Vintage Attraction (24 page)

We checked into the Esperides Spa Hotel, situated among the churches and monasteries and ancient tombs. It was a modern resort that had been designed to look rustic. The rooms were clean and brightly colored. Izzy and I showered and changed for dinner. We decided to have a cocktail on the terrace, which overlooked a beautiful verdant countryside beneath the dwindling sunlight.

“You want vodka?” she asked after we sat down. She'd given me the seat that faced the mountains. So I could appreciate the scenery and maybe get inspired, she said.

A server promptly took Izzy's order. We were the only lounge patrons. “I guess Greeks don't start drinking this early,” I mused.

Izzy shook her head. “We're Americans. It's always five o'clock wherever we are. It's nice here, though. Without everybody else. Without a tasting to rush to.”

“I know what you mean,” I said. “These trips are intense.”

“Why do you think I've turned down so many invitations? ‘Come to Canada,' ‘Come to Argentina,' ‘Come to Italy and Croatia and Slovenia.' If I went everywhere I got invited, you'd never see me.”

“It was nice of them to let you have me along this trip.”

“I insisted.”

“Why?”

She looked at me like I'd just asked the stupidest question she'd ever heard. “Why do you think?”

The waiter set our drinks and a small dish of pistachios before us.

“I have an idea why you might have wanted me here at one point, but I don't know why you would now. It felt like we were getting along again, but—”

“But what?”

“Ask yourself, ‘But what?'”

“I don't follow.”

“Do you still want to get a separation? Do you still want to break up?”

“I don't know.” She flipped the clean ashtray in her hands. “Do you?”

“Are you done with Pacer Rosengrant?”

She squinted at her cava. “Don't start with me.”

“Why are you texting him?”

Her gaze went stormy and piercing. “Why are you constantly patrolling me?”

I was struck with the vague understanding that it was going to take more than reason to extricate Izzy from the mire. I was going to have to do something, but I didn't know yet what.

Izzy stepped away to the water closet off of the lobby to refresh her makeup. I drained my vodka and stared out the windows, down the expanse of green vegetation. It seemed to stretch out beyond the resort into infinity. I knew it must have had some kind of end point, even if I couldn't conceive of it from here. There was always a demarcation where something concluded and something else began. When I tried to commit the panorama to memory, it made me dizzy. I shivered. Suddenly my throat was dry.

When she came back, Izzy noticed right away that her glass was empty. “What happened to my drink?”

“‘I drank it,'” I said. “‘Because it was yours.'”

She wrinkled her forehead in perplexity.

“That's Hemingway. From
The Garden of Eden
. When you said . . . well, it came back to me.”

“It's a beautiful line, Hapworth.”

“You should read the novel.”

“What were you writing down at Tsantali?” she asked then.

“Everything.”

“Do you feel like you've learned more about wine since we've been here?”

“I do. I'm trying to get as much of it into my brain as I can.”

“There's probably a restaurant concept in here somewhere.”

I grinned. It was touching how she wanted to help me become something more than just an out-of-work English teacher who followed his famous sommelier wife along on wine trips, made inane comments, and took superfluous notes. She still believed in my potential, even at a point when she had no idea of what she'd end up herself. “I know. They're everywhere. You know, Izzy, I'm starting to think more and more about developing a wine idea. A real one.”

“Like a wine bar?”

“A
Greek
wine bar, a restaurant, something like that. I love these wines. You love these wines. We could be a hit.”

She inhaled the clean evening air that breezed our way. “You'd still need to convince investors.”

“Once I'd tell them about all of this, how hard could it be?”

“You'd have to sell more than just Greek wine, you know.”

“I know—but, wait a minute, why?”

“Because nobody knows Greek wine in the States yet. Except for Retsina. And those shitty, dusty, ancient bottles on high shelves at those terrible fake tavernas on Halsted, in Chicago. People admire them and then order a Mythos. To Americans, Greek wine is decoration. And what we've had so far here is the total opposite.” She looked almost forlorn delivering this disheartening state of enological affairs.

“You forget about your inimitable way of teaching old Americans new drinks. Isabelle Conway doesn't follow trends. She
starts
trends.”

“You really want to open a Greek wine bar?”

“There's nothing else like it in Chicago. We could have these wines, foods we've had here for sale, yogurt strained on the premises. We'd be known for our
dolmades
and our delicious by-the-glass Xinomavro.”

“I don't know about a Greek specialty foods shop, too, since, you know, you and I know nothing about Greek food, except how much we like eating it.”

“You're an amazing cook.”

She shrugged this off. “I can tell you this: I like all this ‘we' stuff.” She smiled.

“Whatever we did, it would be the only way to do it.”

“That's sweet, Hapworth.”

“We are married, remember?”

“Yeah,” she said in a dreamy tone. “I do.”

Aboard the bus, we circled the mountain. We climbed up hilly drives at imperiled angles. Then we plunged into town for dinner. We passed gas stations, some boarded up, others operational. We drove by newsstands, a sporting goods store, and an electronics store. There was a sign pointing interested drivers to a sacrifice site. A large power-tool warehouse had a big banner on a windowless side advertising a Mikita circular saw and FAG brand bearings. The latter product name elicited fervent adolescent twittering from the back rows.

We waited outside while George stepped into a small restaurant to announce our arrival. Izzy told Dick, Maddie, and Barry more about
Vintage Attraction
—their intrigue was boundless—and I watched her. She'd changed clothes again before we left. Now she wore a bright-white blouse with its first three buttons open. She also had on dark jeans and ballet flats on her sockless feet.

George emerged to direct everyone into Manos. Across the room from a polished bar, a long table, covered in a plaid cloth, awaited us beneath low-watt bulbs on spindly cords that dangled from the chandeliers. Some menus lay between the place settings. Nobody except Dick reached for one.

“Just order for us,” Maddie said to George. “We've had so much food today, I don't know if I can think about anything more.”

“Sure,” he said. “Just a couple of things? Small plates, family style?”

Dick thinned his lips. He released the menu he'd taken with a flourish. “I was going to get an entrée. But if nobody else is . . .”

Under the dim lights of the chandeliers, the support branches of which looked like wooden antlers, we ate appetizers. Dick and Izzy talked about the wines we'd tasted earlier.

“So, basically, what we saw today, at Tsantali? I could easily buy the entire vintage for my stores,” he said from his seat at the head of the table. Behind him was a wall of a stone mosaic that resembled the pattern of a giraffe's skin.

“How many franchises do you have, again?”

“With Corked4Less? By the end of the year, we'll have two hundred locations in America. Next two years, we're going international.”

Maddie spread some
taramosalata
on a piece of bread and ate it without an outward expression of enjoyment. She stared through the windows at some kids skateboarding in front of the restaurant. She'd probably heard this story too many times.

“And so since I can get tremendous discounts straight from the wineries, I can cut out the need for distribution channels, and that's why we can offer such savings to the consumers. Isabelle, that organic Cabernet we had today. How much would that usually retail?”

Izzy said, “I don't know, Dick. Depends on the wholesale cost, of course, but assuming good FOB pricing, after you convert the currency from the euro . . . twelve, thirteen dollars a bottle?”

“So, I'd sell it for seven,” Dick said. “That's our ideal price point, seven to fifteen dollars. Anything over fifteen, our customers don't want to bother with it.”

“Neither does this customer,” I said.

Dick smiled. “I'm sure with this one you don't have to buy a lot of your own wine.”

“No, not too much,” I said. “But I appreciate a good deal when I see one.”

“That's the right way to approach it, I think,” said Dick.

“What's your next franchise business?” George asked.

“We're launching a line of self-service tanning bed facilities.”

Here Maddie put down her water glass and turned back to the table. “It's called Bronze-o-Matic.”

Dick pressed together his lips. “I let her name it.” Maddie bowed her head, and Izzy and I applauded.

“What's it . . . so, it's going to be—” Barry began to ask.

“Tanning,” Maddie said. “People will buy prepaid tanning cards at a variety of outlets, supermarkets, Walgreens, and then let themselves into the franchises with their cards, just like at an ATM.”

“And then just get down and close the lid?”

“Pretty much.”

“The overhead is low, and the demand for hastening skin cancer high,” Dick said drolly. “From where I sit, it's a gold mine.”

“A bronze mine,” I said.

“Right,” Dick said. He smiled. We clinked our glasses together. “I like this one. He's quiet, but he's on the ball.”

Plates began to arrive and circulate the table. From hand to hand went breaded eggplant, salad,
horta
greens, sausage, broiled lamb chops—surprisingly devoid of fat, compared to their American counterparts—pita, and sautéed mushrooms. There were bowls filled with lemon wedges. The waiter encouraged us to each take several pieces. The restaurant recommended, in keeping with Grecian dining practices, that we squeeze lemon juice over all of the dishes, in order to heighten the flavors. To conclude the meal, an assortment of brown and golden semolina cakes,
revani
, appeared alongside chocolate, strawberry, and vanilla ice creams. Everybody claimed not to really want dessert. After receiving it anyway, compliments of the house, everyone forked and spooned steadily until it was gone.

On the return drive to the hotel, in the front seat, working beneath a small light, George went over the next day's itinerary. In the back, Barry tried to fill out postcards when the road wasn't too bumpy. Maddie, in her own row, listened to her iPod. This allowed Izzy and Dick to sit together and talk about business. A few rows ahead, I stretched out, shut my eyes. I breathed Mike's billowing closed-window cigarette smoke and pretended to sleep.

“I have the money, I have the stores, but the thing I don't have is someone who knows what the hell he or she is talking about telling me what wines to stock,” Dick said. “It's frustrating. I need a sommelier. Do you consult? I know you're busy with TV and stuff, but do you have colleagues who do that sort of thing?”

“Sure,” Izzy said. “Sommeliers are a diverse bunch. Many are in restaurants, but a good number work for distributors, for wineries, do consulting, speaking, buy for hotels, train restaurant staffs, serve as brand ambassadors, you name it.”

“I think if I had someone just assess the overall Corked4Less central purchasing operation, I'd at least have a good idea if what we're doing makes sense in the long run, if we're picking good sellers.”

“Well, how
are
your wines selling?”

“It's all over the map. We have a couple of core products—Pinot Grigio, for example—that sell consistently well, year-round. Other wines are seasonal, heavier reds in the winter, for example, and lighter styles in the summer. But I think we're limited to . . . a roster of very typical, very safe choices.”

“Safe and typical are the least interesting wine descriptors.”

“I know. I
know.
And that's why I wanna get someone in to help out.”

Izzy was silent during a turbulent stretch of highway. The road leveled, and she spoke again. “I think I might have some contacts for you.”

“Good,” Dick said. “Give me their names and e-mails when we get back. Or, you know, before the end of the week.”

“I will,” she said. She spoke obliquely, as though she were thinking about other things.

At the hotel, we said good night and went to our rooms. Izzy washed up. I lay on the bed and flipped through the leather-bound hotel information binder. When she came out of the bathroom, she looked at me with such a serious expression that it caused me to sit up. That her face was disconcertingly pale without makeup heightened the trepidation.

“What?” I asked.

“What's that?” Her gaze had snagged on the information binder.

I read to her from the “Electricity” chapter.
“In case of interruption, luminous lamps lit up sufficiently all the communal spaces until the generator of hotel is placed in operation. During this time it is not allowed to use electronic equipments (TV, P/C). The generator does not provide constant tendency and exists danger of their serious damage.”

“Sounds foreboding.”

“I think we're safe as long as we don't use the computer or expect any sort of constant tendency.”

She smiled, but I could tell a rival emotion assailed her.