Cabernet Zin (The Southern California Wine Country Series)

by J Gordon Smith

  “Hello, Amanda!” Nick stood between her and her car door. “Nice meeting you here.”

  “I have to go.”

  Nick looked in her car’s window and saw the chips, “You bought all single serving items. I cannot believe –” He ran a knuckle down the side of her face and along her jaw before she could pull away. “– That you do not have a date on a Friday night.”

  The stiff black hairs growing out of the back of his fingers abraded her skin, “I’m on my way to my friend’s house.”

  “Must not be a good friend. I can fix that. I have a nice snack at my place. I’m a chef on the weekends. I can whip something up for you for dinner … and for breakfast.”

  “Let me go,” she pushed him away from her car.

  Nick’s anger flared, he was about to push her back but the convenience store attendant speaker crackled, “Leave her alone sir, or I will have to call the police.”

  Nick looked across the cement lot at the cashier’s window and saw the attendant watching passively. The overhead speaker clicked on again, “You are on our remote video recording already.”

  Nick’s face flashed brick red. He swung his arms away from Amanda while he took steps back. Then he cut across the pump isles to his car, got in, and drove off with tires chirping out of the cement lot onto the blacktop street.

  Amanda clicked open her car door. She slid down on the car seat. Her fingers shook as she worked at snapping the seatbelt buckle in place. She dropped her keys in a jangle between the seat and center console, “Shit!” She fumbled for the keys but found them, took a deep breath, and started her car. She watched her rear view mirror the entire way home to ensure no one followed her.

  Amanda tossed her keys on her counter next to the scary movie she originally intended watching. She found a romantic comedy instead that just started on regular television. She opened the chips and sipped her pop. Her blanket wrapped her body and covered her cheek like a poultice over a wound.

  -:-:-:-O-:-:-:-

  Claire sat with her father as they watched a romantic comedy on broadcast television. She had seen it twice. Her father watched the movie as if mesmerized by the flashing mosaic of images. She studied his face. Worn, aged, and gray he sat in his old stuffed chair. He bought a used chair shortly after getting married. They reupholstered it when she was almost out of elementary school. The arms had become grease stained and threadbare along with the darker shading where her father’s head rubbed the fabric at the back. The chair always comforted him. Maybe it comforted her to see him sitting in it as he always did. The side of his face lit by the ghostly glow of the shifting television scenes. He looked at Claire, “Miss, could you get me some water?”

  “Yes, Mr. Vega.” She went to the kitchen and drew a tumbler full of water. For an hour that morning, he remembered everything. Within the space of ten minutes, he faded back to this zombie state. He thought she filled the role of one of his old students when between his extremes. Then other times he thought her a nurse that kept him locked in a room that simulated his home while they performed dangerous medical experiments on him. He never seemed alarmed at the perceived danger and just accepted the situation.

  “Here you go sir,” she wanted to say Dad so much, but she had learned that anything outside of what he assumed caused more confusion and she would argue with him the rest of the night. She learned to play along provided he remained safe and calm.

  “Are they sending me on a mission tomorrow? I know that’s code for more tests. Are they going to run more tests on me and see if their experiments are effective?”

  “No, Mr. Vega.”

  “I thought not. If their experiments worked, I guess I’d be dead. They will keep trying until I am dead you know.”

  “Yes, Mr. Vega.” The phone rang. Claire went to the kitchen and took the receiver off the wall. The phone was the same one the phone company rented people up through the nineteen seventies. Her father bought the thing from the phone company when the government changed the monopoly regulations opening up carrier competition. He told her the phone was so well built it would never wear out. One of the small investments he still used more than thirty years after purchasing it; equipment that might have been twenty years old when he bought it. The bludgeon-heavy receiver might easily last another thirty years.

  “Hi, it’s Tyler. How is Dad?”

  “The usual since we brought him home from the hospital.”

  “Did you ask him?”

  “Ask him what?”

  “For that money I need. For my rent.”

  “You saw him. He doesn’t know if I’m a nurse or his daughter.” Claire wanted to cry but she held firm. “I gave up my apartment when I had to move in here because I couldn’t make enough to afford it. I’m not sure how I’m supposed to keep my job going either,” she didn’t want Tyler thinking the same though. Better if he was out on his own than living here. Then she’d be taking care of both of them.

  “I really need money. Dad gave me my rent when I couldn’t get it together. I’ve had rotten luck lately.”

  “What kind of work are you doing?”

  “Well … none at the moment. Just surfing.”

  “I don’t have magical access to his finances.”

  “How are you paying his bills?”

  “He set everything up with auto pay. I haven’t even seen the statements to make sure it stays working; he locked everything up in his computer accounts. The bank won’t tell me details either. I hope he recovers before we have to make any changes.”

  “That’s going to be a problem if something else happens to him.”

  “I know,” Claire glanced at the power of attorney forms on the counter; she didn’t know how to get her father to a notary to sign them with her. His lucid time was too narrow and too unpredictable to schedule someone to stop by the house. “I try to catch him when he seems aware but that’s not often –” She worried more since she noticed a lengthening time between his true wakefulness.

  “Do you have any money you can spare?”

  “Since I came here to watch him, like I said, I’m barely working. So no.” Joan and Claire had discussed again getting Tyler to watch their father but they had agreed it best for the situation to keep Tyler on his own. Claire used the money she managed from work to buy groceries. She was glad neither she nor her elderly father ate much.

  “Well, this sucks!” Tyler growled, stomping around on the other end of the phone. “Maybe I can make an excuse with the landlord again. Can you push Dad? I could use some help. I already pawned my guitars and two of my best surf boards to get through last month.”

  “Can you teach more surfing classes or work at a fast food or a retail job?”

  “I’ve gotten fired from all the places within walking distance and you know I don’t have a car. A car takes gas and insurance. The ones I can sometimes afford break down a lot. Which is another problem; I don’t know how to fix them.”

  “I don’t know what to say.”

  “Just talk to Dad for me?”

  Chapter 14

  July

  Zack clipped away the extra shoots growing from the base of the vine in front of him. He stood and rubbed the back of his glove across his forehead to push the sweat from burning his eyes. He heard footsteps crunching along a row and the tinkling of little bells. He searched for the source of the sound.

  “Hi there.”

  “Claire?” Zack dropped the clippers into his back pocket and removed his gloves. She bent low and the bells chimed furiously as she scraped under the trellis wire and crossed a row. Then two more rows while Zack met her by crossing several remaining rows between them.

  “I brought you a drink,” she said, holding up a capped pitcher full of lemonade, lemon wedges, and ice.

  “I thought I heard the sounds of angels and I hoped I wasn’t in this field having heat stroke.”

  “The sound of angels? Oh, the ice against the glass,” she shook the pitcher and grinned. “Here,” she handed
him a glass and then flipped the pitcher spout open and poured.

  Zack took a sip, “Lemony … and really sweet.”

  “I wondered if I put too much sugar in there.”

  “No. This is great – it makes me wonder how soon the vultures would find me out here, hallucinating like I must be right now.”

  “Didn’t you bring a water bottle? It’s really hot.”

  “Yeah, but I didn’t bring enough. I must have tipped over by the fence post, dreaming all this?”

  “I could pinch you,” she said while pouring a second glass for herself. She balanced the pitcher on a few rocks sitting above the dirt.

  “And I would find that fun,” he sipped his lemonade. “You drove an hour out here to give me lemonade?”

  “I hadn’t seen you in a while. I enjoy spending time with you.”

  “Why do you seem attracted to me? While I’m ok, I know I’m not movie star handsome. Unlike you - you’re hot with a personality to die for … and did I say hot?”

  “Maybe you are hallucinating against the post after all?”

  “Makes me curious. I don’t even have movie star money making me even more handsome.” He stepped back, “Now don’t get any ideas that I don’t like it. I really enjoy my time with you.” He tried changing this dangerous discussion, “This is great lemonade.”

  “True, you’ve got a voice for radio.” Claire winked and sipped her drink. She realized that the tone of his voice held her too, somehow. “You undersell yourself. You’re hot handsome.” She touched his chest and slipped her fingers down to his washboard stomach. “And a great body. You’re also passionate about your projects, and ambitious.”

  “I’m not president ambitious.”

  “There are different shades. The crazy driven are a mess in their personal lives. You have some sort of balance about you.”

  “My home life is a mess –”

  “– That’s not your fault. You’re not like a lot of people I know that work for money because it’s a job. They try to hang on until the weekend and then get grumpy Sunday afternoon dreading work the next day. You mold a job as part of your life. You also have a plan and you push toward it. I know many guys that treated college as an extension of high school. They had no idea what they wanted to do with their life and assumed a muse would tap them after they graduated. They wanted to travel the world and dreaded entering the world of work.”

  “It’s an attitude. You’re going to have to do something, why not find things you are good at and can have fun with?”

  “You see work and life and family together. It’s all one. I like that.”

  “You have a much better opinion of me than my wife does.”

  “I think everyone has a better opinion of anyone than Lydia.”

  “Yeah, she thinks everyone is shit and her everything is the tops. Drives me crazy. She equates intelligence and skill by what job someone has. Some get lucky with their jobs and it has nothing to do with skill or smarts. While others are insanely smart and don’t get the good breaks.” Zack drained the last sip of his drink, “How are things going with you?”

  Claire’s eyes fluttered, chasing sudden tears, and she looked away. “Doing fine.”

  “You know you can tell me if you want to talk. I don’t want us to be all one way about my troubles.”

  “I know.” She bit her lip, “I’m just not ready to talk about any of it.”

  “You have your sister and family to talk to, right?”

  “Yes.” Claire nodded. “They are part of it too.”

  “And your other friends? Leiko and Alfanjo? They know?”

  “Leiko does, but it’s not important. Leiko and Alfanjo broke up.”

  “What happened?”

  “Alfanjo’s selfish pride. He lost his job when the lure company he worked for went out of business.”

  “That’s too bad.”

  “He couldn’t afford a wedding and Leiko said he’s too proud to ask for help. He left her and went to the gulf side of Texas looking for work in the commercial fishing industry. He was really mean about it and Leiko is devastated and bitter.”

  “That’s hard,” Zack said. Claire gave him the pitcher to fill his glass.

  Claire picked away strands of hair brushing her face, “My sister came out for a few days to see my father. Her husband teaches too but he runs summer courses. He’s between summer sessions so he’s at home watching their kids while she’s here for a few days.”

  “Then I feel extra fortunate. Your sister traveled out here and you came to see me. I think you better pinch me.”

  Claire leaned toward him, a smile spreading on her face, “Why do you think I just gave you the pitcher?”

  Chapter 15

  “You forget I had a great career before we had kids,” Zack leaned forward, his fists clenching and releasing in spasms.

  Lydia pounded her palm on the plastic counter, “And you threw it all away!”

  “We made the decision that one of us was going to stay home with the kids. We tried doing the day care pickups and drop offs and that didn’t fit with either of our work schedules. I remember you complaining about dropping off the kid and then dragging into work late. You worried that everyone would think you were a slacker. It was hard for me to get out in time, get across town with traffic, to pick the kids up. Everyone in the office seemed to collect all their problems for the end of the day and then dump them on me to solve in the ten minutes before I had to leave.”

  “You could never get the kid ready fast enough in the morning or you didn’t get the clothes put out or his snack made. I couldn’t excel at my work when I started late.”

  “– and I couldn’t do required travel because I had to pick up the kids. So we made the decision one of us would stay home.”

  “If I knew you would quit everything and wouldn’t be doing anything at home then I would have stayed.”

  “The only reason I had a bumpy career since then –”

  “– You quit and got fired –”

  “The reason I had bumps was I looked at your promotion and it put your earnings above mine. The economic logic was for me to stay home which meant an end to my career –”

  “A lot of mothers quit and then go back.”

  “But the statistics are not there, I checked. Only a minority get back to their prior trajectory. I saw I had to bow out then or I risked my chips and pushed them all in the pot. If the gamble paid off –”

  “It didn’t.”

  “But if it did I’d be running that division. Did you see the projects I ran then? You didn’t care because I was traveling all the time and you had to drop off and pick up Noah. And you wanted to have a second.”

  “It wasn’t like that. I couldn’t rely on you getting back from your trips or finishing the presentation deck meetings you were always pecking at in the evenings.”

  “So I had to quit.”

  “And then you started up some consulting thing that didn’t take off for years.”

  “I picked up that one client from Europe.”

  “Then they fired you.”

  “No. Their customer resourced their products to a place in South Carolina. They didn’t need any program managers if they didn’t have a customer with new products to produce. I still get calls from their guys on fill-in work.”

  “And then you got fired from that machining company.”

  “Did I? They hired me, full-time, but I remember that being a problem for you and your career when Grace was born. Half my compensation package was tied to their earnings performance. When I saw how deeply they cooked their books so they reported zero earnings to me or to the Internal Revenue System? What did you think I should do?”

  “You could have gone on, that half pay was pretty good. Then I could have quit and stayed at home – to take care of our children.”

  Zack gripped his head with both hands, “I held an executive position with financial responsibility and I – we – didn’t need the IRS dragging me i
nto some legal wrangle the company owners caused and refused to fix. Their CPA jumped when I pointed out a couple of blatant subterfuges they had going on.”

  “You were just an employee doing what they told you.”

  “I just couldn’t be involved. Besides, I was pissed about the bonus arrangement they agreed to and remained inflexible to rectify. Then you complained about the house we lived in and the cars we drove compared to the career level you had. So we bought that fancy house and got you a shiny car –”

  “That’s because it’s expected at my level. An executive of a major corporation needs to have those things just as much as getting a good haircut and wearing nice clothes.”

  “Your outfits for a week cost more than I bought for the five years I worked at my first job at Chatwell Communications.”

  “And that is why your career stalled and mine took off.”

  “No. Again, I took more risk that would either propel me to the top or black-ball me into zombie middle management for the remainder of my days until they forced me to take an early retirement.”

  “And what is bad about that? You’d have a salary, health care –”

  “And no soul.”

  “Which is your problem that caused everything.”

  “That I’d either fly to the sun –”

  “– or get burnt and crash to the ground.” Her eyes flared, “I see you chose to crash.”

  “You see the logic in what I did and why.”

  “No, I see you just wanted to stay at home and still not do anything that needs to be done around here.”

  “Laundry? Dishes? Starting up a business is hard. Infinitely hard –”

  “And uncertain. You’ve not done much in, how many years?”

  “I’ve constantly worked on this business. I have six guys that I’m feeding work.”

  “Work that you could do?”