Easy to Like

by Edward Riche

  “Like a television set, I mean. I watch a lot of shows, on my computer,” said Harris.

  “We usually bring the laptop to bed and download a torrent,” said Abby.

  “There’s an old show that I find really funny,” Harris added. “It’s called Get Smart. Have you heard of it?”

  “Elliot is more than a, um, t-television executive, you know,” Rainblatt said, mercifully changing the subject. Shop talk was a bore, and if the shop was the CBC then all the more so. “He has his own vineyard back in, ahhhh, California.”

  Johanson raised her glass to this news.

  “What’s it called?” she asked.

  “Locura Canyon.”

  “Can’t say that I’ve heard of it,” said Thorsten Marshall.

  “It’s not available in Canada. Production is modest, a thousand cases a year.”

  “A hobby, then,” said Marshall.

  “No,” said Elliot. “It’s a business.”

  “I like some Ridge and Caymus wines but must confess to having gone off New World lately,” said Marshall.

  “Ridge and Caymus are good. There are others. You’re missing out.”

  “There is something unsurprising about California wine,” Marshall said. “Do you think it’s because it’s grown by graduates of agricultural colleges rather than by farmers?”

  Was there anything more humbling, more poisonously and profoundly humbling, than hearing oneself in an idiot? How else to respond than to protest too much?

  “Slagging UC Davis was fashionable once,” said Elliot. “I see a lot of science in the fields of France these days too; even the most dogmatic biodynamie freaks are mindful of it. And I have never met a race so convinced of the healing powers of the latest potion, whether it’s an antifungal from big pharma or an ox horn filled with dung from some witch doctor, as the French. There aren’t so many hunched old vignerons out pruning the vines as people like to think.”

  “Those California Cabernet Sauvignons, they all taste the same.”

  “Yes, but the left-bank wines in Bordeaux are now trying to taste like the ones they make on the right, so . . .”

  “I don’t follow you.”

  “Those California Cabs taste that way deliberately,” said Elliot, warming to the task of giving smug Marshall a lecture. “They made those wines to ape what they loved in French Bordeaux. Something plummy, something like black currants, something like licorice allsorts, smell of a cigar box . . . They got land in California that was close enough climatically to grow the same grapes they grew in Bordeaux, and they made wines. They made wines that hoped to mimic the famous Frenchies: the Latours, the Lafites, the Moutons.”

  “Yes, and?” said Thorsten.

  “But those winemakers realized that the one thing they could not taste in the French wines they were trying to make in California was France.”

  “The terroir thing, yes, and you’re making my point.”

  “Let me finish. By the time they’d realized this, their fat, fruity, juicy wines, made from grapes that were too ripe, had found success in the market. The wines they made were easy to like.” Was the young playwright rolling his eyes for his girlfriend? “They could not very well go back and change the taste of the consumers, a taste they had fostered. So now the Bordelais, the garagistes, and even some of the classed growths have started to make their wines taste more like those of California. The imitated now imitate their imitators’ imitations.”

  Elliot could tell he’d bored both Marshall and Johanson. The only person who’d been paying him close attention was the playwright’s date, the tiny Miss Amstoy.

  “You can’t ask that people learn how to like a wine,” she said now. “People like what they like.”

  “Not even if knowing more means they will get more out of it?” Elliot said, no longer wanting to talk about it. “I’m just saying . . . I don’t know . . . you can chase taste all you want, you’ll never catch it.”

  “I know there’s a corollary in there somewhere,” Hazel said, “for television.”

  “You own one of these Napa wineries, I take it?” asked Amstoy.

  “No,” said Elliot, “I’m doing something slightly different, much less successfully, somewhere else.”

  “You don’t seem to enjoy it much.”

  “Don’t I? I’ve given the wrong impression, because I miss being there every day.”

  He turned to look at Hazel and found she was already looking to him, wanting to meet his eye. Elliot wanted to tell her that she had made too big a leap in conflating two different sorts of taste; that one could not simply substitute television for wine in his argument because television was always, by definition, in the broadest taste. However, Rainblatt, choosing this moment to launch himself from the wall, tackled him.

  “C-come Elliot. I’d, um, forgotten about it but I wanted to show you my, aaah, wine cellar, get your views, show me how many of those terrible Californians I’ve salted away,” he said.

  Rainblatt hung off Elliot until they reached the steps to the basement. By comparison, locomotion down the stairs in the narrow passage was comparatively easy. He held a rail and, with his shoulder pressed to the wall, more or less slid down.

  The cellar was large for a home. Perhaps an earlier owner was a serious wino. Rainblatt’s collection looked, at first glance, to be typical of what you saw in basements: wines that had been kept too long under the mistaken impression they would improve, the occasional trophy label received as a gift with a transparent cash value. Elliot had been asked to perform this same task on several occasions. Sometimes you found a gem or, better, an oddity with a good story. Rainblatt got purchase with an elbow on an empty shelf as Elliot started, with some dread, to give the bottles his attention.

  “I don’t know who else to to t-talk t-to, Elliot,” said Rainblatt, his voice pitching up involuntarily.

  “Oh no,” thought Elliot, keeping his eyes on the wines to avoid Rainblatt’s. So this was the reason for all the chumminess: Rainblatt had some personal problem, a disgruntled mistress, money woes, a secret he wanted to unburden himself of or, worse, was seeking assistance in solving.

  “I still have a few friends in Ottawa,” Rainblatt began, “but most of those I’d call allies have been pensioned off or shown the door.” In the lower reaches of the rack Elliot thought he saw a Châteauneuf-du-Pape by Henri Bonneau. He withdrew it. A 1978. Gentle Jesus in the garden, a ’78 Bonneau.

  “The current government, well, they are no friends of the CBC, I mean ahhhh philosophically they would be opposed, but it is much more than that. They really believe that we have some sort of v-vendetta against them.”

  “Yes,” said Elliot, noting that there were two bottles of the Bonneau, a ferrous blood tonic, a sap with the polish of vintage port that, without residual sugar, challenged fundamental perceptions of dry and sweet. “. . . the Liberals, I see,” he murmured, in response to something he’d not quite heard.

  “No, no,” said Rainblatt. “Neo-liberals, as in the global economic movement, in an unholy alliance with evangelical Christians, at least while they have a shared agenda.”

  “Of course,” said Elliot.

  “And I’m sure you’ve heard these ahhhh conspiracy theories about Stanford’s reign, how he bungled things on purpose, that he was a saboteur acting on behalf of some sinister right-wing cah-cah-cabal in Ottawa.”

  “The conspiracy theory, yes . . .”

  Next to the Bonneau, Elliot saw, there were at least six bottles of the 1990 Rayas. There was an unopened case of 1998 Pignan on the floor. Someone with a sophisticated palate, knowledge and connections, and wads of cash was buying the best of Châteauneuf-du-Pape. It could not be Rainblatt. “These wines from the southern Rhône, Victor . . .?”

  “I never bought it, I took Heydrich’s mistakes for conventional incompetence,” Rainblatt continued. “But now —”

  “There are some exceptional wines here.”

  “There’s always been talk of privatization, but
I never bought it. I never thought it could fly, ahhhhh, politically. The Canadian public wouldn’t stand for it.”

  “No, of course not,” said Elliot. “The Canadian public, never.” Now he saw several bottles of Beaucastel’s 2005 old-vine Roussanne, a veritable confiture of figs and white flowers. Whoever had acquired these wines was intimate with the region.

  “But we have to accept that after the past few years, with ahhhh viewership down, the radio audience aging, the old platforms maybe coming to their end, maybe the public has less invested than they, they used to. And immigrants, I mean New New Canadians, the CBC means ahhh nothing to them.”

  “I wouldn’t say that,” said Elliot, now rooting through the bottles with fervour.

  “These friends of mine in Ottawa tell me that the Prime Minister’s Office has commissioned a study, all very huh-huh-hush-hush, secret, to investigate the sale, in whole or in part, of the organization. They’ve gotten it into their heads . . .”

  It was in shifting a very vieux bottle of Vieux Télégraphe that Elliot saw them, just two of them, beneath dust icing, the only adornment on their labels a rough line rendering of a single key. The thought first occurred to him that it was some common symbol on labels from the region, a now meaningless crest signifying loyalty to some sub-sect of . . . but then he saw the word Isabelle and, without hesitating, with a grasp that was ginger but sure, withdrew the bottle from its iron cuff.

  “. . . perhaps he was being p-paranoid.” Rainblatt’s speech was now racing, as if he needed to get everything out before being found out. “But at the same time there was a meeting, with only the Minister of Heritage himself, with representatives of CCTV.”

  Elliot placed the bottle upright on the floor. The cloudy green glass container, unlike the contemporary bourguignonne version for Rhône wines, was in the normande shape, with steeply sloped wide shoulders atop a tapered cylinder. Elliot knew that the type of bottle used by the estate could be variable, that they had even, being both economical and contrary minded, put it in cheaply acquired Alsatian flutes in the 1959 vintage. The fluid within was level with the shoulders.

  “With CTV, that’s terrible,” said Elliot.

  “No, CCTV, the Chinese national broadcaster. I know this seems incredible but there are other indications . . .” Rainblatt was panting.

  The label on the wine bottle was crumbling but clear. There it was, in flowing script: Isabelle d’Orange. In the lower left-hand corner in another typeface was the indication of vintage: année 1961. Elliot was about to say something, tell Rainblatt that he was in possession of a most unusual bottle of wine, one that Elliot coveted, but he stopped himself.

  “These are . . . startling revelations, Victor.” Elliot hoped Rainblatt would repeat them another time, so he could actually hear what they were.

  “I can’t substantiate any of this. I can’t even tell you who told me, and I am still unsure about their motives. We cah-cah-can’t stay down here too long, I don’t want anyone to think . . .” Without finishing the thought, Rainblatt cocked his head, put his cheek to his shoulder, and launched from the shelf, through the door, and onto the rail of the stairway. Elliot realized that Rainblatt’s method of propulsion could best be described as one of controlled falling.

  To his right, as he exited the cellar, Elliot saw a door, presumably to the backyard, and considered making a dash to unlock it. This would allow entry from the outside, necessary to facilitate his returning later and stealing a bottle of Isabelle d’Orange. He was aware he’d come to this decision rashly. From the moment it was clear that Rainblatt was ignorant of the cellar’s inventory, Elliot had known he was going to take one of the two bottles. Perhaps he needed only to ask for one, but the tiny risk that he might be refused, that Rainblatt might claim he’d received it as a gift and must keep it for sentimental reasons, was simply too great.

  But a few steps up the stairs Rainblatt turned to look back at Elliot.

  “Say nothing of this to anyone. Once I’ve learned more . . .”

  “Of course, Victor.” Elliot could not get to the door.

  “You had a question about one of the wines?”

  “No, nothing, only that there was a decent selection of stuff from the South of France.”

  “Pat Cah, Pat Cahill brings them to me.” To get up the stairs Rainblatt had to pull himself, hand over hand, by the rail. “He has some business in Avignon and often comes back with something.”

  “Are they any good, Mr. Jonson?” boomed a voice from above. Cahill. Elliot could see his scuffed, heavy-soled black shoes at the top of the stairs.

  “Speak of the devil,” said Rainblatt, hauling himself upwards, shoulder into the wall as though he were trying to push the house free of its foundation.

  “You’re a man with good taste,” said Elliot to Cahill.

  “No, sir. I am a man with many friends and acquaintances with good taste. Helga wondered where you men had gotten to. She would like us to sit.”

  Cahill and Elliot stood next to one another waiting to be assigned their seats.

  “Victor said you are back and forth to Avignon,” said Elliot.

  “Yes, I am,” Cahill answered, in way that pre-empted further inquiry.

  Helga beckoned Elliot to come forward and sit next to some Tory lawyer’s wife.

  Elliot wondered if he might be coming undone. A bottle of wine, however great, however full of associations, was just that. Did he imagine that tasting it again, swishing the fluid around in his mouth, would provide him with the information to reverse-engineer it? Anybody obsessed with anything — a painting, a car, haute couture, a boy or a girl — obviously fantasized that finally having that which they desired would solve their problems. All it could provide, at best, was the memory of why they’d pursued it in the first place. All it could do was put their decisions along the way into some sort of context. All it could do was give the choices they had made in their lives meaning. Only that.

  The lawyer’s wife turned out to be named Carrie. She was an executive in professional figure skating. Elliot was genuinely surprised when she informed him of the considerable audience the “sport” drew on television, and he made a mental note to scan the pitches piling on his desk for something featuring it. Though he expertly managed to deflect queries about his own family, Elliot knew he was doing a poor job of pretending to be interested in Carrie’s.

  He was dually distracted: by the thought of the bottles in the basement, and by Hazel’s décolletage. She was seated on the opposite side of the table, three chairs north of Elliot, and as she turned to talk with Abby Amstoy next to her, the panel of blouse shielding her breast folded and fell back from the flesh. He was buzzing in the sex-crime tendrils and jellies. He’d not thought that Hazel might ever be sexually available, and knowing that he relied on her skills to prop up the charade that he had competencies, he knew that to consider her so would be a mistake. All the same, the allure of Hazel’s boob was strong enough to befuddle his calculation of how to get the wine out of the house.

  He was confident that Victor did not know what he had down there. But perhaps Cahill did. Still, even if Cahill asked after the wine some time in the future and Victor could not account for it, it could easily be that Victor had drunk it without knowing. The wine was so obscure . . . it wouldn’t be missed if Victor didn’t know that he possessed it.

  His first plan, to unlock the basement door near the cellar and return in the dead of night, was, on consideration, ridiculous. The door could easily be relocked by his hosts before they turned in for the night. And there were certain to be alarms. No, what Elliot had to do was get one of the two bottles outside the house during the party. He remembered exactly where he’d placed the one he’d taken from the shelf. Once people got a few more drinks in and someone got up for a piss, he would follow. Finding the washroom occupied, he could claim to be going downstairs in search of another. He’d snatch the bottle, exit into the backyard, and then stash it just the other side of the fence or
hedging. Easy.

  The course of watercress soup had been finished by all but a few of the more vociferous when the playwright, Harris, excused himself. Harris was likely looking for a respite from the table, planning to close the bathroom door behind him so he could free a trapped sigh of despair at the tedium of his evening and reflect on how he’d become so toothless that these sorts of people would invite him. His peers were probably having a grand old time over jugs of draft at some dive downtown while he was listening to (Elliot had caught snippets floating over the table) Friar Cahill expound on schism arcana.

  Elliot watched Harris shuffle into the john before he ducked for the stairs. He took all twelve in three bounding strides, like a student late for class.

  Only when the Isabelle d’Orange was in hand did Elliot calculate the cost. Utter disgrace was disproportionately high in relation to the possible reward. But it was in hand. His flight commenced.

  He was pleased with the confidence and stealth with which he conveyed the bottle out the back door and into the night. He was calm, even poised. Elliot had always assumed himself to be the sort of person who performed poorly under pressure, but having so rarely put himself in such a position he might have been mistaken. His sang-froid was impressive.

  Leafless branches caught light from windows above to lay a net of shadows on the lawn. There were patches of snow on the grass but not enough to be reflective. Elliot slid slightly on the wet stone walk beneath his feet. Heading to the rear of the yard he worried whether the fence, when he found it, might be electrified, or outfitted with motion detectors or such. A forward step felt not turf or pavement but deep air.