He came back on deck and held the closed book with both hands for a moment. Then he returned it to Russell.
“No, it’s yours. I made it for you.”
The old man shook his head. Took a couple of the Ritz crackers, raised his beer in a salute, and stepped off the boat. When he was even with Russell, standing on the finger pier, he took a long swallow of his beer. His old blue eyes wrinkled in what Russell had learned was a smile.
“The Sailing Cat. First in a series. Big hit.” Then he was gone.
Russell played with Nutcase a little, finished his beer, and idly flipped through the album in the failing light of the day. Perry was right. New York would eat it up. He’d send it to Arnie and she’d have it sitting next to every bookstore cash register in the country by Christmas.
At the second to last page, there was the photo of Nutcase sleeping on his chest. He could have sworn he’d put that one at the end. He turned to the final page.
There she was. Cassidy, in that incredible evening gown with the boat and the city a soft backdrop, and Nutcase curled up in her arms. The look on her face still blew him away. He thought he’d photographed love before, but it was as if he’d only photographed the word itself and here was the true emotion. There was love, humor, passion, and, something indescribable. Whatever it was, it made him feel incredible that for even that instant of time it had been aimed at him.
Perry had nailed it; her entry into his life was what made the book complete and personal—it told the story. The collection would go ballistic.
Stowing the crackers, he locked the cabin and headed for Cassidy’s. He couldn’t lose her to some status-seeking California winery. Couldn’t lose her to a bunch of high-rolling Italians. Forget their tacit agreement not to discuss the future. There had to be a way to keep her and he was going to do something about it now.
He punched in her keycode at the lobby entry and made it all the way to her door, had even raised his hand to knock, before the absurdity of the situation sunk in.
Since when had he ever said the right thing? He should go consult with Angelo. Or should he? His friend had talked about Jo enough, but hadn’t done anything. Granted, his restaurant was taking off. Really taking off. Cassidy had done another write-up and this one had caught the attention of the magazines. Suddenly Sunset, Condé Nast, and Cigar were coming out to write up “Angelo’s Tuscan Hearth” above and beyond Cassidy’s column. Maybe now wasn’t the best time to get advice on how to handle his girlfriend.
Girlfriend.
He’d had lovers, but never a girlfriend—at least not since high school. Natasha Beckworth, senior prom—though she’d been a lover, too. Maybe she’d been more lover and less girlfriend. They’d had a great time in bed, but he couldn’t remember a thing about what she did or didn’t like.
Cassidy had been the one to teach him the difference between lover and loving someone. He didn’t need Angelo’s advice; Russell knew what woman he wanted.
He knocked on Cassidy’s door.
No answer.
Harder.
Still nothing. But he heard a clink of glass, or something from inside.
Harder still.
Now there was an echoing silence.
Then he heard it. A long, low moan. A moan of someone in pain.
He threw his shoulder into the door—there was a loud crackling of wood.
He hit it again—with all the force of his college linebacker days—and the door blew inward.
She wasn’t in the kitchen or the bedroom-office. He raced into the living room and stumbled to a halt.
The table was littered with wine bottles and half-empty wine glasses, but no Cassidy. A bottle of red had fallen to the floor and a long red stain spread across the white rug.
No one was in the bathroom…nor the master bedroom.
He heard the moan again and dashed into the bedroom she’d converted into a wine cellar.
There she sat, still dressed in the jeans and shirt she’d worn to the lighthouse this morning, but they no longer looked so pristine. Red stains were dribbled all down her front. Her legs were splayed before her like a little girl and another twenty or more wine bottles were open around her. Most had a matching glass, some part full—but most stood empty.
She moaned again, struggling to uncork yet another bottle. In no condition to do so, the corkscrew kept slipping from her fingers. The moan was part growl of frustration and part wounded animal.
He squatted down in front of her. Russell considered removing the bottle from her hands, but decided that discretion was the better part of valor as she was wielding the corkscrew as much like a sword as a kitchen tool.
“What are you doing, Cass?”
“I’ve lost it, Daddy. I’ve lost it somewhere.” She looked about the room for a moment, ceasing her efforts to uncork the bottle. She didn’t turn his direction.
“Lost what?”
She bowed her head down over the bottle and stopped struggling with it.
“I can’t taste it. I can’t. I tried. Just like you taught me. But I can’t taste it.”
He slid the corkscrew and the bottle with its mangled cork from her fingers and set them carefully aside.
“That must have been one heck of a letter.” Her dad was really starting to piss him off. Next one, he wouldn’t leave until he was sure she really was fine.
He did his best to lift her clear of the nest of glasses. A couple fell onto the hardwood floor and rolled away as he shifted her into his arms; he’d have to deal with those later. Hopefully none of it would leak down into the ceiling of the nineteenth floor below before he could mop it up.
She kept complaining as he moved her.
“My life is over. Can’t taste anyting. All those years. So mussh work. Gone. Wasshted. Down the drain. Corked. Thas it. I’m corked. Just like a bad shwine.”
Their first stop was the bathroom floor. She wasn’t steady enough to stand while he stripped her. Russell looked at the stains all down her front and decided to settle for expediency. He set her in the tub clothes and all, then cranked up the shower.
“Cassidy Knowles. Corked. Spoiled-ed in the bottle. So sad.”
Too drunk to even protest, she sputtered at the water as it ran down her face, but that was all. He did his best to clean her up with a washcloth as the water ran over her. He aimed the spray off her face and trotted back to the other room. Four of the bottles she’d knocked over had corks partly rammed into them, thankfully the bulk of the uncorked horde of bottles had remained upright. The three fallen glasses looked as if they had been mostly empty. Either she’d been pouring less as she went, or drinking more—he’d bet on the latter. He threw a towel on the worst patch and decided he’d come back later.
The glasses in the living room were much fuller. She’d still been just tasting in here. The red in the living room was going to be a different cleanup problem. He righted the bottle and saw that it was a 1969 Mouton Rothschild Bordeaux. That stain on her carpet was worth hundreds of dollars. He let his eye range over the dozens of others open on the table, the coffee table, the side table… Thousands of dollars of wine. Wow! And he thought his studio parties had been extravagant.
A curse sounded from the bathroom and the sound of splashing.
He hustled back to the more immediate problem.
Russell sat on the balcony off Cassidy’s bedroom and watched the stars slowly turn over Puget Sound. Once she’d finished emptying the contents of her stomach into the toilet, he’d showered her as well as he could and managed to get her to spit after he brushed her teeth for her. He’d tucked her into bed after forcing her to drink some water and take a B12 vitamin he found in her medicine cabinet. It was the best hangover cure he had to offer, though she was still going to have a doozy.
The cleanup had taken a while—handwashing thirty-seven glasses. Hard to believe she even had that many or the room to store them in the small kitchen. Dinner for eight and four wines for a meal; maybe not that hard to imagine, but
it was still a lot of washing. The red wine stain answered fairly well to the old trick of club soda and salt, but she’d still need a professional carpet cleaner.
Now he sat with a glass of the Bordeaux and some crackers and cheese. It was somewhere before dawn. Stars could still be seen, despite the waterfront lights below and some vague twinkling on the distant shore that was Bainbridge Island. What perversity had led her to get a condo facing what her father had lost?
Well, nothing to do but wait.
Wait for what? He must be more tired than he thought. He rubbed a hand over his face. There’d been something so urgent that he’d rushed over.
The future. Their future. Right.
Well, it was hard to go a whole lot further without knowing what Cassidy was thinking. That in itself was kind of funny. He’d done a lot of growing this last year. His mom had pointed it out when he went back to New York for a visit last week; Julia Morgan approved of Cassidy with all her heart—that much was clear.
Russell had walked out on Melanie with little thought for her and no awareness of her feelings. When their intensity surprised him, he’d gone to the West Coast anyway. Now? Now he was in limbo while Cassidy considered her destiny in California and Italy for heaven’s sake.
For the hundredth time he looked at the waterlogged letter on the little wrought iron table. He had found it crammed into her jean’s pocket.
If I could wish anything, it was that you had stayed in the vineyards with me. Then I wouldn’t have had to sell my life’s work to strangers.
“Good thing you’re dead, old man. Or we’d be having some words right about now.” Hell of a burden for a dead man to place on his living daughter. As if we don’t have enough problems making our own decisions.
“Russell?” Cassidy’s voice trembled out into the darkness. He hadn’t heard her get up, even though he’d left the sliding glass door open for that purpose. The late night lull was past and the first sounds of the waking city had begun: street cleaners, service trucks, the crazy, hyper-driven corporates, restaurant owners. It probably wasn’t all that long until Angelo would be awake and down at the market visiting the fish, produce, and meat vendors.
“Right here, Cassie.”
She came to him in the faint glow of the city lights. She lowered herself into the chair beside him with a hesitancy of movement that he knew well from past experience. Once she was settled, she took his hand. He held it lightly, knowing that everything must be hurting.
“I feel…”
“Shh. I know.”
“I don’t remember you coming in.”
“Good. Then you won’t remember that I splintered the frame of your door as I did so. My shoulder appreciates that you locked only the handle and not the dead bolt.”
“You busted down my door?”
“I panicked when you wouldn’t answer, but I could hear you groan. Sorry, I’ll fix it tomorrow.” He looked up at the sky. There was no light yet, but there soon would be. “Later today.”
“I don’t remember.”
“Don’t remember my tossing you in the tub? Helping you puke? Brushing your teeth for you?”
“I didn’t! Not really?”
“How I had my wanton way with you?”
“While I was drunk?” She sat up at that, though she froze and he felt sorry for what the sudden motion must have done to the inside of her head.
“Well, not the last, but all the other stuff, yes. I did shower you and towel you down. Though it wasn’t as much fun as usual.”
He reached his hand to stroke her cheek, marveling as he did every time how soft it was and how personal it felt. To be so close to someone he wanted to touch so much ranked beyond marvelous.
“What do you remember?”
“I sat down to write my column. It was going fine. I was working on a little section about the effect of climate between California temperate, Washington temperate, and the new Piedmont vineyards that are opening up in the foothills of the Italian Alps. But I couldn’t remember the taste of a Bainbridge Island Pinot Noir. I grew up with that wine, probably the first one I ever tasted.”
She was rubbing her forehead as if she could pull the memory out with her fingertips.
“I checked my notes, but I never wrote it down. Who could forget their first wine?”
Russell didn’t even remember his last wine the way she did though the dregs were still in the glass. It was far and away the best Bordeaux he’d ever had.
“So I opened a bottle—and I couldn’t taste it,” her hand started to shake in his hand as the memory returned.
“My palate is gone,” her voice grew shaky. “I opened a California Pinot, then a French Chardonnay. Nothing. None of them…” Her voice trailed off on a catch of breath. Her thoughts had finally caught up with her words.
“My palate is gone,” her silence was echoing, punctuated by the sound of a Metro bus’ diesel roaring far below.
“Kiss me.”
“What?”
“Kiss me.”
“I’m telling you my life is ruined. That it’s over. My gift is gone after twenty painstaking years of study and practice and you want me to kiss you?”
Russell nodded, knowing she could see the outlines of his face in the growing light.
She huffed a few times and finally leaned forward to give him a quick peck on the lips.
“Um, thanks for helping me out.”
“You’re welcome. Now kiss me.”
She practically growled when she did so. She leaned in and really kissed him—kissed him so hard that his body went electric. What had started as an attack quickly turned so sensual that it was hard not to drag her through the doors to the bed waiting only a few feet away.
He broke it off before she did.
“Now. Tell me what you tasted.”
“The ocean and the sky. You always taste like that.” News to him. He considered a moment and decided he could live with that, especially if Cassidy liked it.
“What else?”
She tipped her head sideways, in the way she always did when analyzing a flavor, whether a wine or a chocolate truffle. It was the moment when she was most quiet and most stunning.
“Plum and eucalyptus. Bitter cherry... You inveterate low-life!” She punched his arm hard enough to hurt. To really hurt.
“Am not,” he rubbed at his wound as she shook her hand in pain.
“Are too. You didn’t ravage me. You ravaged my 1969 Bordeaux. That was a graduation gift from my dad. I was saving it.”
“Yup. You were. For last night.”
That dropped her back in her chair. “Last night?”
“Most of it was in your carpet when I arrived. I got out the worst of the stain, so I guess it’s in your sink now. I had a half glass while watching over you. I saved the last half glass for you.”
Her voice was very small. “I don’t think I could drink any wine now if my life depended on it.”
“How about kissing me again? To make up for punching my arm so hard.”
She leaned over just far enough to kiss him on the arm. “What else did I open?”
“I don’t know. I lost track somewhere after thirty bottles.”
“Thirty?” Little more than a squeak.
“Kiss me again.”
“Why?”
“Because,” he rose and helped her to her feet. He swung her up into his arms and headed back into the bedroom.
“I like proving that your palate is still just fine.”
Point Robinson Lighthouse
Maury Island
First lit: 1887
Automated: 1978
47.3881 -122.3746
The Point Robinson light and foghorn is the principle guiding beacon between Seattle and Tacoma. Fog is an especial problem on this point of Maury Island. In 1897, the sole keeper, who had been asking for an assistant for years, had to run the whistle for 528 straight hours on his own. In those twenty-two long days he shoveled thirty-five tons of coal by hand to po
wer the whistle.
His request for assistance was granted. But it was 1903, six years later, before one was assigned to the light.
OCTOBER 1
“You didn’t ask her? Mama mia, you’re an idiota!”
Russell was, but that didn’t mean Angelo was going to get away with it. He dug around in the fridge for a couple Cokes.
“And have you called Jo Thompson yet?” He called out the hatchway to Angelo up at the tiller.
“Low blow, my man. Low blow.”
“Have you?”
“No. What’s a classy, hot-shot lawyer gonna see in a lousy, Eye-talian servant’s son?”
Russell came on deck and shook the bottle hard before handing it to Angelo. Angelo groaned and slipped it into a cup holder unopened.
“She may be a big-time lawyer, but you’re a big-time restaurateur.”
“Oh, yeah. One whole restaurant. That’ll really impress a lady like that.”
“Got news for you, buddy boy.”
Angelo just glared at him.
“Fisherman’s daughter.” Russell turned away and peeked under the sail as the light finally dawned over Angelo’s face.
“Lighthouse ho.”
There it was, right on cue. Point Robinson was a windy, godforsaken spot known for its shrouds of fog and today didn’t disappoint. They’d spent much of the morning creeping through fog banks and dead-reckoning from one channel buoy to the next. A little sunlight broke through around the lighthouse itself, enough to make a pretty picture of the light wrapped in a foggy, surreal landscape of mystery.
He pulled out his camera and starting snapping photos for Cassidy. It didn’t feel right though. Without her here, the purpose was gone. He wanted to see the lady on the beach in her ridiculous, knee-length parka. Or spend a lazy afternoon teasing the sassy wine-connoisseur lying back in his dinghy. Hell, he’d be glad just watch her as she cranked on a winch or played with the cat. Even Nutcase seemed despondent without her, curled up in the cockpit rather than out on the boom.
The Complete Where Dreams Page 27
