Vintage Attraction (31 page)

“And what are we going to do with an entire open magnum after that?”

There was something I'd been considering recently. I'd refrained from sharing it with Izzy for fear she'd charge me with treason for even suggesting it. I decided, in that instant, to take a chance. Wine not? “Don't hate me for asking this.”

She looked at me.

“Should we invite Scott and Sheryl down for a toast?”

“Oh, god,” she said. “No. Absolutely not.”

I took this in with a smile.

“In this apartment?” She was coming to temperature.

I nodded.

“The very apartment they've assaulted over and over with their shoes, platitudes, flood insurance pamphlets, and Fisher-Price toys?”

“Yes, here. Come on, Izzy. They've been behaving, right?”

“No,” she said, “but we've hardly been around.” Something gave her pause. “We've been working on the store so much that I kind of forgot all about them.”

“So we inadvertently discovered a means of coexisting. What if they've really been trying?”

“Okay, fine,” she said. In appreciation of her beneficence, I planted a small kiss on her cheek. “But only for twenty minutes.”

“It's Champagne,” I said. “It will be gone faster than that.”

Izzy was turning the magnum in its ice bath when I got off the phone. “So when are they arriving?” she asked.

“
She,
” I corrected. “Apparently Scott is watching Casshole for the evening. At his apartment.”

Izzy spun around, her mouth agape. “
His
apartment?”

I nodded solemnly.

“I'm shocked,” she said, sounding like she very much was and also wasn't that terribly.

“I guess that means no more fights,” I said. “No more treadmill.”

“And every other weekend Casshole-free.”

“Probably some weekday evenings, too. Every other Christmas.”

“Let's hope we're not still living here for too many ‘other' Christmases.”

“You want to move again?”

“I don't know, I've been thinking about it,” she said. “Looking around on the Internet, very informally. I haven't even called Leslie or anything. I'm just . . . I think we should keep our housing options open. You know?”

“What have you seen? Anything good?”

“A little of this, a little of that.”

“Just in Pilsen?”

“Actually,
not
in Pilsen.”

I was astounded by the possibilities. For so long I'd believed Izzy would only live in this neighborhood, but now that she had broadened her search criteria . . . I pictured us in various scenarios. There we were after a party, ascending in the mirrored elevator of a Gold Coast high-rise, Izzy and I drunkenly colliding into each other along a carpeted hallway, laughing, like the modern-day Fitzgeralds. There I was following Ishiguro up the stone stairs to a Lincoln Park town house. I'd wake early Sunday morning and go outside our single-family home in Roscoe Village for the
Times
, a garage in the back for the Mustang and a front yard in which I could play Dino with the pug. A crumbling mansion in Kenwood could be a project, something we'd restore together, one Sunday undertaking at a time. There was always the possibility of trying out another loft, but in the stroller-free Fulton River District on the West Bank, on the top floor . . . .

“It would be nice to live closer to the store,” I said. “Or, you know, wherever.”

“I think we'll end up exactly where we're supposed to be.”

“This isn't it, is it?”

“No,” she said. “But you know what? I don't think anymore that the Biscuit Factory was a mistake. It was something we
needed
to do.”

“A test of some sort. Endurance. Fortitude. IQ.”

“If our marriage can survive living here, we can make it through anything.”

“I feel kind of sorry for Sheryl,” I confessed.

“I do, too. But she married the wrong guy. It was bound to come up sooner or later.”

“I'm glad you didn't marry the wrong guy,” I said.

She put her arm over my shoulder and gave me a kiss.

We got to work while the wine chilled. Between rehearsal takes, Izzy's BlackBerry rang. The affable voice she used in answering had me figuring it was Sheryl. But soon the call began to seem serious. Izzy was largely silent, listening. Her acknowledgments were dull, faint. Then she disconnected and returned the BlackBerry to the breakfast bar. She told me, without my having to inquire, that it had been Ken Fredrickson, a master sommelier. Ken had cashed out of the casinos and now ran a distributorship in Las Vegas. He'd called with intelligence, of sorts. The top-tier master-level Court exams were held this week in Aspen. And Pacer Rosengrant, his and Izzy's mentee, skipped out on the final and most difficult third of the exam to master: theory.

“After all of that, he didn't even show up,” she said vaguely. “I really thought he wanted this. Can you believe it?”

I could, in fact, believe it. And it was more than likely my fault. It was pretty remarkable. As I'd impulsively typed in the Amyndeon hotel room, I had no doubt that my pretending to be Izzy was going to backfire. Yet for some reason, by an act of Dionysus, possibly, the clumsy, transatlantic text transgression had managed to make it past rough draft and the acid reflux I'd been coughing and into Pacer Rosengrant's mind. She didn't hear from him again while we were in Greece. And as the weeks went on with no sign of him, it seemed more and more like I'd really convinced Pacer Rosengrant, albeit in the roundabout ventriloquism that marriage sometimes was, to have a conscience. At the very least I'd driven him away from his master sommelier fantasy and excuse to have Izzy mentor him. I'd run him out of Chicago, back to Vegas, or anywhere else. Most important, I'd put distance between him and my wife—and me. He was out of our lives.

“Maybe it was something I said?” I offered. The closest I'd ever come to confessing.

She was putting herself back on her mark behind the kitchen counter and didn't appear to have heard me. It was no matter. I didn't need her to dwell on it more. There were important things awaiting our attention.

“Okay, places, everybody, please, places,” I barked from behind the tripod. I stuck my eye to the viewfinder. I huffed and grumbled to myself, in the character of an impatient director eager to get rolling again before we lost our available light.

Izzy, with fingers sweeping up her hair like an actress, laughed.

By the time we closed the shop for the night following the grand opening, we'd grossed seven hundred dollars. After subtracting what we'd put out in free food and drink for the inaugural festivities, the profit was negligible. But the fact that we drove home at the end, from our new store, together, made it all worthwhile.

I got Ishiguro ready to go. “I probably should get dinner started,” Izzy said before we left.

“Should I open a bottle of Xinomavro?”

“Just a glass for me,” she said. “We have to get up early and go to work.”

“I almost forgot,” I said, feigning nonchalance. In truth, I was so excited about the prospect of facing a job the next day, I hadn't stopped planning what I'd do at the store tomorrow since we got home. I couldn't ever remember that happening before.

It was a warm evening and so we ate on the terrace. Pilsen was quiet. Few cars drove down the block. I looked into my wineglass at the ripe, graphite-colored juice. I smelled the oregano and parsley and olive oil on the grilled lamb and dill of the spanakopita. I tasted the lemony acidity between the flaky pastry layers. It felt, for a moment, like we were back in Greece. Yet it was better somehow. We were home, together. We had a life, a promising new business, and things to look forward to. I couldn't remember a time when I felt so much in love, so acutely aware of my good fortune, so at peace with everything. I was no longer hapless. I was happy.

I stood to take in the dishes. I asked Izzy if she wanted to join me inside.

“Let's just stay out here for a little while longer,” she said.

“Okay, but one more thing?”

“Yeah?”

“I love you, Izzy.”

“And I love you, Hapworth.”

I deposited our plates and silver in the sink and let myself back onto the terrace. We could hear gentle Haydn on the digital music station through the screen. Ishiguro came around and sniffed for leftovers. His search yielded none. He settled for climbing up and arranging himself into a cinnamon roll on my lap, where he promptly fell asleep. In our twin deck chairs, Izzy and I sat side by side, facing the street. We held hands and interlaced our fingers. We sipped our wine. Periodically I turned to say something to Izzy, my wife, my business partner—my partner. Sometimes I looked over and just smiled. She knew everything I was thinking and not thinking. And it was there on our little porch, just like this, that we watched the night grow old together.

 

Special thanks to: George Athanas, Thomas Beller, Iris Blasi, Jessica Case, Belinda Chang, Louisa Chu, Lisa Clark, Marissa Conrad, Jessa Crispin, Ted Diamantis, Tony Dreyfuss, Amie Droese, Erika Dufour, Kevin Elliott, Maria Fernandez, Helena Fitzgerald, Gina Frangello, Ken Fredrickson, Michael Fusco, Phil Gaskill, Judith Gurewich, Claiborne Hancock, Ryan Harbage, Brian Hieggelke, Erica Horisk, KC Ipjian, J. Joho, Caroline Eick Kasner, Justin Kaufmann, Danny Klieman, Michael Klong, Vicki Lame, Maia Larson, Victoria Lautman, Theresa May, Cris Mazza, Jay McInerney, Peter Michelson, Brad Morris, Haruki Murakami, Nasdijj, Lydia Netzer, Mike Newirth, Achy Obejas, Maryanne O'Hara, Edwin Olivieri, Eddie Osterland, Julie Pacer, Chilli Pepper, Sofia Perpera, Liese Ricketts, Mike Rosengrant, Amy Krouse Rosenthal, Eric Schaeffer, Davis Schneiderman, Gary Shteyngart, Rebecca Silber, Alpana Singh, Marc Smoler, Philip Spiegel, David Spielfogel, Liz Stigler, Carolyn Stopka, Jill Talbot, David Tamarkin, Madeline Triffon, Ned Vizzini, Vikki Warner, Burt Wolf, Henry Yee, and Kelli Zink.

 

Charles Blackstone
is the author of the novel
Vintage Attraction.
He is also the author of
The Week You Weren't Here
(Dzanc and Low Fidelity Press) and the co-editor of
The Art of Friction: Where (Non) Fictions Come Together
(University of Texas Press). His short fiction has appeared in
The &Now Awards: Best Innovative Writing
(Lake Forest College Press),
Metazen, Esquire, Salt River Review,
and
The Journal of Experimental Fiction.
In 2012 and 2013,
Newcity
named him in their “Lit 50: Who Really Books in Chicago” annual feature. He resides in Chicago, with his wife, Master Sommelier Alpana Singh, and Haruki Murakami, a pug.

All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Copyright © 2013 by Charles Blackstone

Interior design by Maria Fernandez

Pegasus Books LLC
80 Broad Street, 5th Floor
New York, NY 10004

Distributed by Open Road Integrated Media, Inc.
345 Hudson Street
New York, NY 10014
www.openroadmedia.com