Vertical

by Rex Pickett

  I approached Jack, smoking, and said, “Okay, here’s the deal. They don’t allow pets. So, you’re going to put Snapper in this tote bag I brought. In it you’ll find a sweatband. I want you to put that over his snout so he doesn’t start barking his fool head off.”

  “Okay,” Jack said, dropping his cigarette to the asphalt and extinguishing it with a twist of his shoe.

  “We’ll get my mom settled in and then we’ll head over to the Hitching Post.”

  “Sounds like a plan.”

  “Check this out,” I said, handing him one of the tourist maps.

  Jack glanced at it. “These fuckers were all over this one with their PR, weren’t they?”

  “This place has changed forever, I’m told. A friend of mine came up a couple of months ago and said it was a madhouse at the Hitching Post. But we have a table.”

  “Excellent.”

  Joy wheeled my mother from the van as Jack and I hauled out the bags. A bell captain loaded them onto a luggage trolley. As Jack stayed back to park the van and sneak Snapper inside, I escorted Joy and my mother to their suite.

  “You okay, Mom?”

  “Oh, yes.”

  “Not too tired to go out to dinner?”

  “Oh, no.”

  “Because we could order in for you.”

  “No,” she said sharply. “I want to go out. I want to live. I don’t care if I die choking on a nice big T-bone steak!”

  I laughed. “That food in Las Villas was pretty bad, huh?”

  “Oh, you don’t know. That would have killed me before my heart gave out.”

  I laughed and gave her shoulder a little squeeze. We were all in an ebullient mood, the way being in a picturesque new setting with star-riddled skies and foreign smells gives one the sense of newness, discovery.

  Joy and my mother disappeared inside their special handicapped room.

  Inside my expansive room I opened another one of the Willamette Pinots, an ‘08 Bergström, and poured two glasses in the Riedel sommelier’s glasses I had brought along for the trip. Wineglass in hand, I drifted out onto the small concrete patio and took a seat in an all-weather chair. The 101 traffic roared in opposing directions on the other side of the large swimming pool that glowed turquoise in the encroaching dark. I would have preferred a B&B in the middle of nowhere, but my mother felt more comfortable in the concrete wombs of the more corporate hotels. With her infirmity, it was probably a prudent course. My thoughts strayed. After a half a glass of wine, an unadulterated peace invaded me, rushed in and cushioned my soul. It had been a tough road to this penthouse suite. My journey was by no means over, but I felt like I had crested some kind of professional hill and now, if nothing else, was enjoying the ride back down to the quotidian sphere.

  A few minutes later, there was a knock at the door, accompanied by a familiar booming voice. I let Jack in and poured him a glass before he commandeered the bottle and we repaired to the patio. In reverential silence, we watched the sun lower to the horizon and slip lyrically away to the other side of the world.

  “You got Snapper in okay?”

  “Yeah,” Jack said. “Fucker bit me.” He glowered at his finger and then shook it.

  “That’s why they named him Snapper. Chomp chomp.”

  “Great,” Jack said. “Thanks for the warning. Ten days with that little lap shark, huh? I might have to petition for a raise.”

  “You’re already overpaid,” I said. “That wine in your glass is worth a double sawbuck alone.”

  He drained his Riedel and said, “Good. In that case, I’ll have another.”

  From where we were seated we could see the sign for the Days Inn where we used to stay. “There’s the Windmill,” I said, gesturing and nostalgically calling the place by its former name.

  Jack looked over. “Oh, yeah. Those were the days.”

  “I like Windmill Inn better. Sort of more appropriate for the kitschy Solvang motif.”

  “Yeah, I agree,” Jack said. “Man, it seems like yesterday we took that trip.”

  “Yeah,” I said, reflecting back with him. “Remember that time I came back to the room and you and Terra were going at it like marmots?”

  “Don’t remind me,” Jack said. “That chick was smoking hot. I’ve never had better sex in my entire life.”

  “It’s probably because you were about to get married and you knew that it wasn’t going to be anything serious.”

  “I don’t know,” Jack said. “Yeah, probably it wouldn’t have lasted.” He turned to me and said with a grimaced expression, “She’s really a stripper in Reno?”

  “That’s the scuttlebutt in the tasting rooms. People up here know what everyone’s doing, who they’re fucking, how much they’re drinking. I’ve got to be careful.”

  “Terra’s not in the wine business anymore?”

  I shook my head. “Pussy for cash. That’s the word.”

  Jack visibly winced and shook his head, no doubt a succession of prurient images suddenly menacing him. “Man.”

  “You’re lucky you didn’t get crab lice and pass ’em to Babs.”

  “The chick was follically challenged. What would crabs clamp onto?”

  I laughed. “And you were going to blow off your wedding and were trying to inveigle me to move up here with you and start a winery! Fuck, man, you had flipped your pons.”

  Jack sipped the Pinot he had refreshed his glass with, smacked his lips and furrowed his brow. “I said that?”

  “Yeah. And you were fucking serious. I mean, I knew you were out of your coconut, but you presented it to me in a way that was so genuine I was almost swayed by your lunatic logic.”

  “Hmm,” Jack said.

  “I mean, new pussy does that. When I had the affair that broke up my marriage I was so out of my mind over this stupid little nothing D-girl it wasn’t funny. I mean, I thought I was behaving reasonably normally, given the crazy circumstances, but in retrospect I was out of my freaking gourd. New pussy is like the call of the Sirens, Lorelei beckoning sailors to their doom.”

  “Yeah,” Jack said. I sensed that he was traveling back in his mind to what wrecked his marriage; a trace of lament and remorse had crept into his voice. “Yeah. New pussy. They ought to put a warning label on it.”

  “Like that would do any good. God really fucked us with that one, didn’t he? Gave us this turbo-charged sex drive to ensure the propagation of the species, but didn’t count on modern civilization and the fact that we don’t need it anymore. But here we are, stuck with it. It’s driving us crazy.”

  The orange bled out of the sky and the empyrean purpled. Owing to the scarcity of ambient light, stars broke out like fireflies on a summer night in the Midwest and coruscated in the darkness. I kept flipping my iPhone over and over in my hand like a deck of cards. “I think I’m going to call Maya and invite her to the Hitching Post.”

  “Excellent idea,” Jack said. “See if she has a friend.” I looked over at Jack and he met my dismayed expression. “Or maybe not.”

  “Or maybe not. Jesus. That’s an understatement.” Shaking my head to myself, I found Maya’s number in my contacts and pressed Call. After five rings her voicemail intercepted the call. I listened to her familiar sultry voice until the beep sounded. “Hey, Maya, it’s Miles. I’m up here in Buellton. Going to head over to the Hitching Post in a bit. You’re welcome to join us if you’re free. Would love to see you and catch up. Take care.” I turned to Jack. “She was probably sitting there staring at her phone.”

  “I doubt it,” Jack said. “I’ll bet you she shows.”

  “Uh. I don’t think so.”

  Jack suddenly held his wineglass up to his face. “What’s this wine we’re drinking? It’s delicious.”

  “It’s an ‘08 Bergström.” I didn’t bother to recite the vineyard because Jack didn’t care. I upended some more into my mouth. “It is good, isn’t it?”

  “Excellent.”

  “These Willamette wines are fucking impressive.�
�

  There was a soft knock at the door. I got up from my chair, crossed the spacious room, and answered it. It was Joy. A shower and a change into a black sleeveless dress had left her positively transformed. Her bloodshot eyes betrayed a few more hits of pot and there was a suppressed giggle evident in her otherwise diffident expression. “Your mom’s all ready.”

  “Okay,” I said.

  “She wants a glass of wine now,” she said.

  “I bet she does.” I went into the portable refrigerator and produced a bottle of Chardonnay, uncorked it, poured a glass, then went next door to placate my mother who, if she didn’t get her evening glass, would be unappeasable. I found her out on the patio with Snapper resting in her lap. I handed her the half-glass of Chardonnay. She sipped it and a smile broadened across her face.

  “Oh, I needed that,” she said.

  I pulled up a chair next to her, placed a hand on her shoulder and gave it a squeeze. “How’re you doing, Mom?”

  “Fine.” She sipped her wine with relish. Her endlessly shifting mood changed like the stock market.

  “Excited?”

  “Oh, yes.”

  “It’s going to be a zoo at the Hitching Post tonight. Sure you want to go?”

  “Stop asking that,” she reproved me.

  “Sure you wouldn’t like to go somewhere more quiet?”

  “No.”

  “Okay. Just checking.”

  “Do you have to put that sweatband over Snapper’s nose?”

  “Mom, if management finds out we’ve got a dog in here they’ll kick us out. Do you want to stay at the Motel 6?”

  “Oh, no,” she said, laughing.

  “Or in a tent at a campsite?”

  “Don’t joke me.”

  “All right then, stop your bellyaching. Enjoy your wine.”

  I rounded up our gang for a night of food and wine plundering. We abandoned Snapper to the room with the sweatband around his snout, climbed into the Rampvan and rode the short distance over to the Hitching Post. The parking lot was so full it was difficult to find a place to park. Something I had never seen before: a crowd of maybe twenty people clustered around the entrance waiting for their names to be called. The four of us threaded our way through them and went in the front door, my mother spearheading the charge in her wheelchair. The noise level inside was deafening. The maítre d’ exclaimed: “Miles! Good to see you.”

  “Nice to be back at the scene of the crime,” I shouted to her over the noise. I ducked around the corner and glanced into the bar. They were four deep! Packed in like sardines in a tin. Again, something never witnessed before at the Hitching Post, at least not by me. Shameless, like the maudlin Field of Dreams, had turned one of its key locations into a tourist-groupie magnet, drawing fans from all over.

  I said to the maítre d’ (whose name I was blanking on), “Jesus, I’ve never seen it like this before.”

  “It’s your doing, Miles. You changed it all.”

  “I didn’t. The movie did. But, whatever…”

  She smirked at my modesty.

  “I hope my lifetime certificate is good for four.”

  “For you, the moon!”

  We were escorted like royalty to a large center table. A chair was hauled away so Joy could slide my mother up to her place in her wheelchair. Jack took a seat and leaned back, hands behind his head, beaming, sizing up the possibilities. I got up to go to the bathroom. Jostling through the throng at the bar I cast about for a sign of Maya, but didn’t see her through the arms raised to get the attention of the beleaguered bartenders.

  When I came out of the bathroom, a valley winemaker recognized me and leapt up from his coveted stool. “Miles. Good to see you.” He embraced me.

  “Hey, Dick, how’s it going?” I shouted over the din. “How’re the grapes shaping up this year?”

  “It’s going to be a good vintage. Here, you want to try something?” He motioned to the bartender who, seeing me, gave me a thumbs-up and quickly produced a wineglass and waved to me over the crowd. Dick poured me a half-glass from an unlabeled bottle he had with him. I took a sip and sloshed it around in my mouth.

  “Pretty powerful juice,” I said.

  Dick, a little high on the stuff already, raised a hand in an effort to get everyone’s attention. “Hey, everyone,” he announced, “this is Miles Raymond. The guy who wrote Shameless.”

  “Dick, Jesus,” I said. “I don’t need this.”

  Dick had known me before the movie took off. “Have some fun with it, Miles.”

  Heads turned. Within seconds, the crowd imploded on me. Cocktail napkins and business cards and matchbooks were thrust in my face for me to sign. I did my best to accommodate everyone, thinking that maybe it wasn’t such a good idea to have come to the most celebrated location in the movie. But then I had a lifetime free certificate, so…. As I expected, a couple of attractive women wormed their way close to me. Women who wouldn’t have paid attention to me when I used to be a habitué of the unknown, unprepossessing joint this had once been. At the mention of Shameless it was as if ten years of wear-and-tear had been magically effaced from my true age. One of the women thrust a business card into my hand and said loudly, “Call me, Miles. I’m at the Days Inn.” Drunk out of her skullcap, she put her mouth next to my ear and whispered lewdly, “I want to fuck you into a coma.” She backed away and waited for my reaction.

  “What’s your name?”

  “Patricia.”

  “Patricia. I’ll take the coma, but not the fuck. Thanks.”

  “Oh, don’t be such a wet blanket, Mr. Famous Writer.”

  I backed away through the crush of bodies.

  “See you at the Days Inn later maybe,” she shouted over the din.

  I just smiled wryly at her and finally broke free from the autograph hounds and elbowed my way back into the main dining room. A special magnum of the Hitching Post’s signature Pinot, the Highliner, had already found its way to the table and Jack was filling glasses for everyone. My mother wasn’t really a fan of red wine–she said it was sour. So I summoned our waitress over–it wasn’t Maya, of course–and ordered her a glass of Alma Rosa Chardonnay, which I knew she would like.

  “Where’d you go, Miles?” Jack asked.

  “It’s fucking nuts in the bar. Some winemaker recognized me so I had to sign some autographs.” I produced the business card from my front shirt pocket. “You want to get laid? Here you go.” I handed Jack the card.

  Jack glanced at the card. “Massage therapist. Shiatsu. Thai,” he read aloud. “Nice.” He smiled broadly. Things were picking up after the afternoon’s deplorable dognapping episode.

  “She’s staying at the Days Inn. You can pretend she’s Terra.”

  Jack smirked. “Dude, she wants you. Not me.”

  “Tell her Miles sent you as his crackerjack replacement. I’m sure she’ll do you.”

  Joy absorbed this badinage with bemusement. She was so shy and inexpressive it was hard to know what she was thinking.

  As my mother jubilated in her Chardonnay, I said to Joy, “How do you like the wine?”

  “I like it. No aftertaste.”

  “No aftertaste? That’s it? Try another sip. Move it around in your mouth.” I sudsed the wine in my mouth to demonstrate.

  She took another miniscule sip and tried to replicate what I had shown her. “It’s good. No aftertaste.”

  “Okay,” I said, resigning myself to the fact her drug of choice was something you smoked, not drank.

  The restaurant’s affable owner, Frank Ostini, bedecked in chef’s whites and wearing his iconic pith helmet, materialized at our table. His teeth shone white under his bushy moustache. He extended an arm and said, “Miles. Good to see you.”

  I took his hand. “Likewise, Frank. Place is hopping.”

  “Quadrupled the business.”

  “When’re you buying your yacht?”

  He laughed, obviously elated in the flush of a windfall that had he had his way, w
ould never have happened.

  “Remember when you tried to shut the film down because you thought the script romanticized over-imbibition?” I needled him.

  “I do. Thank God they talked sense into me.”

  “I mean, come on,” I teased. “You’re not in the mineral water business. Jesus. What were you thinking? Half the people up here are wine drunks.”

  He scowled a moment at my jibe.

  “By the way, thanks for the magnum. Highliner’s tasting better than ever.”

  “You’re welcome. Can I take your orders?”

  “Mom? What would you like?”

  “I want a big steak.”

  I gestured to my mother. “Frank, this is my mother. We’re headed to the International Pinot Noir Celebration in McMinnville, Oregon and then I’m taking her to Wisconsin and turning her over to her sister.”

  Frank placed a caring hand on my mother’s shoulder. “Nice to meet you, Mrs. Raymond.”

  Tears formed in her eyes. “My son’s a big success.”

  “Oh, that’s for sure,” replied Frank. “Huge.” My mother nodded, trying to ward off the tears. Frank squatted down next to her. “How would you like your steak?”

  “Well done,” my mother replied. When we were growing up she cooked the shit out of everything, believing all meat was tainted with trichinosis.

  Jack, Joy and I placed our orders and Frank, after showering me with more compliments, disappeared back into the kitchen.

  My mother, tears still glassing her eyes, pointed a finger at me. “I always knew you would make it. Your father thought you were a loser, but I believed in you.”

  “Thanks, Mom. Good to know Dad had thrown in the towel on me.” For a moment I grew wistful thinking about him. My father had wanted me to drop my artistic aspirations and come into the family business, selling commercial coin-op equipment to laundries and apartment complexes. Instead, I had moved to LA, where I had struggled mightily to find a toehold in the film business. I had borrowed heavily from him–and others–and though they had come through in my destitute years they had all urged me to get a real job. Now that my ship had come in, his untimely death–a massive stroke while he was undergoing a triple bypass had plunged him into an irreversible coma–weighed heavily. He would have been so proud to see me gain this level of recognition. It would have vindicated me in his eyes, effaced years of often-mutual animosity over the fact I hadn’t used my college degree in the pursuit of something that would pay the bills. Well, I was paying the bills now! I remembered having to appear alongside my poor mother in front of a medical ethics board at a V.A. hospital and implore them not to let my father waste away on life-support. They agreed to pull his feeding tube, but, even then, it was three agonizing weeks before he officially died. It took a toll on my mother, and she suffered her devastating stroke less than a year and a half later. I looked over at her. She was ecstatic to be out of Las Villas de Muerte, sitting in a lively restaurant and drinking her treacly Chardonnay, and my heart went out to her. Hell, if she croaked on this trip, would that be the worst thing that could happen to her?