Midnight at the Wandering Vineyard

by Jamie Raintree

  “And then one day last week, out of the blue, Sam calls me up says, what if we pitch them together?”

  I sit up straighter, suddenly interested. “He called you about this last week?” I ask.

  Todd nods. “First thing Monday morning. He’s the only person I’ve ever known who actually likes Mondays,” he says with a laugh.

  That was the day after Shannon’s death. Two days after the party where Sam and I said our goodbyes with a promise that we would chase our real dreams. A week after he admitted that most of his pursuits for success were fueled by his desire to prove something to his dad.

  Is that what he’s really been working on in the guest house all week?

  I guess our time together hasn’t meant as much to him as I thought it did.

  “And he’s going with you to the pitch?”

  “Tomorrow.”

  I struggle to swallow.

  “Wow. That’s...exciting.”

  Todd misses the skepticism in my voice or chooses to ignore it. He strikes me as the kind of guy who ignores anything he doesn’t want to hear. But maybe that’s my cynical side speaking.

  Sam returns to the table then, a hopeful smile on his face at seeing Todd and I getting acquainted.

  “Well, good luck with that,” I say to both of them. I thought things between us were different. I thought Sam was different. But no matter what Sam might say to me, his actions prove that this is the kind of life he wants. The ten-dollars-for-a-side-salad kind of life.

  Sam furrows his brow. “Good luck with what?”

  * * *

  Sam and I don’t get the opportunity to speak on the way home since Todd does all the talking. And once Todd brings up their new business idea, Sam grows quiet, answering Todd with nods and reluctant hums. I encourage Sam to accompany Todd back to his hotel so they can prepare for their meeting. Sam must have thought I would never notice his absence since Tuesday is Kelly’s day off and we would naturally be spending it together.

  Alone in the kitchen, I heat up leftover tuna casserole from my parents’ dinner and cry. I thought I was older and wiser. Too old and too wise to fall for Sam’s illusions. But it isn’t even Sam I’m angry with, it’s myself. For getting dressed up and allowing myself to be dragged into an environment that made me feel out of place, less than enough. I’m mad at myself for betraying my own authenticity for a man, or to try to impress anyone.

  I’m still feeling emotionally hung over the next morning bleary-eyed, a cup of coffee in hand, when I get a text from Kelly.

  Heading to LA for the morning. Will text when I get back.

  It’s just the getaway I need.

  Swing by here first, I respond.

  By the time she pulls into the parking lot, I’m outside waiting for her with two travel mugs of coffee and a bag of chips I scrounged from the pantry.

  She rolls down the window and asks, “What exactly are you doing?”

  “I’m coming with you. I’m not letting you go to LA alone.”

  “You do know you’re voluntarily signing up for the probable scenario of ending up stranded on the side of I-5?”

  “Let’s take the rental,” I say. “Might as well get my money’s worth.”

  Once we’ve switched cars, Kelly behind the wheel, she asks, “What are the chips for?”

  “It’s not a road trip without junk food.”

  We take turns choosing radio stations as we pass from one small town to the next. I toe my shoes off, kick my feet onto the dash, and rest my head against the seat as the sun rises over my shoulder.

  Kelly explains the reason for the trip. She hasn’t been able to get anyone from Social Security on the phone to find out if there are any more of her mom’s disability checks coming. Without that money, she won’t be able to afford the mortgage on her house so she has to explore different options for supplementing her meager income or find a new place of her own.

  She’s working awfully hard to stay in a place she tells me she never wanted to be in the first place. But who am I to say she should give up the one thing she has left when she’s already lost so much?

  So I nod and encourage her in the way that best friends do because I know support is what she needs right now, not a critic.

  But after a sweaty trip into the city and two hours in line at the Social Security office, Kelly discovers they can’t tell her anything without a death certificate and paperwork proving that Kelly is the next of kin on Shannon’s estate.

  I had long since escaped the snaking, coughing crowd and only listen to Kelly’s account of the news once she’s returned to the parking lot and climbed onto the hood of the car to sit next to me. We face the busy street and watch the traffic pass for a few minutes, blowing exhaust-filled heat into our faces.

  She reaches into her purse and pulls out a pack of cigarettes, putting one in her mouth and fishing out a lighter. She lights it and takes that first inhale like she’s been smoking for years.

  I watch all of this with my mouth agape. This is the girl I’ve always known to be careful, thoughtful, never stepping out of line.

  “Don’t look at me like that,” she says. “My mom is dead and I’m homeless.”

  I consciously close my mouth, unsure of whether this is one of those times a best friend intervenes or if it’s one of the times she looks the other way.

  “What am I going to do, Mal?” Kelly asks. She’s smoked the cigarette halfway down.

  I squint at her through the sunlight and sweat.

  “What do you want to do?” I ask.

  “Coming down here was completely pointless.”

  It could be her chance to explore the area. I know Shannon hoped Kelly would move here and create opportunities for herself. She encouraged me to give Kelly a nudge in the right direction. But while I may have once had Kelly’s ear on matters like these, she’s made it clear since I’ve been back that her decisions are entirely her own.

  “Hey, at least we got to do our road trip,” I say. “Officially.”

  Kelly snorts. “I wouldn’t exactly call this a road trip.”

  I watch the cars fly by again. I feel helpless to guide Kelly in figuring out the next direction of her life when I can’t figure out the direction of my own.

  “I have an idea,” I say, hopping off the hood. Kelly starts from my sudden movement. “Give me the keys.”

  She raises an eyebrow but hands them over.

  She doesn’t ask questions as I get us back on the I-5 and head toward downtown. She leans the seat back, blasts the air-conditioning, and closes her eyes, not sitting up again until we’re engulfed by high-rises, honking, and foot traffic. I almost feel like I’m back in New York City, even though it would be sacrilege for me to say so to any New Yorker.

  “This is a one-way,” she says, turning the radio down.

  I ignore her, searching the buildings for what I’m looking for. Downtown was the only area I could think to find it.

  “Aha,” I gasp when I catch sight of the tacky neon sign. I cut someone off to snag a parking space that is only half-vacated. Kelly doesn’t notice my maneuver. As if in a trance, she gets out of the car, never taking her eyes off the tops of the buildings. I dodge traffic to join her on the sidewalk.

  “I’ve never been downtown before,” Kelly says.

  “Really?”

  When I think about it, the only time I visited before was with my mom on a work errand to pick up paperwork for the law office. I hadn’t thought much of it then—the city’s buzz, the sense of being dwarfed by the buildings—but there’s something familiar and almost comforting about it now.

  “Do you have any change?” I ask.

  We feed the meter from her purse and I coach her to hold it tighter as we pass a sketchy-looking alley. When we stop at the storefront with a sign advertising tarot card readings, Kelly laughs.


  “I thought I was going to get out of this one.”

  “You put it on the list.”

  She groans. “I’m too old to fall for this stuff now.”

  “We’re both looking for guidance on what to do next, right?” I ask. She looks skeptical. “It’ll be fun. Come on.”

  I drag her into the shop and a bell rings over the door. The small lobby is dank. It smells of incense and the musty curtains that hang over the front windows. There’s no one at the small front desk so before Kelly changes her mind, I ring the bell that sits on top.

  Almost immediately, a squat older woman bustles out from behind the curtains that lead to a back room. Her face is round and kind but there’s an intensity in her eyes that unnerves me.

  “Well, let’s go,” she says breathlessly in a Russian accent before she turns back and hobbles down a narrow hallway. Kelly and I share a glance but follow.

  The psychic turns into a small room that is sparse compared to the ornate decorations of the lobby, like she either ran out of money to finish the job or only used the expected trappings to draw people in. There are potted plants on the floor and small tables around the room. Candles give the space a dim glow.

  I motion for Kelly to take the chair at the small circular table in the center of the room while the old woman drags a chair over for me. I sit to the side, giving Kelly the focus.

  “You’re in love, no?” the woman says to the room. I look to Kelly and shrug.

  “I...don’t think I’d call it that,” Kelly says.

  “Of course you are,” the woman responds as she falls into her chair. “Young girls like you, always in love.”

  As the woman shuffles a stack of cards in front of her, Kelly rolls her eyes but I smile in encouragement.

  “You are sisters, no?”

  “Yes,” I say.

  “I read for your relationship?” The woman waggles a stumpy finger between the two of us.

  “No, just her,” I say. Kelly tries to argue, but I repeat, “Just her.”

  “You have a question?” the woman asks.

  Several expressions pass over Kelly’s face, slowly, each one evolving from the next: sheepishness as she glances at me out of the corner of her eye, then shame, then resolution.

  “I do. Yeah,” she says. “What does my mom want me to do with my life?”

  My throat tightens and I reach for her hand.

  “She leave us recently,” the woman says, nodding her head. I’m not sure if intuition tells her that or she gains that insight from Kelly’s face, but she shuffles and begins to lay the cards out in a shape I don’t understand, nodding to herself.

  Kelly squeezes my hand as she waits for the verdict, suddenly much more believing.

  “Wheel of Fortune.” The woman points to the card with a circle in the middle that looks like a clock or a compass. “Change. A big change comes to your life now. Eight of Cups. A choice. You must decide... Will you hold tightly to what you have known or will you take a risk? You have been playing it safe, not listening to your heart when it calls you.”

  I bite my lip, struck by the accuracy, and the way this stranger is saying all the things I’ve been wanting to—trying to—say to Kelly.

  “You are called now to be brave,” the woman goes on. “Stop worrying about what you think others want for you. Do what you want to do. Allow yourself to be pulled in the right direction.”

  Kelly tilts her head toward her lap.

  “What if I don’t know what I want?” she says in a small voice. I squeeze her hand.

  The woman lays out another card.

  “You know,” she says. “You don’t listen to what is all around you. Listen.” The woman points her finger violently at her own head. “Your mind is wrapped up in choices but there is no choice. Your heart has the answer and is only waiting for you to catch up.”

  She sweeps the cards back into a pile with one swift movement and shuffles again. She lays the cards out in another formation.

  “There is a man,” the woman says. “He has admired you for a long time.”

  “Kyle,” Kelly says, her voice rough with what I realize is tears. It’s hard to see her face behind her hair, which is loose today. “If he admires me so much, why did he reject me the other night?”

  “No. Nine of Wands. He feels hurt. He keeps his feelings to himself.”

  “We dated a few years ago. It’s not exactly a secret.”

  The woman shakes her head, squinting her eyes closed. She’s quiet for a few seconds—listening or seeing or egging us on.

  “He’s been watching you since you were a girl. He doesn’t feel worthy of you. He wants to tell you, but he feels it’s too late.”

  Kelly looks to me but I come up short. We didn’t hang out with many guys in high school but we knew them all. I don’t recall anyone acting shy around Kelly who didn’t come out with their feelings eventually.

  “I don’t think so,” Kelly says more soberly, her walls creeping back up. She almost believed. She wanted to.

  “He would do anything for you. He’s in love with you,” the woman goes on. “And when you see him in a new light, you may find that you love him, too.”

  There’s a long silence in which Kelly stares at the woman, blank faced. Then a high-pitched laugh pierces the room. The tarot reader and I both start in shock. My eyes widen at Kelly, who, under usual circumstances, wouldn’t offend a nun. It continues to roll out of her in waves until tears form in her eyes, leaving me speechless to apologize on her behalf when the tarot reader’s face hardens.

  “I can’t believe I almost fell for that,” Kelly says between gasps.

  “Kelly,” I chide. I pull out my wallet and fish out the money we owe the woman, plus a hefty tip.

  “You’re good,” Kelly goes on. “Well done. You even played off my dead mother. Hey, if you’re going to play, you might as well go all in, right?”

  The woman, in a seeming act of revenge, pulls another card and slaps it onto the table. Knight of Swords is written across the bottom in an old-fashioned font, and the card depicts a horse. Its mane blowing in the wind. Its expression determined. It’s the look in the horse’s eyes that draws me in and I lean closer. I almost miss the violent intentions of the man atop him.

  “You ride horses, no?” the woman asks.

  Kelly suddenly stops laughing. “Not... No,” Kelly stutters. “Not really.”

  “Your spirit is free but you are chained down by your own fears.”

  Kelly slowly reaches for the tattoo on her wrist, running her thumb across its lines pensively.

  “You try to ride away, and you make it far, but it is never far enough. You cannot outrun yourself.”

  Kelly looks to me, her eyes probing, questioning. Why is she looking at me? I hold my breath, shaking my head, my mind refusing to follow Kelly’s train of thought.

  “It’s for you,” she says, her brow furrowed like she’s not sure how to feel about that.

  I shake my head again, but as I think about everything the woman has said in the reading, connections form and answers rise to the top like a magic eight ball.

  The woman looks directly at me now, her voice more gentle.

  “Shannon asks that you lead by example,” she says.

  Kelly and I reach for each other’s hands at the mention of her mother’s name. The woman’s ice-blue eyes bore straight into mine.

  “She says you are the true leader. When you are brave, you make others brave around you. She asks you to lead her daughter to the path that is waiting for her.”

  A hush sucks the air from the room. Then Kelly bursts into tears.

  TWENTY-TWO

  THEN

  The morning I woke up next to Sam was the best and most confusing morning of my life. His dark curls danced across the pillowcase. The tension he usually wore on
his face had been rubbed away. To see him in his sleep, relaxed and defenseless, I saw the Sam I knew he kept hidden from everyone else. And yet, he’d let me see this side of him. He’d trusted me.

  But too quickly, the memories of the way Sam usually reacted to our evenings together washed over me and I found myself antsy to escape before he woke up and remembered how close we’d been, before he regretted it and pulled away.

  And while my parents didn’t usually hover too closely over me, I didn’t know how they’d react to me spending the night with a man—an employee, no less—regardless of how innocent it had been. I slipped away while he was sleeping.

  Later that day, Kelly, Tyler, and I went on a ride together. As they talked, I nodded in all the right places, laughed when they laughed, but my mind was on the night before as I tried to decipher this new feeling shooting through my veins—gratitude and pining wrapped up into one emotion that seemed to have leaped off the cliff of “crush” and into something that hadn’t quite landed on love. I liked it.

  “Mallory,” Kelly snapped at me.

  We were already back at the stables, brushing the sweaty horses. I blinked out of my reverie and stared at her. I didn’t remember arriving here, could hardly recall the ride.

  “Seriously, what is going on with you?” she asked, her voice uncharacteristically tight.

  “Sorry. Friday. Hot springs. Got it,” I said, catching up with the conversation.

  “No,” Kelly said, tossing her brush to the ground. “You’re not skating over this again. You’ve been distracted, even more forgetful than usual, and distant for weeks. What is going on with you? Actually, don’t answer that. I think we all know exactly what is going on.”

  I was paying attention now, defensiveness tightening every muscle in my body. This was about Sam. Again. She had been resentful of any moment I spent with him all summer and I didn’t understand why. She would have me all to herself at Columbia—at least as far as she knew. Sam and I hadn’t talked any more about hiking, but after our night together, my hope had returned.