“We can do that after dinner,” Zoe’s sister, Pam, said. “They’re open late.”
“Okay. I feel better. It’s just that sometimes Bruce is … too attentive, I guess.”
“Yeah, that must suck.”
“I know, I know. I’m not complaining.”
After dinner they all did go to the bar, drinking several more bottles of the amazing wine, and eventually spilling out onto the patio area, with its firepit and a sky full of stars. Abigail, who’d been tired earlier, found herself fairly drunk and wide awake by midnight, then time suddenly sped up and her friends had disappeared one by one, and the fire was dying down, and she was wearing a stranger’s sweater.
CHAPTER 5
Frankly,” she said, staring at the half inch of wine at the bottom of her glass, “it’s getting a little creepy how much you seem to care about my sex life.”
The man held up both hands. “Okay, I’ll stop. I am being creepy. I just … you seem a little hesitant about this impending marriage, and as someone who’s not in a particularly happy marriage myself, I guess I’m projecting a little.”
“Because you wished you’d slept with more women when you were single.”
“I’ve slept with plenty of women. I think my problem was that I hadn’t been in a serious emotional relationship with another person before I got married. I don’t think either of us had been. And when we couldn’t have kids, it just took too much out of us, and now it just feels joyless.”
“Do you think you’ll get divorced?”
“Probably. I think she’s already involved with someone else, this guy she works with, although I’m guessing it’s more of an emotional affair right now. Honestly, when I think about it, I worry more about who’s going to get the dog. And I worry about my parents, because they both love her, love my wife. More than me, I think.”
“But if you’re not happy …”
“Right,” he said, straightening his back but staying seated. “Enough about this, though. Let’s get back to you.” He held up his glass. “To the bride-to-be. May you have better luck than the rest of us.”
Abigail took the last sip of her wine. “Your hand is trembling,” she said. “Are you cold?”
“I’m fucking freezing to death,” he said, smiling.
“Oh my God. Take your sweater back.”
He reached across and placed his hand on Abigail’s arm to stop her from taking the sweater off. “No, then you’ll be cold.”
“Let’s go inside, then.”
“I’d rather stay cold. If we get up and go inside, you’re suddenly going to realize how late it is, and how tired you are, and then you’re going to go to your room and I’ll never see you again.”
“How late is it?” Abigail asked, looking at her wrist where she normally wore her Fitbit before realizing she’d taken it off for the night.
“I’m not telling you,” the man said, digging into the front pocket of his pants, pulling out a crumpled pack of cigarettes. He extracted one, putting it between his lips, and said, “I hope you don’t mind. I limit myself to one a day, usually around this time of night.”
“How do you do that? I only smoked in college, but I was up to a pack a day in less than a month.”
“You want one now?” He held out the blue pack of cigarettes, a French brand, and Abigail took one.
“Why not?” she said.
“They’re unfiltered, so go easy. I figure if I’m only going to have one a day it might as well pack a punch.”
He lit her cigarette first, then his, using matches that had been tucked inside the pack.
Abigail slid back along her seat and blew a plume of smoke into the night. The taste of smoke in her mouth made her feel younger than she was, younger and drunker. The whole evening was reminding her of something, and she realized that it felt like that first night she’d spent with Ben Perez in college, like she’d met a stranger and suddenly anything was possible. And even though she didn’t want to admit it, she didn’t want the night to end, either. She liked this guy. Or at least she liked the feeling of being with this guy. She liked his insistent questions, and his honesty. And she liked his sweater. It was a yellow cardigan with corduroy elbow patches. It smelled old, but in a nice way—mothballs and aftershave.
Tilting her head back, she stared across at the man. “You never told me your name. Remember, it was part of the deal. I tell you my entire sexual history and you tell me your name.”
“Maybe, at this point, we shouldn’t tell each other our names.”
“We could make them up,” Abigail said.
“Sure. How about I make up your name and you make up mine?” He tapped his cigarette, and ash dropped onto the patio. She wondered if smoking was even allowed at this vineyard.
“Okay. You go first.”
“Um, I’ll call you Madeleine.”
Abigail thought about it for a moment. “I can live with that, I guess. Why Madeleine?”
“I don’t know. It just popped into my head, like it’s the name that you should have. I’ll call you Maddy for short. What’s my name?”
“Scottie,” Abigail said.
“Scottie? Why Scottie? It makes me sound like a dog.”
“It’s a movie reference,” Abigail said. “If I’m Madeleine, then you’re Scottie.”
The man pursed his lips, then said, “Vertigo.”
Abigail smiled. “Yes.”
“If I recall, that particular relationship didn’t end very well.”
“Look, you started this, Scottie, when you named me Madeleine, so don’t blame me.”
“You’re too young,” the man said, “to know about movies like Vertigo.”
Abigail took a long drag on her cigarette, her throat burning, then picked a shred of tobacco from her tongue. “My father gave me my movie education, and my mother gave me my book education. I was an only child, so I was also their project.”
“What are you going to do with all those skills after you get married?”
“Oh, let’s not talk about that right now.”
“Is that because it’s a boring subject or because you’re not going to work after you get married?”
“Why do you say that?”
The man stretched an arm above his head and rotated his wrist.
“Because your fiancé is rich.”
“Him being rich has nothing to do with whether I’ll keep working. And, no, it’s not the reason I’m marrying him, but it is a part of him that I find attractive. I won’t lie. It will be very nice to never have to think about money again, because, honestly, that’s all that my parents seemed to do before they separated, and I worry it’s wrecking them. You’re really overly concerned that I’m marrying the wrong guy.” During this short speech, another internal speech was going through Abigail’s head, one in which she told herself that she sounded haughty and defensive. She stared at the cigarette in her hand, realized it was making her dizzy, and flicked it into the fire.