Wildcat Wine

by Claire Matturro

  Oh, well.

  Whether I wanted it to or not, my day had begun. I accepted the cosmic message that sleep wasn’t in my particular cards, and I got up, waited on my one-hundred-pound dog, swallowed my aspirin and ate my coco-coffee beans and drank my pot of coffee, and decided that on the off-chance I might want a stomach lining in my old age, I should eat some food to soften the blow of the coffee. So I ate some granola. Then I called Benny to see how he was doing. In that teenage I’m-too-cool-to-worry tone he was perfecting, he assured me he was doing just fine. I doubted this, and suggested I go over later that afternoon and we’d talk. While I didn’t hear the sound of happy feet dancing in glee, he more or less agreed.

  Still worrying about Benny, I showered. By the time I finished showering, washing my hair again, and contemplating what one wore to a winery to convince a man to drop charges for felony theft, it was early afternoon. Dressed in a short jeans skirt and a cropped knit blouse and another pair of kicky sandals, I drove out to the winery. Fortunately, the wine labels gave an address on a road I recognized, and the sun was bright, the sky cloudless, and the air warm and damp as I peeled out of my driveway and headed east.

  And practically stopped, hitting the traffic pockets on Clark Road.

  By the time I got to the winery, which advertised on its label that it was open seven days a week, my gel-sleeked hair was a wiry, fuzzy halo in the humidity and I seriously craved iced tea.

  Pulling into a long, dirt road, I followed the signs to the “Gift and Wine Shoppe” and parked. Why on earth were there other people here? Why weren’t they at the beach? It was spring, it was Sunday, it was prime skin-cancer and jellyfish-sting time.

  Inside, I saw a thin man, with wire-framed glasses and a high forehead, very high, actually, and a blond ponytail. He was chatting with two women who had big heads of permed hair teased into ridiculous ball fluffs that looked like wet poodles on crystal meth.

  The squatter of the two women was asking what a muscadine was as I sashayed up to join them. The man looked at me, tentatively, I thought, so I smiled brightly and he nodded. His brow was permanently furrowed, but his eyes were bright blue, and his chin was strong and clean. A nice-looking man, a man who looked smart, dressed in his khakis and a white polo and brown loafers. William Hurt, twenty pounds underweight, I thought. I smiled so persistently at him, he finally smiled back.

  “What’s a muscadine?” the squat woman whined through her nose again, as her buddy turned to glare at me.

  “It is a particular kind of grape . . .”

  Uh-huh, I thought. Now how do I get this man alone and find out if he is Earl Stallings and then convince him to let old Dave and Waylon go their way in peace? I ran a finger slowly along the scooped neckline of my knit shirt, and, for icing on the Look-at-Me, Look-at-Me cake, I made a ponytail of my thick hair with my hand, lifting it high in the air as if cooling off my neck, and then I let it fall in a slow cascade. Works every time. Maybe-Earl watched me, smiled, and paused in his monologue.

  “You’se gonna tell us about that grape, now, or what?” Poodle Head asked.

  Pulling his eyes from me, our host said, “The muscadine grape is actually a Florida native.”

  That was certainly more than these ladies, or 99 percent of the Sarasota population, could claim, I thought, and made myself look fascinated by Maybe-Earl’s recitation of the wonders of our native grape.

  By the time he had finished his muscadine monologue, the permed hairs were noticeably bored. I raised my hand, and smiled again.

  “Yes,” the man who might be Earl said.

  “Excuse me,” I said, “but I was wondering if you could explain about why your wine is organic?”

  I know all about organic myself, but I pegged my nonnative companions as the sorts who would walk off in boredom or disgust as Maybe-Earl launched into a second monologue about farming organically. Damn them, the ladies held their place as our teacher preached the dangers of strip farming and the lost topsoil and the horrors of pesticides—cancer, dead birds, dead good bugs, disruption of the balance of nature, reproductive abnormalities among humans and reptiles, et cetera, et cetera. Rachel Carson would have been proud.

  As Maybe-Earl talked, I began to appreciate his voice, a deep, clear voice with the softening trace of a southern accent, with perfect grammar and well-chosen words. Definitely a smart man. The more I looked at him, the more he seemed to me to be one of those New Age nerd hippies who either make money in software or go to jail for starting meth labs.

  But Poodle Heads hung in there, not listening, exactly, but holding their ground.

  “What about the sulfite-free sign you’ve got up there,” I asked, figuring a similar lecture on sulfites would surely drive the two women away.

  “Sulfites occur naturally, to some degree, in wines, but the problem is that sulfites are added during the wine-making process as both a disinfectant and a preservative. Sulfites are controversial, that is, whether they are innately unhealthy or not, but it’s an accepted fact that many people are allergic to them. There’s a well-supported theory that the infamous wine headache is actually a reaction to the added sulfites.”

  I nodded and smiled.

  “To get an organic label, a wine must be made without sulfites. But to make a large amount of wine without sulfites is tricky. Everything has to be perfect. The least miscalculation and you’ve got a barrel of moldy wine.”

  “That’s disgusting,” squat Poodle Head said.

  “Ah,” our environmentally sound vintner added, “but I don’t have that problem because I’ve perfected the system. There are neither sulfites nor mold in my wine. My system is labor intensive and that drives up the cost. But it also increases the quality, the taste, and the healthfulness of my wine.”

  “Let’s try some and see,” the lesser-squat woman said.

  Oh, great. If they started drinking free wine, I’d never get them to leave me and this smart, Maybe-Earl man alone.

  Remembering the flirty-girl tip to always ask a man questions about stuff he wants to talk about, I asked if muscadine grapes gave the wine any distinctive qualities.

  Smiling now in earnest, he explained that the native muscadine grapes are distinctive because of their 2-phenylethanol content. One of the ladies harrumphed, but he ignored her, and asked me if I knew what that was.

  Yeah, sure, it’s a long, boring word. But I leaned toward Maybe-Earl. “No. Please explain.”

  Earl, if this was Earl, was warming up to me and he was pleased to explain. “It’s the substance that also gives roses their characteristic fragrance.”

  I made a little gasp of appreciation.

  Outside, there was a sound of engine, a gust of diesel smell, and the slamming of doors, and I stretched my neck until I could see out the window and saw a whole damn busload of old people getting off. Didn’t the snowbirds go home in the spring anymore?

  They toddled in. Maybe-Earl went to greet them, and it became quickly obvious that this was an arranged tour. He invited me and the two Poodle Heads to join them. A tour I didn’t need; privacy with the real Earl I needed, so I thanked him, but declined.

  As I declined, I offered my hand. “Lilly,” I said. “I’ve so enjoyed this. Count on me coming back.”

  “Earl Stallings,” he said, “please do.”

  “Actually,” I said, not wanting to give up now that I knew this was the famous Earl the Vintner, “but, with your permission”—big smile and little pause—“I think I’ll just wander around a bit on my own, until you have a few minutes for me. I’d sure like to talk to you.”

  “That would be fine,” Earl said. “Look around and I’ll get this tour started in the shop, and then I’ll step outside and speak with you.”

  We smiled so hard at each other my jaws ached, and Poodle Heads clucked their tongues together as if Earl and I were consummating our little flirts right there.

  I went outside to amble around in the fresh air and wait until Earl had the tour group infatuated wit
h his many different items for sale. Tired of watching the old folks nodding their heads at Earl through the plate-glass window, I cruised through the lot, toward the vineyard, until a big barnlike structure caught my eye. Someone had made a border of red bricks and planted a hedge of gardenias and hibiscus along the side of the barn. I huffed over toward it and poked my head right in through the big door. Nobody was home.

  The barn was cool and dim, with light coming in the windows. Buckets, rakes, a little tractor, and this and thats of what I took to be the usual accouterments of farming were scattered about. I read the labels on some sacks of rock phosphate and then wandered over to a table under a window with two big, bulky things on it under a tarp.

  Since nobody was about, and Earl did say, more or less, I could explore on my own, I pulled the tarp off. Under it, two strange-looking Star Wars–type models, or toys, or something mechanical and mostly metal sat on the table. They were similar, and they were each about four or five feet high, little models that appeared to be workable, with little, metal, robot-type arms on the sides of miniature motors in a center frame. They appeared complex, but with no obvious purpose.

  Weird. What, Earl made Star Wars models for recreation when he wasn’t making sulfite-free wine?

  Behind me, the barn door opened and I turned and saw a small, dark man with the look of mixed Spanish and Indian blood. “You no supposed to be here,” he said.

  “Oh, no, it’s all right. I’m a friend of Earl and he said it was okay.”

  “No. ¡Fuera de aqui! Get.” The short, dark man pulled his features into a vaguely menacing look.

  Well, all right. Be that way.

  “Can do,” I said. Jogging through the barn toward the exit, I shoved past the little man and walked out.

  Behind me, the little man slammed the barn door.

  Not totally frustrated yet, but close, I went back around to the front door of the Gift and Wine Shoppe and went in. Earl was explaining to the tour group what a muscadine was.

  Earl raised his eyebrows at me, and I smiled as a bent man screeched a question into Earl’s face. Then Earl poured little wine samples for the tour group, and slipped over to me while they slurped down his fine, organic wine.

  “Lilly,” he said, smiled, and pushed his glasses up on his nose.

  “Earl.”

  Okay, we knew who we were. Now how did I launch into my mission? “I’m actually here on business, of a sort.”

  “You’d like to buy in bulk?”

  “No. Thank you. But I would like to buy a case. I’m a lawyer, and I’m here on behalf of Dave Baggwell, and his friend Waylon, er, Waylon.” I realized I didn’t know Waylon’s last name.

  Earl nodded, and I thought he looked disappointed in me. “You want me to forget prosecuting them over the wine, that is, if I get it back?”

  “Oh, yes, that would be so much better for everybody. Oh, and better for you especially. You really don’t want to get tied up in testifying and wasting all that time going to court. Do you have any idea how much time it takes, and how irritating it is, to be sucked into the criminal-justice system, even as the”—technically, victim was the word here, but that wasn’t the connotation I wanted, so I paused and waited for the blue god of wordsmithing to descend with just the right phrase—“eh, witness, and if you drop the charges, I will personally see that you are reimbursed for any losses. Plus, of course, the wine will be returned.”

  “Yeah. That other lawyer, Philip Cohen, has already spoken with me too.”

  Oh, good for Philip, I thought, early worm and all that. Of course, not having spent the night in the ER, he could get up earlier.

  “And we can count on your cooperation?” Beam, beam, beam toward Earl.

  “I will tell you what I told him. I will think about it. I’ll call him and let him know what I’ve decided. But Dave and Waylon were employees of mine, and I can’t tolerate theft by employees.”

  “Oh, I think it was more of a”—A what exactly, a bad joke? An extremely bad idea? A typical Dave money-for-nothing adventure?—“a frolic. They’re not career criminals, or anything. I don’t think they will bother you again.”

  “No, one way or the other, I’m sure they won’t. And like I said, I will think about dropping the charges. But I have other things on my mind now, more important things.”

  “Earl, thank you. I know you will do the right thing.” I offered my hand, and to my pleasant surprise, he took it. “You do have a wonderful place here, and I would like to buy a case of your wine.”

  “You don’t have to. I can’t be bribed that easily.”

  “I really like your wine, it’s not bribery.”

  He nodded, and I bought a case of his wine, and I tried during the transaction to get us back to the smile, smile, flirt, flirt stage, but he wasn’t going back there, so I took my wine and left him to his old-people tour.

  In light of future events, I should have stayed longer and asked more questions. Or gone back after the tour was over. But, after all, I’d had a pretty rough Saturday and, unlike Gandhi, I didn’t have the gift of seeing beyond the moment, and was nearly nauseous with exhaustion and thirst. So I went home, drank iced tea, washed up, and then Bearess and I went over to Bonita’s and picked up Benny.

  Benny was in no mood to talk. He was in no mood to do anything. If there was anything more to his Saturday adventures with Farmer Dave, he wasn’t telling me about it, bent as he was on a course of action that involved staring at his feet and mumbling incoherent not-sweet nothings. We hung out on the track at the middle school and watched Bearess run around in circles while Benny refused to talk to me. Finally Bearess laid her big head on Benny’s legs and slobbered until she caught her breath.

  I took it as a bad sign that Benny did not pet Bearess as she draped herself over him.

  Chapter 9

  Monday morning I awoke early with a sense of panic pounding my chest and watering my eyes.

  Most lawyers, the litigators at least, wake up on Monday mornings with exactly that same feeling.

  Having lost the weekend, and with a looming appellate argument on Tuesday morning, I was left with a frantic sense of having run out of time. I hustled myself to the office as quick as a little bunny on steroids, and I hoped my hands would stop sweating as the day wore on.

  Inside Smith, O’Leary, and Stanley, I marched past Bonita, sitting prim and pretty at her desk in her little cubbyhole office outside my big office, and I hissed, “Don’t let anyone, not anybody, past my door.”

  I slammed my way into my office with its scenic view of the parking lot and cranked open the window for a touch of real air and threw my briefcase on my desk.

  When I turned around twice, like a cat selecting a nap spot, I saw that Bonita had already made my coffee, so I poured a cup and smelled it and began to formulate a plan of preparation that didn’t involve stolen organic wine or boys from my past.

  But first I called Earl and got no answer. Then I called Philip, and after working my way through his receptionist and then his secretary, I demanded a direct line, which Philip gave me.

  “Do you charge a set fee for phone calls, or bill according to the actual time spent on the phone?” This would determine how much flirty, polite stuff I said.

  “I bill the actual time,” Philip said.

  “Dave still in jail?”

  “Yes.”

  “Earl drop the charges?”

  “No, not yet.”

  “Okay, ’bye.” I hung up the phone, jotted down two minutes so I could check Philip for honest billing, and picked up my cup of coffee.

  Before I had finished my first cup, my office door burst open with a blast of the chilly, artificial office air and I shivered.

  My associate, Angela, huge with child, teetered on her feet with the misbalance caused by a gestating baby on her petite frame.

  Poor Angela. Pregnancy had not made her glow. She had three inches of orange roots showing in her curly auburn bob and not a speck of Maybelline on he
r pale eyes.

  “Brock, every six weeks, rain or shine or baby,” I said, pointing at her hair as if she had barged in for beauty advice. Brock was our hairdresser and my primary therapist and I’d introduced Angela to him when I had decided that instead of being my overworked, mousy-faced, orange-haired associate, Angela should be an overworked world-class beauty. That makeover had also facilitated her theft of my own boyfriend Newly Moneta, who was now her husband and the father of the baby brewing inside her. Her world-class beauty, in pint size, had lasted only until she blew up with unnamed Baby Moneta and stopped using her makeup and having Brock color her hair.

  Angela shook a handful of paper at me.

  “Brock, once every six weeks, Angela, and Maybelline on the lashes and L’Oréal on the lips,” I repeated in case being pregnant made her deaf.

  “Chemicals,” she said. “Baby.”

  Since becoming huge with child, Angela was too tired and frazzled to waste time on extraneous words. Though she still communicated what was necessary, her terseness was not a great trait in a lawyer, lawyers being paid to talk, that is, and I was a little afraid to send her to hearings these days.

  As I mused on Angela’s immediate future, she advanced upon me and practically smashed my face with her handful of paper. Pregnancy had also, I noted, and not for the first time, made her unusually aggressive. This was a good trait in a lawyer, although not necessarily when directed at me, but I let it go and took the papers.

  They were copies of a memo to the law clerks, requesting legal research on the issue of whether a plaintiff’s fraud in calculating the amount of damages in a wrongful-death claim could be used to vacate the whole judgment.

  Oh, yawn.

  “This doesn’t have anything to do with us. You’re not a law clerk and it’s not my case.” I thrust the papers back at Angela.

  Angela took the papers only to rustle them under my nose and shove them back into my hand.

  Okay, okay, okay. I looked past the first paragraph in the memo. I didn’t see my name in it, or Angela’s, for that matter, so I scanned again for the gist. A request for legal research on recouping a judgment in a wrongful-death case. Something about fraudulently claiming the decedent had more children than he actually did to jack up the amount of the ultimate judgment.