Vertical

by Rex Pickett

  In The Astoria I discovered–to twin feelings of horror and delight!–a veritable cornucopia of local Pinots cluttering the tables and the nightstands and even spilling over to the floor. The bottles sprawled everywhere! An oenophile’s Christmas.

  “Christ!” Jack exclaimed when he got an eyeful of this embarrassment of riches. “Holy moly.”

  “Man,” I said to Bruce, who had come in to check up on us. “They’re really rolling out the red carpet.”

  “Well, to be honest, they’re hoping you’re going to write about the IPNC. Or, better yet, put it in your next novel.”

  “Yeah, if I’m sober enough. And not in a morgue all Prince purple.” Jack and Bruce guffawed. “Besides, I can’t be bought.”

  “Oh, bullshit,” Jack boomed. “Before Shameless you would have sold your mother’s wheelchair for salvage.”

  “It did occur to me,” I confessed.

  Bruce and Jack had a hearty laugh over that one, too.

  “Do you know a good, casual restaurant close by?” I asked Bruce.

  “Tina’s. I took the liberty of making a reservation. Otherwise you’d never get in because of the IPNC.”

  “Thanks. Gee.”

  “That’s what we do here, Miles. We think ahead. I’ll give you the address.”

  “Nah, it’s fine.” I held up my iPhone with its myriad apps. “I’ll get it here faster than you can write it down.”

  “Okay,” Bruce chuckled. “I’m a bit of a Luddite when it comes to all that gadget stuff.” As he said this, he casually reached into his breast pocket and pulled out a card. Tina’s, in a nice cursive. Address, phone, and even a little schematic map on the back. “In case the network is down.” He left.

  I stood there, feeling like an idiot. It wasn’t the first time. Or maybe it was the first time I was suddenly, humiliatingly conscious of it.

  Jack found a corkscrew, among the many and sundry the winemakers had left us, uncorked an interesting bottle he pulled at random, and poured two glasses into an unmatched pair of the several dozen Pinot-specific, logo-embossed glasses with which our local hosts had also gifted us. I picked up the bottle Jack had selected and looked at it. All it had for a label was a strip of masking tape, hand-lettered with a Sharpie: “2009 Harper Voit Strandline Pinot Noir. Barrel Sample.”

  Jack nosed it, and took in a generous mouthful. His expression ranged from curiosity to plebian exultation. “Mm,” he said. “This is awesome, dude. Get some of that down your gullet ASAP. Monster.”

  I smelled the bouquet and it struck me flush in my olfactory glands like a vinous haymaker. In my mouth it was inky, plush, gorgeous, almost savage, a wild ride of pepper, black cherry, cedar, and Cuban cigar–the full three-act structure so many Pinots lack. “Wow,” was all I said.

  “Told you.”

  I passed the bottle to Jack. “This is a fucking barrel sample. Hasn’t even been released.”

  “Man, this is good.”

  “Fuck. I’m getting excited.”

  “Me, too.”

  “God, I’m glad we got off the road.”

  “Amen, brother. Amen.” He held out his glass and we toasted. I wanted to hug Jack just then, but that wasn’t how we rolled.

  “All right, let’s shower up, and go eat.” I picked up the Harper Voit and corked it. “We’ll take this with us, and another one.”

  “Oh, that’s such good news,” Jack drawled as he headed out my suite’s door.

  I hadn’t checked my messages all day. One from my book agent, but it was now Friday night and I wouldn’t have to return it until Monday. Next from Marcie, wondering whether we had arrived. (I’d call her back later.) Next one I had to replay twice because the voice was scratchy and indistinct. Laura! LAU-ra. She had gotten home safely and was saying rapidly in broken English that she had had a lot of fun and hoped I would honor my promise and come to Barcelona. There were two threatening ones from Yvonne at Las Villas de Muerte informing me I needed to sign discharge papers and pay some kind of penalty. Then a really, really vitriolic one from Melina about Snapper. Should I call her and inform her that Snapper was in intensive care? Maybe shake her down for the bill? Damn pettifogger would probably drag me into civil court and get a judgment against me for mental anguish. Fuck an attorney once, but don’t fuck her twice. When would I ever learn my lesson?

  When I emerged from the shower, Jack was back, lounging in the lone chair, still luxuriating in the massive Harper Voit. His hair was wet and uncombed and he had on a blousy white shirt with the tails flying out over a pair of black acid-washed jeans. He looked like some hillbilly who had just gotten off the bus from Arkansas seeking fame and fortune in Tinseltown. I changed into my uniform of black T-shirt and blue jeans and Patagonia mock bowling shoes.

  After half-killing the Harper Voit, Jack and I plodded downstairs. Joy and my mother, primped and in a fresh change of clothes, were waiting anxiously.

  “I thought you went off drinking,” my mother grumbled.

  “Don’t start in on us, Mom. I’m not that much of a degenerate.”

  Jack pushed her outside and we all clambered into the Rampvan. I punched the address for Tina’s into the GPS and we rolled away. The tiny town of Dundee was just a ten-minute drive on tree-shaded roads. The collective mood was happily pacific, reminiscent of when we had started off. Which seemed like weeks ago!

  Tina’s proved to be a small, cottage-style place, painted red, its eaves festooned with a string of white lights as if the restaurant existed in a perpetual Noel. Inside, it boasted a homey, open feel, with a democratic arrangement of tables and a wood-burning fireplace. Thanks to Bruce, and his intimation that there was a “celebrity” in the party, we were seated at a center table. The place was hopping–IPNC attendees I surmised by all the bottles they had brought.

  A pretty waitress slapped a wine list on the table. Jack and I had brought over one of the housewarming presents–a Van Duzer 2008 Estate Pinot–to back up our half-drunk Harper. On the wine list, I was delighted to find a Soter sparkling brut rosé. Even having not tried a Willamette sparkler, I nonetheless had a hunch my mother and Joy would like it.

  When the Soter was poured into proper flutes for all of us, I raised mine. “Here’s to our making it to Oregon and the International Pinot Noir Celebration.”

  Everyone clinked glasses and took sips. This was a beautiful, austerely dry, one-hundred-percent Pinot bubbly.

  My mother, tears forming, raised her glass for a toast. We waited until her lachrymose spell had passed. “Here’s to Snapper.”

  We all solemnly toasted Snapper.

  “May he make a quick and full recovery and find a good home,” I added.

  “Home is with me,” my mother retorted. Any argument to the contrary would have evoked her wrath.

  “Home is with you, Mom.” No one at the table, even she, believed it.

  Menus arrived posthaste. The fare, the house crowed, was sourced as much as possible from local farmers and ranchers. The eclectic offerings included seafood, lamb, duck, steak, rabbit, and a wild mushroom risotto.

  After the starters I had the waitress open the Van Duzer. A year older, it was a more balanced wine than the Harper, more complex, with a weighty mouthfeel of blackberries and hints of spice. Jack and I exchanged appraising looks. He was nodding, I was shaking my head, both in amazement at the pornographically good wine.

  “We are drinking fine, my friend,” I said. “We are drinking fine.”

  We plowed into our entrees. Jack and I abandoned the Soter sparkler to Joy and my mom, the latter hogging it. After the mains we ordered a selection of their shockingly sumptuous desserts. My mother enjoyed what I supposed might be her last orgasm over the nectarine-blueberry fruit cobbler. Feeling magnanimous, I ordered a bottle of Amity Late Harvest Gewurztraminer, a viscous, slightly treacly dessert wine I didn’t much care for. My mother, however, had never in her life tasted such an elixir. Snapper seemed all but gone from her mind when she exulted over the Gewurtz: “Nect
ar of the gods.”

  “What about you, Joy?” I asked.

  “Mm,” she nodded enthusiastically. “Good.” The girls liked their sweet shit, I thought. Fucking diabetics.

  The bill was knee-weakening–and not comp-ed.

  chapter 12

  Iwoke to the incessant ringing on my cell. Blinking my eyes into focus, I picked it up.

  “Are you up, Miles?”

  I groggily noted two empty bottles of wine, whose contents I had no memory of drinking. My head pounded and my body felt torpid. “Yeah, Julie, I’m up.”

  “Opening ceremonies start in an hour. I just wanted to make sure you’re going to be there.”

  “Absolutely.”

  “You’ll be the last to speak. Something funny, you know. That’s what they want from you.”

  “Okay, I’ll give it the college try.” I hit END, walked over to the window and drew open the curtains. On the manicured lawn separating the Main House from the Carriage House my mother sat parked in her wheelchair, head angled to the sky, basking in the sun. The coal-coated Newfoundland bounded over to keep her company. She looked at peace in this bucolic setting, even as I was feeling the extreme opposite: an infernal hangover, compounded by doubts about this madcap trip. I poured a glass of Pinot from one of several bottles left unfinished the night before and degenerately carried it with me into the bathroom. I drank liberally in the shower, desperate to quash the jimjams.

  When I barged into his unlocked room, Jack was masturbating under the sheets. I backed out in a big hurry and closed the door.

  “Jesus, man!” he shouted. “Don’t you ever knock?”

  “You’re the one who always brags he never has to do the knuckle shuffle.”

  “My guy sustained a serious injury. I was giving him a test run. Christ!”

  “Opening ceremonies in forty-five minutes. I need both of you down at the car in fifteen, Jackson.”

  I staggered down the stairs to the lawn, thumb and fingers pressing my temples. A vast, invisible avian population trilled in the dense enveloping thicket. The air almost trembled with pure nature–or was it my befogged perception of reality?

  Approaching my mother’s chair, I set a hand on her shoulder. “Did you sleep well, Mom?”

  “Oh, yes.”

  “Did you have any problem getting bathed and everything?”

  “Oh, no. I took my bath. I don’t smell.”

  “Good. Because you were smelling pretty ripe yesterday.”

  “Oh, no,” she chuckled.

  “Oh, yes,” I countered. I knelt down next to her. “So, Mom, just to remind you: we’re at the International Pinot Noir Celebration. It’s a three-day, all-day wine-drinking festival. These people start early and they go late. You’ve got to pace yourself, okay?”

  “Okay. I’ll be a good girl.”

  I straightened to my feet and caught a glimpse of Joy, moving up the gravel path leading into the inn. She’d obviously ventured out to the main road to get stoned. Shortly, a haggard and somewhat chagrined-looking Jack emerged from the Carriage House.

  As we all convened, Bruce blustered out of the Main House, toting a large basket. “I didn’t see you guys for breakfast, so I put together a supply of some of my hazelnut scones. You’re going to the opening ceremonies, I presume?”

  “Yeah,” I said, accepting his offering, its piquant aromas discomposing my queasy stomach. “Thanks, Bruce. Sorry we missed breakfast. I hear your scrambled eggs are to die for.”

  “So they tell me. Have a great day.”

  Bruce looked on as we piled into the car. Giving him a wave, I punched the address of the venue into the GPS.

  IPNC’s kickoff was held on the green commons at the Linfield College, an old, quaint institution housed in weathered red-brick buildings, some with cupolas on their domes. A moveable podium had been set up at one end of the large grassy rectangle. Towering, gnarled oaks bordered the commons on all sides. Behind the podium the organizers had set up a three-tiered bleacher. It was packed shoulder-to-shoulder with local and international winemakers and other Willamette Valley wine cognoscenti. They were all bedecked with special orange badges. Facing the dais were nearly a thousand participants in foldup chairs, mopping their brows and fanning themselves in the strengthening sun. A heat wave had settled in over much of Oregon, and though it was only ten in the morning the temperature was already in the upper eighties, and predicted to hit close to a hundred!

  I was told that there had been a number of private dinners at the hundreds of participating wineries the night before, explaining why a lot of the attendees looked slack, florid-faced, like a herd of cows headed for the abattoir.

  Once Jack, Joy and my mother had been handed their badges I led them to a long, white-clothed table upon which various tin buckets overflowed with rosés and sparking wines jammed into ice, among them a few scattered whites. I poured my mother a glass of rosé and her clouded face gave way to radiant sunshine as I handed it to her. Next I filled a glass of Elk Cove Pinot Gris, while Jack, following my lead, helped himself to a glass of the same. Joy, true to form, declined. I’m sure she was shocked seeing so many people imbibing so early.

  “Okay, I’ve got to go find the director of this orgy-in-the-making, so why don’t you go find some seats? I don’t think this thing will drag on all that long.”

  Back at the information table where we had received our badges, I was intercepted by a woman with short, spiky platinum-blond hair–Divorce? Midlife crisis?–in a simple knee-length dress, blinking with excitement. “You’re Miles?”

  “I am,” I said.

  “I’m Julie.” We shook hands. “I didn’t think you were going to make it. Two of our guest speakers I guess had a little too much at the Patricia Green dinner last night, you might have to carry the show.”

  “I’ll do my best,” I said, raising the Elk Cove to my lips and taking a healthy quaff.

  “So,” she started, leading me by the elbow, “why don’t you take a seat in the bleachers and I’ll get started.”

  Armed with my glass of Pinot Gris I wandered to the bleachers where I found a seat among some of the most famous Pinot vintners from all over the world: Burgundy of course, New Zealand, Sonoma, Monterey… Some of their ruddy, sun-weathered faces I recognized from Wine Spectator and Decanter covers. Although I had written a book celebrating their cantankerous, low-yield grape, the dirty secret was I had never until recently had the wallet to partake of their ethereal wines, especially the fabled Bourgogne rouges. I felt a little intimidated in their august presence.

  Julie stepped up to the podium, tapped the mike to make sure it was working, and leaned into it. She welcomed us all, cracked a mild joke about everyone looking a tad hung over, paused for the laugh, cautioned that this was a three-day festival of seminars, vineyard tours, wine lunches and dinners, “So, I suggest you drink a lot of water in this heat!” To which there was a collective chorus of boos and catcalls. “Okay, and a lot of Pinot Noir, too.” To which there followed good-natured derisive cheers and a lot of fist-waving from the crowd that had flown in from the four corners of the world to sample some of the finest Pinots, learn about them and, who are we kidding, get fucked up! Where else, I asked myself, as the sun beat down with increasing ferocity, could you consume such quantities of exquisite wine from morning to night with unbridled permission, free from dispiriting jobs, money- and energy-sucking children and, in some cases, nagging, finger-pointing spouses? This had all the Dionysian makings of a royal descent into Hades.

  First up, Julie introduced one of the directors of the IPNC. Reading from notes, the portly man delivered a droning recitation of the various activities ahead, spelling out the rules and regulations we all had in the pamphlets, but no doubt hadn’t bothered to read. “Let’s face it,” I said to the vigneron sitting next to me, whom I didn’t recognize, “it’s going to be a free-for-all whether they like it or not.”

  Julie retook the podium. “And, now, before we fan out into our semin
ars and the great Willamette Valley of Oregon, where some of the finest Pinot Noir is produced, I’d like to introduce our master of ceremonies.” She glanced down at the notes for her speech. “Eight years ago, totally broke, not even able to afford a bottle of cheap Merlot”–pause for laughter to clear–“Miles Raymond sat down and wrote a book that changed the world of wine. Most particularly the realm of one specific grape, the grape we all unwaveringly adore…” She looked up from her notes, thrust her arms in the air and shouted: “Pinot Noir!”

  The cheers were so deafening that Julie could do nothing more than smile and blink until they died down. When they did, she soldiered on: “As we all know, from that book was made a movie called by the same name, Shameless.” More whistles and clapping and cheering. “That movie made everyone want to drink wine, especially Pinot Noir. In the year since its release Pinot sales have tripled… while Merlot sales have plummeted.” More cheering. “So, without further ado, I’d like to introduce… Miles Raymond.”

  Still clutching my glass, I rose and stepped down from the bleachers and, as Julie back-pedaled away and clapped her hands, took over her spot behind the podium. A din of applause greeted me. Some of the attendees struggled to their feet and soon they were all giving me a standing ovation. I threw a quick backward glance to the bleachers. All the vintners and other prominent people in the world of wine were also standing and applauding enthusiastically. If they could have seen me five years before, I thought, dodging creditors, hiding from my slumlord, stealing from my mother–well, I guess they already know about that–undatable, stricken with panic and anxiety, suicidal, homicidal, matricidal, writing “career” a sullied dream. Now they were wildly applauding, some even whistling. It was as if the decade of indignities since my divorce from Victoria had all been effaced in this roar of approbation. And all the while I kept thinking: this is so fucking ephemeral.