Vintage (8 page)

“Bullshit. Somebody conked you on the head.” Morty fished a cotton swab and some alcohol out of the kit, dabbing Bruno's brow and making the writer wince. “At least it looks like you won't need stitches.”

Though Bruno's head was aching, his ears ringing, he
managed to shift gears now from medical services to gathering intelligence. He knew that to get the information he wanted without giving away his hand, he had to play his cards right. His aim was to validate the authenticity of the cork in his pocket and also get a read on anyone who might be looking to pawn some of the missing bottles. Bruno suspected the cork was either extremely valuable or a good fake. Either way, it was a clue to a bigger story. The assailant had been looking for something special in that locker, and Bruno had been in the way.

But he had to be careful. Morty was coy with the truth, and getting information from him was always a game.

“Listen, Morty, what could I get for a '63 d'Yquem?”

“Depending on the condition . . . if I could authenticate the label . . . four to seven hundred a bottle.”

Bruno moaned.

“Where would you get a d'Yquem?”

“I had it in my hands . . .”

“You're trying to tell me someone knocked you on your head and took your d'Yquem?”

“It was a vertical. Six, maybe seven bottles. I was at a friend's locker . . .”

“I'd slug somebody on the head for that kind of stash.”

“But something tells me that's not what he was after. The bottles were there for the taking, but when I woke up, the place was tossed,” Bruno mused. He felt Morty's attention fixing on the scenario as he applied an adhesive bandage. It was time to up the ante. He reached into his inside breast pocket and pulled out the cork. “What do you make of this?”

Morty seized it and held it up to the light, squinting. “Hmmm. Burgundy. It's old. Wax. Probably thirties . . . or a '43. Right there. Look at that. And does that look like a
J
or a
T
to you?”

Bruno shrugged. Morty studied him carefully before rifling through a bookshelf behind the counter, finally retrieving a thick catalog with yellowed paper. He slammed it down in a spiral of dust and leafed through the pages, muttering to himself. “It's definitely a
T
. There it is. Clement Trevallier. They're still around. Near Pommard . . . town called Les Cloches. Smack in the middle of the best vineyards.”

“Sure, I've heard of 'em. I used to live around there. They make some pretty good juice.”

“Damn right they do. Sylvie Trevallier, the owner . . . she doesn't mess around. I hear she's a real piece of work. Won't talk to the press. Doesn't go in for fancy glass or labels. Real stubborn, micromanager-type . . . directs all the operations herself. But year after year she makes stuff that stands toe-to-toe with the big boys. In any case . . . this '43 . . . it's a fake.”

“Why do you say that?”

Morty spun the book around and tapped the page. In the inventory of labels there was no '43 listed. The listings jumped right from the '42 to the '44. Bruno's heart leapt.

“No '43? Why not?”

“Occupation. Nazis. Story goes they shipped all the good stuff to the party leaders in Berlin. Some of it turned up again . . . but not the Trevallier. One of the lost vintages.” Morty paced, holding the cork, his eyes sparkling. His grin was as unreadable as ever around the cigar stub. He slipped his glasses down onto his nose and squinted at the cork more closely. “It's a damn good fake, though. I'll give you a buck fifty for it.”

Bruno could use another hundred and fifty dollars. But why would Morty offer so much for a fake?

“No, thanks.”

“Okay, two hundred,” Morty said with a hint of annoyance.
Bruno tried not to smile. He recognized by his friend's tone that Morty thought the cork was authentic. “What are you going to use it for . . . a good luck charm?”

Bruno held out his palm and Morty reluctantly relinquished the cork. “I could use a little luck.”

“Well, I tell you what. Maybe it isn't a fake. You find yourself one of those little guys still in the bottle, then you've really got yourself something. Find a case and you could buy yourself a nice bungalow in Belmont.”

Morty winked. If it was real, then that meant that somewhere, out there, a vintage of wine assumed lost to the Nazis, maybe just a case or maybe even a single bottle, had survived the occupation. Had this cork been pulled from the last bottle? Or did more exist out there somewhere? And why was this under a file cabinet in a warehouse in Chicago? These questions coaxed the return of Bruno's headache.
Some good luck charm.

Suddenly it no longer seemed so magical. After all, it was just a cork. The legendary lost wine that was once sealed beneath its pulpy texture was long gone. Like everything in Bruno's life, it was now a dusty reminder of past glories.

“Thanks for the patchwork,” Bruno said, slapping Morty on the back as he headed for the door. He put the cork in his pocket, ready to forget about it. More immediate on his mind was Carmen's parent-teacher conference and his chance to finally present Anna with his new business plan.

One can hide, within the humble pirozhki, a message. It is at the cook's discretion to stuff them with wild mushrooms, giblets, sweetbreads, fresh apricots or bitter chocolate. And the guest is only required to bring a sense of wonder and a willingness to entertain surprise.

—
B
RUNO
T
ANNENBAUM,
“A W
ALK
T
HROUGH
L
ITTLE
W
ARSAW,
”
C
HICAGO
S
UN-
T
IMES

B
runo sat in the passenger seat while Anna drove. She was briefing him on Carmen's classroom performance in preparation for the conference while he was distracted, wondering if he'd left the girls with all the ingredients they'd need to make pirozhki.

“She's gotten three ‘whoops' notes in recent weeks for talking during class.”

“I wish they had ‘whoops' notes back in my day.” Bruno chuckled, hitching his hips uncomfortably in his seat at the memory of the polished wooden paddle his middle school principal kept in the top drawer, holes drilled into the surface to
reduce wind resistance and also to produce a terrifying whistling sound.

“Her reading scores are a touch below grade level on the standardized tests,” Anna said through her teeth. Bruno refused to be alarmed. He was enjoying the clear evidence that his child was . . . well . . . an actual child rather than an animatronic pawn in the growing national pastime of competitive child-rearing.

“Wouldn't worry about it,” Bruno said. “Did you see that stuff they want her to read on those practice tests? I couldn't choke it down, either.”

Anna sighed. Bruno knew his laissez-faire attitude frustrated her. But he also felt that life was far too short to start making it a contest in the third grade. Carmen was smart, funny, she had a few good friends and a healthy appetite, and that counted for a whole lot more than grades in Bruno's mind.

As he gazed out at the passing neighborhoods, his thoughts kept returning to the cork in his pocket. He had tasted a Trevallier only once in his life, and it had been a
spiritual experience. He was working in France as a vineyard laborer, and was with a group of other workers at a small restaurant off the village
place
in Puligny Montrachet, a dingy little hole of a joint that served an excellent cassoulet. One of the men, trying to impress a girlfriend, demanded the best bottle of wine in the house, and the owner very proudly brought up a '76 Trevallier and dusted it off. The normally raucous crew sipped the wine in reverent awe. Bruno held the glass under his nose and swirled as layer upon layer of aromas unfurled for him, and he recognized the full potential, depth and complexity of a single glass of wine for, perhaps, the first time.

As they pulled into the parking lot and got out of the car, Anna reminded him to take off his cap before going inside.
She frowned at the bandage on his forehead but didn't ask. She reached up and straightened the collar of his lapel, biting her lower lip.

“What's the matter?” he asked.

“I'm just worried Carmen might have behavior issues.”

Bruno wanted to dismiss her concerns with a laugh, but instead he swallowed his reply and took Anna's shoulders, offered a reassuring squeeze. “She's a feisty girl. Which will serve her well in life. But let's see what Mrs. Jackson has to say first.” Anna drew a deep breath and they went inside.

Mrs. Jackson had lots to say, all of it good. They sat across from the teacher at Carmen's little worktable, Bruno engulfing the tiny chair. “Carmen's a very social girl. We just need to make sure she focuses when she has to. But she's a delightful student,” Mrs. Jackson said. Bruno felt Anna exhale with relief. They leafed through Carmen's folder of work. One of the assignments had been to write a “how-to,” in which she had described the process of making a chilled English pea velouté, and Bruno blushed with pride. Anna didn't. The last thing she needed was another gourmand in the family. The next essay was about the person Carmen most admired in the world, and it was, deservingly so, her mother. Anna brushed away a tear and Bruno touched her knee under the tiny table. Anna took his fingers and gave them a squeeze, the automatic, unthinking reaction of a longtime couple. Now Bruno wanted to cry.

“Well, that was a relief,” Anna said as they were leaving.

*      *      *

Thirty minutes later, Bruno was standing next to Anna, carefully wiping dishes and carrying them, one by one, to the cupboards. The girls had trashed the kitchen, but they'd also left a plate
of pirozhki on the flour-dusted, dough-splattered counter, and while Anna initially sighed at the mess, she also smiled to herself, and Bruno could tell that she was still quite pleased with the results of the conference. Bruno munched through the pirozhki. Carmen had opted for a sweet cheese filling, while Claire chose wild mushrooms and rice with a hint of dill. He had uncorked a bottle of very good champagne that he brought in anticipation of a positive conference experience, and Anna had even accepted a generous pour, although Bruno soon pulled ahead of her by three glasses.

Anna hummed as she scrubbed a fork and doused it in cold running water, absently fingering the tines. Bruno watched her in profile and found himself startled, as always, by how striking she looked, so close to him but so unreachable.

How could he fuck this whole thing up? Aside from James Beard, who was a largely decent fellow, Bruno's other literary heroes, Henry Miller and William S. Burroughs, were impulsive and completely self-absorbed bastards. What he was beginning to realize, though, was that some heroes punched a clock. Some heroes dragged their asses through the maddening crowds to a cubicle in a sterile downtown high-rise with little complaint. They held down steady gigs and paid the bills and sent their kids to college and fired up the grill on the weekends, sizzling a tenderloin with a decent dry rub and uncapping a cheap lager beer, maybe two. Other heroes did it all on their own, after their lout of a husband came home late one too many nights without explanation, discovered the next morning snoring up a storm on the couch with a slip of paper bearing a number written in a feminine hand, half-dialed phone on his belly, the annoyance of the looping operator's message not even rousing him. Some heroes woke up at five to catch up on emails from their job and
then make breakfast for their daughters, driving them to two different schools before heading to work. They passed over a promotion they really wanted, despite the fact that they could have used the money because they couldn't rely on their husbands to do even the simple things, because the miserable wretch traveled for “research” purposes but was actually blowing away royalty checks that should have been augmenting the girls' college funds. Some heroes worked out on a stair machine at lunch and drank smoothies at their desks hoping to counteract the sedentary lifestyle of an office job, hoping to hang on to a sliver of youth so that they could maybe meet someone new even though they didn't really have a social life, so what was the point? Some heroes picked up their daughters from after-school programs and then fixed dinner and helped them with their homework before collapsing exhausted into bed wishing that they'd made smarter mating choices—as if you could choose such things—but then they had these two glorious, lovely daughters who were a joy and a delight even if they fought too much and the teenage years made one of them a headstrong, unpredictable bundle of overconfidence and anxiety but she was still a good girl, a very good girl. Some heroes still loved their husbands and were willing to forgive them to a point, even if they were exasperating schemers who probably didn't deserve it, and not a day went by when they didn't second-guess their decision to kick him out until he grew up, which would likely never happen, though one still held out hope. Some heroes didn't feel so heroic at all, but rather like speeding, overloaded trains hurtling downhill and threatening to wreck at any moment, hurting the ones they loved the most.

Anna polished a plate and sipped from her champagne when she felt Bruno's stare across the room. He drifted over and she
could feel him close. It was so nice and comfortable to just have the big, cuddly bulk of him standing there like a favorite mangled teddy bear that happened to be actual size.
The miserable shit
 . . . if only he could just do a better job of keeping his pants zipped. If only he'd step up and put his daughters . . . not even Anna, but just his daughters . . . ahead of whatever it was he was trying to do with his life . . .