by Linda Keir
We sat in silence as a poem emerged.
Spit your brandy in the glass
Unsmoke your cigarette
Lift your crumpled napkin from the plate
And smooth it in your lap
Unspeak all you’ve spoken
Save that and your laughs for me
Groom your plate with knife and fork
And return it to your host
Drive backward down the highway
Watching the road ahead
Miss your turn deliberately
And find my driveway instead
Turn around and face me
I’ll be waiting on the step
Then, looking in my direction, if not exactly making direct eye contact, he asked, “What am I trying to say here?”
I felt like every response was half-garbled and in slow motion.
“That brandy tastes terrible?” Tommy Harkins said.
“It’s an acquired taste.” Dallas smiled. “Get back to me about that in twenty years.”
“It’s kind of about being done with a meal,” Lola McGeorge said.
“Metaphorically,” Crystal Thomas added. “I think it’s more that you’re asking someone to do just the opposite of what they’ve been doing.”
“Exactly.” Dallas nodded. “Any other thoughts?”
Everyone and everything in the room felt like it had fallen away as I summoned up my courage. My voice cracked as I said, “You’re asking someone to do something with you.”
Tuesday, October 22, 1996
I really thought Ian was everything I ever wanted.
I love the way his hair flops into his face and the way he brushes it away just as quickly. I love watching him play soccer and basketball. I love that we both love Bit-O-Honey, which most everyone thinks is totally weird. I love that he’s kind, considerate, dependable, and that he loves me. I love him. I really do. The thing is, I can’t remember him ever making me feel as fluttery as I do now. 24-7. (If I put “fluttery” in a poem, I think Dallas’s grading pen would push through the paper.)
I’m not sure I’m in love with him anymore.
Maybe I’ve just grown out of him. Grown up.
I don’t want to lose him, but it isn’t fair to leave him hanging, wondering why I’m not there for him, for us, the way I used to be. Why I’m so distracted.
I can barely sleep or eat.
It isn’t fair to keep avoiding Ian, to keep reassuring him, when I can’t tell him where my mind really is.
I have no other choice.
It’s the right thing to do.
But what if I’m wrong?
What if I’m making up everything I think is happening?
Wednesday, October 23, 1996
In the early-evening darkness, I might not have recognized Dallas, leaning against a bench outside Copeland, except for the light of the bright-orange cherry and the narrow plume of smoke.
“Unsmoking your cigarette?” I asked, stopping in front of him.
Instead of answering, he took the cigarette out of his mouth, exhaled, and put it in mine.
Miss your turn deliberately.
And find my driveway instead.
Friday, October 25, 1996
I don’t know if I’ll ever get over the look of pure pain on Ian’s face, how it clouded his eyes when I told him I thought we needed to take a break.
I’ve had to accept that fact, and as bad as it makes me feel, Ian does, too.
Still, I feel like I have actual rocks in my stomach.
“Why?” was all he said. “Why . . . ?”
There was no way I could tell him the truth.
I can’t honestly believe it myself.
And yet it’s all I’ve been able to think about, can think about all day long.
“It’s not you,” I actually said. “It’s me. I need some time to be me.”
How’s that for the worst of all clichés?
He turned and walked away without another word.
I deserve everything he’s thinking. Feeling.
And yet I have butterflies like I’ve never felt before.
All I can think about is Dallas.
Chapter Eight
On Sunday, after a texted goodbye to his unsentimental daughter, Ian checked himself and Andi out of the Old Road Inn and got behind the wheel to drive Andi to O’Hare. She would board a plane for the short hop to St. Louis, where his parents had been looking after the twins, and Ian would drive back on Tuesday after attending a convention in Chicago. He felt a strange sense of relief to be off campus; once they’d left Glenlake, the world beyond it seemed to be going on as usual, with no sign of the revelation that threatened to turn their world upside down.
“So should we expect further questioning from Scoop Copeland?” he asked as they flowed past Des Plaines on I-294, breaking the silence with the only thing on his mind.
Andi was watching a large flock of starlings wheel above the billboards. “When I reminded her that she promised to keep us in the loop, she told me how the phrase ‘in the loop’ originated years ago in Chicago.”
“By the end of the semester, she’ll be wearing a porkpie hat with a press card tucked in the band.”
“Bantering rapid-fire, like she’s in a 1930s screwball comedy.”
Their own banter felt forced, and neither of them laughed. Ian wished he knew what Andi was really thinking. For his part, he kept seeing the digital photo from Wayne Kelly’s class, imagining the creak of chains as the ruined Charger hung suspended from the crane on the barge, water sheeting out of its ruined floorboards and rotted door gaskets.
“And how, exactly, will she be updating us?” Ian asked as he merged onto I-190 for the final approach to O’Hare. “We know she hates calling. And Skype allows us to see where she is and what she’s doing.”
“I told her even texts are fine. We’re just curious about that class . . . along with everything else that’s going on this semester.”
Along with everything else, thought Ian. It would be hard to remember to ask about cross-country or science class or the student Amnesty International organization.
After pulling up at the departures terminal, he put the car in park and hopped out to get Andi’s bag from the back. As he put it next to her on the sidewalk, he straightened and met her eye. Unbidden, he remembered part of a lecture from the crusty old professor who’d taught his English composition class at Amherst.
Jealous is one of the most misused words in the English language today, mistakenly used in place of the word envy. To be jealous is to guard your treasure—whether it is literal treasure or a woman you love.
That guy, with his bushy white hair and sprouting eyebrows, had looked like a caricature of a classical composer, with pretentious diction that had students competing for the best impression around a keg. But it was funny how many of his insistent opinions had stayed with Ian.
The look on Andi’s face now was one of impatience, one he’d seen in varying degrees ever since they first started dating. She was fast; he was slow. She was the one who simply ghosted when leaving a party, while he was the one who insisted on finding and thanking the host, and shaking the hands of the people he expected to see again soon.
There it was again, that word: ghost.
“That guy wants you to move your car,” observed Andi, as an airport traffic warden rolled up on a four-wheeler.
Ian snapped out of his reverie and gave her a hug and a quick kiss. “Give my love to the kids. See you Tuesday.”
“See you then,” she said, picking up her bag and disappearing into the terminal.
Traffic was still light on the late Sunday-morning roads, and he made it downtown in near record time, finding his hotel in River North easily. His room, however, wasn’t ready. Unwilling to begin his convention in the jeans and Glenlake sweatshirt he was wearing, Ian left his bags at the bell desk, bought a coffee, and made his way to the Chicago Riverwalk.
It was a cool day, and with a blustery breeze coming i
n off Lake Michigan, his fingers grew cold despite the steaming-hot cup in his hand. Still, he made his way west, under traffic that thumped and whizzed overhead on the drawbridges, hoping a walk would clear his head and make him more enthusiastic about the task at hand.
Global Wine and Spirit was an annual trade show for US importers, distributors, and retailers that took place each year in New York, Chicago, and San Francisco. While his head buyer would be doing the real work of tasting and ordering, Ian had found the show useful in terms of keeping up on trends, forging relationships, and sniffing out the occasional new product line for Grape and Barley, his three-location chain of high-end stores selling wine, spirits, and beer.
When he’d decided that New York and high finance were not for him, Ian had recognized right away the need for a new line of work. Idly mulling the offbeat portfolio that made up the Copeland family empire, he had thought about the dusty old wine shop called St. Louis Wine Importers, a store that hadn’t changed much since the 1960s but had a killer location in Clayton. Having noticed the trend toward wine boutiques from visits to Chicago, he’d realized St. Louis was ripe for its own version—and he’d moved at just the right time, talking his dad into letting him take over the shop and give it a complete remodel and rebranding.
With his business empire now comprising three locations and seventy employees, he was well on his way. He’d even allowed himself to look at a few property listings in Kansas City.
There was just one problem: the two new stores were new buildings, and building costs had exceeded estimates, and he wasn’t profitable. He should have been—he would be—but this was a pinch year.
A late-season tour boat glided by on the river, a guide’s amplified voice telling the dozen passengers huddled on deck to crane their necks and appreciate one of the skyscrapers towering above them. Ian complied, not sure which one he was supposed to be looking at. He had taken the tour Cassidy’s freshman year and had enjoyed but forgotten most of what he’d learned. The end of his nose growing cold, he decided to walk to the next bridge and turn back.
Desperate wasn’t the word for it. Copelands never felt desperate. But he was concerned. Ian didn’t want to go to his dad for cash because the old man’s reserves weren’t what they had been, not to mention that he’d already fronted a fair amount of money for store number three. Which was why he’d swallowed hard and hit Andi’s dad, Simon, up for a short-term loan of $350,000.
Without telling Andi, who’d flat out said no when he floated the idea.
She had recently made investments of her own in Blooming Books, her publishing company, moving to new offices with storefront retail near the wine shop in Clayton. Some of the money had been a small-business loan, but most had come from Simon; even though there was plenty more where that came from, Andi’s pride had overruled asking for more.
“Find it somewhere else, Ian,” she told him. “We owe him enough already, and there’s a limit to how much I want him in our lives.”
Andi’s relationship with her father had always been something of a mystery to Ian, a complicated history that began with her mom’s death from cancer when Andi was in second grade and peaked with her dad’s decision to pack her off to Glenlake. They could go weeks without speaking, and Andi could refer to Simon with a dismissiveness that would have seemed coldhearted and unthinkable even in Ian’s admittedly not warm-and-cuddly family. But when they were together, Andi acted perfectly comfortable with him. Loving even, at least when Andi’s stepmom, Lorraine, wasn’t in the room. Their own kids had long ago gotten used to the fact that their half aunts, Sage and Savannah, seemed more like big sisters, and everyone had learned to politely ignore Lorraine’s vapidity. Everyone except Andi, to whom Lorraine’s every breath must have seemed like a betrayal.
Ian had always chalked up his lack of understanding to inexperience with complicated family dynamics. His parents may not have been demonstratively affectionate toward each other, but they had always been together, always been there.
Every other difference—from the way Simon bragged about big-money deals to the way family dynamics were discussed with family members present—he attributed to California.
Ian turned around and headed back, now into the wind. He tossed his half-empty coffee into a trash can so he could jam both hands into his pockets.
Did he like Simon? He found him interesting, maybe even fascinating. In some respects, Simon lived up to every stereotype he had of a Hollywood mover and shaker, even if Simon’s role didn’t quite allow him to tread the red carpet. After doing different jobs on smaller movies as a young man—driver, carpenter, assistant location manager—and then going back to school to get a degree in accounting, he’d become a film accountant and eventually a line producer who’d worked on dozens of films. Only one Oscar-nominated film (the Simon Bloom oeuvre tended toward modestly budgeted action films starring just-past-their-prime A-listers) and only one smash hit (for which he’d wangled a producer credit and profit participation), but it all amounted to a steady and highly lucrative career.
Visits to LA felt to Ian like visits to a film set of a movie about Hollywood life: late breakfasts; egg-white omelets; eighteen-dollar smoothies with chia, acai, and other ingredients that never graced the Copeland kitchen; and lots and lots of name-dropping. Despite his public reputation as a ruthless operator, Simon seemed to genuinely like kids and had doted on Cassidy, Whitney, and Owen, making it harder for Ian to square Andi’s father issues with reality.
Then again, it was always easier one generation removed.
Ian was too leveraged for another bank loan, so Simon had been his only choice. He’d made the request for cash in person, telling Andi he was going to LA to see a supplier he could have simply emailed. As the day neared, Ian felt himself getting nervous. His own father would have made it a formal affair of state, with a lecture in the study, a silent and careful writing of an actual paper check, followed by a glass of Scotch and a stern admonition to Be careful.
If he’d still had that kind of cash. The Copeland fortune had been divested from railroads and invested in real estate at exactly the wrong moments. There was still enough money in blue-chip stocks to keep everyone comfortable and pay the dues at various clubs, but the days of six- and seven-figure endowments and investments were over.
Simon had been more casual. He’d chuckled and said, “Is that all?” when he heard the amount—stopping Ian’s heart for a moment—before suggesting that “our people” could exchange data and handle the transfer electronically. He’d taken Ian to lunch for a truly horrifically sized pastrami sandwich (Only once a week, or my doctor doubles my treadmill time) before Ian headed back to the airport, and all in all, it had seemed a genuinely amicable affair, with only one exception.
As he dabbed his lips with a napkin, Simon casually lobbed the big question: “I presume Andi is on board with this?”
Ian answered using the words he’d carefully rehearsed: “I’d appreciate if we could keep it between the two of us.”
Simon nodded thoughtfully, dropped his napkin on his plate, and added one more term to their agreement, “just to prove we’re both serious men.” If Ian failed to make repayment within a year, Simon would take a 20 percent ownership stake in Grape and Barley Incorporated, cementing his role in Ian and Andi’s future indefinitely. Timing was everything, and Simon was a shrewd negotiator: After saying yes, how do you say no?
He tried not to think about the way Andi called Simon a “gangster” and joked about the bodies buried in his Bel Air backyard.
Reentering the hotel lobby, Ian checked in at the front desk, where the clerk assured him his room was almost ready. He found a secluded chair and checked his phone. On Facebook, Andi had shared a few pictures of parents’ weekend while waiting for her plane to take off. The captions, needless to say, didn’t mention anything about dead poets in submerged muscle cars.
Catching up with fave high school teacher Mrs. Henry!
Father vs daughter stickball. W
hich team won? I’ll never tell.
Another great parents’ weekend at Glenlake.
His sense of cognitive dissonance only deepened: Was he relieved by her posts’ lightheartedness or disturbed that she hadn’t made a single mention of the big mystery on campus?
Finally, his phone pinged with a text that his room was ready. He collected his bags from the bellman and took the elevator to the twelfth floor and a room with a sliver of a view of the river where he’d been walking. After changing quickly into slacks, a dress shirt, and a sport coat, he palmed a small stack of business cards and headed back downstairs. He hung the badge around his neck, took a deep breath, and put on his game face before entering the exhibit hall.
As a smaller, regional show, GWS didn’t have the range of some, but exhibitors still hawked everything from boutique and mass-produced wines and spirits to stemware, cocktail napkins, bottle openers, wine savers, insulators, toothpicks, olives and cherries, custom T-shirts and aprons, and more. Ian ignored all of them, making a beeline for his newest supplier.
He found Preston Brandt in a small booth where a modest sign on the pipe and drape identified his eponymous company: THE BRANDT GROUP: VINTAGE AND COLLECTIBLE SPIRITS. Trying to capitalize on the next hot trend, Ian had taken a flier and laid in quite a bit of the unique stock, despite a high up-front cost. The only problem was, for some reason, his customers weren’t really biting.
Preston, busy arranging a museum-worthy selection of amari, herbal liqueurs, vermouth, rum, vodka, gin, and whiskey, saw him coming.
“How are things in St. Louis?” said Preston as they shook hands.
“They could be better, which is part of the reason I’m here,” said Ian. “Your stuff looks terrific in my stores, and my sales team tells me the bottles are great conversation starters, but unfortunately, it’s just not moving.”
Preston raised his eyebrows. “I’m surprised to hear that. We’re doing real business here in Chicago, not to mention New York, San Francisco, and Seattle. Some of the craft cocktail bars are buying from us and paying top dollar—it’s not like you can get a bourbon bottled sixty years ago wholesale.”
