Elixir (14 page)

“Three minutes?” Natasha asks, face leaning forward in surprise, a few blond locks bouncing. Her boyfriend’s arm is around her, warmth from a nearby space heater radiating on them.

“Tops,” Marco says, breaking a corner off a loaf of bread, dipping it in a pool of sauce on his dish. “It doesn’t hit us at first. No big deal. Then a little later...it’s like we were hallucinating. I don’t remember much from the rest of the night except swearing to myself I was never touching wine again. Hook stumbled his way home. Who the hell knows how.”

Sean forks some linguini from the bowl and slides it into her plate. “Here babe.”

“Yum,” she says, getting a whiff of the fresh basil in the brisk clean air. “Thanks.”

He looks at her, contemplating how glad he is he found her. Yes, he realizes she’s beautiful, but it’s more than that. There’s an effortless yet powerful energy in everything she does, the way she keeps eye contact with you while she’s giggling, how she springs her shoulders up when she sits back next to you after being away, the dance her voice does at the end of a sentence when she says something she thinks you want to hear.

He moves his attention to Marco and asks, “How far away did this Hook dude live?”

“Far,” he says, snickering. “Really far.”

Sean laughs. “Picture seeing a kid walking up the road that drunk. People wouldn’t expect someone as young as him to be hammered. They probably thought he was possessed.”

“He had these buggy eyes man. Kind of look possessed when he was dead sober. I could only imagine the vibe he was throwing off on that walk home. I’m kind of shocked nobody got freaked out and mowed the bastard down in their car.”

“You guys are awful,” Mary says, doing a bad job pretending she doesn’t think they’re funny.

Marco gives his wife a loving nudge on the ribs, then looks at Natasha and says, “So I go to bed. Wasted. Keep in mind it’s a Saturday. And I grew up in a strict Catholic family. You can guess what that means...”

“Oh no,” she says in a drawn-out way. “Church in the morning.”

“Not only the morning. Crack of dawn. My old man had a thing about going to the first mass of the day. The damn sky would still be black when you were driving over.”

She smacks her forehead and says, “Bruuuuuuutal.”

“Really early, a hand latches onto me. It’s my mom waking me up.” He clenches his bicep and jiggles it a couple times. “Soon enough I’m on the bench in the chapel, just trying to come off like a normal human being. I got an arrow through my skull. My stomach is rumbling. Any sudden movement and I’m positive I’m puking. Few songs. Listen to the priest talk. I battle through it.” He pauses, waving his index finger. “But...my old man could tell something was up. He wasn’t certain what though. He kept scoping me. You know, like this...” He looks forward, then drags a suspicious glance to the side on Natasha. She chuckles. “Some time goes by, I’m still holding it together. Then all of a sudden I see on the altar they’re getting ready for communion. With the bread.” Inching forward, he widens his eyes. “And the wine.”

“It never gets old,” Mary says, shaking her head.

“I got my mom pinching me, like, get up, let’s go. I hobble to the back of the line. All I’m thinking is, how can I take a sip of this and not swallow it somehow? Not that I had an actual plan.” Shrugging, he bites his chicken. “So I’m getting closer. And closer. Finally, after about a week, it’s my turn. I step up to the priest. The smell hits me. That was it. I’m done. Didn’t even need to taste it. I do a one eighty and start booking for the back of the church.”

“Come on,” Natasha says, left palm on her cheek.

“I’m about halfway down the aisle. Everyone is staring at me in their Sunday best. In front of all of them I start yacking in my mouth. I throw my hands over my lips to you know, keep it in. I make it outside. Into the street. Then just lost it. All over the pavement. About a minute later, and I didn’t even hear him, I just sensed he was there. I peek over my shoulder and it’s my pops. In his black fedora. With his big bushy eyebrows. He grabbed me by the neck, dragged me in the car, and laid one hell of a licking on me when we got home.” Grasping a bottle of Chianti, he refills his glass. “I guess I kind of deserved it.” He winks and has a gulp. “Never thought I’d be living on a damn wine vineyard thirty years after.”

Natasha applauds, cracking up. “Great story. Wow.” In ten seconds or so she quiets down, her expression going from hysterical to pensive. She observes the impressive property. “I got to say, for such a misfit, you didn’t wind up doing that terrible for yourself.”

“Boy, I was trouble. That’s just one story.” He scratches his head through his salt-and-pepper hair. “That’s all you’re getting tonight.”

“You’d be surprised,” Mary says, her fingers on Natasha’s wrist. “For all his bad qualities, and there are many, he does have a few good ones. He ran his own fruit distribution business for twenty years before he sold it.” She pokes his stomach. “How many employees did you have? About two hundred?” Swirling his drink, he hangs his attention on the tabletop without answering. She shakes his arm. “Tell them about it hon.”

“They don’t want to hear about my boring company. They’re kids. They want to hear about me hurling in church.”

“You can tell us,” Natasha says.

He sips, gaze off in the distance, the part where it’s tough to tell where the black hills meet the gray sky. “All I can say is this. You’re young. Don’t worry too much about things. Make some mistakes. I sure as hell did. You don’t need to plan everything out. I had no idea I was going to be a damn produce hauler when I was your age. But hang out with good people. And don’t do anything too dumb. And it somehow all sort of works out.”

Natasha takes a moment to absorb his mini speech, then says, “Cheers to that.” Bending across, she touches her glass with his. She drinks, then grins at Sean and rubs his thigh. He kisses her cheek. From the things she’s told him about her overbearing parents, he doesn’t feel an adult’s assured her it all ends up working out in a while, if ever. He thinks about how content and snug she appears in the red shine of the space heater, Marco’s words nestled in her mind. She looks irresistible to him, confident yet delicate. He wants to hold her and kiss her a thousand times.

Cutting his chicken, he overhears the others jabbering about a new topic, something in the paper about the Pope. But his head drifts. He reflects on the four of them together around this table, and for the first time since he can recall, he’s happy. For a while he didn’t think he’d have moments like this again.

Pondering why it took so long, he decides he’d been trying to force joy on himself, viewing it from a logical angle similar to a math problem. He considers something the therapist warned him about in the hospital when he overdosed on OxyContin, how he’d never be happy if he deemed himself a victim. He’d been doing just that since his parents died, for over a decade. He’d imagined himself a victim of nature, born different than everyone else and forced to suffer the consequences. He’d always hoped he’d uncover some formula that could snap him out of it. But he never did. He realizes it’s because it doesn’t exist.

The feeling he has now is far from formulaic, brought about in a natural way when his path merged with Natasha’s. Though he still knows he’s different than everyone else, he doesn’t feel like a victim anymore. The world is easy again, how it was that day in the Poconos when he took the photo with his mom and dad.

“Who wants dessert?” Mary asks, conversation about the Pope tapering off. “I have a chocolate cake in the fridge. Fresh strawberries.”

“Definitely for me and Natasha,” Sean says.

Marco pats his stomach over his button down shirt. “Screw it. Bring me a slice. I’ll work out tomorrow.”

“You made the same vow last night after the giant sundae at the restaurant,” his wife says with a smirk. “And your dumbbells look like they’re still in the same spot in the garage...” He squeezes her thigh just above the knee to tickle her. With a giggle she pushes him away and sweeps some of her long brown hair from her eyes. “I’ll bring you a half.” As she saunters toward the house Marco changes the subject and chats with the two teenagers.

A few hours later Sean and Natasha lie in bed in just underwear, the moonlit countryside out the window, the heavy down comforter pulled up, the sheets toasty on their half-naked bodies. Hands behind his head, he’s looking at a painting of a wine barrel on the wall, bottom-right corner signed “Leanne.” He pictures his aunt scribbling this new name on everything, checks, order forms, receipts, Marco not even aware of her secret. He recollects the time people used to call her Mary, an era that seems an eternity ago. Then he considers Natasha, right next to him, oblivious to that whole part of his life too.
Jeopardy!
, SoCal Tech, the Traveling Salesman Problem, his extreme intelligence, everything.

“They’re amazing,” she says, her index finger making little circles on his chest, voice soft.

“Yeah, they’re pretty great. They think you are too.”

“Aww really?”

“Yeah. She was telling me in the kitchen. When I brought in the empty bottles.”

“It’s like they’re the only two people I ever met that I don’t know, figured it out. Well, whatever that means. They’re up here, away from everything. And they do so much together. Grow grapes. And cook. And go for walks and stuff. And that’s it. They don’t need anything else. They make it look so simple, you know?”

“Yeah. I guess they do.” He grins. “Babe, are you hungry? I think I’m gonna go downstairs and grab seconds on that chocolate cake.”

“I’m gonna just eat you.” She bites his shoulder, then makes the noise of a lion, or a tiger, or something like that.

Flinching, he laughs. “You got to stop doing that. It kind of hurts. I’m not kidding.”

She snickers. “You know what I feel James?”

“What do you feel?”

“We can make our own wine. Not as much as them or anything. But we could do it. Like maybe once a month. We can go to a place like this and get away from the city. And it could be our thing.”

“You don’t know how to make wine silly.”

“I’ll learn,” she says, slapping his leg over the covers. “And you can too. With me.”

He rolls on his side to face her and adjusts the pillow under him. “What would it be called?”

Her eyes sway as she mulls it over. “How about Two Stones?”

“Two Stones?”

“I always liked that saying, ‘a rolling stone gathers no moss.’ You know it?” He nods. “Well, that’ll be us. Rolling away every now and then, up here, and then going back. Always kind of moving. That can be the label. Two stones next to each other going down a big green hill. Not too fast. Just fast enough. With trees and flowers and stuff behind.” She pats his arm. “You can paint it.”

He wraps his hand just over her hip, his left leg entwined with hers. “Two Stones. I dig it.”

“Deal? You’ll learn with me?”

He kisses her forehead. “Deal.”

She lingers on him for a second, then shifts to the ceiling, her lighthearted demeanor fading. “I don’t want to go on this stupid holiday safari with my family. I’m gonna miss you.”

“You’ll only be gone for a week and a half. It’ll be hard, but we’ll talk every day.”

“What does my dad expect? By putting me, him, my mom, and my brother in a jungle in Africa it’s gonna magically make us forget he’s an asshole?”

He puts his palm on her cheek. “Don’t think about all that now. You’ll be back in time for us to spend Christmas together. We’re with each other in Tuscany now. Let’s enjoy this.” A pause. “I’m really glad you came up here with me.”

She takes a deep breath, cheery expression returning, and says in a sweet little voice, “I’m really glad you invited me.”

“I’ve never done anything like this with anyone else. Go on a trip.”

“Me neither.” She smiles, moonlight pouring over the top half of her face from an opening in the curtains.

About half a minute goes by. “I love you,” he says, his heart fluttering as he hears the words come out of his mouth.

A couple moments pass. “I love you too.”

“That’s the first time I ever said that to anyone.”

“Me too.”

On Christmas morning two weeks later Sean shuffles a few slabs of bacon in a skillet, delicious aroma filling his apartment, holiday music playing from a portable speaker plugged into his phone, a gush of sun shining through the balcony’s glass door. Setting the pan back on the stove, he grips his coffee and sips.

The sound of slippers at his side, he spots Natasha strolling toward him, fresh from bed in reindeer pajamas, a bit sleepy still. She follows the smell and says with delight, “Babe I didn’t know you cooked.”

“I figured I’d give it a shot. Little Christmas surprise for you. I experimented on Fabrizio the other day...” He chuckles. “Didn’t turn out too well.” He picks up a spatula and fiddles with the scrambled eggs, cooking in another pan. “I got the kinks worked out on him.” He sprinkles in some pepper. “Well, I hope.”

She kisses his cheek. “That’s so sweet. You’re the best. Merry Christmas. Mmm. Smells sooooo good.” She rubs her eyes and stretches her arms, her expression waking up some.

He flashes her a smile, then flips the bacon. “I’m getting there. About five more minutes.”

“Well in that case...present time,” she says with excitement. “Wait right here mister.” She claps a couple times, then skips across the living room.

He hears her go through her overnight bag, some makeup cases clunking. She returns with a small box wrapped in blue paper, a red ribbon around it in a bow. She rests it by his mug and says in a slow voice, “Whenever you’re ready.”

Glancing at it, he lays the spatula on the tile counter. He wipes his hands on the front of his flannel pajama pants, lifts it, and rattles. “Let me guess. A stapler?” Grinning, she shakes her head. Another jiggle. “A screwdriver?” She slaps his chest. He peels the paper, a cardboard box underneath. Pulling back the lid, he makes out a pair of gold-framed sunglasses with amber lenses.

“They’re the Peter Fonda ones from
Easy Rider
,” she says. “The ones you said you thought were cool when we watched the movie. No knockoffs either. Vintage originals.” He removes them with care. “Ray Ban Olympian One Deluxe,” she says with familiarity, accustomed to the jargon after hunting for them online during her safari in Africa whenever she had internet access. “Never been worn before.”