Sweet, Sweet Wine

by Jaime Clevenger

  “It’s been a long time, Sharon.”

  “Three years. I’m not ready for Deb—or anyone else for that matter—to move into my life.”

  “I don’t think Deb is looking to move in. I think she would be happy taking it easy. You could just get to know her. Have her over some evening and play cards.”

  Sharon sneered. “Did you meet the same Deb? Taking it easy isn’t her thing. And I don’t think she wants to play cards with me.” She pushed her plate away from her and tossed her crumpled napkin onto it. “Yes, I like her, but I don’t think it would work out. She wants a commitment and I feel like I’ve used up all of my commitments.”

  “I don’t think that’s how it works.”

  “I was with Cherie for twenty years. Did you know that we weren’t always monogamous?”

  “What?” Riley shook her head. “Don’t tell me this. I’ve had the idea in my head that you two must have had the perfect relationship. I don’t want the story tarnished.”

  “Well, you didn’t know Cherie.”

  Cherie had passed away from cancer the year before Riley had met Sharon. From the stories Sharon had told her, they’d had their ups and downs. Somehow, in Riley’s mind these ups and downs did not include sleeping with other people, however.

  “In fact, Deb and I were close, for a while. Cherie knew it then. But Deb was the sort of woman that every dyke in town had kissed at least once. I’m certain Cherie and she had a fling, though we never talked about it. I knew it didn’t mean anything, really, even at the time. Deb was with Rhonda then. They had an open relationship, but it was all on Rhonda’s insisting. Deb was in love with Rhonda and only pretending with everyone else. One day Rhonda decided she was sick of the mountains, sick of small towns, and before we knew it, she’d moved back to New York. She didn’t want Deb to come with her.” Sharon’s eyes were distant, remembering. “Anyway, if Deb doesn’t want to wait for me, so be it. But I know that woman well enough. If I tell her I need to go slow, she’ll be over every night.”

  “Would it be awful to have company every night? She’s good-looking and has a sense of humor. Why not see where things go?”

  “I like my alone time. It gives me space to remember.”

  Riley stopped at this. Sharon’s eyes were moist, and it was clear she didn’t want to share any more. Cherie had been the reason that Sharon’s marriage had broken up. She’d married early and had her son, Max, by the time she was twenty-three. Not long after Max had been born, she’d moved to Colorado and met Cherie. Shortly thereafter, she was divorced. But there were many pieces of the puzzle that Riley had yet to learn. Sharon was a great one for starting conversations, but as soon as the topic turned serious, she’d get a faraway look and clam up.

  “I should have realized…I’m sorry for bringing it up.”

  “Don’t be. Three years does seem like a long time, doesn’t it? I probably would tell someone the same thing—time to move on.” Sharon had wiped her eyes and forced a smile. “I half sent you up there to work on the burn scar and half to help me feel out this situation with Deb. She knows I’m attracted to her. That’s no secret. I’ve been acting interested in her for years.”

  “I’m not saying move on. I’m just saying it might be nice to have company.”

  “And yet it feels like I’m cheating on Cherie whenever I’m around Deb. Ridiculous, isn’t it?”

  “I don’t know. I’ve never lost someone I loved.”

  “Deb is a go-getter. And at one point in my life, I wanted her attention nearly enough to slip out on Cherie. Just for one night, I told myself…” Sharon shrugged. “If I could explain it better, I would. But now after years of flirting when we knew we really shouldn’t, we’re both single and I’m not ready.”

  “Go figure.”

  Sharon wiped her eyes again. “Scott makes good cookies, doesn’t he?”

  Riley noted the change in her voice. She’d changed to the chitchat voice she used with guests. “He’s good at dragging logs halfway up a hillside too.” Riley rolled her shoulders and neck.

  “And Ana liked the cookies?”

  “Almost as much as you like asking leading questions.” Riley smiled. “By the way, what exactly did you tell Ana about me? She said you didn’t skimp on details.”

  “Oh, I skimped on plenty of details.” Sharon stood up and carried her plate over to the dishwasher. It was overfull and it took some jostling to get the last plate in. She turned on the wash cycle and sat back on the stool. “Let me see, I told her about your work. She asked me how long you’d been working as a physical therapist, but I couldn’t remember. And I told her about Lisa. I told her that you should have never gotten involved with her and that you probably knew it. I told her you probably wouldn’t stay in Colorado.”

  “You don’t think I’ll stay?”

  “What’s holding you here?”

  “Work. Friends.” Riley had thought about moving back to Seattle too many times to recount.

  “Maybe. We’ll see. Anyway, I changed my mind about Ana. I don’t think she’s very straight. And she’s definitely interested in you.” Sharon finished her cup of tea and cleared her throat. “What happened last night?”

  “Nothing. It was almost something too, which I think is worse than nothing. She still thinks she’s straight.”

  “Been there.” Sharon gathered the toast crumbs on the counter into a pile with a sweep of her hand. She stood up and went for the broom. “I don’t know, though. Maybe it isn’t about her at all. Maybe it’s about you. It is possible that I insinuated that you weren’t ready.”

  “Thanks a heap, Sharon.” Riley sighed. “Well, I wasn’t hiding the fact that I was interested in moving forward.”

  “It’s possible that I told her a bit more about what happened with you and Lisa than I really should have, considering.” Sharon had her back to Riley, sweeping around the center island. She leaned down with the dustpan and disappeared from view. When she popped up again, she stared at Riley for a moment. “Maybe she doesn’t want to get involved with someone who isn’t ready.”

  Riley wondered if Sharon was projecting but decided not to challenge her about this now. “When does she check out?”

  “Monday morning.”

  “I don’t think I’ll convince her one way or the other in three days.” Riley thought of Ana’s expression this morning when she’d knocked on her door. She had looked at Riley as if they were merely strangers sharing a cottage. “Anyway, you mentioned that you had some projects you needed help with around here. I’m all yours today. The last thing I want to do is climb any mountains. Or even hills, for that matter.”

  “How do you feel about climbing ladders? The gutters need to be cleaned.”

  “On it.”

  Sharon smiled. “I’m glad you didn’t go to Alaska. It’s good to have you here.”

  “I didn’t like the idea of being stuck on a boat in a freezing ocean anyway. And the company here is better.”

  Once the gutters on the main house were cleaned, Riley moved on to the cottage. It was light work compared to the erosion control, but her arms ached when she’d finished. Sharon came out to inspect the job, then set her to the task of mowing the lawn. By lunchtime, Riley had worked up an appetite. She went to Cheddar’s and ordered a bowl of Scott’s gumbo. Oliver, Scott’s partner, served her. He apologized that Scott wasn’t there to serve her himself and mentioned that he’d been sore from their work dragging logs. Riley took some comfort in this.

  She ate the gumbo with a slice of crusty bread. There was a good-sized lunch crowd and, once again, plenty of talk about the weather. Heavy rains were predicted that evening. The café was buzzing with the debate over whether the mountain pass highway would be closed early in anticipation of mudslides off the burn scar.

  Riley listened with more interest now that she’d seen the canyon and had a better idea of the lay of the land. She also had a vested interest in the logs and run-off ditches that would, in theory, curtail the deb
ris running off the hillsides. More work was needed before she wanted to see Deb’s erosion control plan tested.

  As she was leaving the café, she heard her name and scanned the street. She spotted Scott and waved. He hollered across the two lanes of cars, “How’d you like my gumbo?”

  Riley held up her thumb and he smiled. He scanned for a break in the line of cars and jogged over to her. As he did, she saw Ana coming out of the building behind him. She was with three others, a man also dressed in a business suit and an older couple in more casual attire. Ana looked directly at Riley but was clearly in the middle of a conversation; she glanced away quickly. Her group crossed the footbridge that passed over the river and then disappeared behind another building.

  Scott approached with a big grin. “Please tell me you are as sore as I am.”

  “I think I was more sore before Sharon had me up on her roof cleaning gutters.”

  “Hey, I need my gutters cleaned too. Do you do that?” He looked skeptical, but eager.

  “Not normally. Sharon won’t let me pay rent for the week I’m going to be here so I asked her to find ways to let me earn my keep.”

  “She needs company. I know she’s got to feel alone in that house full of strangers…Sometimes I wonder if I’d ever want to run this place alone.” He gestured to the café and shook his head. “That inn of hers was in Cherie’s family for years. Do you know that Cherie died without a single living relative? I didn’t think that ever happened, but it’s true. Cherie had no one else. Anyway, no one contested the will that she’d written up, so Sharon got the inn.”

  “I think Sharon would have walked away from it if any of Cherie’s relatives had shown up. In some ways, I think she probably should leave.”

  “But the memories hold her there. And it wouldn’t have been the same to have someone else running the place. I knew Cherie’s parents. They ran that place until they got too arthritic to climb the staircase to the front porch, then Cherie took over. They passed away not long after. Now Sharon runs the place just the way it has been for years.”

  Scott paused and looked at his storefront and the café sign that was in need of paint. “Sometimes I wonder, if Oliver left me, would I keep up the business alone, like Sharon’s done, or just walk away from it all?” On cue, Oliver appeared in the doorway, gesturing to Scott. His look was urgent. “It’s good to be wanted…I’m serious about the gutters, by the way. I’ll trade you a week’s worth of lunches if you want the job. I hate ladders.”

  Riley shook her head. Scott sighed and turned to head into the café. Riley watched him enter the café and then, through the window, saw him set down his packet of mail and tie on an apron. Oliver pointed to two tables that needed clearing and a sink full of dishes awaiting his attention.

  Riley glanced over at the building she’d seen Ana head toward. Curious, she crossed the street to the footbridge to take a closer look at it. Several storefronts, including the boutique winery and a busy restaurant, were housed in the stone building on the other side. The tables outside the restaurant were all full of diners, but there was no crowd at the winery. A sign outside it disclosed its business hours—they were relatively short—and the wine selection, which looked like a fairly limited offering. It stated that all the wine was made on the premises, but she guessed that the grapes or probably the juice came from California or a state with a better growing season. A winery seemed out of context in Colorado. Beer was the prevailing beverage here and the state’s rugged mountain terrain did not conjure up images of grapevines.

  Riley went back to the footbridge and stared down at the river. It was a fast-moving mass of water, entirely unwelcoming, with a cloudy brown color and churning with branches and uprooted stumps.

  * * *

  Black rain clouds gathered on the horizon just after five. They obscured the mountains with hazy streaks and then, moments later, dropped sheets of rain on the town. Riley had come out to sit with Sharon on the covered front porch. They stayed outside for the first part of the storm, both noting that the heaviest clouds were hanging over Williams Canyon.

  When the rain increased in intensity, choking the drains on the streets below and spilling over gutters on some of the neighboring houses, Sharon looked over at Riley and said, “Good timing on the gutters, sweetie.”

  When the flood siren sounded Sharon was inside checking the news, worried about the river. The blaring siren was followed by a man’s recorded voice informing everyone to move to higher ground. Sharon’s house had the distinct advantage of being a full story level above the street. An old staircase made from red rocks and seamed together with a hundred-year-old cement led down to the sidewalk below. It was treacherous in the rain, though, and the railing swayed when grasped. The entire property was well above the flood risk zone, therefore, but unreachable if the streets below flooded.

  From this vantage point, the river appeared now to be nearly level with the street. Another inch of rain up in the higher terrain would likely cause it to overflow its banks. The roads through the pass were almost certainly closed at this point. Fortunately, most of the guests had already returned from their day’s adventures.

  Riley hadn’t seen Ana, though. She squinted, trying to see the buildings on the other side of the river. It was nearing dusk and she could make out little more than the blue pulsing light on the police car blocking the bridge. A television crew had parked its van on the street below just in front of the sign for the B & B. The reporter stood under an umbrella and the cameraman huddled under his poncho. They returned to the comfort of their van after a brief filming, sloshing through several inches of rain as they crossed the street.

  She spotted Ana hurrying up the sidewalk under an umbrella shortly after that. She had a bag in one hand and her purse in the other. She tried the back gate, but it was stuck closed. She glanced over the gate at the back path. It snaked around the house to the cottage and the parking lot, but Riley guessed it was already a muddy mess. Finally, she turned and took the treacherous stairs up to the main house. When she reached the landing, she shook out her umbrella, closed it and set it among the others all tipped upside down in a line against the house. She turned to head inside and then startled when she saw Riley.

  “What are you doing out here?”

  “Watching the rain.”

  The flood siren sounded again and the recorded voice repeated its speech.

  When the recording had finished, Ana said, “The water’s level with the footbridge. Any more rain and the river will flood the town. At least, everything lower than us.” She shivered. “I thought Colorado had an arid climate.”

  “Until the monsoons.”

  She pulled off her heels and stepped over the muddy doormat. The door closed behind her and the porch light snapped on, casting an orange glow on everything. With the light on, Riley couldn’t make out the shadowed street below. She headed inside a few minutes later, passing the guests clustered around Sharon’s television in the living room and Sharon, who was on the phone and waved at Riley distractedly, and then she slipped out the back door. She hadn’t thought to bring an umbrella and the downpour soaked her in seconds. Water pooled on the gravel between each of the flagstones. Riley dodged into the cottage. The pipes were rumbling from Ana’s shower. She pulled off her clothes and hung them over the woodstove. The sound of the shower stopped abruptly. She waited for the light to switch off and then took her turn in the shower.

  Her last remaining clean shirt happened to be the one nice shirt she’d packed, a dark blue, collared shirt that she’d last worn at Lisa’s request. She’d said the color matched Riley’s eyes. She pushed this thought away and pulled on her favorite Levis, tucked in her shirt and slid a belt through the loops. She felt like going out for the evening, but there was no way she could drive in this weather and no business in town was open anyway. Aside from that, she had no desire to eat dinner by herself on a Friday night.

  She propped open the front door to let in the smell of the rain and t
he cool breeze. The rain showed no sign of letting up anytime soon. She thought of going over to the main house so she wasn’t alone. The lights were on over there, the drapes were pulled open and she could make out Sharon in the kitchen at the stove and people still grouped in the living room. The television screen reflected in flashes of light on the window.

  A knock sounded on the bathroom door, and a second later, Ana poked her head inside. “Good. You’re dressed.”

  “What would you have done if I wasn’t?”

  “I would have closed the door. Maybe I would have apologized.” Ana came into the room and looked around. Riley had made the bed out of habit, but her clothes were strewn about drying and her backpack was open on the nightstand. Ana seemed to note all of this, then said, “I’ve got the nicer room.”

  “You’re paying.”

  “You got this place for free?”

  “Such as it is. The bed’s comfortable, though.” Seeing Ana’s eyebrow arch at this, she added, “I didn’t mean anything by that. Just that it’s comfortable. It would be small for two, but it’s fine for me.”

  “It took me a while to get used to sleeping in a big bed alone. Hotels always have king-size beds or two queens, and for some reason, getting two queen beds always feels ridiculous so I get the king and then just think about how I have all of that extra room. I’ve taken to sleeping diagonally so I don’t think about how there’s room for two and I’m alone.” She paused and then added, “I’m fine alone, though. I mean, I’m not super clingy or anything. You get used to eating and sleeping alone when you’re traveling all the time.”

  They stared at one another for a moment, with Riley guessing at Ana’s intentions. Was she simply lonely tonight and looking for company or was she actually interested in more?

  Ana held up the sack she’d seen her carrying earlier. “Wine and hors d’oeuvres. We each took a few of the open bottles and split what food the chef had already prepared. Everyone thinks the place will flood.” Ana glanced around the room, presumably searching for a table to set down the items, then said, “Want to come over to my place tonight?”