Vertical

by Rex Pickett

  “You look a little down, Miles,” said the blonde. (What was her name? Damn it! Sherry? Sarah? Started with an S.) I turned and gazed into her too-young, freckled face and smiled wryly. How could she read me so well, I wondered? I guess the twin emotions of elation and depression were warring inside me and my tired and spent expression bore both equally.

  I held up my glass. “No, I’m happy,” I said. “Two beautiful girls, a hit movie, the honeymoon suite with the ocean view. All the Pinot I can drink. What more could a guy like me ask for?”

  “Do you have a girlfriend back in LA?” she probed.

  “No,” I said.

  “How come?”

  “I’m picky about wines, and I guess that spills over into my feelings for women. When my life was shit I would have married a parking enforcement officer I was so desperately lonely. Now, I feel like everyone wants something from me, including women. I’m having trouble differentiating fact from fiction.” I held up my glass in a toast to the sea, to the world, and all that awaited me therein, and said, “Maybe I just got so used to the fact that I would never find the right woman–and that the right woman would never have anything to do with someone as fucked up as me–I had given up.”

  “Maybe you just want to serially date for a while?” the blonde chimed in.

  “I don’t think so,” I said. “It doesn’t appeal to me.” I held up my glass and stared into it, ruminating. “I’m really looking for love.”

  They raised their eyes circumspectly, smirks on their faces. Wasn’t the Miles Raymond they had imagined. Because they had thought they were meeting Martin West, Shameless’s protagonist-narrator, not me.

  “Seriously,” I said. Then I cheered up. “But since you two both have boyfriends back in LA”–actually, one was engaged if memory served!–“you’re out of the running. Plus, I’m not sure it’d be good for my liver to be falling in love with sommeliers.”

  They laughed.

  “You were funny at the dinner last night, Miles,” the brunette remarked.

  “Was I? My recall’s a little fuzzy.”

  “You wouldn’t think from reading your book that you would be the type who could do speaking engagements,” she said.

  “Yeah, well, I just, I don’t know, drank myself through it, I guess.”

  The blonde ruffled my tousled hair and said, “When you lifted that spit bucket and poured it over your face and shouted out ‘No more fucking Merlot!’ that crowd went berserk.”

  “What?” I said, suddenly alarmed.

  “Don’t you remember?”

  At the memory, both broke into irrepressible, eye-watering laughter. My chin sagged to my chest in mortification. As after a lot of drunken blackout nights, my own recall could be snapped quickly into focus by someone’s painting a vivid picture of an incident that alcohol had mercifully occluded. Now, it all came back to me in a stinging, humiliating rush. Holy Christ! I remembered now how the crowd had grown positively primitive and tribal about it, pounding the tables with their fists and imploring: DRINK! DRINK!

  I turned to the brunette. “Did I really do that?” I asked, feigning ignorance.

  “Oh, yes,” she said.

  “I don’t believe it.”

  She turned and went back inside the room and a few seconds later returned with a white dress shirt, extended the sleeves and modeled it. The entire front was Rorschach-ed with red wine, a rag-like testament to my public opprobrium and refutation of my selective memory.

  I glanced at it with increasing embarrassment. I brought the wineglass to my mouth, deciding I needed a little more memory obliteration. “I’ll never live this one down,” I said. “Fuck, that’s going to be on YouTube tomorrow,” I muttered.

  “It’s already up,” said the blonde. “But the quality’s poor. Cellcam, I think.”

  “Oh, what a consolation!” I said, genuinely aggrieved. I tried to sort through the potential repercussions of this now viral dissemination of disgrace, but it was too much to deal with, so I just took another healthy sip of the sublime Bonaccorsi to chase it away. Still feeling guilty that I didn’t remember their names, I glanced at each of them, then settled on the blonde. “Forgive me, but I… can’t recall your names.”

  “Sera, with an e,” said the blonde. “Like the evening, in Italian.”

  I turned to face the brunette.

  “Jessica.”

  “Sera and Jessica. How the hell did I end up with you two impossibly beautiful women?”

  “We thought you were cute,” Sera answered.

  “It’s the World of Pinot Noir, Miles. We all let our hair down. You know, like that pagan German beer festival where everyone takes off their wedding rings.”

  I nodded, suddenly feeling a little weary. The wine festivals, the book signings, they were starting to take a toll on me.

  Sensing perhaps I was a little down, I don’t know, out of nowhere Jessica snaked a hand through the crease of my hotel robe and throttled me. Damn Sildenafil! Build it for a 70-year-old who shouldn’t be having sex and then cleverly and disingenuously market it to 40-somethings. There should be a limit to how much we can cajole out of our bodies, I thought, as my cock magically sprang back to life.

  “Oh, no,” I protested.

  “Oh, yes,” she said. “You look depressed. We don’t want you to be depressed.”

  “You’re going to give me a heart attack. I’ve got a mother in a wheelchair in an assisted-living facility who depends on me.”

  She ignored my expostulation. Succeeding in arousing me, Jessica set her Riedel on the stucco partition, knelt down and started to fellate me again, twisting her head this way and that as if to impress me. Sera, apparently not wanting to be left out, and not interested in philosophizing on the infinitude of the sea and sky, turned to kiss me. Out of the corner of my eye I noticed a young couple with their two kids walking on the cliffside cement path. Thank God the partition shielded their innocent eyes from the pornography below my waist. For a brief moment I thought wistfully about the prospect of kids, flashing back to a memory of Victoria, early in our marriage, agreeing to an abortion after an accidental impregnation that sent me spiraling into a high level of anxiety. Nah, I thought, as my cock stiffened in Jessica’s confident mouth. If I’d had kids I’d never have written Shameless. And I wouldn’t be getting blown at the World of Pinot Noir in the honeymoon suite with the ocean view at ten in the morning….

  We potato-sacked it back into the bedroom and, hangovers be damned, resumed the orgy, each of them taking turns now, no one giving a prudent pause to consider prophylactics or personal sex history confessions, boyfriends, fiancés or whatnot. I think we all believed that all the wine would kill any transmittable viruses and concomitantly disembarrass us to any guilt we might suffer when we returned to our quotidian lives. I let them cavort on my enervated body as if I were fresh kill and they were a rogue pack of coyotes. It felt good to be adored so unconditionally, made love to until there was nothing left in my imagination or testicular chambers. There were moments when I thought it was a vortex pulling me down somewhere chthonic where I would have trouble resurrecting myself, but I let myself surrender to it.

  The wine industry girls were really lovely, if a bit over-enthusiastic, but I was glad when they had finally evaporated, leaving business cards, kisses, specious promises, sashaying behinds, half-empty wine samples, the wreckage of an all-night bacchanal, and me, on the bed, TV remote in hand, benumbed by a golf tournament, feeling utterly relaxed, a fat pasha, my upper lip reeking faintly of, well, Woman!

  I lay contentedly on the bed, sommelier’s glass resting on my expanding waistline–I made a mental note to get back into the gym, even though it didn’t seem to matter one whit to these wine worshippers–and reflected on how everything had changed so dramatically in my life in just the last six months. Emceeing wine festivals, hosting faculty dinners, women looking at me with a whole new aspect and degree of attraction. Okay, admittedly I had been sipping wine since waking–and I wo
uld have to work on that as well, I mused ruefully–but I wasn’t sweating rent, wasn’t scheming stealing from my poor mother, was no longer in a state of paresis over how I was going to get through the next damn month without succumbing to the St. Vitus’s Dance. All the years of suffering–living on the edge, the divorce from Victoria that capsized me into despair, my mother’s debilitating stroke, my career in tatters–all of that had been magically wiped clean with one book, and a glorious movie. Sure, the press had first cluster-fucked the director and the stars, but finally they realized this wasn’t the Immaculate Conception and that indeed there was a novel behind the whole éclat. And suddenly, I was the go-to guy for Pinot Noir. It was a riot. It was all just too incredible. And a lot to deal with all at once.

  I was basking in it, though. I had nowhere to be. I could afford to let my phone ring off the hook, even when I knew it was someone important calling, many of them clamoring for a piece of my soul. The more I blew them off the more they wanted me. What a novelty! The women found me sexy. Yeah, sexy! The salacious things they drunkenly whispered in my ear. Married, affianced, committed relationships. They didn’t give a shit. The married ones were the most uninhibited. Christ, don’t you men fuck your wives anymore?! I almost shouted out loud as I mused on this phenomenon. God, these women. I didn’t understand them. What was it about some middle-aged guy who had written a moderately successful book? Had my looks suddenly, supernaturally, transmogrified into those of a movie idol? Did sleeping with me and receiving my bodily fluids constitute some irreligious category of christening into the numinous realm of creativity where, it seemed, everyone dreamed of residing, but which few could actually attain? Was I a genius and didn’t even know it? Hell, film people, agents, others, were using the “G” word with regularity now. Best not to get too big a head I spoke out loud to myself–a tic I had developed from spending too much time alone–as I continued sipping my wine and reflecting on my newfound good fortune.

  My new iPhone jangled on the nightstand. I glanced at it. It was Jack. Did I want to hear his boozy voice? In the seven years since we made that serendipitous and novel-inspiring trip up to the Santa Ynez Valley, he had fallen on hard times. Shortly after his opulent wedding his wanton philandering had picked up where it had left off. Assistants on the TV shows he directed, location groupies, scuzzy barflies, any willing woman he could get his meaty paws on and seduce with his outsized charm–it was as if he was on a self-destructive tear to destroy his marriage. Because once you cheat on your spouse and get away with it a couple times there’s no more moral superego. The libido runs riot. The fresh pussy feels intoxicating, transformative. You can’t get enough of it.

  Then, invariably, the wife gets wise. She kicks you out of the house, lawyers up after couples therapy dismally fails. Throw in a kid–a cute little boy named Byron–and the inexorable, nasty, venomous divorce from Babs, the custody battle protracted and expensive–and your life becomes a living hell, the stress nerve-shattering, drink-inducing. And Jack was drinking more now than ever. His benders were being bruited about by an already too-gossipy industry. Like a lot of people who drink too much, he didn’t care about the fallout; they’re so immured in their misery that they lose all touch with reality and soon it’s too late and they find themselves unemployed, sans wife, visitation rights stripped away from them by an unsympathetic judge, bank-gutting child support payments, alimony, and all the other detritus of a wrecked life. That’s where Jack had landed with a thud and being around him had ceased to be fun. His usual bonhomie had turned lugubrious and sullen. Still, I felt an obligation, what with all my success, to be his ameliorant, if that’s what he needed. Hell, his lovable roué of a character had made me thousands. I owed him. And he was not shy about reminding me that our financial situations had flip-flopped.

  “Jack,” I said. “What’s happening?”

  “Where are you, Miles?”

  “Up here in…“–I glanced at a brochure on the nightstand; I didn’t even know the name of the hotel I was staying in!–“Shell Beach. Shell Beach Lodge. The World of Pinot Noir. Two women just left.”

  “Bullshit,” he roared.

  “I’m not pulling your leg, Jackson. It’s fucking nuts up here.”

  “I told you you were going to get laid off of this.”

  “Man, they were off the charts, dude. These women in the wine world. You’d think they’d be dehydrated from all the alcohol and come with purses overflowing with Astroglide, but, no, they’re lubricious. And you’d think they’d pass out, but, no, their tolerance levels are Falstaffian, they want to fuck all night! It’s wild, dude, it’s wild!” It was a stunning reversal of fortune, our discrete lives, and I enjoyed needling him about it.

  Jack listened without saying anything. I thought I could hear him dragging on a cigarette, disgruntlement or envy rasping his silence. “That’s great, man,” he finally allowed. “When’re you going to take me on one of these extravaganzas of yours? Let me be your factotum,” he bellowed, somewhat pathetically. “I need the money. And you need the protection.”

  I chortled. “From what?”

  “All the women, short horn.”

  “You just want me to deflect the rejects into your coop.”

  “That too,” he said. There was a pause. Jack dragged on a cigarette and I sipped my wine.

  “Look, Jack, I got your message a couple days ago. I know you asked me for five grand and I haven’t forgotten.”

  “Well, I wasn’t going to bring that up,” he said proudly.

  “No, it’s okay, it’s cool. I’ve been there. I know how hard it is to ask for handouts.”

  “I mean, I was the inspiration for the Jake character in Shameless after all.”

  “That you were. And I’m tired of your using that as a fulcrum to lighten my wallet.”

  He grew silent. “You owe me, short horn. You had a good run with Maya, didn’t you?”

  “Yeah,” I said, my euphoria dipping a tad. I reflected for a moment on the relationship, now petered out, with the Hitching Post waitress–the commute, a new love interest in her life that derailed me for a while, and then my descent into unbridled hedonism a few months ago when the movie hit.

  “Whatever happened with that?” Jack prodded. “We never really talked about it.”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “The movie. The attention. I don’t know. I don’t think she was happy with that hot tub scene where I licked a ‘90 Richebourg off Renay’s–meaning her–pussy.”

  “Yeah, but it didn’t make the movie. And it made her the hottest fucking waitress in the Santa Ynez Valley.”

  “True. True,” I conceded. “But, you know, I’m not sure I’m ready to settle down, big guy. There are weak moments when I think I am, then another side tells me I’ve still got some wild oats to sow here. Relationships are a tough gig. Tell me? How can I possibly be faithful at this magical juncture in my life? And at least I have the smarts to recognize that, and if I find myself inclined to get into a committed relationship, the likelihood that I’m going to hurt some wonderful woman like Victoria is too omnipresent. And I don’t like hurting people. It’s very taxing.”

  “I hear you, brother, I hear you.” I heard a gurgle of liquid. Jack was warming up, the glow was slowly returning to his morose mood. I had an image of him sliding slowly into a hot tub, the ills of his life melting away with every inch of immersion. I didn’t dare bring up Byron, Babs, the directing gigs that weren’t there as they had been, the one-bedroom walk-up in Silver Lake where he was now unhappily ensconced with futon and TV and six-packs of cheap suds and little else.

  “Look, I’ll loan you the five. No, fuck it. In fact, I’ll give you ten.”

  “What?” he said.

  “I just sold the German rights for twenty. Wasn’t expecting it. Euros dropping out of the sky. But, I want something in exchange.”

  “I’m listening,” he said, tugging on the cigarette.

  “Okay, I told you that I’ve been invited to be th
e master of ceremonies at the International Pinot Noir Celebration in McMinnville, Oregon, right?”

  “I think you mentioned it, but you didn’t want to go or something.”

  “Well, I wasn’t. These festivals are killing me. I want to get back to my writing. But I’ve decided to accept this one.”

  “What?! You weren’t going to tell me?”

  “Jack! I was planning to take the Coast Starlight all the way up to Portland. I was going to make a relaxing week out of it. Read a good book. Tap out some ideas that have been rattling around in my brainpan.”

  “Jesus, man, we talked one night about going up there together. Where’s the loyalty, Miles?”

  “I confess I was just a little too afraid it was going to be another bacchanal with the two of us.”

  “Bullshit. You met a chick who wanted to go. Miles Raymond. Celebrity author. I get it, dude, I get it.”

  “Well, okay. But the chick and I had a falling out.”

  “Uh-huh,” Jack said, incredulous.

  “No, seriously. She told me she was looking to get married, I told her I wasn’t, so I didn’t want to string her along. Especially because she wasn’t really right for me.”

  “What was the problem this time?”

  “She waxes.”

  “Ah.”

  “You know I like some fur down there.”

  “I know, brother, I know.”

  “So, anyway, I was going to cancel, but then a flare went off in my head. Why not drive? Schedule a couple book signings along the way, take in the scenery, get out of the hurly-burly of LA…”