by Rex Pickett
Using one finger and the other hand, Jack produced a vulgar gesture.
“We’ll see,” I said.
“What happened to Laura?” he teased.
“She’s outside the hundred-mile radius.”
“Ah, the hundred-mile rule. You dog, Miles.”
“Takes one to know one.”
Jack laughed and then wrapped me in a bear hug. “I got to be honest. I almost bailed on you. But this is awesome, this was all worth it.”
“Tonight should be pretty interesting,” I said as he released me.
“Let’s hope.”
“Keep Joy and my mother apart as much as possible if you can,” I advised. Jack glanced over at the two of them, and turned back to me.
“I got it, short horn. Have fun.”
I dragged Natalie away from a famous–and famously garrulous–wine writer and we giggled and cracked jokes and made out while groping each other as we weaved our way to the dormitory where she was lodged.
Once inside, we collapsed in a heap onto the lower mattress of a bunk bed. Sex was awkward. We slammed against the wall, the mattress springs creaked noisily in our plundering of each other. At one point we fell off the damn thing! Having had a little too much on the mystery tour, I experienced difficulty maintaining an erection, which made the spontaneous tryst clumsier yet. In the end I opted to go down on her in a valiant, ego-saving effort to bring her to orgasm, which she muffled with a hand over her mouth. Couldn’t have the others in the dormitory thinking she was some kind of wine slattern. When I remarked to that effect, she joked, “I have a reputation to uphold.”
“Oh, yeah,” I said as I lay naked next to her on the narrow mattress. She rose from the bed and said, “Do you want to try something really awesome?”
“What? You’ve got some toys?”
“No,” she giggled. She had a lot of wine samples cluttering the tiny room’s small writing desk. She splashed a ‘96 DRC into two huge Riedel sommeliers’ glasses and handed me one. The wine was luxurious, not overly alcoholic, and had a gorgeous floral finish that lingered for a seeming eternity.
“Isn’t it good?” she asked.
“Yeah. So different from these monster Pacific Coast Pinots.” I took another taste. Unlike most wines, this just got better and more complex the more you delved into it, yielding mysterious aromas and flavors that a first taste was insufficient to disinter. And it was sexy drinking that DRC stark naked with this savvy food and wine writer. “I should probably get back. I’ve got the book signing to get ready for, and if I lie around here with you and that sublime quaff I’ll never make it.”
“Okay, I’ll give you a ride.”
Natalie shuttled me back to the Brookside. At my behest she braked to a stop at the turnoff, so my mother, with her penchant for paranoia, wouldn’t see a woman dropping me off in a total state of dishevelment. We kissed goodbye passionately, totally enveloped in each other, as if one of us was headed off to the front lines. “Will you stay with me tonight?” she asked.
“I don’t know, Natalie, there’s going to be a lot of women at the salmon bake, and after the book signing I’m going to have a lot of opportunities…”
She punched me in the shoulder and pretended to pout. “Oh, you’d better not,” she admonished. She extended an index finger and pointed it at my crotch. “You owe me, Mr. Shameless.”
We sealed the promise of a post salmon-bake salacious ravishing with another wild, slobbery kiss. “I can’t wait, Natalie.”
I crawled out of the car and staggered up the dirt-and-gravel road, bounding over the fairy-tale pond and emerging out of the canopy of old, gargantuan oaks into the Carriage House. I desperately needed a nap after the hot afternoon of wine, but that hope was shattered by the voice of my mother from their downstairs room, berating Joy. “You’re no good,” she was saying in her infantile way. “You’re no good!”
A moment later, Joy stepped out.
“What’s wrong?” I asked.
“Your mom. I can’t handle her anymore.” She irately tapped her temple with her index finger. “She has no brain! She is stupid!”
“What’s going on?”
“She still accuse me of killing her dog–dog not dead,” she practically screamed. “And stealing money that was mine!” In defiance of the inn’s no-smoking policy she fired up a half-smoked joint and took several hits in quick succession, holding each inside her lungs before exhaling and taking the next.
“Come with me,” I said.
“I’m not going back in there,” she said in a staccato voice.
“Yes, you are, Joy. We’re going to resolve this once and for all.” I took her by the elbow and half-dragged her into my mother’s suite.
My mother was parked in her wheelchair in front of the television, bewitched by some infomercial. I wrenched the remote from her hand and turned it off. Joy stood behind me at my left flank.
“Where’ve you been?” my mother wailed.
“Mom, I’ve got duties to perform up here, people I have to meet. I’m an important person.”
“Oh, stop bragging,” she spat.
I got right back in her face. “I want you to apologize to Joy. I’m sick and tired of this bickering between you two. Joy was not responsible for Snapper’s accident. And she didn’t lose her money on purpose to extort me. That’s fucking nuts! What’s going on up in that noggin of yours, huh? She’s done an amazing job. Without her you wouldn’t be heading to Wisconsin to be with your sister, which is what you wanted. You’d be back in Las Villas de Muerte with those moribund people waiting for the FUCKING UNDERTAKER! Is that what you want? Huh?” It was a rebuke the likes of which I had never before delivered. I stared at her with an ominous look. “Now, if you want to continue acting like a fucking child, I’m going to turn around tomorrow and ship you back. And the next time you have a minor stroke or another congestive heart failure, you know where you’re going? Full convalescence. You’ll become a ward of the state! You know what they do in those places, Mom, when you pee your pants? They stand you up and hose you down, then throw you back onto your cot in a room with no TV, no phone, no nothing. Is that what you want?”
“Oh, no,” she whimpered, frightened by my stern–and, if I say so myself, colorful–upbraiding.
“Then apologize to Joy. Tell her you’re sorry.”
My mother looked down at her lap. Tears churned in her eyes. “I’m sorry, Joy. I guess I’m just a mean old cuss.”
I lowered my tone: “Tell her you were wrong to demonize her for Snapper’s unfortunate accident.”
“I know you didn’t mean to get Snapper hit by that car, Joy.” She raised her head and pointed that crooked arthritic finger of hers at the ceiling. “I never should have brought him.”
“Halleluiah! The only thing you’ve said on this entire trip that has the ring of truth!”
She looked contrite as she continued to avert her gaze.
“And you know Joy didn’t pretend to lose the money? And that she had legitimate reason to believe you may have taken it? Okay, maybe she was wrong in her accusation, but she didn’t make up the fact that her money was gone. She’s not that kind of a person, Mom.”
My mother nodded, mortified at being scolded by her son. “I’m sorry, Joy. You’ve been so good to me.” She pointed her index finger at her temple. “I had a stroke, you know. I’m not the same. I say things I don’t mean. I’m scared.”
I placed a hand on my mother’s shoulder and bent at the knees to be at eye level with her. “There’s nothing to be scared about, Mom.”
“I know,” she said through her tears.
I straightened to a standing position, turned to Joy with great reluctance and said, “Please tell my mother you accept her apology.”
Joy exhaled a sigh of exasperation. “I accept your apology, Mrs. Raymond.”
“Oh, that’s such good news,” my mother said.
“Okay, I’m going to go up and take a nap. Big night tonight. A lot of single wo
men.”
My mother chortled. Joy, the weed having gone to her brain, suppressed a giggle. I pulled her out into the hallway so my mother couldn’t hear and said, “If there’s a problem, come to me, okay?”
“Okay.”
“Give me a hug,” I said. I reached my arms out and embraced her tightly and she hugged me back. I whispered into her ear: “There’re a bunch of cute guys here. Enjoy yourself. It shouldn’t have to be all work. This is the Miles Raymond road show. As you can tell, we get fucked up sometimes and let our hair down. Okay?”
“Okay,” she said, blushing.
I released her from the hug and tottered up the short flight to my suite. Bone tired from all the female drama, I fell heavily onto my bed and closed my eyes. A moment later, Jack, full glass in hand, materialized and melted into one of the cushy chairs.
“How was she?” he asked, always wanting to know the blow-by-blow.
“Pretty teenager-like,” I confided. “Haven’t done it on a bunk bed since college. Why is sex always hotter when you’re not in your own bed?”
“Because it usually means you’re fucking someone for the first time.”
“Or having a hot clandestine affair.”
“That, too.” He held up the bottle that was clutched in his left hand. “Want a glass?”
I shook my head no. “I had a little performance problem over at the dorm–too much of the grape, I guess. But I’m going to rectify that tonight after the salmon bake.”
“Good man,” Jack said.
“I’ve got to try to get some sleep.” I glanced at my watch. It was 3:30 and the book signing started at 6:00. “I’m so wiped. And then I come back and Joy and my mother are going at it. Had to put that fucking fire out. I’m not sure this was such a good idea.”
“We’re almost there,” Jack said. “It’ll be a straight shot to Wisconsin. Two day gonzo. Head to the airport. Get tanked up. You’ll be back at your desk in less than a week. Try not to stress about it, man.”
“Yeah,” I grumbled, wearily envisioning the road still ribboned out ahead of us, our final destination a distant chimera. I fumbled for my iPhone in my jeans pocket and set the alarm. I rose from the bed, lumbered over to the window and yanked the curtains closed.
Jack rose cumbrously from the chair. “See you in a few,” he said, turning and heading out.
I closed my eyes. The weight of my world fell onto me like a knight’s armor. Panic gripped me in its steel vise. I reached into my left pocket and shook out a Xanax and let it dissolve under my tongue for swift absorption into my beleaguered soul.
It seemed only seconds later the alarm went off, as if I had been administered an IV twilight anesthesia and had just come out of it. I glanced at the time on my iPhone. Two hours had gone by like a meteor streaking across the sky. It must have been a true REM sleep because I felt magically revivified. I showered and put on a nice button-up shirt, a fresh pair of jeans and some spiffy loafers.
Twenty minutes later the four of us were assembled in the Rampvan, Jack at the wheel and captaining us on bucolic roads back to the dominion of Persephone, a.k.a. the Linfield College campus. Joy, appearing mollified by my stern intervention, had groomed my mother for the event and dressed her in her nicest clothes. Jack looked aptly disheveled in his surgeon’s scrub pants and pineapple-decorated Hawaiian shirt. Apparently unaware that white was not the wisest color choice for wine events, Joy was attired in a pair of cream-toned cotton slacks and a revealing black tank top. (Had she taken my earlier urging to heart?)
The lot was filling up when we arrived. We paraded over to the entrance of the college’s Oak Garden where a long line was forming. I wended straight to the front of the line, where badges were being handed out, and found Julie running around like a chicken with its head cut off. The partying had been going on a few days now and some in the crowd were growing obstreperously impatient.
“Miles! I was worried you weren’t going to make it,” Julie exclaimed.
“I’m here,” I said. “Where’s the signing booth?”
“I’ll take you in,” she said.
I gestured to my group. “I want to get my people in. I don’t want them waiting in line,” I demanded, pulling rank–and enjoying it for once!
“Of course,” she said.
Julie found us all badges and we followed her into the Oak Garden. It was a vast area with large, spreading oaks ruling over the perimeter and providing shade from the still-searing sun. Round, red-clothed tables crammed the venue. Long tables, laden extravagantly with food and wine, and manned by local chefs and their respective staffs and sommeliers, festooned the borders on three sides. Orange-glowing Japanese lanterns were strung over the garden, lending it a preternatural aura. Julie led Jack, Joy and my mother to a center table where half the seats were reserved for us. The other IPNC participants sharing it–two couples with florid complexions and bottles from their cellars–greeted us affably.
As my dysfunctional family settled in, an impatient Julie pulled me by the elbow to the signing table. Pillared stacks of boxes of Shameless flanked the ends. On the lawn to the side I noticed additional boxes, still to be opened. Eager autograph hounds had already started forming a line and were raring to go. “This is where you’ll be signing,” Julie gestured.
“Okay,” I said, distracted by what looked like a series of parallel fences on fire. Silhouetted figures moved in front of them, characters of a Javanese shadow-puppet show, in a kind of strange pyromancy.
“Come on, I’ll show you, then you can start signing.”
“Be right back, folks,” I called out to the burgeoning line.
Julie ushered me over to where the eponymous salmon bake was underway. There were four long rows–maybe a hundred feet in length–of stacked oak logs that a small crew was in the process of igniting. To the side, sous chefs in white smocks wielding razor-sharp sword-sized knives were gutting gargantuan king salmon, expertly filleting them and then pegging them onto thick oak branches with a kind of crude, barbarian flair. “Once the fire gets really going,” Julie was saying loudly over the shouting voices and the crackling flames, “they’ll stick the salmon on those huge skewers in the ground and roast them just like the Kalapuya Indians did two hundred years ago. Flavor is unbelievable.”
“This is quite an event you put on, Julie,” I said, starting to feel as if I was coming on to a powerful hit of LSD.
“We spare no expense. These people are paying a lot of money. Come on.”
She directed me around the perimeter. I stopped to grab a glass of Pinot from the Boedecker Cellars people, who, once Julie apprised them of who I was, were thrilled to oblige. Wine sloshing out of the too-small tasting glass, I walked briskly to catch up with the indefatigable Julie. She steered me to the far side of the Oak Garden.
“I wanted to show you where the charity event is going to take place.”
“What’s the charity event?”
She stopped in front of one of the college’s brick buildings. On the lawn rested a fermentation vat the dimensions of a suburban tank pool, filled to the brim with red wine, and, in the heat, smelling badly oxidized. Constructed fifteen feet above it was makeshift scaffolding, with a 10x10 foot platform. A wooden stepladder leaned against the platform, on which I noticed–to my horror–was stationed a single chair.
“What’s this, Julie?”
“The charity dunking apparatus.”
“What?”
“You’ll be up in that chair.” She pointed. Then she swept her arm to the side of the contraption to indicate a prodigious bulls-eye–maybe three feet in diameter–mounted on a metal pole on which some artist had painted a cluster of red grapes five times scale. What looked like a primitive Rube Goldberg series of levers ran from the bulls-eye, feeding under the platform, where, to my increasing dismay, I could make out a trapdoor. Directly…beneath…the…hangman’s…chair.
“Someone’s going to get up there and…” I started to laugh nervously.
She threw me a bewildered look. “That someone is you, Miles.”
I telescoped my head into her face. “What? What’re you talking about?”
“Didn’t Marcie tell you?”
“No!”
“It’s part of being the master of ceremonies,” she said, smiling.
“You’re fucking joking?” I glanced back up at the hangman’s chair.
“I’m not going up there. I have acrophobia! As well as thanatophobia!”
“Miles, it’s for charity. Portland’s homeless shelter.”
“Which I’m going to be in after I get up there and destroy my reputation.”
“They’re going to love you,” she said, trying to be reassuring.
“Have you done this stunt before?”
“No. It’s the first year. But we tried it out. It’s fine.”
“No, it’s not fine, Julie. I wasn’t told about this.”
“We informed your publicist,” she said testily. “It’s in the contract.”
I got out my iPhone. “This gives a whole new meaning to double-booking! Hold on a sec.” I autodialed Marcie. She answered on the second ring.
“Hi, Miles,” she said in that cheery, disingenuous voice of hers that I was coming to loathe.
“Marcie, I’m here on night two of the IPNC…”
“Did the books arrive in time?”
“Yes! That’s not why I’m calling. You seemed to have conveniently forgotten to mention the WINE DUNKING CHARITY EVENT.”
“That’s part of the ten grand, Miles,” she replied unflinchingly.
“Why didn’t you run this by me?”
“I didn’t think you’d care,” she said, rapidly growing bellicose. “You’ve dumped spit buckets over your face, what’s the difference?”
“You didn’t tell me because you knew I would bail. This thing’s fifty feet high,” I hyperbolized. “A fucking gallows! And I’m paying you ten percent? Why don’t you fly your fat ass up here and do a couple cannonballs into the wine, you Benedict Arnold!”
“It’s unbeatable publicity,” she said, ignoring the insults, to which, as a publicist, she was inured.
