Easy to Like (2 page)

“Italians didn't crash those planes
into the buildings, Saudis did,” said Eva.

“All the same, when we have perfectly
good wine grown right here in California,” said Veronica.

“Rather too much of it,” said Elliot.
“And as for ‘perfectly' . . .”

“What about your wine?” asked Veronica.
She turned to Eva and Robin. “Elliot has his own vineyard. Is it in Napa?”

“Paso Robles region, place called
Enredo,” said Elliot.

“Will we taste your wine?” asked Eva.
“If only for America.”

“I hadn't planned on it. Most of our
vines are only eleven years old, our fifth vintage in the bottle, none of it is
really drinking.”

“It's not ready?” asked Robin.

“No. It's made to age, a
vin de garde
. Now if we can return to Fattoria
Galletti, do you . . . ?”

“Which of the two is your favourite?”
asked Robin.

“Both are utter failures. While I find
the 2002 the more interesting, it is impossible to drink.”

“Why are we drinking wines that are
failures?” Robin was confused.

“Let's drink some successes,” Veronica
said, clapping her hands. She was rocking slightly as if trying to hold her pee.

“The point here is
to . . . There comes a time, if you're being analytical,
when failures are more intriguing than successes.”

“But,” Eva cut him off, “I thought wine
was all about pleasure. I'm sure you said that.”

“And getting a buzz,” added Veronica.
What wine she'd consumed had lowered her already limited inhibitions, for with
these words she, without a care, manually hoisted one of her boobs into a more
comfortable position. Surgically altered or not, thought Elliot, they were great
tits.

“People draw pleasure from different
things. I, for one, don't like a wine that gives too much of itself, I —”

“So there is no Cab in the wine you
make,” Robin concluded.

“Correct,” said Elliot, to make life
easier.

“Is it like a Chardonnay?”

“No. It's a red table wine. It's made
from many different grapes, nine different varieties, none of them Chardonnay or
Cabernet Sauvignon.”

“What do you call it?” Veronica said,
and laughed inexplicably.

“It's called 303 Locura Canyon
Road.”

“Why?” wondered Eva.

“Because that's where it comes from and
what it should taste like.”

“Why so many grapes?” asked Robin.

“It's . . . I don't
like to say ‘emulate' but — well, it's
in the tradition
of
a Châteauneuf-du-Pape.”

“I think I've heard of that,” said
Veronica.

“The most intriguing wine I ever tasted
was a Châteauneuf,” said Elliot. “We don't want to mimic it, it would be
impossible, but Châteauneuf is our inspiration.” Elliot saw that he was losing
Robin and Veronica. “Châteauneuf-du-Pape is a wine they make in the hot part of
France from a bunch of different grapes, some of which we also grow here in
California.” Yeah, he was only talking to Eva now. “We also use a bit of the
old-vine black mix, mostly Zin and Carignan and Cinsault, that was on the estate
when we bought it.” (This presence of the Zinfandel in his wine was bothering
Elliot of late. Tiny portion though it was — probably less than one percent — he
felt it might be imparting a note that he could identify only as “aluminum
syrup.”) “People mistakenly think, because it's a blend of grapes, that it's
some sort of
concoction
, but you grow different
grapes on different sites to best represent the land and the conditions. It's a
meadow, not a lawn.”

“That was absolutely THE BEST wine you
ever tasted?” said Robin, who Elliot now saw was drunk.

“Well,
no . . . what's ‘best'? The best wines anyone ever tastes
are Burgundy Grand Cru, Musigny, or Les Clos. You don't compare every play to
Hamlet
 . . . that's not
the . . .” Finally Elliot thought he had it. “The most beautiful
lover you ever had isn't necessarily the one you think about all the time.”

This appeared to give Robin pause.
Either that or she was becoming dizzy.

“What did you say it was called again,
Château something something?” Veronica's pen was poised above a notepad on which
she had yet to write a word.

“Châteauneuf-du-Pape. It was an old
bottle — a 1961 Isabelle d'Orange. It should have been long finished when I
drank it, too old, but no.”

“Orange County?” wondered Veronica.

“Why didn't you bring some of that
‘intriguing' wine along, instead of two wines you say are failures?” asked
Eva.

“The one I drank was the only bottle I
have ever seen. Nineteen sixty-one was the last year the vineyard existed. They
never made much. And the family was always at odds with the syndicate. I've
tried tracking any down that might have been lying around
but . . . to no avail.” Elliot heard himself starting to
sound precious.

“Why was it such a memorable lover?”
Veronica asked.

Good question.

“Oh, I'm not sure.” Elliot had worried
for a time that it wasn't the wine at all but the context, the confidence and
contentment he'd felt drinking it with Lucy on that perfect day in the South of
France. Then, hearing one day, about a not very good movie, that “everything is
context,” he realized that everything wasn't. Some part of anything was context,
some other part was substance. “It was a spectacular vintage for the entire
appellation, and the blend of grapes at that particular vineyard was not
typical; there was more of this and less of that than was usual. Isabelle
d'Orange actually used fourteen different grape varieties, the extra grape being
an obscure one, the Matou de Gethsemane. That's one of the reasons they were
having trouble with . . . Regardless, it's not germane to
this discussion.”

“But you will bring some good wines the
next time?” asked Veronica.

“I promise.”

Outside,
the glare
punched. The stone of Jerry's vast sloping drive was the
texture and colour of Rolaids. In the sun it was infernal. Elliot felt his
pockets for sunglasses. The daytime highs in Southern California were
approaching record levels; it was Al Gorey. Elliot dreaded calling Walt and
getting a report out of the vineyard — no doubt another day over a hundred
degrees and the newly formed grapes would be beginning to show signs of heat
stress. The oldest Zinfandel vines seemed even to like it and the Mourvèdre
could handle it, but every other grape variety he grew would be shutting down,
the fruit cooking before it could mature phenolically.

He looked back at the house. It was a
rectilinear thing, planes of tooth enamel and shimmering glass — Richard Meier
school. There was a smog warning, and the sky, white as the centre of a spark in
every direction, seemed to suspend something dusty and grey as cigarette ash.
The palms in the rear garden that rose beyond the structure looked to Elliot as
if they were about to ignite, like that tree line at the beginning of
Apocalypse Now
.
“This is
the end.”

Worse, it was the middle.

Eva emerged from the house, her blue
hair and bituminous sweater on the white stone in the midday sun some kind of
experiment in the limits of ultraviolet tolerance in New Yorkers.

“That was interesting,” Eva said, not
bothering to sound convincing. “It's weird terrain, aesthetically. I mean, are
there greater rewards for the viewer or listener or drinker if the work is more
difficult?”

Elliot made like he wasn't sure whether
it was he to whom Eva was talking, as though she was mistaking him for someone
else standing nearby who might understand, or care, what she was saying.
“‘Aesthetically?' I'm a
screenwriter
, you
know . . . 
here
,” he jabbed
his finger down toward the scorching concrete drive, “in Los Angeles.”

“You're being flip, right? It's hard to
tell in California,” said Eva.

“Sorry. I don't hear many interesting
questions. If you'd asked me if the lead could be younger and more sympathetic
or if the ending could be more uplifting, I might have better understood how to
dodge the question.”

Eva smiled for the first since they'd
met. And she was right, it was weird and interesting stuff. He was being a
prick. Elliot was about to say so, but Robin was upon them.

She came out the house like a shot and
staggered, tipping forward on account of her heels, gravity sending her
careering toward the street. By the time she reached Eva she had to put a hand
out to arrest her momentum.

“Elliot,” she said, “you live in
Beverly Hills . . . didn't you say?”

“No. I didn't. I'm in the Los Feliz
Hills, by Griffith Park. Beverly Hills,” he sighed, “can be on the way.”

“Awesome. You can drive me home, it's
not far, 1085 Summit.”

Given what little they had consumed —
and that over a couple of hours — it seemed incredible that Robin could be
impaired, but as she came unmoored from Eva her course to Elliot was as
irregular as a torn kite. Elliot looked back to Eva as Robin dragged him
forward. “Aesthetically,” imagine.

On the drive to the Silvermans' house
Robin explained how it was that she had become so intoxicated: Thursdays were
“not-eating” days for her. On Mondays and Thursdays she would take no solid
food, though she allowed herself fluids — that they might be alcoholic was no
matter. Elliot didn't bother offering that booze, in any variety, was not
particularly slimming.

So little did Robin care about getting
smashed during her fasts that she invited Elliot in for a drink.

“I would love to,” he said, on the off
chance that Lucky Silverman was at home and that Elliot might finally shake his
hand, give Lucky a face to remember. Everything went through six or seven
page-one rewrites, minimum, these days; having your name rattling around the
consciousness of a producer as busy as Silverman increased your chances of
joining the queue of eligible hacks. Elliot had been on a conference call with
Silverman once but knew that Lucky would never remember it. Even he couldn't
recall what that one had been about. That Lucky would've known that the
scribbler on the phone also had something to do with a winery of which he owned
a piece was unlikely. Lucky Silverman had bigger fish to fry. Men in such a
hurry only learned the dimensions of their holdings when the courts were seizing
them.

Elliot pulled up to an iron gate at the
bottom of a long, steep drive. Robin stuck her head out the window, waving to an
invisible camera, and the security barrier opened. Parking was under a
twelve-car pergola.

The interior of Casa Silverman was
decorated in an Asian tropical theme. There was a preponderance of
coffee-coloured wooden furnishings, the grain and heft of which said endangered
and illegally logged. Indosamnesian? Javanuatan?

Once onto the rattan matting of the
living area, Robin gave a kick of each leg, launching her high heels toward the
far end of the room, a punt for the help to return.

“Do you only drink wine?” she asked,
making for a credenza the length of a Cadillac.

“No. I'll —”

“How about a vodka?”

“Sure,” Elliot said, though he didn't
really care for vodka. “You know, I've been meaning to come by. I guess you know
that Mr. Silverman is one of a number of investors in my —”

“Lucky's overseas. Toronto, I think.”
She turned around with an offering of four ounces of clear spirit on ice for her
guest.

“That's a shame.” Out of habit Elliot
swirled the liquid in the glass and sniffed its contents. Next to nothing. Maybe
vague grassiness.

“Shame. Shame on me? Sorry?
Nooo . . . I'm sooo high. I should sit. Sit with me.” Robin
took a place on a couch, one of three distributed seemingly willy-nilly
throughout the place. She patted a space next to her as if beckoning a puppy.
Elliot sat. He gave the place another once-over to avoid eye contact. It looked
not like a home but like a furniture showroom. Over a concert Steinway hung a
Warhol of his hostess. Elliot did the math. The painting, if genuine, would have
to have been executed in the early '80s at the latest, when, judging from
appearances, Robin would have been only in her teens. Unless she was mainlining
formaldehyde . . .

“Nice Warhol,” he said, fishing.

“Yeah, looks like me, hey?”

“Very much.”

“It's Lucky's second wife, Melinda. It
was in storage. I thought, she looks just like me, what the hell. It's a Warhol,
right? And where, like, Warhol's dead, this is the closest I'm going to come to
getting him to do me.”