Vertical

by Rex Pickett

  “Why don’t you try it?” Jack asked.

  “The professionals never taste it, they just sniff to see if it’s off.” I turned to Christopher. “It’s fine. Ramp us up.”

  He poured Joy’s wide-bottomed, narrow-lipped Pinot-specific stemware about a third full. “So, how’d you get to be Master of Ceremonies?”

  “Oh, well…” I started, not sure I wanted to go down that familiar road.

  But it didn’t matter because my mother blurted out, “He wrote Shameless.”

  Christopher stopped in the middle of pouring for Jack and turned to me, his expression now one of wide-eyed shock. “Are you joking? You wrote Shameless?”

  I hung my head and nodded. I was tired; I didn’t want the fawning that was sure to ensue. “Yeah,” I said, a little weary already at the inevitable consequences of my admission–especially to someone who obviously knew his wines.

  “I loved that movie,” he effused. “It’s one of my favorites of all time. In fact, it was required viewing for our entire wait staff here.”

  “Really?” I said. “So, they all drink from the spit bucket now, huh?”

  He laughed and thrust out his hand. “It’s a pleasure to meet you…?”

  “Miles. Miles Raymond.” I took his hand and shook it.

  “Wow, we don’t get many celebrities up here in Fresno,” he said, flushing red and grinning broadly.

  “And for good reason,” Jack interjected, unable to hide his sarcasm.

  “I’m not really a celebrity. I’m just a sadsack writer who got lucky.”

  Christopher cocked his head to one side and smirked at my modesty, not believing it for a second. “I’ll bring you your water,” he said. “And it’s a pleasure to meet you, Mr. Raymond.”

  “Miles, please,” I said.

  He glided away. My mother, her glass now half drained, donned her reading glasses and opened her menu. She scanned it a moment, then let loose a kind of owl cry. “Woo. It’s expensive.”

  “Who cares, Mom? Order whatever you want. It’s been one long hell of a day.” Jack and I locked eyes and exchanged a meaningful look that only underscored my words.

  “Rusty would never take me to a place like this,” she said, still staring goggle-eyed at her menu, referring to my father.

  “He was a cheapskate, wasn’t he?”

  “Oh, yes,” my mother said. In a singsong voice that had only manifested itself since her stroke, she added, “All I did was cook, cook, cook. We never went out. And when we did it was pizza.” She made a face, looked at me over her rectangular-lensed glasses and said, “That’s what killed him. All that damn pizza.”

  We all laughed and sipped our wine. The Bergström was nice, well balanced, a lot of ripe fruit, not too alcoholic. I turned to Joy: “You like the Pinot?”

  She nodded enthusiastically. “No aftertaste.” This had become her default response every time I asked her about the wine.

  “Anything else?” I prodded.

  She took another sip, let it swash around in her mouth a bit, then pronounced. “Tastes a little like hashish.”

  “You would know,” my mother said without looking at Joy.

  Joy glowered at her.

  “All right, Mom, can it, or I’m wheeling you back to the Marriott and ordering you pizza.” I turned to Joy. “Hashish, huh? In all the winespeak I’ve heard over the years, and that includes melting asphalt and cricket legs, I’ve never heard anyone compare a wine to a cannabinoid.”

  My mother, who was ignoring us, set her menu down, reached for her wineglass and simultaneously announced, “I’m going to get the biggest goddamn steak they have. To hell with Rusty. I don’t care if he’s mad at me,” she added cryptically, as if my father were a reproachful presence hovering over her.

  “You get the biggest colon-buster you want, Mom, okay? I don’t think Dad’s going to come down and snatch it away from you.”

  “I wouldn’t be so sure,” she shot back.

  Everyone laughed, including Joy.

  “And I want to take the bone back to Snapper.”

  “Absolutely, Mom. That’s why they call them doggie bags.”

  My mother ordered the prime bone-in rib-eye with the classic Caesar to start and a baked potato side. Joy, a finicky eater, demurely ordered a shrimp cocktail appetizer and Fleming’s house salad.

  “Is that all you want?” I asked, incredulous. She shrugged. “Come on, Joy, it’s on me. I’m flush with cash. Do you like seafood?” She nodded. I turned to Christopher. “Bring her the Australian lobster tails,” I said grandly.

  “Oh, no,” Joy said. “That’s too expensive.”

  “Not at all, Joy,” I said. “You’ve been doing a yeoman’s job. Hasn’t she, Mom?”

  “What’s yeoman mean?” my mother asked.

  “Someone who uncomplainingly does hard, thankless work.”

  Jack and I ordered meat and fish respectively and Christopher disappeared.

  “I’m not thankless,” my mother barked.

  “No, but sometimes you’re thoughtless. Joy’s doing a great job, isn’t she, Mom?”

  “Oh, yes,” she cried out, the wine having momentarily liberated, however evanescently, the last vestige of human decency in her. “Without Joy”–tears suddenly sprang to her eyes–“I wouldn’t be able to get to Wisconsin.”

  “Mom, please stop crying,” I said firmly.

  She squinted and bobbed her head up and down, staring into her thoughts. “Oh, this is the best night of my life.”

  “That’s what you said last night.”

  “And it was until you brought up the fire.”

  “I’ve already apologized for that, Mom. But, you remember when Hank burned down our vacation place in Baja?”

  “Oh, yes. I remember. Rusty was so angry with him.”

  “Do you know how that happened?”

  “It was a propane leak.”

  “No, Mom. He was getting the generator out. He’d been drinking all the way down, the moment he crossed the border. It was out of gas. So, he filled it up, but he was so drunk he sloshed gas all over the garage floor. Then, when he pulled the starter cord, a spark ignited.”

  “Oh, no,” she said.

  “Oh, yes,” I said. “There’s a pattern here in the Raymond family.”

  My mother grew reflective. “I didn’t know that,” she said.

  “Obviously, Hank lied because Dad would have disowned him.”

  “That’s true.” She looked up at me over her glasses. “Why do you have to bring up all this bad stuff?”

  “What does it matter, Mom?”

  “I don’t want to remember the bad stuff,” she cried.

  “I’m sorry. I just thought you might like to know the real story.”

  “No, I’m not interested,” she snapped. “I just want to enjoy my wine.” Tears sprang again to her eyes. “And these last few days I have before you abandon me at my sister’s.”

  “I’m not abandoning you, Mom. I’m taking you where you said you wanted to go.”

  “I know,” she said. She nodded some more, adrift in a world of her own creation. “Could I have another glass of wine, please?”

  “With your dinner, Mom. Remember, you’re taking a lot of meds and we’ve still got a long way to go.”

  “I know. You’ve all been so good to me.” And tears watered her eyes again.

  The food could have been deemed delicious, if you were partial to that kind of cuisine. I couldn’t believe my mother, devouring her mammoth steak, Caesar salad and the jumbo baked potato, fully loaded. Joy nibbled at her lobster guiltily, knowing that it had set me back over $40. Jack and I got a second bottle of Pinot–hell, we were only a mile-and-a-half straight down the road from the hotel, so why not get a little tipsy? My mother tried to inveigle a third glass of the Chard, employing her sad clown expression oh-poor-me-I’m-in-a-wheelchair routine, but I reproved her, “Mom, you’ve already had two glasses, and you had one back at the hotel.”

  She
held out her glass like a little kid, cocked her head coquettishly to one side and said, “Please. One for your mother, who raised you…” Tears welled in her eyes.

  “You are unfucking believable,” I said, not swayed by her weak shot at emotional blackmail. “You’re going to get a nomination this year. Best performance by a stroke victim who wants a fourth glass of wine.”

  Everyone laughed. Except my mother. Her lachrymose charm suddenly changed into a flash of anger. “Oh, damn it, don’t be like that to your mother. I’m not a child.”

  Christopher, who was hovering over us, awaiting the verdict, glanced back and forth between us as if he were mid-court at a tennis tournament.

  I turned to him and said, “Give her a half a glass.”

  I don’t know whether Christopher was being charitable or had put in the wrong drink order because he brought my mother a full pour. She was in heaven. But wasn’t I being a hypocrite with the two bottles of wine, not to mention the one Jack and I had pounded at the Marriott? And Joy was still on her first glass, so there were extenuating circumstances here for sure.

  During the course of the sumptuous repast, some of the wait staff and kitchen crew came over to shake my hand, congratulate me, and then have me sign autographs on menus and cocktail napkins and even the sleeves of their chefs’ uniforms. At one point, sweating like a factory worker, the chef himself, rotund with a florid face–a walking myocardial infarction!–emerged from the kitchen and pumped my hand. “Wine sales are going through the roof because of you,” he proclaimed, a bottle or two to the wind himself it seemed.

  “Well, the movie did that,” I said, all modesty. “I just wrote the blueprint.”

  “It starts with the book, doesn’t it?” he said in his booming voice. “How’s the food?”

  “Marvelous,” my mother said, a half-chewed chunk of rib-eye clearly visible.

  Everyone laughed. Periodically, Joy would have to remind my mother to wipe the left side of her mouth. Now and then Joy would do it for her, occasionally having to retrieve pieces of semi-masticated food that had fallen onto the napkin in her lap.

  After desserts, one of the wait staff–a pretty, sylphlike brunette beauty–came toward me, bent at the waist and whispered in my ear, “After we close, we’re going to have a little celebration. It’s one of the waiters’ birthday. We’d love to have you as our special guest. We’re going to open some awesome bottles.” I was a little bit–well, more than a little bit–drunk, but I could have sworn she added in a lower, more brazen, tone: “You can have anyone here you want, Miles.”

  “I’ll think about it,” I said, feeling jaded. “Thanks for the invite.”

  I paid the tab, which totaled well in excess of $500, tipped obscenely so they wouldn’t gossip that the author of Shameless was a piker, and rose from the table with my anomalous troop.

  As we went out the front door, the brunette vixen brushed by me again and said, “See you back here a little later, I hope.”

  Without breaking my stride, I smiled at her a little affectedly, but said nothing, and trailed my dysfunctional family out into the still torrid night.

  The valet brought the Rampvan up and opened the doors and helped everyone in. I must have slurred a little because he said, “Sure we can’t call you a cab?”

  “We’re just a mile down the road, at the Marriott. I’m sure I’ll be fine,” I said, enunciating carefully.

  Out of Fleming’s drive-up, the direction I needed to go was left, but that would require crossing a double-yellow line. Looking right, I could see I was going to have to go pretty far before I could turn around. There were no cars on the road and the weeknight Fresno cityscape was deserted. I executed the left and headed in the direction of the Marriott.

  Halfway to the hotel I could make out the big green-and-red, garishly lit neon sign. Everyone was laughing about something Jack had said when, checking my rearview mirror, I caught the flashing colored lights–red, white, and blue–of a cop. They must’ve been flashing awhile, because a few moments later I heard the shrill WHOOP WHOOP as an audio reminder, followed by a stentorian voice on a bullhorn: “PULL OVER TO THE SIDE OF THE ROAD.” The megaphone-amplified voice was followed by another WHOOP WHOOP.

  “Oh, fuck, just what I need.”

  “Keep it cool, Homes,” Jack said.

  I complied with the order, switched off the Stevie Wonder CD Jack had put in and had been singing to, and waited. A uniformed officer–Fresno PD? County sheriff? I couldn’t tell–slowly approached my side of the car, right hand riding his holster. I motored my window down and manufactured a smile. He was in his thirties, mustachioed, a young Steve McQueen look-alike, his face set in a perpetual snarl. He was wielding a baton-sized flashlight, which he directed contemptuously into my eyes.

  “Can I see your driver’s license and registration, sir?”

  I reached around for my wallet and fished it out of my back pocket, fumbled with the plastic inside card holder, while Jack rooted around in the glove compartment for the rental agreement.

  The cop shined his light on the license once I handed it over, then back into my face. “Are you aware that you made a left over a double-yellow?” he casually asked as I passed along the Avis folder.

  “No, I didn’t see it,” I said. “We’re not from here, we’re passing through.”

  “Where’re you coming from?”

  “Well, we started in San Diego and we’re headed to Oregon.” I shrewdly stopped myself before elaborating that we were headed to the International Pinot Noir Celebration–what a bonehead mistake that would have been!

  “I meant, where’re you coming from tonight?”

  “Oh,” I said amiably, “we had dinner over at Fleming’s.”

  “Have you been drinking, Mr. Raymond?” he asked, expressionlessly.

  “A couple of glasses of wine over, I don’t know, three hours, that’s all. We’re staying down the road at the Marriott.” I pointed through the windshield toward the three-story stucco structure lit up like a fabled sanctuary, but felt myself receding with every passing second into the encroaching net of a DUI.

  “Would you mind stepping out of the car, please?”

  Without protest–indeed, with the cheerful readiness born of fear–I opened the driver’s side door and climbed out. I can’t remember, but I may have stumbled a bit on the little step-up assistant, just enough to give him pause. I stood out in the dank Central Valley night air, the radio from the cop’s cruiser squawking a cacophony of overlapping voices issuing from various disembodied dispatchers. I was sentient enough to envision a night in jail awaiting a morning arraignment while Jack, Joy, my mother and Snapper were holed up in the Marriott, my mother’s tooth worsening and Jack and Joy’s patience strained to the cracking point.

  “I’m going to give you a field sobriety test, sir, because I have cause to believe you’ve consumed more than you’ve said, that you’re impaired and quite possibly over the legal limit.”

  My instinct was to protest. But I’ve learned over the years that arguing with cops and getting obstreperous in such situations only exacerbates things. Besides, I reasoned silently, monosyllabic cooperative answers would give him less chance to analyze my clearly hobbled speech. “Okay,” I said meekly.

  “I want you to look straight up at the sky”–he demonstrated briefly–“and remain like that for thirty seconds. Okay?”

  “Okay.” Shuffling my feet, I tried discreetly to widen my stance, having learned from my years playing golf that a solid base was important for a successful swing. I slowly tilted my head upward ninety degrees, and stared at the sky. I don’t remember whether I swayed, but the thirty seconds felt like an eternity.

  Next, he said, “Now I’d like you to stand on one foot and hold that for ten seconds.”

  “Oh, the flamingo part of the test,” I joked.

  He remained poker-faced.

  I cocked the knee on my right leg and lifted the foot off the ground. That was a mistake; it would have b
een much easier to balance myself on my right side than my left. I tried, but I couldn’t make the full ten seconds and had to plant my right foot back on the ground lest I fall mortifyingly into a heap onto the asphalt.

  “Mr. Raymond, I believe you’re over the limit.” He looked at me, awaiting a response. I could see that he was vacillating on the question of arresting me.

  “Look,” I started, in as calm a voice as I could muster, “I’ve got my mother, who’s in a wheelchair, and her nurse, and a friend who’s just undergone a very invasive medical procedure, we’re taking my mom to Wisconsin to be with her sister.” I held open my hand and motioned toward the ethereal Courtyard Marriott, less than half a mile from where we, cop and celebrated author–reputation about to be tarnished–stood. “We’re just staying right down there…” I cut myself off.

  I sensed my rambling plea had ever so slightly swayed him. “Stay put,” he commanded. He walked around to the passenger door on the van and rapped on the window with his flashlight. I was praying Jack wouldn’t fall out of the cab and launch into his desperate actor routine and get us all thrown into jail.

  Through the window I could make out Joy sliding open the passenger door, then returning to her position next to my mother. The inside of the back was lit up now with the overhead lamp, but the cop still sprayed his flashlight around, trained no doubt in its intimidating effect. I was hoping he wouldn’t poke around in the ice chest and find the bottle of Puligny-Montrachet I had been chilling for Joy, Jack and me. I also prayed that the dramatis personae, especially my paralyzed mother, to greet him when the door was opened would move him to a more compassionate verdict.

  Suddenly, my mother cried out, “Don’t arrest him! He’s my son! He’s taking me home to Wisconsin. Please don’t arrest him!” This was followed by a brief silence. Before she started ululating: “I can’t breathe. I can’t breathe! I can’t breathe!”

  Fresno’s finest, disconcerted by the sight of my mother and the shrill sound of her wailing, backed away from the passenger compartment and wordlessly circled around the front of the Rampvan, all the while directing the beam of his flashlight inside, then back to where I, sweating bullets, had remained standing, raking my hair with my fingers in anticipation of the worst.