New Canadian Noir

by Claude Lalumiere

  Simon shrugged. “It’s been a while.”

  “Seven years. You fought Dad hard, and you taught him a few things even if he’d never admit it.”

  “Did I teach him to let his Merlot rot on the vine?”

  “No,” she smiled. Her teeth were very white. “That’s my decision.” She held out her hand. “I’m Marina, the judge’s youngest. You don’t remember me but I remember you.”

  Simon shook her hand and turned back to the window. From this height he could see the big estate up the valley. Narrow orange trucks climbed the rows, tiny as ticks.

  “Are you the High Bench winemaker now, Marina?”

  “Not me. But I know what’s good for grapes. Dad knew too, only he never applied the principle to the vines, just to his children.”

  “Your neighbours have the jump on you. Getting their harvest in as fast as they can.”

  “The weather will hold.”

  “The weather will hold?” Simon placed his fist against the window, clenched it hard. “You’re playing chicken with winter. There’s deer in your home block and starlings mowing through the rows. Get your harvest in so I can put the grapes in a fucking tank.”

  He said it too loud, but he didn’t care. He was sick of amateurs and their magical thinking. The weather would hold, the ferment would take, and everything would work out. Well, she was paying for his advice so he’d let her have it.

  “Wine is farming. It takes hard work, not luck. You’re battling the elements. And you know what? The elements always win. Making wine is chemistry. It’s not art. It’s not an opportunity for self-expression. It’s science. Farming and science. You don’t leave any of it up to chance or it’s not a business, it’s just a rich man’s hobby and a fucking waste of time.”

  She blinked but didn’t back away.

  “I’ll take care of the deer, but the birds are fine. They only nibble around the edges. The grapes want more sun so I’m going to let them hang. And anyway, I was waiting for you.”

  “Waiting for me. Why? The old man would have hired a kid from the local college. Someone he could boss around.”

  “If you’ll come downstairs, I’ll show you. Bring that toast.”

  She padded down the stairwell, bare feet on slate. Simon looked around, confused, and then his gaze fell on the old man’s uneaten breakfast. As he plucked the toast off the plate the room filled with the smell of shit.

  Simon shook his head. “Your Honour,” he said, “that’s a hell of a sad way to go, even for an asshole like you.”

  The old man lifted his fingers to his lips.

  Marina waited in the kitchen. A woman in scrubs was drinking coffee at the granite counter. At one look from Marina she put down her cup and trotted upstairs.

  Marina unlocked a heavy oak door. “You’re going to like this,” she said.

  “Is there a cellar down there?” Simon laughed. “Of course there is. Or do you call it the wine library?”

  The stairwell spiralled down into a stone cavern lined with shining wood racks lit with pot lights recessed into rock. Ranks of wine bottles were filed into alcoves with brass rack labels. Decanters and stemware gleamed above a marble counter with an array of corkscrews and decanting funnels and aerators. A digital humidity and temperature gauge blinked on the wall by the stairs, and the far end of the room was dominated by a towering stainless steel fridge vault. In the middle of the room, a pair of armchairs faced off across an oak table. The air was fragrant with yeast and leather.

  “I call it the cave. I don’t know what Dad called it. By the time it was finished, he couldn’t really walk anymore.”

  “You’ve got a private cellar dug into the cliff but you’re still making your wine in a Quonset hut?”

  Marina ran the rack ladder along its noiseless track and climbed up to fetch an unlabelled bottle. She looked at the slice of toast in Simon’s hand and raised her eyebrows. Fair enough, he thought, as he bit into the cold toast. Let’s do this right. Don’t want to be tasting crap wine with a tongue fouled by VB.

  Simon browsed the racks. One side was almost all Bordeaux, good labels and expensive vintages. Next to that was a rank of Barolo. Nothing wrong with the old man’s taste. There were several dozen big spendy Napa Cabs further on, and then a rack of port followed by a dog’s breakfast of local reds, vintages all jumbled together, some bottles past their time and most not worth drinking.

  The other side of the room was devoted to High Bench wines, the bottles racked opposite the Bordeaux, and just as carefully organized. The rest of the wall was filled out with vintage Champagne. Nothing wrong with the old man’s ego, either.

  Marina stripped the foil from the bottle she’d chosen and eased the cork. “We’re not making wine in the hut anymore. There’s a new crush pad built into the hill under the tasting room. Didn’t you see it?”

  Simon’s mouth was full of dry toast. He shook his head.

  “Well,” Marina said, “it’s nice. Everything you’d want.”

  He swallowed. “I can make wine in a garage if I have to.”

  “But don’t you like it better when you have a proper set-up?” She turned her hand over and gestured at the room, a model’s move, slow and elegant. “You can’t tell me you don’t like this. Be honest.”

  “Who wouldn’t like it? It’s a fucking wet dream. But it’s in the wrong place. You can’t make good wine here.”

  “Can’t we?” Marina smiled. “Oh, I see. Tell me, what do you need to make good wine?”

  Alright, Simon thought. Kindergarten time. He resisted the urge to look at his watch. “Good grapes.”

  “Anything else?”

  “If you’ve got a winemaker who knows what they’re doing and a hardware store within a couple hundred miles, no. A few pieces of equipment would be nice, and an oak barrel if you’re making red. But Sicilians make killer red in concrete troughs. It’s not clean but it’s tasty.”

  Marina plucked a pair of stems from the cabinet and placed them on the table beside the unlabelled bottle. She sat back in one of the leather chairs and crossed her legs. “And how do you get good grapes?”

  “You farm the fuck out of them. And you don’t grow them in Canada.”

  “Don’t you? Well, you’re the professional.” She lifted the neck of the bottle to her nose and inhaled. Her eyes rolled back a bit, an involuntary gesture of pure sybaritic delight. If this was a High Bench wine, she was putting on a show. Either that or her palate was borked.

  “Let me tell you how to get good grapes.” She spread her fingers again in that model’s gesture, inviting him to sit.

  The scent of leather enveloped him as he sank into the big armchair. “What do you know about farming, Marina?”

  She leaned back and crossed her slim legs. “I used to work in the vineyards.”

  “Sure. The vineyards at Tiffany’s, maybe.”

  She smiled. “Since Dad got sick I’m more in sales. But you remember me. Think about it.”

  Simon remembered a skinny teenager in coveralls and a baseball cap bringing in truckloads of grapes, working the sorting table, hauling loads of stems out to the compost. She had kept her distance at first, but as the fights with the old man got worse and worse she started sticking close. He remembered her hovering at his elbow as the old man shoved his shotgun in Simon’s face. He thought she was being protective of her dad, but maybe she had been learning something. Learning how to survive her father, maybe.

  “Okay, farmer. Tell me what you think you know.”

  She leaned toward him. “Vines are generous; they want to produce. If you water them and baby them and let them get comfortable, they’ll throw out canes galore and give you as much fruit as they can. But it’s bad fruit. No flavour.”

  “Sure,” he said. “That’s Viticulture 101.”

  “So you torture them. Plant the vines close together so they have to compete for water and nutrients. You cut them back hard to keep them stressed. Keep them thirsty and force them to drive their ro
ots deep. Then you thin the buds until the vine is forced to put everything it’s got into a few clusters just to please you. You don’t get much quantity for your effort, but what you do get is the best quality. That’s what Dad believed. Torture brings out the best. I know it better than anyone.”

  Simon sat back in his chair. “We still talking about grapes?”

  Marina nodded. “What’s good for grapes isn’t so good for people. But I learned. I’m not sentimental. I don’t baby the vines, I keep them scared and make them work for me. And let me ask you, what’s crueller than forcing vinifera to grow this far north? They beg for every ray of sun.”

  “If you’re going to go crazy on me, better I get my cheque now.”

  She laughed and poured. A ruby stream tipped into the crystal, studding the lip of the glass like gemstones.

  “Anyway,” said Simon, “this isn’t that far north. You’re on the same latitude as Champagne.”

  “Now you’re making my argument for me. No reason why we can’t grow good grapes here.”

  “Go ahead! Grow Riesling and Gris. Cool climate varietals make nice little patio sippers. Bottle some fat Merlot and sell it at the grocery store. Make a sparkling if you want to brag about something. But you can’t grow good Cab, and that’s what you need to make real wine.”

  She pushed a glass toward him with the tip of her finger. “Cabernet Sauvignon likes heat, and we have plenty of that. It’s just getting hotter every year.”

  Simon sighed. “You’re the judge’s youngest? I bet you never lost an argument, just like him.”

  “Dad lost plenty of arguments. Just never admitted defeat.” She lifted her glass. “How about you? Ever admit defeat?”

  Simon swirled the wine and plunged his nose in the bowl. The first whiff was pure black fruit, concentrated and treacly like a Napa Cab but then all that fruit spread out over hot soil, sunk into good stony dirt. He swirled again and sipped. The fruit burst over his tongue and slid like velvet down his throat. The finish was plush with pepper.

  Simon tasted wine all the time, tasted, measured, assessed, critiqued, and criticized. It had been years since he’d drunk wine for pleasure, but this glass practically begged to be drained.

  He sipped again. “That’s decent Bordeaux.”

  “It’s not Bordeaux.”

  “Whose is it?”

  “It’s yours.”

  Simon put the glass down. Crystal rang on oak.

  “Ours,” she continued. “High Bench, seven years ago.”

  “I never made wine here. Your dad did. I just kept his mistakes from turning into vinegar.”

  “Yes, you did. You gave Dad hell over it, just one barrel of your own, the way it should be. The way you knew it could be. And this is it.”

  She sipped. Her eyelashes fluttered closed.

  She could be lying. Could have soaked the label off a thousand dollar Grand Cru and poured him a big glass of bullshit. But no – she didn’t just like the wine, she was proud of it. Proud like her father had been of his Jaguar and his big old house. Every sip seemed to puff her up just the way her father had puffed up every time someone down in the town called him Your Honour or gave him right of way at an intersection.

  Ego, that’s what he saw in her. Pure ego.

  He tasted again. It was good. Very good, and after seven years starting to open up and even out. It would stand another ten years in the bottle, maybe even twenty.

  He drained the glass and held it out. Marina refilled it, generously.

  “Just one barrel, you said?”

  “Yes, three hundred bottles. It’s our Grand Reserve. We don’t sell it, just give it away to wine critics and break it out for special guests. There’s just ten bottles left.”

  One barrel. There had been one barrel. Simon had slept on the concrete beside it, kept the old man off it for weeks. In the end, he had stood over it with the axe clenched in his fists as the old man shoved the shotgun’s muzzle under Simon’s chin. He remembered panting with the urge to drive the axe blade through the old man’s skull, his vision turning red at the edges. He had nearly done it, nearly scattered the old man’s brains across the concrete, nearly painted the crush pad with his blood.

  Instead, he’d used the axe handle to shove the shotgun aside and just walked away. Walked straight down to the highway, hitchhiked into the city, and had never thought about that barrel again once he was on the plane to Australia. Just wrote the whole thing off.

  And now here it was, good as anything, anywhere.

  “Grand Reserve,” Simon said. “I bet the old man labelled his own Grand Reserve every year.”

  “No. This is our only Grand Reserve.” She filled his glass again. “But you could make another this year, if you think you can do it again.”

  Simon swirled the wine. It clung to the crystal like blood and streamed into the bowl in thick rivulets.

  Could he? He wasn’t sure. Nothing in his experience could explain getting a wine this good from grapes like these. But he’d done it, somehow. Grand Cru quality. The kind of wine people search for, shed tears over, fight about. Legendary wine. His.

  “Alright,” he said. “But I still want my cheque.”

  Marina stood and walked over to the cold storage. “I haven’t got it.” Her voice echoed off the stainless steel. She opened the door. Cold air washed over Simon’s skin.

  “Fuck,” he said.

  “I haven’t got the money,” she repeated as she closed the door. “The new tasting room, new crush pad, finishing this house before Dad dies. And the nurses, three shifts a day. Dying at home isn’t cheap. But I’m talking to the bank again on Monday and we release the new reds in November. I’ll have it, just not right away.”

  She placed a can of VB on the table beside his wine glass. Condensation pearled the aluminum.

  “The bank would be a lot nicer to me if I had a winemaker. A permanent one, not a hired gun. Someone to stay year-round, take the ferment from harvest to bottle. Especially if he was the one who made our Grand Reserve.”

  She was clearly crazy, Simon thought. He should grab the beer and run like hell. Go to Nicaragua and forget everything.

  But there were only ten bottles left of his Grand Reserve. He would do it again, make more wine this good, or die trying.

  “Stay,” she said. “Forget Australia, forget France and California. Stay and make wine here. I’ll make it worth your while, eventually.”

  Simon settled back in his chair and lifted the glass to his lips. “What the hell,” he said. “It’s just getting hotter.”

  A SQUARE YARD OF REAL ESTATE

  Steve Vernon

  In order to make this whole system work, you’ve got to learn how to break a few rules. That’s one of the first things you figure out when you go into business for yourself. The government never wants to know the whole truth. I’ve owned this used bookstore for over seventeen years. That’s a success in some people’s eyes. I’m not so certain.

  There’s a guy out there who sits on the sidewalk nearly every day. Well, actually there’s quite a few of them. They’ve got the whole downtown Barrington Street area divided up by street corners. You can find one of these guys on pretty near every street corner leaning their back up against a telephone pole. I think in some ways they’re holding the whole damn city together.

  They used to call them bums. For a while they were called the homeless or the out-of-doors. Some folks are polite and refer to them as houseless. The bureaucrats have named them transient populace. Romanticists call them pilgrims of the road or, more poetically, the walking wounded of society’s endless battle against poverty. I once heard a social worker refer to them as the disenfranchised. All of those labels with way too many syllables. Do you know what I call them? I call them people, because they just don’t look all that different from you or me.

  The funny thing is you never see them fighting over who sits where. They’ve got a pretty good system worked out, I guess. They sit there, usually on about a s
quare yard of cardboard, shaking a Tim Hortons coffee mug and saying those same words over and over again: “Spare-sum-change?”

  I saw a show on television once about this holy guy who spent his days squatting on a prayer mat somewhere in Alberta or Alabama, one of those A-places. It seemed he had it figured out that if he sat there for long enough saying special secret words over and over to himself that he would be transported to a better reality and perhaps even a higher tax bracket.

  I don’t know what those words were. Maybe he was chanting nothing more than a lead pipe confession from Professor Plum, or whispering the Cadbury Caramilk secret or intoning Colonel Sander’s eleven herbs and spices. But part of me figured that all that his secret incantation amounted to was some form of the panhandler’s never-ending mantra: spare-sum-change?

  I hear that mantra a lot these days. When I go into the bank the tellers sit there and rattle tin cups against the banker bars and mutter in coordinated unison – “Spare-sum-change?” Telemarketers phone me every night and whisper in dry, crackling, static-bound tones – “Spare-sum-change?” George Bush sends me telekinetic messages from a WMD site in some spun-dry-desert-kingdom, Arabia or Albania, one of those A-places, and asks me if I can “Spare-sum-change?”

  Like I said, I run a small business here on Barrington Street in Halifax, Nova Scotia. I sell used books and cigarettes and soda pop and lottery tickets. I sell an awful lot of lottery tickets. The money goes to the government. They tell me that the government does good things for us, but all I know is they seem to be the number one panhandler out there on the street.

  I pay taxes on my bookstore. I pay taxes on my business license. I pay taxes on what I earn and I pay taxes on the cigarettes I sell and I pay taxes on my tax deposits. I even pay taxes on the awning over my store window that people stand beneath when it’s raining and they’re waiting for a bus. It’s called encroachment tax. As near as I can figure, I have to pay a tax for the wear and tear that the shadow of my awning inflicts upon the sidewalk.