In any case, if you do know me, this story is strictly fictional except for the setting. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, etc. etc. you get the drift. And I will proofread this hashtag before posting this time:
#thegirlwhowrites
Wine Country
It had been too long since
she felt a warmth like this. The beginnings of sunburn prickling on
her bare shoulders. The first stars igniting over their heads as the
Miata jostled its way over the weatherbeaten roads back into town.
She ought to feel guilty, spending the day in wine country with a man
who wasn't her husband. Instead, for a span of a few stolen hours,
she felt free.
Not that he was her type,
really. She knew full well what that was: tall, thin, gray-eyed and
intellectual. Come to think of it, her husband wasn't her type
either. And he hated wine: complained about the sourness and the
booziness and couldn't tell a Chardonnay from a Riesling. Jim, on
the other hand, was going through one of his phases and threw himself
into the excursion with a natural ardor. Her bastard brother. Not
by blood, of course, but the sort of fickle, just on the edge between
screw-up and success life-lover you shook your head and couldn't help
smiling at. The last thing she wanted from him was sex. But as a
travel companion, he was ideal.
Neither one could quite
remember whose idea it was. Although, “I didn't know there was
wine country out here,” she admitted, looking out onto another gray
winter day over the slovenly Mississippi. However it was, finally
there came that weekend that dawned without a cloud and with that
first capricious inkling promise of warmth, and Rob had to work, and
next thing they knew they were following country highways into
Hermann or Hannibal with the top down. She vaguely wished for a
hairband. And a pair of shades. The latter more so as they passed
the first party trolley and were promptly mooned.
It was
the drive as much as anything, they agreed. God's country. Vast
stretches of low-lying farmland you could see a lightning bolt clear
on the other side of, and punctuated by short knobbly trees you could
just imagine cowering and buckling from the heat of the full summer
sun. Desolate as any English moor for all the flatness and promised
fruitfulness. Here and there they passed a farmhouse with the paint
peeling off in chunks, or a silent group of cows. It was like having
Whistler in her brain to provide commentary. That was while sober.
“It
was the best of times. It was the worst of times,” she quipped as
they found themselves in another crowded parking lot with loud music
wafting sourly overhead from rented speakers. This time the “estate”
grounds were littered with Viking hats. “I won't ask,” she said.
“Better not to,” he agreed, turning the key in the ignition.
Then,
just as they began to despair, there it sat on the rise of the next
hill: quaint, unassuming, unsullied, with nary a trolley in sight.
Like a revelation, she
thought, and wondered if he thought it too.
And of
course, inside, the wine beckoned. Hot and cold on the tongue,
lingering on the palate, teasing her memory with not-quite-placeable
aromas. He developed a yen for Vignoles. She grew misty-eyed over a
tawny port and referenced mead-halls over an oak-matured ice wine.
Once the spell was cast, she knew, it would be difficult to undo.
She realized she didn't care.
A
clatter at the door made them look up from their individual reveries.
A shaggy golden retriever, still soaking from a run-in with a hose,
dashed in one entrance, through the storefront, and back out the
opposite door, followed by a trio of young men in various states of
wet formalwear. She watched them and thought vaguely of Whitman's
twenty-ninth bather, the young men still handsome with the flush of
good health and spirits and someone else's wedding. The proprietor
turned up a patrician nose, mortally offended at the intrusion. As
for Jim, he laughed and went back to his wine.
They
settled on the lawn for a few moments afterward, stretched out in the
shade of a venerable oak just getting its leaves back. Her head swam
with port and poetry. Not for the first time, she wished she could
fly, or at least drift through the cosmos on the perfection of the
moment, lie weightless with nothing but the unblemished blue of sky
as a mattress and listen to the whispering of the cooling breeze
through new leaves.
She
knew his thoughts held a different color, that he was aware of the
curves of her body through the thin shirt, the heave of her breasts
with every half-contented, half-melancholy sigh. But she wasn't her
body anymore, more Emerson's transparent eyeball, and the risk to her
physical form didn't concern her. Besides, she sort of relished the
danger of not knowing whether he had the control today not to do as
he wished. He did: she always did bring out a protective impulse as
well as the unexpected desire. It was why she trusted him.
The
landing was always the hardest part, the slight jerk and thud of
re-inhabiting her body, the realization of oak roots digging into her
back muscles and the slight dryness to her mouth as the wine
dissipated. He waited quietly for her return. “Ready?” he asked
when she finally looked up. She nodded, pushing aside the sense of
responsibility a little while longer. First she would savor the
evening drive.
Alternate
scenarios floated through her mind at intervals. What if the car
went over a rickety guardrail on a lonely river and her last thought
would be of the starry night? Nuit étoilée,
her mind filled in automatically, wryly. Or what if she found
herself actually attracted to Jim, proposed they run away together
and escape the boredom ingrained into her soul by a cold winter and a
bland marriage? Would he do it? Sometimes, she thought, watching
him drive, his thoughts as occasionally visible as hers, it would be
so much easier.
The
house was dark as they pulled up. Or course, he'd gone to his
sister's, realizing she wasn't home to help ponder the old dilemma of
what should they do for dinner. She shrugged, settling the dullness
back onto her shoulders like a ratty security blanket. Jim watched
her do it, as he had on countless occasions before, and didn't
comment. It sat among their many secrets, like wine country. One
day, perhaps, it would become a tradition.
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