his hands.

“She’s a cocktail waitress in Buellton, Jack. She has a whole life up here that I’m not privy to.”

“What are you? Some kind of fucking elitist?”

“That’s not the issue. I’m a tourist. She’s not moving to L.A. and I’m not moving to Buellton.”