by Ron Hansen
“For three days?” Natalie asked.
“You will be our guests until Saturday evening.”
Pierre was uncivil over the prospect and was shaking his head from side to side, but Natalie pretended not to notice as she smiled and said, “Oh goody.”
Pierre’s face communicated half loathing and half what-have-you-gotten-us-into?
Mrs. Christiansen sharply said, “Stop tapping your feet.”
And Carlo Bacon said, “Sorry, ma’am.”
Mrs. Christiansen held out both arms and Owen and Dick helped her stand. She asked, “And where is Monsieur staying?”
“With me,” Owen said.
Mrs. Christiansen patted Pierre’s forearm with sympathy and said, “Will you please come with me, Mademoiselle?”
7
Walking south on Main Street, Natalie watched a husband and wife in their eighties pleasantly hold hands on a front porch swing. Calliope music issued from an ice cream truck as it trolled ahead of chasing children. Two barefoot boys with bamboo poles scuffed along in the cool of the bluegrass front yards, sharing the weight of a stringer of cat-fish. Natalie told Mrs. Christiansen, “It is a charming village, Seldom.”
“Oh my yes,” Mrs. Christiansen said. “That Norman Rockwell’s got nothing on us.”
Mrs. Christiansen’s rooming house was just next door, a grand, three-story, Victorian affair, with a wrap-around porch and many gables, each element of carpentry differently painted in imitation of the houses she’d seen on her lone trip to San Francisco. Owen and Pierre watched from the street as Dick gallantly hefted Natalie’s red suitcase from the café for her, carefully set it next to the front door, and rapidly retreated to the front lawn. Mrs. Christiansen noticed Natalie’s puzzlement and explained, “We don’t permit men on the premises.”
Natalie smirked triumphantly at Pierre and said, “No problem.” She went inside.
Owen threw his arm around his newfound pal and escorted him to his gas station across the street, saying proudly, “You got one glorious surprise in store for yourself!”
Owen’s late father had not troubled himself to modernize the gas station, which was a flashback to the forties, just a one-bay garage with a hoist and oiled cinder floor and a full-service area with faded red pumps topped by white globes of illumination that had red-winged horses leaping skyward on them.
The Reverend Dante Picarazzi was there, holding a gas nozzle as he filled an old, faded Volkswagen van that had an excess of New York decals on it. He was a fast-talking priest in his forties, just a little beyond a midget in height, with crow-black hair and mustache and goatee, and without the Roman collar you’d have thought he was an East Coast movie director scouting talent or rural locations.
Owen whispered confidingly to Pierre, “You know that Paul Simon song where he sings about me and Julio down by the schoolyard?”
“I have not heard.”
Owen quoted, “‘When the radical priest come to get us released we was all on the cover of Newsweek.’” And then he surreptitiously pointed to Reverend Picarazzi. “Radical priest was him. When he first got here he was full of opinions, and now he’s just like the rest of us.”
Hanging up the gas hose, Dante said in a Brooklyn accent, “Owe ya a dime, Owen.”
“Duly noted.” Owen draped a heavy arm around Pierre and said, “My French friend here’s staying with me for The Revels.”
The Reverend considered him and said to Pierre, “You poor schnook.” And then he got into his van.
Hanging sideways on the full-glass office door was a sign that read, THE MECHANIC IS OUT. Owen failed to change it as he walked inside. The office was filled with car batteries, hoses, and fan belts, as well as a hundred or so video tapes for rent, a hand-cranked cash register, a rack of Wrigley’s chewing gums, and another of air fresheners that when dangled for some weeks in a vehicle would fractionally reveal the photos of buxom women whose unquenched passions seemed to render them immodest. Hanging from the fluorescent ceiling light was a sign that read, HUSKER FOOTBALL SPOKEN HERE. Owen lifted off some cash receipts that were stabbed onto an upended wooden block with a ten-penny nail pounded through it. He got serious for a few seconds as he effected arithmetic, then he shoved them inside the cash register, saying, “When I’m hither and yon, I’ll let folks fill up on their own and leave me IOUs. We have that kind of town.”
Next to the video tapes was a door marked Private and he motioned for Pierre to follow him as he sidestepped to it through the high walls of clutter. With his hand on the doorknob, Owen stopped and peered at Pierre solemnly. “You gotta say, ‘Go Big Red.’”
Pierre just stared at him.
“It’s what we say in honor of our four-time national champs. You try it now: ‘Go Big Red!’”
Pierre, just mimicking, said, “Go beeg uhr-red.”
“Now say, ‘What game you watching, ref?’” But Owen laughed and the door gave way to a bungalow attached to the gas station.
The front room seemed furnished wholly in red blankets, bleacher cushions, jackets, banners, pens, glassware, and framed posters of the Nebraska Cornhuskers. Even the lamps and red telephone were particular to the team. Owen heaved his sizeable self down on his blanketed sofa and with fresh eyes surveyed the magnificence of what he had created there. “I just wish I could be looking at all this like you are now. I’m kinda jaded after all these years. There’s fancy touches I hardly see anymore. And the thrill of a perfectly unified interior motif isn’t there like it once was.”
Pierre was in scan mode and unsure of his emotions. “C’est dégueulasse,” he said. (It’s disgusting.)
Owen got up and went to a bookcase that held his many tomes on wine as well as Husker memorabilia and annuals that went back to the days when Bob Devaney so brilliantly coached. “What’d you say your surname was?” Hearing nothing from Pierre, he asked. “Pierre . . . what?”
“Smith,” Pierre said.
“Are you funning me, Pete?”
“It is that we are British on my father’s side.”
Owen frowned like a welfare worker. “Was that a burden when you were a boy?”
Pierre shrugged and did that puffy French thing with his mouth. “They could not pronounce. I was called Smeet.”
Owen seemed to get the shivers. And then he hunted up the Smith name in his vintner’s directories as Pierre fascinatedly wandered about the bungalow, examining the Husker paraphernalia. Wallpaper borders bore the Nebraska Cornhusker logo. A dining room sideboard was filled with Husker dishware and glassware and steins. A signed picture of Doctor Tom Osborne hung there like a household saint. The bathroom was painted red. Pierre switched on the light and heard the Husker theme song of “There is no place like Nebraska” harangue him from the overhead vent before he hurriedly switched it off. A sponge finger gesturing that the team was #1 was on the commode’s flush handle and the seat cover was furred in red. Pierre hesitantly lifted it like someone fearing the worst in a horror movie. There was no blood, no floating head.
Owen went to another book. “Here we are. Pierre Smith, neego-see-ant.”
Walking out of the bathroom, Pierre corrected his pronunciation: “Négociant.”
“Why, for goodness sakes, you’re the WalMart of wines over there!”
“But no. That is my big father.”
“Your beeg fahzer? Oh, your grandfather! But you’re inheriting the business, right?”
“Peut-être.” (Perhaps.)
Owen was all but overtaken by delirious joy. “You could not know this, but it’s been my life’s work and my great big impossible dream to someday chaperone my wines into the loving embrace of a fancy wine importer, and lo and behold from out of the blue comes waltzing into my life the MVP of the wholesale market!”
“Yes?”
Owen put a Budweiser football schedule marker at his name and solemnly placed the directory in his bookcase. With wet eyes he said, “I have a feeling of reverence about this occasion. I mean, what are the odds
of meeting you here, now, without a handy boost from good ol’ divine providence? You represent my ship coming in, Mon-sir Pierre Smith. And me? I represent the flat-out best new wine you’ll ever taste.”
Pierre registered that with great disbelief, and a feeling of What-else-can-go-wrong? “You are makings the wines?”
“Absolutely!”
“Here?”
“You bet!”
Pierre pointed to the floor. “In Nebraska?”
Owen crooked his finger in a hithering gesture and hustled out back through the kitchen and screen door to the yard while getting out his padlock key. Pierre hesitantly followed. Owen called behind him, “Experimented with sixty percent cabernet sauvignon grape and about thirty percent merlot, plus some cabernet franc and malbec to keep it true to the soft and fruity Bordelaise style.” He unlocked a padlock to a root cellar whose doors were aslant at his feet. “But what I happened on by sheer accident was the petit verdot grape, which doesn’t yield all that much so it’s not commercially viable, but you add about five percent of that to the mix and you get surprising depth of character and a rich, reddish-black color in an otherwise fragile wine.”
Pierre understood just enough to be speechless.
Owen heaved up the cellar doors and paused. “Say, ‘Go Big Red!’” Pierre began, “Go . . .” but Owen elbowed him. “I was just joshing ya.” He let the doors bang wide, scattering indignant insects whose only home is the grass. “My reds are big, I’ll grant you,” he said, “but they’re also surprisingly complex, with just a hint of black currant and a strong, durable finish.”
Owen and Pierre rumbled down the wooden steps to an underground root cellar that held tall racks of hundreds of bottled wines. Owen screwed an overhead sixty-watt light-bulb tight to illuminate the cellar, and Pierre considered his precise arrangements and his orderly tools and charts. At least here Owen was perfectly organized.
Pierre asked, “Tous ces vins. . . . Yours?”
Owen nodded. “You want a taste?”
Pierre shrugged noncommittally, like a high school kid trying to be cool. And then curiosity carried the day and he said, “Okay.”
Owen went to a rack, got out a high-shouldered bottle, and proudly held it up to Pierre. “Big Red, that’s our brand name. And see here on the label? Miss in boo-telly ow chat-o.”
Pierre corrected, “Mise en bouteille au château.”
“Means I make it right here. And on the flip side,” Owen said, delicately giving it a half revolution, “the complete Husker football scores for that vintage.”
“Alors,” Pierre said.
“I’ll just open her up. Well, not that one.” Owen got another. “Here we go.” Owen uncorked the wine with great effort and gently decanted it over a candle flame while saying, “Maybe you and me could get some kind of deal going. I mean, I didn’t just fall off the turnip truck. Who’s going to take a red wine serious if it comes from Nebraska? We aren’t especially known for our viticulture here, and you have to go clear to Omaha to find a good oenologist. But if you were to put your name on the label or just represented it some way, you could get my lovely darlings the admiration I personally think they deserve.” Owen handed him a half-filled, red plastic cup. “At least those are my main bullet points. You can take the agenda any way you want from here.”
Pierre suspiciously assessed the aroma of the purplish wine. “Ce n’est pas du vin, c’est du sarcasme.” (This isn’t wine, it’s sarcasm.)
“Don’t judge that pretty miss too quick now. You gotta give the shy ones a second or two to introduce themselves.”
Pierre sniffed again. “C’est charmant. D’une manière brouillonne.” (Charming. In a slovenly way.)
Owen assumed praise. “You don’t know how it pleases me to hear you say that. All my friends think my reds are real tasty, but you, you’ve got a highly trained palate and an Old World discrimination that’s woefully lacking in these climes.”
Hopelessly, Pierre drank as if to debase himself, as if he were quaffing Sterno. He was prepared to wince, and his hand shot to his mouth as he forced a swallow, but then he just stared ahead, wide-eyed and mystified, for the finish of the wine was excellent, wholly unlike the poison he’d expected. “She has changed clothes!” he said.
“Oh, much better than that,” Owen said, smiling. “She’s shucked them off, and she is sheer beauty.”
“Mais oui,” he said, “it’s so!”
Owen swished the wine from side to side in his mouth with a milk churning sound and then let it ooze down his throat. “A hint of cherries and green cigar in this one, isn’t there?”
“Il y a quelque chose.” (There is something.)
“The secret’s the water. All my grapevines are fed from Frenchman’s Creek. We got our own little microclimate along those ruddy banks.”
Pierre sipped again, evaluated, and offered flatly, “C’est bon.” (It’s good.)
“Music to my ears,” Owen said.
After finishing his plastic cup, Pierre handed it to Owen for more.
Owen got down another bottle of Big Red and grinned as he examined its vintage. “We beat Florida State in the Orange Bowl this year.”
8
At four o’clock, Carlo Bacon locked the front door to the Main Street Café, put on his kitchen oven mitts, and hauled out of the Chefmaster oven a tray of lamb spring rolls that he’d later dress with mango chutney. On a butcher block table was a yellow King’s Ransom rose with a handwritten tag that read “To the fairest.” Clenching the rose in his teeth, he took off his “Kiss the Cook” apron, went out the kitchen’s screen door with his tray of hors d’oeuvres, and headed toward his garage apartment behind Mrs. Christiansen’s rooming house.
Against the tool bench wall of the garage was a freezer a sizeable Angus could ruminate in. Humming “You Saved the Best for Last” he wrapped the tray of spring rolls in cellophane and nestled them inside the freezer next to a tray of wild mushroom risotto cakes and frosted containers of crab cakes and scallops enclosed in bacon. Waiting for his free time tomorrow was the four-tiered wedding cake of marzipan and chocolate ganache. The field greens with Cockburn pears and the main course of lobster and filet mignon he would have to prepare on the morning of the ceremony.
Carlo trudged up the garage stairs to a grandmotherly apartment furnitured in Mrs. Christiansen’s hand-me-downs, and immediately dialed Dick Tupper’s phone number. “Dick?” he said. “Carlo. What’re you doing?”
“Getting into character,” Dick said.
“Well, I’ve got a trade-last for ya.”
Dick was a trifle slow on the uptake.
“You have to trade me some good gossip first.”
“Oh, yeah. Um, Orville told me your coffee’s just about as fresh and tasty as anything out there.”
Carlo sighed. “It’s the water.”
“Well, I’m not very good at this,” Dick said.
“Hokay,” Carlo said. “Your trade-last is a certain mademoiselle is mighty interested in you.”
There was a pause while the cattleman suppressed his glory and delight, and then Dick frugally conceded, “She seems real nice.”
“Maybe you should reciprocate.”
“Oh jeez.”
“How’s this? I’ll buy a yellow rose and say it’s from you.”
“All right,” Dick allowed. “My sis always liked that brand called Summer Sunshine.”
“I’m thinking King’s Ransom. More fragrant.”
“Or an Eclipse would be good.”
“King’s Ransom it is then.”
“Appreciate it, Carl.”
“Old habits die hard, don’t they.”
“Carl-o,” Dick said.
Hanging up the phone, Carlo fell back onto his green chintz sofa and pulled his scrawled-in wedding planner into his narrow lap. So much yet to do, and she’d given him no clue about the invitations. With the weight and texture of the paper stock he felt confident, but although he’d slyly offered Iona plenty of po
st–lunch hour chances to indicate a favorite font in his printer’s guide, she’d only regarded his inquiries strangely, as if Bodoni were interchangeable with Palantino or Fairfield italic. All he had was the wording. “The honour of your presence is requested in the marriage of Miss Iona Christiansen to Carlo Bacon, Saturday, the ____ of _________.”
To be filled in later.
The affair itself would be al fresco, around noontime and under the shingle oak shade trees beside Saint Bernard’s Church over there on Third Street, the Reverend Picarazzi officiating. Chantilly lace gowns, layered organza, or tiers of tulle with little pearl beading. And for him a stroller or morning coat, with striped pants and a four-in-hand tie.
The hitch in his scheme was that Iona had no clue of it and she really ought to be involved—or so his Modern Bride hinted. And then there was the problem of the newly available Dick Tupper. She’d been trying to hide it since high school, but Iona was crazily in love with him, had been goofy about the older man since she was a little girl, even high-tailed it to Omaha because she thought she’d do injury to his wife over how she was mistreating him. So it was fortunate, Carlo thought, that Natalie and Pierre so glamorously waltzed into town. The mademoiselle was the kind of independent, educated, put-together lady Dick would be enchanted by, and Pierre, he was sure, was one of those wealthy, suave, and handsome louts that even smart women went ga-ga over. Carlo felt sure he need only play the spaniel, the pert and nimble spirit of mirth, and when Dick’s attentions were wildly misdirected, and Iona’s foolish choice became crushingly clear, Carlo would be there to commiserate, to superpraise her parts, to hold Iona as she cried, to offer forgeries of grief and insult, to agree that men were heels, lechers, scoundrels, and skunks—but not you, Carlo, you’re different, Carlo, you’re so generous, gentle, and good.
The liquor of such thoughts intoxicated him and it would be six before Carlo got into his Revels costume as the Marquis de Sade.
In Owen’s living room, fourteen opened bottles of mixed shapes and sizes stood upright on the red carpet and, affected by drink, Pierre crawled on his hands and knees from one to another, sniffing inside with his scholarly nose as Owen talked on the telephone. “Orville? Owen here. Say, that wine-tasting day after tomorrow? Don’t ask me how, but I came up with a genuine French négociant to be there. . . . Négociant. . . . A merchant. . . . Means he sells wines. . . . Uh huh. All the way from Paris. . . . No, not Texas; France. . . . On a bus. . . . Well, I s’pose he flew across the ocean. . . . A lot of people do. . . . You ask him that on Friday. And get the word out. . . . Okay. Au revoir.” Owen hung up the phone. “Low-brow. Works on a snowplow in winter.”
