Vertical
Page 48
chapter 22
Two days later I had a reservation from Milwaukee to Los Angeles. I’d turn in the Rampvan at the airport. With a couple hours to kill I drove along Lake Michigan, three-legged Snapper riding beside me, panting happily. The sky was blue and wind churned up little whitecaps. I rolled my mother’s wheelchair–a kind of keepsake–down to the shoreline and sat in it. It felt weird, of course. For nearly five years she had spent her waking hours only in this chair. Sitting at the lake’s edge, Snapper nestled in my lap, everyone else gone, I felt the same old loneliness start to claw at me. I got out the iPhone.
“Soy yo,” I said, doing my best at the accent. “LAU-ra.”
“Sí, es ella.” That was followed by a moment’s hesitation. “Miles?”
“Yeah.” I hesitated. “Is that offer to come visit in Barcelona still good?”
I had a hard time with the rush of beautifully inflected Catalan that followed, but took the answer to be yes.
“I want to eat at the finest tapas bars in Barcelona and stare into the wells of your eyes. I want to take that boat to Ibiza that you were telling me about and run naked into the Mediterranean. I want to take a train down to Valencia and dine on the most exquisite paellas. I want to go to San Sebastián and eat at Arzak and that other amazing place I saw on Anthony Bourdain’s No Reservations called Echeveria where the chef cooks everything over open coals, even caviar. I want to drink in your culture. Sound like a plan?”
“Okay. You sound, uh, preocupado.”
“I suppose I am a little.” I’d tell her later that my mother had just–that’d I’d just killed my mother. “I want to change my life. I want to see if what we had has traction, traccíón.” I laughed at that stupid unnecessary translation, stared anxiously out at the mottled surface of the lake. There were no boats, just a vast expanse of water. “¿Laura?”
“Yes, I’m here.”
“I’m coming to Barcelona to fall in love with you.”
I knew viscerally, in my distraught state, that I had stepped across the line, blurting something so ludicrous, so premature. We had only spent a day and a night together, for Christ’s sake. Had I lost my mind? What was this newfound sobriety doing to me?
“Tendremos un gran amor. For as long as it lasts.”
“That’s how everything works. For as long as it lasts.”
She said something else, affirmative sounding, in her native tongue. I caught about half of it.
“One other thing. I quit drinking.”
“That’s good, no?”
“I might have one glass if we go to Rioja.”
“Okay.”
“Or maybe two.”
“Okay.”
I told her I would call her when my plans were finalized and hung up. Next, I logged onto the Net and went to Amazon.com. I ordered Gibbon’s The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. All three volumes.
I thought I might learn something.
I looked down at Snapper. “What am I going to do with you, little guy?” Snapper looked up at me with dolorous eyes. Fuck!
The sound of the tiny waves lapping at the shore metronomically filled the void. I stared pensively into nothingness, the clouds now starting to bunch together. The last patch of sunlight on the water vacated, surrendering to gray.
Suddenly my thoughts were shattered by the roar of a light plane passing overhead, flying east out over Lake Michigan. I tented my hand to my forehead and looked out. Squinting, I imagined my father and my mother in the cockpit, in their prime, laughing. They were going to be engaged soon. Then married. Then have kids.
When the plane had passed I got up out of my mother’s wheelchair, cradling Snapper in my arms, leaving it parked in the sand.
I cupped my hand over Snapper’s head, brought it to mine and nuzzled his snout. I let him freely lick my cheek. “It’s just you and me now, little guy.” Tears welled in my eyes. “Let’s go home.”
THE END
Author’s Note
Vertical, like Sideways before it, is a celebration of wine – all wine – and not any one particular winery or vintner. No winery or winemaker or anyone in the wine trade any capacity influenced the wines or wineries that appear in Vertical. As part of my research for Vertical, I held several large tastings with non-wine professionals and solicited their opinions. The wines that appear are a result of those and other efforts, and were picked as appropriate for the characters and the story. Please celebrate the hard work and achievements of all vignerons in the spirit of the Vertical journey. Finally, while many of the places described are real, Vertical is a work of fiction, and its characters are fictitious. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
Rex Pickett
Santa Monica
November 2010
Table of Contents
Cover
Title
Copyright
Acknowledgements
Dedication
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Author’s Note