Christmas in Wine Country (16 page)

Intermittently munching as they chatted and busied themselves, Lila with sorting through a box of books, Zoe with paging through a magazine and Annie with just chatting, they discussed the vicissitudes of their mornings. Annie described how Charlotte, who up until now had loved Cheerios, this morning threw them across the kitchen with fury. After listening a bit, Lila felt compelled to interrupt her by yelling “Moose!”

“Yeah,” Annie laughed, shaking her head. “I know, he was lame.” Though the double date with Tom had taken place a few weeks ago, Lila still enjoyed getting some mileage out of it. 

“Lame,” Lila agreed, taking a bite of risotto.

“Cute, though,” Annie insisted.

Lila scrunched up her nose and gave a lukewarm “eh.”

“Are you guys talking about Tom again?” Zoe asked, not glancing up from her magazine. “Annie, I’ve told you, set me up with him. He’s hot.” Annie tilted her head to the side, skeptically contemplating the compatibility of her eccentric hippie/yogini friend with the burly builder.

Turning a page in her magazine, Zoe began flapping in a thoroughly unzenlike manner. “You guys! You guys!”

Lila looked over. “Everything OK?”

“Look!” Zoe picked up her magazine and flipped it toward Annie and Lila. “It’s the Bay Area’s Most Eligible Bachelors!”

“Well, well,” Annie said, checking out the spread before her. “Look who’s number seven. Our own Mr. Endicott.”

“What?” Lila dropped the book she was holding.

Grabbing back the magazine, Zoe began reading. “Mystery man Jake Endicott, 32, heir to Endicott Vineyards in Redwood Cove, CA.” Looking up she repeated, “Redwood Cove!”

“Mystery man?” Annie asked.

“Family net worth estimated at $10 million,” Zoe continued.

“What’s this magazine?” Lila asked.

“It’s
By the Bay
—”

“The Bay Area’s
premier
lifestyle magazine,” Annie added, quoting their tagline.

“And this is their best issue all year. April, the month of the hottest bachelors!” Zoe did a wiggle dance on her chair. “OK, back to Jake, but we’ll have to check out him later.” Zoe pointed to a photo of the 6’4” SF Giants starting pitcher, the Bay Area’s #1 most eligible bachelor. 

Bachelor number seven, Jake still garnered a full page with a headshot plus two additional photos. One was a distance poolside pic with his baseball hat down low. But who needed to see his face with abs like that? The text of the article read more like a promotional blurb on Endicott Vineyards than anything about Jake. Ladies were invited to picture themselves sipping chardonnay and watching sunsets from the Tuscan-style estate. The photo at the bottom of the page had the title “Act Fast!” It featured a close up of Jake and Vanessa, all smiles, with the vineyard’s grand cobblestone courtyard and fountain in the background.

“Rumored to be near engagement to wedding planner extraordinaire, Vanessa Reid,” Zoe read.

“Figures,” Annie snorted as she returned to her risotto, clearly the least excited of the three. “And why do they call him a mystery man?”

“Something here about his lost years,” Zoe answered, scanning the article. “I guess he spent his 20s in Europe.”

“Ah, so mysterious,” Annie said. “A rich kid loafing around Europe for a decade.”

“Just think, Lila…” Zoe put the magazine aside and stood, stretching her arms into the air. Grasping her right foot and resting it against her left inner thigh in a yoga tree pose, she continued, “a couple months ago, on a dark and stormy night, you were rescued by one of the Bay Area’s hottest bachelors.”

“Are you referring to the night when Jake found me locked out of my car with Red Vines hanging out of my mouth?”

“It’s so romantic,” Zoe continued, bringing her hands down into prayer position. Lila laughed, both at Zoe’s dogged determination to see romance and her tendency to break into poses.

“Don’t, Zoe,” Annie warned, “He’s on Lila’s ‘Do not Date’ list.”

“Remember when Annie psychoanalyzed me the other day?” Lila asked.

Shaking her head no as she moved gracefully into the pose on her opposite foot, Zoe repeated, “a do not date list…” clearly wondering what it entailed.

“It’s like the Do Not Fly list the federal government has. Only more strict,” Lila explained. 

“Aren’t you glad I’ve compiled one for you?” Annie asked. “I know you, Lila.  You were this close,” she held her thumb and index finger a sliver apart, “to falling for his ‘aw, shucks, I’m just a hunk who lets you into your car and helps the bluebirds’ routine. If it weren’t for me, you’d be writing Mrs. Lila Endicott all over your notebook during 5
th
period.”

“Look at this photo of him,” Zoe said appreciatively, pointing to Jake’s head shot.  

Checking out the photo, Lila had to admit she understood why Annie was so worried. A younger version of herself—more prone to foolishness than her current, super-mature self—could have devoted some quality time to gazing at the man in that photo. It wasn’t Jake Endicott, really; Lila had been in advertising long enough to realize that. It was a touched-up head shot, straight out of Hollywood. But he looked good enough to be an A-lister.

Wearing a charcoal gray suit and crisp white shirt, his dark tie was slightly askew as if to suggest the rogue hidden underneath. He had the slightest bit of stubble, not so much as to be unkempt, but enough to assert his manly prowess. It contrasted well with the suit and tie; you could clean him up but deep down he always remained a man. His dark brown eyes had a slight crinkle at the edges as though to suggest he’d done some things and been some places and probably could tell a good story or two. Lila recognized the hint of his trademark dark-and-brooding-on-the-moors scowl.

And that hair. Even through all the awkward encounters, the karaoke and the red vines and that time he’d lectured her about the marketability of sustainable farming, she’d noticed the hair. Thick and black, it had some unruly kick to it. Entire movie careers had been made on hair such as his. It was the hair of shirtless men on the cover of romance novels—not the historical British ones with the ponytails, more the Wild West variety. Jake Endicott, cattle rustler.

“Aren’t you glad I warned you off of him?” Annie asked.

“Oh,” Lila shook herself, realizing she’d grown slightly flushed. “Absolutely. So glad.”

“This guy’s a total player. And without me you would have been building a shrine to him.”

Lila made herself laugh as she powered through the process of looking away from the photo. Annie was right. How many times had she erected a tiny, sad shrine of love for the wrong guy? There was Mike, Hyannis High’s star lacrosse player. He’d kissed her once at a party sophomore year and forgotten her name; she’d pined away the rest of high school watching him make out with cheerleaders at dances and then leave early. There was Josh, Colgate’s Frisbee Golf champ, Frolf as it was known to insider enthusiasts. He liked to make late-night pit stops at Lila dorm room and occasionally look soulfully into her eyes and tell her no one understood him like she did. Of course, he always seemed to take someone else to semi-formals. One parents’ weekend Lila had had to sit through an entire dinner at a local restaurant with her mom and her Gram two tables away from where Josh sat with his arm around Little Miss Headband and Pearls. Even Lila had to admit his date integrated seamlessly into his picture-perfect family.

Then, of course, there was Phillip. Yes, she had gone on the AdSales website more than once to gaze longingly at his head shot. Yes, she had saved the ticket stub from a movie they’d gone to and the napkin from a bar where they’d once had cocktails.

Annie knew what she was talking about. With Lila’s internal homing device set to “unattainable player” she’d surely been just a run-in away from developing a killer crush on Jake Endicott. Cherishing scraps from their encounters, candles lined up around a framed copy of his magazine photo, she probably would have started misinterpreting his glowering silences for awkward interest. Soon she’d have convinced herself that he and
Vanessa were horribly suited for one another and it was only a matter of time before he broke up with her and fell deeply, madly in love with bookish, mildly ironic Lila. 

She was done with such adolescent frivolity. “That was the old Lila,” she declared. “New Lila has no interest in this kind of guy.”

“That’s what I’m talking about!” Annie clapped her hands in support.

Pointing at the magazine Lila added, “He’s nothin’ but a player. And I’m a player hater.”

“Doesn’t that mean you’re jealous?” Zoe asked, right hand grasped around her right foot, left hand outstretched as she leaned forward as if arching her body into a bow.

“I don’t know,” Lila admitted.

“We can look it up on urban dictionary,” Annie dismissed the debate. “The point is, while he’s out there working his way through the Vanessas of the world, you’re going to be finding yourself a hometown hottie.”

“Just not Tom,” Lila cautioned.

“Not Tom,” Annie agreed, laughing.

*
             
*
             
*

The early morning light streamed in through the eucalyptus and Manzanita trees bordering the narrow, winding trail. Small grey birds lifted up and out of the brush, startled, as Lila rounded a turn. They might be Finches but Lila wasn’t sure; she had yet
to make her way through the book on local birds that Marion had encouraged her to read. Loose, limber and with easy breathing, Lila picked her way along the path, avoiding the occasional tree roots and jagged rocks pushing through the earth. Breathing in the clean, crisp ocean air, she felt like she could keep going for hours.

Back in the city, she’d forced herself onto that treadmill. She’d hated it with a passion and had to bribe herself into it, coaxing herself along from minute to minute with a new workout mix or thoughts of fitting effortlessly into new jeans. When that didn’t work, she’d resort to summoning her inner gym coach to yell things in her head like “Pick it up, Clark” or “There is no I in team.” Under the fluorescent lighting, surrounded by machines, plugged into her iPod, she’d felt like some unhappy form of android.

Cresting a small hill, the trees parted for a moment and Lila caught a glimpse of the ocean. Having explored five or six trails near the coastline, this one was fast becoming her favorite. Remote but not so unpeopled that she feared there’d been a zombie apocalypse and she was the last to know, the trail meandered along the coast for miles. Jutting inland, it climbed up and down hills and then turned out to offer glimpses of surf and rocks. It even twisted its way through the edge of a redwood grove. Darker under the canopy of giant trees, her footfalls padded on pine needles, Lila half expected to spot a gnome on a toadstool.

  Up ahead, a rocky promontory jutting out over the crashing surf seemed almost like a mirage, sparkling in crystalline sunlight. Lila had a feeling that no matter what coast she traveled to in the future—Hawaii, Italy, Thailand—she’d find herself comparing it unfavorably to that spot. After a brief pause to admire the view and feel
grateful down to her toes that she was there to enjoy it, Lila turned around and retraced her steps toward town.

Giving her right shoulder a pain-free roll, she wondered if it was the yoga that was making her feel so good. She’d gotten used to always having something-or-other bothering her, whether it was her ever-present stress-induced stomach ache, her shoulders or back from hunching over the computer, or a hamstring from overdoing it at the gym. She’d thought about going to a yoga class before, but she’d always ended up doing a cardio workout instead since she could burn far more calories on a machine.

Zoe, however, had slowly changed her mind. There was the fact that she’d continuously invited Lila to come to a class, not taking “maybe” for an answer. And there was lithe and lengthy Zoe, herself, a continual advertisement for the benefits of yoga as she twisted and balanced her way through conversations with fluidity and grace. Though a bit put off by talk of chakras and sacrums, Lila had stopped by one day at the yoga studio where Zoe worked and liked the feel of it—the small, black Zen water fountain at the receptionist’s table; the hot pot of free green tea you could pour into paper cups; the windows from the studio overlooking main street and, beyond, the ocean.

Three weeks ago, Lila had finally gone to a beginner class and she’d gone twice a week ever since. She was still hopelessly stiff, a lump of rock candy amidst classmates made of taffy, and she continually seemed to have her hips shifted too much or her head tilted not enough, but she was hooked. The feeling at the end of the class: warm and stretched and still as she sat cross-legged and brought her hands to
prayer position at her heart without the least bit of self-consciousness. And the few moments when she’d get it: standing firm and strong and balanced. She realized that she was dangerously close to becoming one of those annoyingly fit people, glowing with energy from within.

             
Enlivened by a slight decline, Lila lengthened her stride and found herself wondering what Phillip was doing just then. He liked to get into the office by eight
AM
, so he’d probably already left his apartment—or flat as he liked to call it—in Pacific Heights. She imagined him in something crisp and edgy, maybe a grayish purple dress shirt with a skinny tie, a nod to the mod. Here amidst the redwoods it was hard to imagine that world still existed. And a touch surreal; with not a single email, text or phone call from Phillip in the five months since he dumped her, it was almost as if he’d vanished.