Love the Wine You're With

by Kim Gruenenfelder

  It’s just too early. “Let’s take a few minutes to let everyone wake up and have coffee,” I suggest as I drag myself off of the love seat and head into the kitchen.

  Jessie bounces like Tigger on his tail as she follows me into the kitchen. “From the pictures I could find online, it looks like the interior’s all brick, which is the trend right now, so that’s great. And I talked to a loan officer this morning who I use all the time. If we pool our money together and make an offer now, she promises me she can get us a thirty-day escrow! You have your inheritance, just sitting in the bank, begging for an opportunity like this and…” Jess yells toward the living room, “Nat, how much money do you have in the bank?”

  “Enough to get me through until Wednesday,” Nat answers groggily. “Wait. No, Tuesday. Holly, can I borrow some aspirin?”

  “I have Advil in my purse,” I yell to her as I pour some beans into our burr coffee grinder, and try to pry my eyes farther open without the use of toothpicks.

  “I’m thinking Nat’s right: a wine bar,” Jessie bubbles, while opening the pink box and handing me a devil’s food cake donut with chocolate icing and rainbow sprinkles. “Just wine. No food. No mixologists. Not even beer. Wine. All different kinds, from all over the world. And we cater unapologetically to women. According to this article I read last night, if you get the women in, the men will follow.”

  “Did you sleep at all last night?” I ask her.

  “Sleep is overrated,” she tells me in her sleep-deprived, manic state. “How do you feel about pink chandeliers?”

  I blink at her a few times, then pick my words very carefully. “Jessie, I admire your enthusiasm. I do. I admire the hell out of it. But you haven’t thought this through. Something like ninety percent of restaurants and bars fail in their first year.”

  Nat appears in the doorway, carrying my travel-size Advil bottle. “The ninety percent restaurant failure rate is a myth. The actual failure rate is closer to one in four.” Nat walks to the donut box, gently pushing Jessie out of the way to get to her breakfast.

  “How do you know crap like that?” I ask.

  “Oh, I know a lot of useless crap,” Nat mumbles as she scrutinizes the box to find her favorite. “Shame I quit my job. Where else can I get paid for knowing Sir Isaac Newton’s dog’s name?” She frowns. “Didn’t you get jam-filled?”

  “You quit your job?” Jessie repeats.

  “I quit my job,” Nat confirms. “And left my boyfriend. Maybe today I’ll total my car and make it a screw-up-my-life trifecta.” She takes a powdered sugar donut with red goo oozing out of the side. “Is this raspberry?”

  “Powdered are strawberry, glazed are lemon. You seriously left Marc with a c?” Jessie asks her incredulously as Nat helps herself to a big bite.

  “Please quit calling him that,” Nat implores through a mouthful of donut.

  “I’m sorry. Prick with a c,” Jessie corrects. “So he’s gone? Like gone-gone, or just gone like he’ll be with his wife for the next week, then talk you into coming back?”

  “I think this time he’s gone-gone,” I assure Jessie as I dump grounds into the coffee filter and pour water from the pot into the coffeemaker’s reservoir. “Otherwise she would have kept her job.”

  “Perfect,” Jessie exclaims. “This is a sign. Now you can cash in your IRAs and come work with us.”

  “Oh, wait. I stand corrected. That’s what I’ll do as my screw-up-my-life trifecta,” Nat retorts sarcastically.

  “More like blow up your life,” Jessie promises with a joie de vivre in her voice that I haven’t heard in years. “But in a good way. Do you still have stock in Apple?”

  Nat’s mouth drops open ever so slightly, and I’m surprised she doesn’t answer with her driest, “Really?” Instead, she says, “Yeeessss. But that’s a solid investment.”

  “So’s this. How much did you spend on your sommelier classes?”

  Judging from the look on Nat’s face, a lot. “It doesn’t matter,” she answers. “I flunked out. Remember?”

  “Ah, but the classes were an investment, because you were following your passion,” Jessie points out fervently. “Wouldn’t it be great to follow your passion again?”

  While Nat takes a moment to consider that, Jessie moves in for the kill. “And think of all the other positives. You’ve been wanting to write a screenplay and get away from game shows. This way you’ll have the mental energy to do it, because you won’t be exhausting yourself ten hours a day coming up with a new way to ask about the Pythagorean theorem. And there will be zero chance you will run into Marc.”

  I can tell from the way Nat heaves a thoughtful sigh that she’s thinking Ouch.

  But then she slowly bobs her head up and down a few times, debating, and capitulates. “I suppose it couldn’t hurt to look at the place.”

  “Yay!” Jessie exclaims, practically jumping into Nat’s arms for a hug. “I love you! Thank you, thank you, thank you!”

  Then she turns to me, a wicked smile crossing her face. “Holly…”

  I cringe. “And she points the gun in my direction…”

  Jessie lowers her chin, gives me a look with fifty shades of serious. “What I am about to tell you is said with nothing but love and compassion.”

  “Careful,” Nat warns me, “the last time she began a sentence like that, it was to tell me I’d gained ten pounds.”

  “It was more like fifteen,” Jessie reminds Nat. “And you had started topping your Frosted Flakes with Pop-Tarts for God’s sake.” Then she turns back to me. (Gulp.) “You know we love you, and what we’re about to say comes with no judgment or shaming…”

  Nat’s eyes widen at Jessie’s statement. “We? Crap.”

  “Since you got off your pills, you’ve become a stark raving lunatic,” Jessie begins.

  For the next few moments, I watch my two best friends engage in the lamest silent communication ever.

  Nat smacks Jessie in the arm. Translation: Shut! Up!

  Jessie puts her palms up and raises her shoulders in a shrug. Translation: What?

  Nat’s eyes widen even more. Jessie’s still not getting it.

  Finally, Nat leans in to Jessie and says under her breath, “She doesn’t know we know.”

  I don’t know they know … what?

  “Didn’t you tell me that last week she went into the neighbors’ yard, stole their rooster, and threatened to make coq au vin?” Jessie asks Nat.

  Oh! The pills! Now I’m up to speed.

  “Okay, I will admit, taken out of context, that is rather damning,” I concede. “But in my defense, that fucking thing was crowing at six in the morning. What city dweller needs to raise chickens? Pretty sure our ancestors left the farm for the city specifically to get away from getting up at sunrise to the sound of livestock.”

  “Aren’t you tired of having no control over your life?” Jessie asks me.

  Whoa. Where the hell did that come from?

  But she’s right. I am tired.

  I’m tired of giving it my all at auditions, then being forced to let someone else decide if I’m good enough. I’m tired of going to work for an idiot boss who knows nothing about running a restaurant and has the job only because she married a wealthy man who wanted to give his Beverly Hills trophy wife a hobby.

  Speaking of men—I’m tired of dating. I’m tired of random men getting to decide if I’m good enough. I’m tired of never feeling good enough.

  I’m tired of never getting to decide my fate. I’m tired of not having anything to look forward to. And yeah, Jessie’s dead-on: I’m tired of not feeling in control of any aspect of my life.

  I nod slowly. “You know what? It can’t hurt to look.”

  Chapter Twelve

  JESSIE

  An hour or so later, three women walk into a bar.

  “I came here with the lowest of expectations,” Nat mutters, sounding almost shell-shocked. “And I’m still a bit disappointed.”

  “I don’t think I’ve ev
er seen men drinking Pabst Blue Ribbon who didn’t also wear skinny jeans a size too small, lots of plaid, ironic facial hair, and a fedora or newsie,” Holly adds.

  I, on the other hand, am oddly intrigued by this brave new world we have fallen into. This! This is different. How many women can say they’ve been at a bar at ten in the morning, hanging out with a clientele whose average age is about a million and two, with Methuselah tending bar?

  “Ladies’ room is out of order,” Methuselah growls at us. “Everyone has to use the men’s room.”

  “Oh. No, sir,” I begin cheerfully. “You see, we are thinking about buying your lovely establishment and wanted to come by—”

  BOOM!

  Nat and I both jump a foot, then quickly turn our heads to the sound of the minor explosion. Holly appears in the doorway of the back room. “Okay, so apparently if you plug in the refrigerator back here, it blows a fuse.”

  “Circuits,” the grizzled bartender says, shrugging.

  I don’t even know what that means.

  I walk up to the jukebox, which I assume is busted, judging from the axe cleaved in the center of it. Just as well, as judging from the vinyl forty-five records I can see underneath the axe, all it would have played was honky-tonk from the 1970s. The floors are covered with a combination of ancient, ripped linoleum and something sticky. So sticky that Nat’s Converse sneaker pulls up an entire eight-inch square.

  As I run over to Nat to try to help her get the square off of her shoe, Holly politely asks Father Time, “Mind if I get behind the bar to inspect it?”

  “Be my guest,” he grunts. “Just make sure you don’t make any sudden movements. Ralph hates that.”

  As Holly bellies up behind the bar, she smiles flirtatiously at an eightysomething dude wearing an old flannel shirt and jeans so ancient they may have been Levi Strauss’s prototype. “Ralph, you’re not afraid of me, are you?”

  “That’s Bob. Not Ralph,” the old bartender tells her, making a show of checking out her butt as she bends down to see what we’re dealing with.

  As I unsuccessfully try to tug the linoleum piece from Nat’s shoe, she asks Holly, “Well? How’s it look back there?”

  Holly pops back up, then leans on the bar. “The drainage back here is nonexistent…”

  Methuselah shrugs. “So, be careful and don’t spill anything…”

  “… the wells for the bottles all seem to be covered in maple syrup…”

  Methuselah chuckles. “That ain’t maple syrup…”

  “… and I’m pretty sure I saw a Chupacabra under the soda jet staring out at me suspiciously.”

  “That’s Ralph.”

  As Holly reacts to Methuselah’s piece of information, Nat lifts her nose in the air to sniff. “What is that smell?” she asks.

  Holly takes a whiff. “I’m going with Eau de Retirement Home for the Neglected.”

  “Can we leave now?” Nat asks.

  “Not until you say we’re taking the place,” I tell her firmly. (Good for me! I have no idea where this backbone came from, but I just need it for five more minutes.)

  Nat opens her mouth, but I cut her off. “Fuses can be fixed, walls can be painted, smells can be bleached away, and Ralph can be…”

  I turn to the bartender. “You can find a home for Ralph, right?” I ask him hopefully.

  “This is Ralph’s home,” he says sternly.

  “Ooohhhh … you do not want to let Holly near Ralph,” I bullshit. “Did you hear about that pig in Silverlake that was reported missing?”

  He turns to Holly, visibly surprised and horrified. “That was you?!”

  It wasn’t her, there was no pig, and I totally made it up. (Who am I? I don’t know! But I’m so loving me right now!) But Holly smiles wickedly at him, shrugs, and confides, “I like bacon.”

  “I’ll take Ralph,” the bartender assures me quickly.

  Point. Match. Game. “So what do you say, guys?” I ask, my heart jumping around in my rib cage like a pinball. “Should we do this?”

  I watch Nat look over at Holly. Holly shakes her head, but she’s smiling. “You know what? Why not?”

  “Why not?” I repeat. “Really?”

  “Really.”

  I then turn to Nat, put the palms of my hands together in a prayer sign, and silently beg.

  Nat looks up and to the left. That means she’s thinking about it. C’mon, c’mon, c’mon …

  Finally, she nods. I grab her in a hug, nearly knocking us both over. “Yay! Okay, what do you think of the name ‘Keep Calm and Carry a Big Drink’?”

  “What a stupid name for a—”

  “Okay, okay. That’s okay, I have others,” I tell her quickly. “You guys, take a moment to absorb everything around you. For this is our eciah.”

  “Our what?”

  “Our eciah,” I repeat. “You know, the point in your life when everything changes in a heartbeat.”

  The three of us share a moment of silence, in honor of the passing of our former lives and the beginning of our new ones.

  Until one of the patrons interrupts our moment by telling Holly, “You know, you remind me of a hooker I used to date in Korea.”

  “Really?” Holly asks in irritation. “Was she half Japanese, this hooker?”

  “No,” he concedes sadly. “Actually, she wasn’t even a she. I miss her.”

  Chapter Thirteen

  JESSIE

  Within the hour of touring the bar that Saturday, we had offered one hundred thousand dollars below the asking price (which was already way below market value), and by Monday we had raided every penny of our savings and retirement accounts, had formed a corporation called Girls’ Night Out, Inc., and had officially gone into escrow.

  Giving my two weeks’ notice was great fun. Telling Kevin, on the other hand …

  Well, I can’t really say it’s been fun. I can’t really say it’s been much of anything, seeing as I haven’t exactly told him yet.

  I’ve been trying. For the past several days, I keep opening my mouth to push out the words, “I quit my job and bought a bar.” But all I can stammer out is inane gossip about the latest celebrity couple or talk about the weather.

  It’s now Thursday, and Kevin leaves for Frankfurt tomorrow morning. He’ll be gone for three months, and it seems cowardly to tell him via Skype.

  Why I am I being such a chicken? After all, it’s my money, my career, my life. And people are supposed to support the people they love in their dreams, right?

  Hah! Support their dreams—what a load of crap. How many women do you know willing to date a guy who does poetry readings at night and still lives in his parents’ guest room? Well, it’s just as bad with the guys these days. I recently read a statistic that said in forty percent of married households with kids, the woman is the main breadwinner. Which means that to almost half of the men in this country, a woman with no job and no savings is way less attractive than someone who hates her job but pulls in a six-figure paycheck. Whether they’ll admit it or not, 2010s men have become the new 1950s housewives.

  Armed with this information, I guess I felt like I was about to be much less attractive marriagewise, and I really wanted Kevin to propose at some point. So I just said nothing.

  But I need to tell him. Now.

  I decide to go with a celebratory approach.

  As Kevin stands next to his bed, packing two large bags and a medium carry-on for his lengthy trip, I walk into his bedroom carrying two champagne flutes and a bottle of Prosecco from Valdobbiadene, a region in Italy that Nat has assured me makes the highest-quality Prosecco on the planet.

  I put down the glasses and pop the cork. Kevin turns around from his suitcases, smiling. “I love that sound.”

  “Me too,” I tell him as I tilt the flute slightly toward the bottle and pour him a glass. When I hand it to him, I try to sound really upbeat as I announce, “Plus, I figured we should celebrate. I got a new job.”

  Kevin’s face lights up as he takes the glass.
“Really? That’s amazing. I didn’t even know you were looking. Is it with that firm in Westwood?”

  I turn away from him to pour my own glass (and avoid eye contact). “No. It’s actually much closer to home,” I eke out nervously. “It’s in Echo Park.” I plaster a smile back on my face, turn to Kevin, and hold up my flute. “Cheers.”

  Kevin clinks glasses with me. After we both take a sip, he says, “This is good. And I’m not usually a champagne guy. So tell me about the job. I don’t know anything about the accounting firms in Echo Park. How big is it?”

  “Little,” I answer evasively. “Only three employees for now.”

  Oh, to hell with it—go for broke. “And it’s actually not so much an accounting firm as it is a bar.”

  Kevin narrows his eyes and juts his chin forward in confusion. “I don’t understand.”

  I can feel my heart pounding in my chest as I confess to him, “I bought a bar with Nat and Holly. We open in about eight weeks. Ten at the outside.”

  Kevin doesn’t say anything. I watch him blink several times, then put down his glass. “I’mmmm…” He lengthens the m, then lets his sentence peter out. I worry about what’s coming next as he opens his mouth to say something, then closes it without a word. Watching his reaction right now feels a little like clipping the red wire and wondering if the bomb is going to explode.

  Kevin finally asks, in an exceedingly calm voice, “When did this happen?”

  I take a healthy swig of bubbly for courage, then get it all out there. “We put the offer in Saturday. After you said you didn’t want to buy the house.”

  Kevin’s eyes widen. “I never said I didn’t want to buy the house. I just said I needed a little more time.”

  “Well, either way, now you can take all the time you need,” I counter in a tense, clipped voice.

  Kevin fake laughs and shakes his head. “And passive-aggressive Jessica strikes again. So if I didn’t buy a house that moment, we weren’t going to buy a house at all? Thanks for letting me know what the stakes were. Thanks for lying to me and saying everything was fine.”