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Vintage Attraction

Page 17

by Charles Blackstone


  I knew what my next move had to be. I really didn’t want to make it. I gasped when I pulled back the covers. Taking careful backward steps, my subjected eyes never veering away from their object, I kept moving until I felt the bathroom door halt me.

  “Who the fuck are you?” he asked.

  “Who the fuck are you?” I returned reflexively. But it was pretty obvious. Short, black hair in a spiky, hipster style (though sleep had been unkind to his faux hawk), earrings in both ears, three or four days’ worth of black beard growing on his face, parti-colored tattoos on his bicep and chest. His taut and defined stomach made me, even in this moment of supreme incongruity, somewhat jealous. I stood there a little self-conscious, sucking in my mini-gut, stuffed into my imported skinny jeans.

  Of course I knew who he was before he introduced himself. I recognized him from Facebook. He had a pretentious name. I’d thought so the very first time I’d heard it. Now that I could ascribe it to an actual person, this person I instantly despised, it rang even worse.

  Pacer Rosengrant rendered me completely irrelevant by lighting a half-smoked cigarette. I couldn’t believe it was my own voice I heard when I asked the intruder, “Do you need an ashtray?”

  “Yeah, dude, thanks,” he said.

  I went for the ashtray in the living room. I delivered it empty, the glass lined with a skin of carcinogenic dust, to the bedroom. The rogue sommelier still lay in my sommelier’s bed—my bed. I watched Pacer Rosengrant smoke. I phrased and rephrased a question in my head while I waited for him to finish.

  He stubbed out his cigarette. I asked him, “Um, do you think you might, I don’t know, put on your clothes and get the fuck out of here?”

  “Hey, bro, don’t take that tone with me.”

  “‘Tone’? You were sleeping in my bed. I think this ‘tone’ is perfectly justified.”

  “Look, dude, this isn’t what you think.”

  “A little hard to believe when I see you there naked.”

  He lifted the sheet. It revealed that his bottom half was still dressed. He wore dark Diesels that resembled the pair I’d slept in. On Pacer Rosengrant they fit much more like I supposed the designers had intended for them to.

  “Well, you’re still without a shirt. And you’re in my bed. And I suspect my wife was probably in it with you fairly recently.”

  “She wasn’t,” he said. “She slept on the couch.”

  “So, what, this was just a little slumber party?”

  He pulled a T-shirt over his head. It bore the homemade silkscreened logo of what I supposed was a local Chicago indie rock band. He shod black boots. I followed him out of the room. I was conscious of my feet traversing the hallway, like I was the guest. In the kitchen, he unhooked the door of the dishwasher. A torrent of steam escaped. Once my glasses had cleared, I saw that the entire compartment was full of wine stemware. He stared at me, as though this was the perfectly platonic explanation I sought. His boot-elevated height increased the emasculating disparity between us by a good four inches.

  “You did the dishes?”

  “No,” Pacer Rosengrant said. “We had a blind tasting.”

  “A blind tasting?” I asked. “What?”

  Pacer Rosengrant seemed to take my consternation to mean I needed clarification as to what a blind tasting was. He explained, in a grammatically challenged “dude”- and “uh”-laden discursive monologue, the gist. Last night, here in the apartment, Izzy led some of the advanced sommeliers in the city through a deconstruction of six wines they knew absolutely nothing about at the outset. This critical analysis and the discussion that followed were practice for their upcoming Court master-level sommelier exams. Under her guidance, Pacer Rosengrant had passed the service portion before he left for Nevada. Tasting and theory were the remaining two parts of the triptychic crucible. They were also the most difficult. He had so far failed to rate on either.

  Successful completion of all three components was nearly impossible. Only three percent of the countless thousands of worldwide examinees ever became master sommeliers. Izzy had reared one victor before. She could have handily ascended into the Court pantheon herself, if she’d wanted to. She was regarded as having one of the most discerning palates in the industry. And she’d figured out everything the hundred or so masters knew—on her own. She’d learned about wine from waitressing, from tastings, from books she’d read about clonal selection. She’d studied maps of the wine-growing regions. She’d perfected presenting, opening, decanting, and pouring the window-table regulars at Bistro Dominique their speciously authentic ’82 Petrus. Yet the same strategy hadn’t worked as well for Pacer. An autodidact he wasn’t. He wasn’t nearly as smart as she was. He still desperately needed to know what she knew. He still needed Izzy’s help.

  Here Pacer Rosengrant produced a form entitled “Sensory Analysis.” It broke identification into three main categories: “Visual,” “Nose,” and “Taste.” It demanded assessments of criteria like the wine’s brightness, clarity, color, rim variation, power, weight, depth, fruit, vinosity, spices, herbs, botrytis, sugar, alcohol, tannin, acidity, texture, length, and balance. The examinee only had a mere four minutes to gather this empirical data from a single one-and-a-half-ounce pour out of a bottle wrapped in identity-concealing brown paper. New or old world? Cool or warm climate? What country? What level of quality? What grape variety? How old? The answers to the questions comprised a preliminary conclusion. Then a final conclusion about region and appellation and vintage was to be declared. A single wrong decision at any point could derail the entire exam.

  I had no idea what “rim variation” referred to, outside of, perhaps, the context of a pornographic film. I couldn’t define words like “vinosity”—the measure of a wine’s wineness? I stumbled in pronouncing “botrytis” a couple of times.

  “It’s exhausting just reading the blank sheet,” I said.

  “I know, dude,” Pacer Rosengrant said.

  Also lying out on the counter were pages and pages of handwritten notes. These mostly illegible paragraphs and grids presumably resulted from the tasting sessions. I found I could more or less read a sheet I recognized Izzy had filled out. Clear, youthful. Fruit-forward, green apple, Bosc pear, white flower blossom, bay leaf, river stones. Residual sugar, earth, no wood. Her conclusions: old world, temperate climate, Riesling or Chenin, and, finally, Germany, Riesling, QBA, Mosel, 2007.

  It went on and on like this for two more whites and three reds.

  “Can I show you something?” he asked.

  “What is it?”

  Pacer Rosengrant went to a pile of last weekend’s newspapers on the couch. He took from it a thick leather-bound sheaf. It had been shoved between the unread Sunday Times sports and business sections. He gave me the document. It was Bistro Dominique’s wine list. “La Carte des Vins de Bistro,” it read in elegant wedding-invitation script on the front. In the bottom corner, “Chef Patron C. Dominique” was embossed. It was heavier than I’d expected. I needed two hands to flip through it. The sections on the first pages, Vins Blancs, were broken up into regions: Bourgogne, Côtes du Rhône, Loire, Nouvelle-Zelande, and Bordeaux dessert wines (sec, liquoreux). Burgundy contained easily sixty wines, not even including the reds. And the prices were staggering. If a dining guest wanted Montrachet, the Louis Latour from 1997 was $790. The ’92 Laboure Roi was a relative bargain at only $330. There were two hundred red Bordeaux wines before I even made it to the Americans and the Italians. A bottle of ’86 Chateaux Margaux was $980 (or, approximately, three months’ rent on my first off-campus studio apartment in Hyde Park). Though a half bottle of a less estimable vintage, 1995, could be had for only $98. The Chateau Haut-Brion from 1953, the year my father graduated high school, was $1,800.

  “I’ve never seen this before,” I said. “Did Izzy really choose all of these?”

  His nod looked as awestruck as I felt. It was dizzying to re
ad the scores of names and prices. I couldn’t imagine what it took for Izzy to physically inventory the bottles, to say nothing of selling them. It astonished me that she knew the infinite subtle variations so well that she could discern one wine from the next by criteria more complex than vintage and cost.

  “What’s the tip on dinner with a bottle of the ’53 Haut-Brion?” I asked. “A Volkswagen?”

  “She’s really something. People call her a prodigy,” Pacer Rosengrant said then. It was as though he were telling me about someone phenomenal I’d not yet met. Shouldn’t I have been the one extolling my wife’s virtues to someone who didn’t know her as intimately? The role reversal was galling enough to snap me out of my amazement-induced reverie.

  “We were just tasting wines,” Pacer Rosengrant mumbled, his eyes trained on the floor. He seemed genuinely frustrated by my unwillingness to be convinced. “But whatever. I’ll get my stuff.” He started back down the hall. Ishiguro, suddenly a defector, ran after him.

  “Did she even ask about me?” I shouted into the increasing space between us. My voice was still raw and shaky from last night’s parking lot performance. Only the pug was moved enough to stop and look in my direction. “Did she even wonder why I hadn’t come home?”

  Before he left, Pacer Rosengrant stood at the door. He asked, in a child’s voice, if he could “borrow” his tasting notes. I stared at him and briefly considered setting the pages on fire or tearing them up. But a strange wave of empathy came into me. I couldn’t even completely hate Pacer Rosengrant for having slept here. Izzy may not have mentioned that she had a husband. He might have been so wasted that he never even noticed she lived with somebody. Little of the furniture and the belongings in the apartment were mine. Few of our mutual possessions bore any traces of my personality. It wasn’t beyond the realm that Pacer Rosengrant truly believed she resided at the Biscuit Factory alone when he came here and decided to spend the night. I handed the sheets over. Pacer Rosengrant mumbled good-bye and walked out.

  Ishiguro scuttled back to me. He looked particularly apologetic. He seemed truly sorry for not having done a better job intervening last night—or this morning. “It’s not your fault,” I told him. “If I’d managed to get myself home any earlier, I probably would have gone upstairs to sleep at the Laheys’, too.” I fed the pug. Five seconds later, he finished eating. He was long overdue a morning nap and I ushered him into his crate. Then I went to the Starbucks a few blocks away for a grande cappuccino. The barista gave me a sympathetic once-over when she took my order. She offered to add a third mercy shot at no additional charge. I gave mute, but heartfelt, appreciation.

  Back in the loft, the oaky, putrescent effluvium of oxidizing wine was heavier in the air than I’d first noticed. The stale smoke on the furniture was newly asphyxiating. Could Izzy really have led this tasting and then fucked this ridiculous Pacer Rosengrant in our own home? The beers, the cigarettes. Had they busted a few rails? He was probably one of those lucky twelve-inch bastards who could screw on coke. (I’d tried to do it, and failed, once in college.) I didn’t want to believe this, to see this, to smell this. And I dreaded tonight, when Izzy would turn up. I tried to imagine her lying on the rumpled couch, where she’d purportedly slept. I had conveniently avoided saying anything after I discovered his apartment a few blocks from here. But now, now that I’d met Pacer Rosengrant, could I still get away without confronting her?

  I found a box of American Spirits on the couch with one cigarette left. I lit it. The last time I’d smoked was with Talia, on the porch of my old sublet. It had followed the last time we’d ever sleep together. After that night, she stopped returning my calls. I heard from other former students that she’d begun sleeping with a fellow twenty-year-old with whom she could listen to indie rock. I’d also later find out she’d gotten into grad school. She hadn’t told me about either development when we were involved. Instead, she started building a series of distances between us. And I’d built my own share of distances. I said it wasn’t serious. All along, part of me had hoped to find someone else—and I met Izzy shortly thereafter. Was my ambivalence the weakness that had not only drawn Talia to me but also driven her away? Was it having the same effect on Izzy? Still, there was no way I could confront her about last night. This was no buried pile of laundry. This was my fault. I’d led her to believe I was fun and confident. I’d referred to myself as a swashbuckler, in the e-mail that started it all. I wanted her to think I was easygoing when we were first getting to know each other. I wanted to be those things, be the person she seemed to see that night we first looked at each other. And for a while, with her help, I’d become that person. Somehow along the way, though, I’d devolved. What if the confrontation’s outcome was that she’d decide to leave me? We’d obviously have to sell this place. She’d probably move back into Chris’s, or take up residence with Pacer Rosengrant. With no real savings in the bank, no significant income, where would I go? There were no professors with apartments to sublet or ex-girlfriends to whom I could present myself left. My first and last cigarette had burned down to the filter, and I stubbed it out.

  I still hadn’t showered or changed out of last night’s clothes. But the wrinkled shirt and blazer comprised the uniform in which, playing the role of taciturn domestic, I’d begin to restore order—a superficial order, but a sense of order nonetheless—to our flyblown domestic life. I started by cleaning up the mess in the living room. I threw every bottle and butt and food container into the garbage. I hung up all of Izzy’s castoff and crumpled garments. I vacuumed the rug and floor. I emptied the dishwasher and stowed all of the glassware. Then my Timex beeped. I had thirty minutes until the office hours slot I couldn’t seem to commit to memory this semester. I was fairly certain I’d have no visitors for the duration of my sentence. It would have been a better use of my time to take a nap. Further incentive to blow it off: the pug had set up rawhide-decimating camp atop my socked right foot as I stood at the sink. Still, I raced away.

  When I got back from school and reclaiming the pony car that had been clipped from me the night before, Izzy was home. I followed a newly laid trail of her shoes and stockings and skirt and underwear and blue sommelier coat and blouse and bra down the hall to our bedroom. I hadn’t been in here since my unsettling ante meridiem discovery. She was in the bathroom, wearing only a towel, blow-drying her hair. She suspended work once she saw me standing in the door frame. Her eyes cast a disbelieving glare in the mirror. “That must have been some party.”

  I looked down at my white Oxford and the skinny jeans into which I barely fit. The whole of my outfit was disheveled. I pressed together my empty palms. “Yeah, about that.”

  “You could have called me,” she said.

  “I know. I’m sorry. I had too much to drink.”

  “You’ve never not come home before. I was really scared something awful was happening.”

  I thought about Talia, how easily I could have ended up in her hotel room. “So was I,” I whispered to my shoes.

  “Where did you sleep?”

  “Berkal’s couch.”

  “Lovely.”

  “I’m sorry,” I repeated. I looked at our bed and remembered the dismay that smacked me when I found Pacer Rosengrant in it. It was unlikely my absence had genuinely given her much cause for concern last night. My compunction about my own misadventure and embarrassment over passing out before anything could even come to pass with Talia receded. My residual regret was quietly fermenting into low-voltage anger. “You could have called me, too, you know. If you were so concerned. It’s not like you don’t know how to send a text.”

  Her forehead became a noteless staff. “I didn’t want to make you feel like I don’t trust you. I never really pictured myself becoming a nagging wife hounding you while you’re out with your friends.”

  “What kind of wife did you picture yourself becoming?” My hands were restless and too cumbersome for my squee
zed Italian pockets. I turned my wedding band around my ring finger.

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “Look, I made a mistake. I don’t see why you’re making such a big deal of it. I’ve never given you any reason not to trust me, Izzy.”

  “What did you mean, ‘what kind of wife’? I’d like to know what you’re getting at.”

  Though it would have been a perfect opportunity to do so, I just couldn’t bring myself to tell her that this wasn’t actually the first time I’d been home today. It was easier to let Izzy think I’d stayed out all night. It was easier for me to let her believe that Pacer Rosengrant had risen on his own sometime after she’d left for work. I was almost starting to believe it myself. He could have been the one to rid the apartment of the incriminating party artifacts and hang up all the clothes. If he’d gotten up earlier—if he didn’t run on restaurant time—he would have disappeared long before I came around.

  She returned to the business of her hair. I stood there, watching her. It was a two-handed operation with a brush and hair dryer. She ran the brush through section after section as the hot air blew down on it. The curls, though reluctant initially, eventually complied with her wishes and straightened out. After she finished, her hair was long and dark and shone brilliantly. She set aside her tools and asked, “When did you first fall in love with me?”

  “When I first saw you,” I said.

  “That’s not possible,” she said. “It must have been later, like on our first real date. At Osteria Via Stato. When I had my hair down.”

  “Then, too,” I said. “Also the first time I heard you laugh.”

  I went to check on Ishiguro. Izzy emerged some time after in a robe. She hugged me. I had to steady myself so as not to lose my footing. She pressed her face to my cheek and inhaled. She took my head to do the same thing in a wavy copse of hair.

 

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