Sideways

by Rex Pickett

  Their tiny tasting room was a ramshackle roadside barn broken at both ends by enormous sliding doors kept open to allow the sunlight and air to pour in. It was a refreshing change from the sterility of most tasting rooms, and an unprepossessing rebuke to the tawdry excesses of Fess Parker’s vulgar estate just down the trail.

  Tipsy now, we swayed into the tasting room, joking, momentarily back on good terms, wine having mended the fences. Jack was laughing pretty boisterously, and when he laughed like that his whole body convulsed and his voice boomed so that you could hear it from a long way off. Just

  As we bellied up to the tasting bar, our ears buzzing, Jack turned to me and brought a finger to his mouth to shush me. But I’m sure it was already obvious to the pourer that Jack and I were already a little on the other side of the vineyard.

  She broke away from a discreetly sipping couple and approached us with a bouncy step and an alacritous smile. She was all of five feet five with short blond hair combed over in a left-center part, framing a pale, lightly freckled face. She had flashing gray-green eyes as alert as a bird’s, suggesting that she might be a product of the East Coast rather than the West with its sunworshipping surfer girls, skin tanned to leather, all trancelike smiles and no ambition. When she spoke, her New York accent came through, and she was quick-witted and sarcastic, affirming my prediction. “Doing the wine tour?” she asked.

  “We are doing the wine tour,” Jack said, loud enough to be heard in Solvang. “And my wine snob friend, Miles”—Jack hooked an arm affectionately around my neck—“claims Foxen makes one hell of a Pinot.”

  “Excuse my friend. Yesterday, he didn’t know Pinot Noir from film noir.”

  The pourer laughed.

  “Give me a break, Homes.” Jack turned to the pourer, all sparkling and flirty eyes and said, “But I’m learning.”

  “That’s good, I guess,” she said. I got the impression, even in that daze of modest inebriation, that she was

  “In town for a while? Or just up for the day?” she asked, thumping the cork out of the maiden Chardonnay.

  “We’re en route to Paso Robles where my friend, Jack, here is …” A foot stomped on mine, making me cry out a little.

  “ … Getting an introduction to the wines of the Central Coast,” Jack finished for me. He turned sharply to me and dared me to contradict him.

  “Ah,” she replied, uncertain how to read us. “Well, Jack and Miles,” she said, leaning forward and drawing out both our names teasingly. “How about some Chardonnay?”

  We nodded. She slid a glass in front of each of us and poured flirtatious dollops.

  Jack swirled the wine around in his glass with the practiced air of a sommelier. “Now, there’s someone who knows how to pour. What’s your name?”

  “Terra,” she said.

  “Terra firma?” I joked, hoping to alienate her with my silliness so she would turn a cold shoulder to Jack’s charms.

  “No, just Terra,” she corrected.

  Jack ignored our banter and leaned in closer to his new mark. I turned to the Chard. It was another undistinguished, generic rendition of the most corrupted varietal in the world, and I was eager to delve deeper into the lineup.

  “Cab Franc?” Terra asked, moving right along, raising her eyebrows as she held up the next bottle. There’s something about a beautiful woman holding up a bottle of wine

  “Fill ’er up,” I urged. “Pour with your heart.”

  Terra laughed. No company miser her, she uninhibitedly poured both of us half glasses.

  I took a mouthful, swished it around, then swallowed.

  “What do you think?” Terra asked. She planted an elbow on the bar—as if wanting to afford us a closer look—and propped her chin on her hand.

  “Quaffable. For a blending varietal. I don’t expect greatness from Cab Franc.”

  “I like it,” Jack said, his brow beetled as if trying to fertilize the seed of a description.

  “You like all blending varietals,” I needled.

  Jack brushed me off with a laugh, then turned his attention back to Terra—glowing ever more beautiful through our winey haze—and asked, “Do you live around here?”

  “Uh-huh. Just outside Buellton.” She corked the Cab Franc and set it aside.

  “Oh, yeah,” Jack said, “that’s where we’re staying.”

  “Yeah, where?”

  “Windmill Inn.”

  “Slumming it, huh?” Terra said.

  “We like tacky,” Jack said.

  She laughed again. Then she pursed her lips to suppress a smile. Her eyes locked with Jack’s in coquettish combat for a few moments, an electric current arcing in the intimate space they had mutually created.

  “Hey,” Jack said, emerging from his trance, “do you know a woman named Maya? Works at the Hitching Post?”

  Terra brightened, revealing a mouth of brilliantly white teeth. “Yeah, I know Maya. Real well.”

  “No shit?” Jack said, excited now. “We had a drink with her last night.”

  Terra frowned, then burst into a sardonic laugh. “Don’t tell me, were you the guys making fools out of yourselves singing karaoke at the Clubhouse?”

  Jack jerked a thumb my way. “He’s Caruso. Not me.”

  Terra shimmied forward on her elbows closer to Jack and practically whispered: “Oh, you don’t sing?”

  Jack bent his big head toward her smaller one. “Only in the shower and after you know what.”

  Their eyes pulled each other closer to actual physical contact. I suddenly had an image of Babs in a changing room fussing over the fitting of her wedding gown, and decided it was time to intrude. “Could we move on to that Pinot, please?”

  “Sure,” Terra said without unlocking her eyes from Jack’s. After a few pointed seconds, she broke out of her dreamy state and uncorked the bottle of Pinot.

  Jack turned and winked at me. I made a sour face and shook my head in disapproval.

  Terra free-poured us each a quarter glass, continuing to defy tasting room protocol.

  “Oh, you’re a naughty, naughty girl, Terra,” Jack teased, holding up his glass.

  “I know. At the end of the day, I might need to be spanked,” she bantered back. “Excuse me a second.” She straightened up from the bar and moved over to the only other people in the tasting room, a gay couple who had become visibly annoyed that we were monopolizing the pourer.

  When I looked at Jack he was turned in my direction, away from Terra, his mouth frozen wide open in imitation of a man pantomiming a scream. He relaxed his countenance, elbowed me sharply, and whispered, “Cute, huh?”

  “Yeah,” I reluctantly admitted. I watched Terra work with a portraitist’s eye. She was wearing a pale pink cashmere sweater decorated with delicate pearl white buttons. She down-dressed it with a white T-shirt underneath and a pair of nicely faded and frayed Levis. She glanced over at us frequently while she poured for the other visitors. In her eyes I sensed a feeding look that exposed her as the kind of woman, recently jilted, who hunted for men like Jack to quell her insatiable need for romance. If she flashed one more smile at us I thought I would scream. Worse, Jack signaled back every time by toasting her with his glass.

  “I’m going to get this whole thing lined up,” Jack announced sotto voce.

  “What whole thing?”

  Jack gave me a look as if I were as slow as one of those brainless bovines we had just passed on Foxen Canyon.

  “You. Me. Terra. Maya.”

  “Oh, yeah, right,” I said unenthusiastically.

  “What are you talking about, ‘Oh, yeah, right’?” He snorted. “Miles, the-glass-half-empty.”

  “Do you know how many guys hit on these pourers? Especially ones as adorable as her?” I tried to discourage him because, for a weak moment, I thought of Babs, of men everywhere cheating on women, the whole male matrix of swinish deceit, and how, as it was salaciously shaping up, I didn’t want any part of it. But then Terra returned, bearing a new bottle and a
sexy smile, obviously as interested as

  “Like that Pinot?” Terra asked me.

  “Not bad. Smooth.” I took another sip. “Sort of gutless for the price.”

  Jack shot me a dark look and Terra picked up on it. “No, he’s right,” she said. “It’s not a great Pinot.” She plucked my glass away from me and upended it into the spit bucket. “Here, try this.” She reached under the counter and poured me a healthy taste from an unlabeled bottle. “This is a barrel sample from our 2000 Pinot.” She glanced at the couple at the other end of the bar and dropped her voice to a whisper. “It’s not released yet.”

  The wine was dark and unfiltered, but it had a kind of feral richness that called to me. “Very nice. Can’t wait until it comes out of hiding.”

  Terra smiled and poured Jack a sample. “Maya’s a big Pinot fan, did she tell you that?”

  “Yeah, I know.”

  “Are you going to the festival at Fess Parker’s?”

  “Got our tickets right here.” I slapped my back pocket where my wallet was.

  “Should be fun.”

  “We’re excited,” Jack said. “And I love this Pinot.”

  “I’m glad,” Terra said.

  “Where’s the bathroom?” I asked, desperate to extricate myself from the growing flirtation.

  Terra pointed and I shuffled off in the direction she indicated. Inside the tiny bathroom, I plopped wearily on the toilet and held my head in my hands. Negative thoughts swarmed in: What if the novel didn’t sell? What did Victoria’s new husband look like? Was he some virile, successful

  I must have been camped out in the bathroom longer than I’d thought, because when I reemerged Terra was assembling a mixed case of Foxen’s finest in a cardboard box for Jack, who was up on his tiptoes leaning over the bar. His sunburned face and tousled hair were inches from Terra’s face, and he was making her laugh while closing the deal. He scribbled his cell number on the back of a business card and said: “So, call Maya and feel her out.”

  “I will,” Terra said. She closed the case, gave it a slap, and shoved it across the bar toward Jack.

  Jack hefted the case into his arms and called out to Terra at the register, “So, give me a call.”

  “It’s a promise,” she said.

  Jack jerked his head toward the open door. “Let’s move it, Homes.”

  “Bye, Terra,” I said.

  “Bye. See you tonight, maybe.”

  Jack shot me a glance, silencing me. I almost didn’t believe it was happening, but I’ve witnessed Jack having this magnetic pull on women many times before, and this was just another example of how effective, when he was in full attack mode, he could be.

  “That chick’s got it going on,” Jack said excitedly, as we stumbled our way out into the blinding sunlight back to the 4Runner.

  “She’s pretty good-looking.”

  “Pretty good-looking? She’s fucking dynamite.” I opened up the back of the 4Runner so Jack could stow the case. “And you fucking go and almost tell her I’m about to get married. What is wrong with you?”

  We started back down Foxen Canyon. Jack was still on my case. “Do not tell these women I’m getting hitched.”

  “So, what’s supposedly happening tonight?” I asked.

  “She’s going to call Maya and see if she wants to get together and make it a foursome tonight for dinner.”

  I bit my upper lip and watched the pastoral landscape blur in my vision.

  Jack kept crowing about his good fortune. “I told you I was going to get this whole thing lined up.”

  “What’d you have to do? Brag about being in the fucking movie business?”

  “I’m hungry,” Jack cut me off. “Let’s get something to eat.”

  We drove into the tiny, quaint town of Los Olivos. The place had one major intersection and only a few blocks fanning out from there. It was both a stopping-off point for tourists on the Santa Ynez Valley wine tour and a place to hang out for the affluent residents who lived in splendor in the surrounding hills.

  We found a good sandwich shop called Pannini’s with outdoor tables shaded by large green umbrellas and ordered at the counter. While we waited, we cleansed our palates and cleared our heads with cold bottles of Pellegrino.

  Jack kept staring at his cell phone, which was standing upright on the table as if it were a small animal in his clutches who might make a run for it. No sooner had our lunch been brought out by a teenaged girl with a pierced

  He folded his cell shut and said to me with a big grin plastered on his face, “We’re on, brother.”

  “Come on,” I said, incredulous.

  “Turns out Maya’s got the night off, so the four of us are rendezvousing at some place in Santa Ynez.”

  “Tonight?”

  “Yes, tonight. Do you think I’ve got all week? Join the party, Homes.”

  “A date? With women?”

  “Yes! Get with the fucking program, will you?”

  “I need a drink.”

  Jack laughed. We finished up lunch and then strolled across the street to visit Andrew Murray’s and Richard Longoria’s neighboring tasting rooms. Both are excellent local vintners—Murray specializing in Rhône varietals and Longoria in Burgundian—but we were a little wined out from Terra’s generous pourings so we mostly spat, which is not the way to really taste wine as far as I’m concerned.

  By the time we left Los Olivos and headed back out 154 in the direction of the 101, the sun had started to bend off to the west, gilding the grassy hills. The wind had kicked up and a couple of raptors were soaring effortlessly on the

  We got back to the Windmill Inn as the sun was dipping over the Santa Ynez Mountains, silhouetting their serrated peaks in a blazing aureole of gold.

  We raced each other up the Astroturf-treaded stairs and both bolted for the bathroom as we got back into the room. I won only by threatening not to accompany Jack for the evening.

  After relieving ourselves, we took our places on our queens, enervated from the long day. I switched on the TV and surfed to a golf tournament. “I can’t believe this guy’s going for the green,” I remarked.

  My comment went unanswered by Jack. I looked over and saw him supine, breathing rhythmically in a light snore, dead asleep. I turned back to the television. The solemnity of the announcers’ voices—“this is an important shot, Curtis”—was such a powerful soporific that I, too, quickly fell asleep.

  When I woke several hours later, it was inky dark in the room, and for a few strange moments I was disoriented. I switched on the bedside light and blinked the room into focus. Jack was gone, but the soaring seagulls and leaping dolphins were still freeze-framed on the wall. I hauled myself off the bed, crossed the room into the bathroom, and shoehorned myself into the closet-sized shower. The needle spray spitting from the cheap shower-head seemed a harsh repudiation to the apparent fact that I was on vacation.

  Jack was standing in the center of the room when I came

  He fished a bottle of dripping-wet Byron bubbly out of the motel ice bucket and extended it across to me. “Open this, will you, Homes? I’ll probably spray it all over, and you do it with just that right little je ne sais quoi that preserves all the bubbles.”

  “Fuck you.” I knotted the towel around my waist and took the bottle from him, eager for a drink. Jack snaked a burly arm out, wrestled me into a headlock, and corkscrewed his fist into my hair.

  “Get away from me,” I said.

  “Open the bottle,” he said, releasing me with a laugh.

  I did the honors. Jack found the little thfft sound when the cork was removed amusing. “You are good, Homes. You are good.”

  I poured two foaming, plastic motel cups and handed one to Jack. We toasted and sipped. Its years in the bottle had tamed the sparkling wine’s mouth-puckering acids and given it an alluring smokiness and creaminess. It hit the spot. I’ve always felt that champagne is a perfect transition between more serious wines, perfect when I didn’t want to sober u
p but didn’t want to goose-step into the void either.

  “Mm,” I said. “Love this stuff.”

  “Delicious,” Jack said. “Not too sweet.”

  “Did you go to the Jacuzzi?”

  “Absolutely.”

  “How was it?”

  “Excellent. I could have sworn this fucking chick was tickling me with her toes.”

  “Oh, come on!”

  “I ain’t lying. This place is fucking nuts up here. Chicks everywhere!”

  “You’ve got pussy on the brain.”

  “Fuck, I know.” He ran in place for a moment imitating a football player warming up on the sideline, then pounded a fist against the wall.

  “You think these girls are hot to trot?”

  “Fuck, man. What do you think, huh?”

  I set my cup of champagne down. “What do I wear? Help me out here?”

  “Just casual, man. They think you’re an author. Exude confidence.”

  “Not exactly a characteristic of the profession.”

  Jack wagged a finger at me. “Now, that’s the kind of self-deprecation I hope to hear precious little of tonight.”

  “Good luck.”

  “Try.” He clasped his hands together and beseeched, “For little ol’ Jack who’s getting the shackles put on him a week from today?”

  I laughed. Jack hoisted up the bottle of Byron and I held up my glass for a refill. He refreshed me with a parsimonious splash.

  “Hey,” I protested, still thrusting my cup out. “Hey.”

  “I don’t want you getting drunk. You know how it affects your stem.”

  I made a face, but before I could protest, the phone jangled. Jack looked disconcerted, then he whirled toward me and said, “Get in the bathroom and get dressed.”

  “What?”

  The phone continued to importune us with its strident, drawn-out rings. Five, six … “I want to take this alone,” he said, urgency in his tone.

  “How do you know it’s not for me?”

  “I.R.S. know you’re in Buellton? I don’t think so, Homes. Just get out of here.”

  I dragged my suitcase off the luggage rack and hauled it into the bathroom. A moment later, the phone stopped ringing. As I got dressed I could overhear Jack saying, “Sweetheart,” “I love you,” “Don’t worry,” “Everything’s fine,” “I miss you, too, honey.” Cringing, I switched on the overhead heating lamp, hoping the hum of the fan would drown out his specious endearments. When I could no longer hear Jack’s voice, I emerged from the bathroom.