Sideways (33 page)

“You can’t keep running from your failures, Miles.”

His words pissed me off precisely because they were true. “Can’t do it.”

Jack came forward and wrapped his arms around me and put his mouth close to my ear. “It’s going to be all right, man.” I let my arms dangle at my sides, unable to reciprocate. He tried to hug me tighter.

I pushed him away and stared off. “Sorry,” I mumbled.

Jack looked at me, crimson with anger. Then he spun in

Jack wasn’t taking off anywhere without me. That I knew. I felt guilty that I had waited so long to spring my resentment on him, not to mention my reason for not wanting to attend the wedding. Then, too, he shouldn’t have hoodwinked me into coming to the wedding knowing that Victoria and her new husband were going to be there. I vacillated between my peevish feelings about the whole affair and Jack’s big moment in the sun and what it meant to him to have me there at his side. After a long debate, I reluctantly came down on the side that Jack was right: I was being unreasonable in pulling the plug at the penultimate moment, and whether Victoria was remarried or not wasn’t the crucial issue.

I let a few protracted minutes pass. The clouds didn’t seem to have drifted much and the crow hadn’t stopped chattering the entire time. His anguished cawing was making me sick. I clapped my hands loudly and the crow rose with a furious clattering of wings and flew off at a low trajectory over the vineyard.

I turned and trudged slowly up the vineyard furrow back to the car. When I got there, Brad was sitting on the hood puffing a cigarette, looking bored. I climbed into the back and shut the door quietly. Jack had his arms folded morosely across his chest.

“All right, I’ll go,” I said, less than enthusiastically.

Jack slowly turned his head and gave me a glower.

“And try to have a good time,” I reassured him, manufacturing a smile.

A smile dawned slowly on his ravaged face, and he appeared victorious for a moment. “It’s going to be all right, Homes,” he said consolingly.

I shrugged. “Yeah, I know.”

Jack, relieved, raised his right arm and snapped his fingers sharply three times. “Jeeves! Tally ho!”

Brad flicked his cigarette away and leapt off the hood and returned to the driver’s seat. He looked back at Jack, awaiting his marching orders.

“Fess Parker. On the double. We’ve got some Pinots waiting.”

“Yes, sir,” Brad said, springing into action and firing up the rattletrap.

“So, who’s the guy Victoria married?” I asked as Brad started off.

“David somebody,” Jack answered reluctantly.

“David who?”

“O’Keefe,” Jack mumbled.

I turned and looked at Jack for a long moment. “Guy who directed
Lessons in Reality
?”

“Yeah,” Jack admitted. “That’s the guy.”

“One goes up, the other comes down,” I muttered, musing about my ex-wife married to a high-profile Hollywood director whose debut feature had been a critical and box-office success, assuring him of a solid future in the business.

“She wasn’t right for you, Homes,” Jack said, hoping to assuage any feelings of diminished self-esteem—not that I could sink any lower.

“Is there any woman really totally right for anybody?” I declared cynically.

“You find the best you can,” Jack philosophized. “Then hang on for dear life.”

I turned to him, taken aback. “That may be the most intelligent thing you’ve uttered all week.”

“I may be dumb, but I’m not stupid.”

“I think it’s the other way around.”

We both laughed.

Fess Parker Winery is a monument to kitsch: a large, wood building nestled amidst manicured lawns and manicured vineyards and gravel paths bounded by blooming flowers. My idea of a winery tasting room is a small, clapboard toolshed with open windows, buzzing flies, stinky cheeses, and serious wines. Fess Parker’s was designed to look like the lobby of a resort golf club, complete with wine pourers wearing identical monogrammed Izod golf shirts and flashing trained smiles.

At the entrance, Jack and I checked in for the Pinot festival and were each handed a tasting glass and a pamphlet detailing the representative wineries and the barrel samples they would be pouring.

As soon as we entered the festival setting I was disappointed. An hour after the noon starting time, the place was suffocatingly jam-packed with wine aficionados from all over California jockeying for position at the numerous booths. Clearly, the Santa Barbara County Vintners’ Association had oversold the event.

All the local big Pinot guns were in attendance: Au Bon Climat, Calera, Brewer-Clifton, Sanford, Byron, and some lesser-known wineries like Tantara, Whitcraft, Longoria, Melville, Clos Pepe, and Ojai. Despite the obnoxious noise level and the elbowing necessary to get to the wines, I settled down and began to feel a tingle of excitement.

We threaded our way through the crowd, wineglasses clutched to our chests, toward Au Bon Climat, a consistently solid producer of Pinots. I noticed some of the regulars from Epicurus—Eekoo, with his own Riedel Sommeliers glass, and Carl, with a cheap-looking woman in tow—and it seemed like months since I had last seen them.

At Au Bon Climat it was four-deep to get a taste. After a frustrating, jostling wait, we finally managed to make our way to the front. We sampled through four single-vineyard Pinots, but the pourers, swamped by all the arms extending empty wineglasses and clamoring for more, were slow and we were constantly getting pushed and shoved. I quickly grew irritable.

At one point, Jack nudged me in the ribs and gestured with a nod of his head. I glanced in the direction he wanted me to look. Over the shifting room of oenophiles, I spotted Maya at the Brewer-Clifton station engaged in conversation with an older, sandy-haired man. I don’t know if she had seen me first and was looking to see if I had noticed her, but she glanced over at me and, I thought, managed a smile.

I turned back to Jack. “She moves fast.”

“I’m sure it’s not a boyfriend,” Jack said, making a face. “Guy’s not her type.”

“Depends how stocked his cellar is,” I quipped, reaching my glass out for another taste of the Rosemary Talley single-vineyard. “Fuck, it’s crowded in here. I can’t get settled in.”

“Call your agent, would you?” he urged. “Then you can relax.”

“I’ve got to get some wine in me.”

I went back through the Climats. They were uniformly fine, if not transcendent. But then what could compare to the rarefied Bourgogne Rouges that Maya had uncorked? I had new standards now and they were pretty exalted benchmarks to meet. I couldn’t help looking over at Maya from time to time. She occasionally shot back a glance that I had trouble deciphering. Finally, bored with the glacial pace of the pourings, I broke away and went off to make
the call
.

Outside, I found a pay phone anchored to the side of the building. In the distance, motionless swells of Fess’s immaculately tended vines spread in every direction. I had a buzz, but I wasn’t drunk when I dialed Evelyn’s home phone, reading the number off the back of an old business card. I decided I was in the perfect frame of mind for good
or
bad news.

“Hello, Evelyn?” I said, enunciating carefully in an effort not to slur.

“Speaking,” I heard her familiar husky voice reply.

“It’s Miles Raymond, your roustabout client, returning.”

She chuckled a little. “Miles. How’s your trip?”

“Pretty adventurous,” I said. “Might be a book in it.”

“Oh, yeah? Well, I hope you’re drinking some fabulous wines.”

“Oh, yeah, that I am. So, what’s happening?”

She cleared her throat. “Conundrum passed,” she said, getting right to the point.

“I see,” I said, not sure what I was supposed to say.

“They really liked it, they really wanted to do it, but they had trouble figuring out how to market it. It was a tough call.” She labored in an effort to find some consoling words.

“I see,” I said blankly.

“I’m sorry.”

I didn’t say anything else. I was trying to figure out who exactly had punched me in the solar plexus.

“So, I don’t know where that leaves us,” she said, measuring her words. “I’m not sure there’s any more mileage I can get out of continuing to submit it,” she said, hammering in the final nail. “I think it’s one of those unfortunate things that happens in this business, Miles. A terrific book with no home.”

I was nodding, but again couldn’t think of anything to say. I could tell this was difficult for her, too.

“Are you there? Miles?”

“Yeah, still breathing.”

“I’m really sorry. We tried.”

“So, I guess that’s it,” I said, unable to summon anything else.

“These things are so subjective. So many deserving books go unpublished. You’re not the first.”

Platitudes rushed in to fill the breaching chasm. “I thank you, Evelyn. You’ve been great. Really. You believed in me when no one else did and you tried your heart out. What more can a writer ask?”

She didn’t reply for a long moment. Her silence and her obvious discomfort with the call was her way of demonstrating just how awful she felt. She attempted to diminish the disappointment the only way she knew how. “Are you enjoying your trip?”

“I was,” I said.

She laughed uneasily. “Well, write that book,” she encouraged, trying desperately to conclude the conversation on an optimistic note.

“Right,” I decrescendoed.

“I’ve got another call coming in, Miles. Don’t be a stranger.”

“I promise.”

She hung up. And that was that. I stood there holding the receiver in my hand as though it were a dead bird. Slowly, I replaced it on the hook, then turned and stared at the vineyards. Everything was imploding, blurred by the despair that had rushed in over me. The landscape started heaving, the sky purpled, clouds raced across it at high velocity, the buzzing of insects rose dramatically in volume. I thought I might be going mad, or at least having a breakdown, and that this was how it happened. It began with visual hallucinations, a sudden retreat into a paranormal world where everything was heightened. Colors were vivid to the point of luridness. Sounds had strange timbres and loud, dissonant crosscurrents. I felt my heart racing. I unpocketed my vial of Xanax and swallowed two as quickly as I could. I planted one hand against the side of the building to steady myself. Shutting my eyes and closing off the world seemed to help. The bitter-tasting Xanax dissolving under my tongue reassured me a little. After a few moments, I mustered up my courage and went back inside, my future no longer hanging in the balance, but foundering instead with every shambolic step.

Inside Fess Parker’s, the business and conviviality of wine sampling was fully underway. The white table-clothed stations were now all three- and four-deep. As the wine flowed and the participants grew increasingly inebriated, the noise level climbed until eventually it was difficult to hear the person next to you. I had suddenly lost all my
ne plus ultra
of varietals and now viewed it coarsely as a vehicle to get sideways. With that purpose in mind, I bullied my way to the Brewer-Clifton station, stemware brandished. Out of the din, I vaguely heard some muttering—“Hey, watch out,” “There’s no rush,” “Jerk!”—but I ignored it. My glass was given the usual one-ounce dollop. I jacked it home and belligerently held it out again for the second Pinot.

“Do you want to rinse your glass?” the Brewer-Clifton rep asked me. He had one of those supercilious goateed faces you see in audiences at cello recitals.

“No,” I said crossly. “Hit me again.”

I was poured another dismally tiny amount, and I practically inhaled it.

I thrust out my glass again. “Pour me a full glass,” I demanded. “I’ll pay for it.”

He looked at me aghast. “This is a tasting, sir, not a bar.”

I fished out one of the U.S. Grants Jack had given me and slapped it down on the tablecloth. “Give me a full pour,” I insisted.

He sneered at my money, then turned brusquely away to serve another party.

Panic seized me. I scoured the tasting room and spotted Jack chatting up Maya. I could tell by the way Jack was gesticulating and the laughing responses that blossomed in Maya’s pretty face that he was, indeed, trying his damnedest to make amends and charm her into coming to his wedding. I couldn’t believe she would even talk to him after what had happened. But Jack possessed an uncanny ability to mend fences, smooth acrimonies, and come out on the other side unscathed.

Maya caught me looking and lifted her wineglass in a

I turned away, unable to bear the thought of actually talking to Maya now. The Xanax had begun to go to work on my central nervous system, dulling my senses. Combined with the wine, it was making me slightly disoriented. I returned my attention to the table. The rep was at the far end, pouring barrel samples and taking in the idiotic purple prose winespeak that filled the room. I picked up one of the bottles and brazenly poured myself a glass.

The rep darted over with daggers in his eyes and snatched the bottle away from me.

“What do you think you’re doing?” he yelled.

“I need a drink. I’m not getting enough. I paid good money for this event and I intend to get my fill!”

“Buy a bottle and go somewhere else.” He reached for the glass in my hand and managed to get a hold of my wrist. The wine sloshed out of the glass, Rorschaching my shirt.

“Oh, that’s lovely,” I said. “Thank you.”

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Jack hurrying over, zigzagging through the crowd. The Brewer-Clifton rep was snapping his fingers above his head, desperate to get the attention of a security person roaming the room.

“So, you’re not going to pour me a full glass?” I persisted, knowing exactly how obnoxious I was being.

“You’re going to have to leave, sir,” he said officiously.

“Fuck you!” I shouted. Then, in juvenile defiance of his authority, I reached for the spit bucket—nearly full from a few hours of avid tasting—raised it aloft with both hands,

Jack broke into the circle to take charge of the situation. “It’s all right, everyone. His mother just died.”