SUMMER WINE

By Sadie

After he fell asleep at the wheel and dented a guardrail out by Fall River, Al began to unravel. I thought I was dead there for a second, he told clients, colleagues, strangers.

Despite his sensitive palate, for which he had won countless awards and accolades, he no longer cared which of the Australian Chardonnays had the fattest mouth-feel. He no longer appreciated the gasoline aroma that wafted from certain German Rieslings, or melted into the fragrant muskiness of a Skillogalee Rosé, ripe and fleshy like the inside of a mother's purse.

His eyes had become wider, more distracted, and somehow bluer. His lips began to dance uneasily across his face. He began to drink quickly, greedily, for the drunk.

Normally this time of year, Al would be filled with delicious anticipation. The annual crop of Beaujolais Nouveau would be released at the end of the fall harvest in just a few weeks. Through the summer, he had whipped his clientele into near frenzy at the prospect of supping these young, playful reds. As a result, this year's midnight tasting event had sold out in minutes. And he was dreading it terribly.

Al had managed the best wine boutique in the city for nearly eleven years. No kind of huckster, he was a true rarity in the business. Wine lovers came far and wide for his heartfelt recommendations, and favoured clientele were often invited into the back room to sample new stock. Amongst the branded wooden shipping boxes and dusty bottles, as he spoke, a glass of Sauvignon Blanc filled many a mouth with melon and straw or wet cool slate.

His voice delivered an endless train of plush adjectives, as he rubbed his tidy beard, eyes gently closed. And when he ran out of words, he'd say, let's arrive in the present moment, allowing the flavours to wash over our tongues and linger in our mouths for a long, dying finish. And before they'd know it, they would be unpacking another case of wine into their cellars.

Since the fender bender, though, these things had become difficult.

I worked in the evenings, serving customers and re-stocking shelves. He paid me in cash so as not to disrupt my disability income, supplementing that with a shared glass of wine or two before closing. Al's eyes would lock into an inward distance, describing the minute rapture of the chocolate notes, the forward jamminess, the hint of barnyard. And I'd nod dimly, pouring the glass down my throat.

After the incident with the guardrail, though, he began to look at me when he spoke. He dropped the back room wine-speak, quietly finishing the open bottles. He began to bite his teeth down on the thin tasting glass.

He began to ask about my scars. I was sure I was dead there for a minute, Esmeralda, he'd say, his eyes searching mine.

Then one night he was asking to touch the scar that began on my right thigh and the wine I had been drinking since the beginning of my shift was burning between my ears and it turned out that he meant with his tongue, his incredibly sensitive and perceptive tongue, and soon I was bent backwards over a pallet of Barolo, my skirt hiked high and my mouth all tar and roses.

I knew he was married but I wasn't really in a position to give a shit.

I thought fucking Al in the back room of the boutique might help him get his mojo back, after his brush with death and all. My therapist said this was bad news, but I was starting to feel better every day. I was beginning to enjoy my walks to work. I was taking pleasure in the cool autumn breeze against my skin, and even the flickering orange of the autumn leaves.

I started to feel like I might not need my cane any more.

But Al's unraveling continued. When Chef Marco Denis, a major restaurant client, came in looking for a pairing for his new bouillabaisse, Al kept on about the sea urchins in the recipe and how his mother's people had always called them whore's eggs, and wasn't it only the ovaries that were edible? And, did I tell you about my fender bender? I really thought I was dead for a minute there.

Even I knew enough from working there that he could suggest, for example, Domaine la Ferme Blanche Blanc de Blanc Cassis. The 2008 had just come in last week and it was an ideal price point for Denis' restaurant clientele.

The winds and rains of early November began to yank the leaves from the trees, turning the city into a slick grey slate. I started leaving my cane home and enjoying my warped wiggle on the way to work. I'd smile at passersby on the street, anticipating his discerning nose drawing in sharp and thick up and down my body, his salty smell mingling with mine.

At the stroke of nine, he'd lock the door, the look of a hungry dog hanging behind his increasingly unruly beard. It got so he would be peeling my clothes off while I tried to finish my cash-out, as if my uniform were smothering him.

One night, gasping as he'd jolted me against the safe, I bit my lip, and there was his hungry mouth capturing me between his teeth, sucking, murmuring, nearly whimpering.

That connoisseur's mouth was everywhere, snuffing and lapping at my neck, drinking in the inky taste of my scars, and then devouring my sex, which I imagined him describing to clients as brimming with sweet jammy fruit, spicy chocolate, leather, licorice, tobacco. I writhed with a dizzied pleasure as Al drained away the anguish and terror that wracked my broken body.

Lying spent against the cold boutique floor with him, I almost felt he understood. I started letting him drunk-drive me home.

Soon Al was sleeping in the back of the store. He began begging me to stay the night with him, cursing his ice queen bitch of an Acadian wife, weeping and clawing at my stockings. He began drinking his way through the oldest and finest stock.

Clients became wary of Al's tufting beard and wine-stained lips. They began to ask for my recommendations. Though I lacked Al's poetic flourishes, or a Dom Perignon Award for Excellence, I felt increasingly poised when suggesting bottles. I forgot to worry about flavour-matching charts and advised from a strange and guttural place.

I even started helping Chef Denis build a wine list for his special fall menu.

In the back room, I'd take a swig of Lebanese Chateau Musar 1997, and let it pour down from my mouth, soaking my work uniform. I'd ask Al to describe the pairing, to explain the inexplicable. I'd pour the rest of the bottle over him, and move myself slowly, teasingly, over his sodden, tormented form.

This wine has a muscular entry, I'd whisper into his ear. It has a musky, earthy depth that goes very well with the gamey spice notes you've acquired over time.

His rasping responses made no sense. But as his wine-soaked beard scratched against me, tingles of sensation awakened in my deadened scar tissue. And as he'd take me from behind, the hot fear and shame that had long marked my legs and back would melt into hilarity and lightness. As Al withered into an agonized climax, I came forcefully against him in joyful whoops and hollers.

I started to drive his car home myself, staggering up to my door, laughing raggedly into the sunrise.

Le Beaujolais Nouveau est arrivé! screamed the banner above the shop door. We'd ordered the banners back in the spring, along with the gold-leafed VIP invitations and scoring sheets.

Beaujolais Nouveau is just another a mass-marketed commodity, a sham hyped out of all proportion by Ole Pennybags DuBoeuf, Al began confiding to clients. He'd taken to muttering about capitalism, vampires, and whore's eggs. He'd taken to carrying around an earmarked edition of The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People.

Still, everyone showed up for the midnight tasting, bundled up against the cold dark night, demure glasses and notepads in hand.

I had spent the day cleaning up syrupy puddles of dried wine, blood, and shards of glass from the back room. Crisp white tablecloths and sparkling Reidel tasting glasses now covered the table where Al had just last night begged on his knees for me slice his leg with a broken wine glass. I toyed with the idea, trailing the jagged edge over his goose-pimpled thigh, but the prospect of nicking his skin made me woozy.

Cut into me, Esmeralda, you selfish witch, he pleaded as I backed away. I resolved to leave his limp body behind on the table and get a good night's sleep, but then I noticed an open bottle of Domaine Sainte Rose La Garrigue beside him. It seemed a shame to waste it.

I'm done with you, Al, I whispered sadly, kissing his forehead, mounting the only part of him that still throbbed with life.

Sharpened pencils and clean scoring sheets were placed neatly before all eleven place settings, along with crystal dishes of palate-cleansing crackers and pewter spittoons. Everything was in place except Al, who was nowhere to be found.

Usually I'd be shuffling around the background, replacing glasses, refilling crackers and emptying the occasional spittoon. I'd be tiptoeing around like the Hunchback of Notre Dame among the cognoscenti. But tonight, at the head of the table, in a spiffy red dress, sheer stockings, and mean lipstick, I knew just what to do.

The guests didn't even ask about him.

As we waited for the clock to strike twelve, I cobbled together some opening remarks. The thin-skinned gamay grape grown in the hills of Beaujolais makes a lighthearted wine that can be enjoyed much younger than the more serious reds produced in nearby Bordeaux or Burgundy, I explained vaguely, preoccupied by the rapt whites of the eyes around me, the attentively crossed arms, the bit lips anticipating.

In the old days, growers would celebrate the end of a season's hard work by quaffing this youthful, easy wine directly from holes they'd stabbed into the barrels. Legend has it, I ad-libbed, that whole villages would collapse into orgies of debauchery and violence. Pausing here for nervous over-loud laughter.

My sideshow barks lacked Al's lyrical grace, echoing hollowly through the tasting room, but no one seemed to notice. I'm not sure what's in store for us tonight, I teased, but I do know that this Beaujolais Nouveau won't last in the cellar. Time's a-wasting, so let's get on with celebrating this fleeting delight!

Silky and lively in my mouth and down my throat, I thought of Al. How I wished he could have been there with the rest of us, sucking the life out of things, terrified, turned on, and fixed on the future.

I don't know about you, I announced glibly, but I taste strawberries, cherries, and an angel's kiss in spring.