Easy to Like (5 page)

Bonnie caught and held her breath,
ultimately failing to suppress the urge to say something.

“Do you really
think . . . It's not my place to question you
but . . . Really, Elliot, do you think that's going to make
any kind of difference to the situation here?”

“I think, if I can find some, it will
make the wine great.” Elliot straightened, lifted his chin.

“I understand that. I've understood
that for some time. But our problems, your problems, are financial and they are
immediate.”

“If the wine is great,
then . . . It came up yesterday during this tasting I was
leading and I thought again how that was really what got me into the business,
and —”

Bonnie held up a hand to stop him and
turned to her computer screen. “I think you have more pressing concerns, that's
all. Besides the money situation, Walt tells me he's gotten phone calls. ATF and
the Department of Agriculture are worried that you have root stock out there
that didn't go through quarantine.” She continued without looking at him. “If
that's true, you have recklessly put the entire California industry at risk.”
She let the accusation settle in silence. “Any particular carrier?”

“Just the quickest way to the South of
France.”

So Bonnie thought that his search for
the grape was an excuse. Indeed, in the South of France, worries could seem very
far away. The perfume there, the
garrigue
, the
lavender and tobacco smoke on the air, put one's head right. But Elliot was
being forthright: whether or not he had a chance of locating the vine, he knew
he was getting near his last chance — in many regards. If all that came of the
journey was a release from confusion, from nascent panic, if there was only a
moment of subsequent clarity, it would be worth it. “I have to go, Bonnie.”

“Sure, boss.”

“I'll talk to Walt about these ATF
jokers. Where is he?”

“He's up in the third block of Counoise
with a rifle.”

“A rifle?”

“A zebra has been eating the
grapes.”

“A zebra?”

By the time he reached the older
block of Counoise, the sun was weakening him. He should have driven. It was the
other side of hot, beyond the barrier at which one could distinguish any change.
He would return in Walt's truck.

Walt Stuckel was meant to hold a rifle.
He was a tall and lean native Californian. If his ancestors hadn't been actual
pioneers, then they had at least been in Westerns.

Seeing Elliot, Walt put the rifle on
his shoulder and walked to meet him.

“A zebra?” asked Elliot.

“A fucking zebra, if you can believe
it.”

“Well, no, I can't.”

“Something was eating fruit, I assumed
it was deer. I saw some tracks but . . . what do I
know.”

“Back up. A zebra?”

“I came down in the dark before dawn,
two days ago, and I saw the goddamn thing. I wasn't even sure if I could shoot a
deer or even a coyote, Elliot. I've never shot anything. But then, I see, you
know, a zebra in here eating the grapes . . . I didn't know what
to do but shoo it away. It didn't budge. Showed its teeth. I thought it was
going to attack me.”

“I don't know how to put
this . . . I'm not being flip . . . but
this zebra . . . it's not in your mind, is it?”

“No!” said Walt. He looked at the gun.
He seemed to be judging its weight. “I think I can do it now. I think I can
shoot it. If I see it again.”

“Zebra.”

“From San Simeon. Hearst had a private
zoo and kept them.”

Elliot now remembered hearing this
before. He nodded.

“They're still there, the descendants,”
Walt continued, “left to range on the estate. This one must have found its way
over. It's sixty miles through the hills.”

“Did you call anyone over at Hearst
Castle?”

“Yeah, they said they'd come over but
they didn't hold out much hope of catching the thing. They wouldn't have done
anything if I hadn't said I was planning on gunning the thing down. Zebras
aren't endangered, are they?”

“The gun suits you.”

Walt seemed insulted.

“I'm glad I got one, with those
Faranistas over there.” Walt pointed eastward with his chin (yeah, he was
definitely descended from actors in Westerns) and raised the rifle, as if he was
going to put the butt against his shoulder in readiness to fire.

“Faranists. Not Faranistas.”

“They're crazy, Elliot. I've seen them
in Paso and SLO, freaking bread on their heads.”

“I didn't know they put it on their
heads. I've seen them with loaves on their feet.”

“It's all bad signs lately. I'm getting
spooked.”

“Signs?”

“There was a tremor the other day, 5.5,
and then these folks from the Department of Agriculture calling.”

“What did they want?”

“They want to see the paperwork on the
vines, especially the Counoise, proof you got them from UC Davis.”

“What did you tell them?” said Elliot,
looking down at the vines. At this tender age the trunks were as insubstantial
as a young girl's arm. At maturity they would be as thick as a man's leg, their
bark cracked and frayed and the plant no higher than it was now, pruned back to
a vulgar bonsai.

“I told them that was your department,
that I didn't know where you got them, that they were here when I came. And
that's no lie,” Walt said. “They know they're suitcase clones, Elliot, they
aren't stupid. They asked about coming down to take cuttings, check the
DNA.”

“You told them they needed some sort of
warrant.”

“No, I didn't. This is my career,
Elliot, it's not a hobby for me. I can't afford to piss those guys off.”

“It's not a hobby for me, Walt. Never
has been. Where do think I'd rather be, here or in Los Angeles?”

“This is it for me. I have my future to
consider.”

“You have a future here, surely.”

“This is serious, Elliot.”

“If they go after me I'll start talking
about all the suitcase clones up in Napa. Nobody's gonna want that.” It was an
open secret that much of the source rootstock of Napa's top wineries had been
purloined from the best vineyards of the Médoc and imported without any
controls.

Walt didn't respond.

“Did the zebra have any sort of palate?
Why was it eating the Counoise? Is it doing okay?” The leaves were wilting,
drooping over bunches of grapes of uneven shape and size.

“It's hurting in the heat and drought,
and it was in bad shape to begin with, what with the powdery mildew. Keeping the
canopy so thick, we should have sprayed Rubigan, and earlier.”

“Bad call. My mistake. How about the
other varieties?”

“They all are in bad shape, 'cept the
old-vine Zin. I swear it likes these conditions.”

“I've actually been thinking we should
sell all the Zin.”

“It's the best fruit you've got.”

“It's giving the wine this metallic
thing, and I'm thinking that by the time the rest of the blend is coming around
the Zin will be crashing.”

“‘By the time'?”

“It's not appropriate anyway. It's not
authentic.”

“Authentic? Christ sakes, Elliot, how
can anything be authentic in a Rhône blend made in California?”

“Can we not go through this again.”

“This isn't the South of France,
Elliot.” Walt paused and drew a breath. “I was going suggest we make a Zin.”

“Under the label?”

“However you want to do it. A Zin is
about as authentic as you can get here.”

“I don't think so. Anyway, I am more
convinced than ever that the solution is adding Matou to the blend.”

Walt spun on his heels, his heavy boots
kicking up dust. He could not look at Elliot.

“That's crazy talk, Elliot. It's
wishful thinking. You've got all your hopes wrapped up in a grape people stopped
growing fifty years ago. After a certain point you gotta get realistic about
this.”

“We have to strive, Walter, and if
you're going to say that, there also comes a point when you accept that this is
the best you can do . . . We're not there yet.” Elliot
reached down and picked a grape that looked to be ripe from the bunch.

“I'm saying that there comes a point
when you learn that what you were chasing was never there in the first place.
Imagine if you actually found some Matou stock. Your false hope could end your
best excuse.”

Elliot forgot what Walter said as soon
as he bit into the grape. “Fuck sake!” It tasted like Sweet'N Low.

“It's been so goddamn hot that some of
the grapes already have all the sugar we need, and some others, because of the
uneven véraison, are weeks from being ripe. We'll have to pick before they've
developed and there will never be enough acidity.” Walter paused. “We could make
a nice sweet Zinfandel, butterscotched up with American oak, zebra on the label,
that lots of people could enjoy. ‘Zebra Zin.'”

Elliot looked past his vines, over
rolling country, land that begged to be covered on horseback, out to the other
wineries that had sprouted in the area. Most of them, heeding the desires of the
consumer, were going from strength to strength. Elliot, making decisions
impulsively, half aping his French heroes, ignoring California viticultural
orthodoxy and the public taste, was going from bad to worse.

But Elliot couldn't shake his
conviction that giving consumers what they “wanted” was to fail to respect them.
To his mind it was limiting their possibilities, diminishing their capacity to
grow and change, and so holding them in contempt. There would come a time, he
supposed, when all the other winemakers would realize they'd made a terrible
mistake. But, like Haldeman Labs with their uniform green rows, their drip
irrigation, their approved clones, and their marketing, they hadn't yet come
around.

As for Elliot, he would sooner have his
winery go down in flames than produce one fucking bottle of “Zebra Zin.” Feeling
the heat of just such a blaze, Elliot's reflex was to run.

PACKING FOR FRANCE
back in Los
Angeles, Elliot didn't even fill his carry-on. He thought this was a sign either
of his essential freedom or of something sad that he could not understand
because it was about himself. He had one stop before the airport. Lucy's place
in West Adams was out of his way, but the cheque was late. The books said he
didn't owe her anything. She was doing better than him. He was just too proud to
admit it.

Lucy's was now the only Arts and Crafts
house on Victoria Park Drive that hadn't been restored. She didn't seem to
care.

“I'm moving anyway.”

“Where?”

“Ascencion and I are going to get a
place in Pico-Union. It's close and it's like half the price.”

“The Peoples Temple — why not?”

“It's not far from there,
actually.”

When they were by for drinks last
Christmas, Connie read the situation perfectly, but Elliot would not be
convinced that his ex-wife was having an affair with her Salvadoran
housecleaner. When he saw it was true, Elliot assumed Lucy was, with her acute
liberal guilt, confusing pussy and politics. But moving in with Ascencion made
it more than a dalliance.

Hefty, hirsute Ascencion was glowering
at Elliot now from an exquisite chair he'd given Lucy years ago. He'd found it
in a small antique shop in Marseille. It was at a time when he was actively
trying to rekindle the romance. He thought giving her a beautiful thing from
France would make Lucy recall their time together there. But Lucy had only ever
seen it as a chair, a gift from Elliot that was actually for himself.

Elliot believed, because of its
measured use of Art Nouveau ornament, that the piece might be by Édouard
Colonna. He couldn't see it in a place in Pico. Lucy didn't know its worth.
Would it be inappropriate to ask for it back? Put it along the lines of
relieving her of the burden of moving it.

“I have a cheque for you.” Elliot held
up an envelope. Seeing no one coming for it, he laid it on the coffee table.

“Gig?” asked Lucy.

“No. Wine sales, actually.”

Ascencion scoffed at Elliot's lie. What
did she know about wine or his business?

“Wow,” said Lucy. “I never would have
thought . . .”

“You? Any work?” Elliot punished Lucy
for her lover's presumptuousness. Of course there was no work: Lucy was selling
the house. She was grey-listed in town. Her last two features were modestly
budgeted, justifiably lauded by the critics, and still lost money. And she was
deducted points for being a woman and over forty. Lucy said she was abandoning
“entertainment” and focusing on a couple of documentary projects. Elliot knew
they would pose surprising questions, be filmically inventive, and connect, in a
profound way, with a tiny audience. She was as whip-smart and original as when
he'd first met her, when they made that film together, discovered France, sought
their fortune. He still loved her.

“You don't really want to know about
me, Elliot. So I will tell you that, yes, I saw Mark last week, and there's been
a positive development.”

“Really?”

“They've determined, the corrections
people, that he is functionally illiterate.”

“What the fuck?”

“Yes. And if you think about it, that
explains a lot.”

“No. He had a full-time tutor on
Family Planning
, what was his name? Kenneth.”

“Did you ever know Mark to read?”

“I . . . thought
so. He played a lot of video games, so . . .”

“And it was Kenneth, I believe, who
introduced Mark to narcotics.”

“I thought it was Harvey, the best
boy.”

“In any event, he's taking a literacy
program they offer there. The Muslims are encouraging him.”

“Muslims?”

“He's converted to Islam.”

“Be serious.”

“I am.”

“I don't think that's good.”

“They've got him reading.”

“What? The Quran? In Arabic?”

“I don't know.”

“You can't convert if you're not
anything to begin with. We raised him with no beliefs.”

“
Nunca queria
salir en television
,” said Ascencion. “
Nunca
queria que todo el mundo le miraba!
”

What was she saying? Elliot's Spanish
was hopeless. Mark never wanted to be on television? Sure he did.

“I want to do a doc,” said Lucy, “about
the social cost of draconian drug laws in America.”

“Not been done?”

“Name one.”

Elliot couldn't.

“Not a polemic, use Mark's story as a
thread.”

“Mark won't talk to me because I got
him a job on a television show and now you want to make a movie about him.
Didn't you just hear your girlfriend say —”

“I think he will see a difference
between network television and an independent documentary. And he was a boy
then, you don't ‘get a job' for a little boy. He's a man now.”

“Maybe. Listen, Lucy, when you're
speaking to him, please put in a good word. I'd like to talk.”

“I tell him every time I visit.”

“Thank you. That cheque is dated for
next week. Some stuff has to clear.”

The quickest route to the South of
France was swift indeed and via, of all places, Toronto, Canada. Everything
direct out of LAX or San Francisco or via Atlanta or New York was booked for the
next several days. Elliot thought this was impossible, believing it a lie that
was part of some sort of price-fixing conspiracy, the mechanics of which he
couldn't yet comprehend. He explained to Bonnie that many of the seats offered
online were mere phantoms, posted to give consumers an illusion of choice. You
could search and click and call until your head fell off, but you would never
get that cheap fare. Besides, on a long flight, anything over three hours,
Elliot clung to a demand, stated in a rider in the nether regions of his
contracts, that he travel in the front of the bus.

He was on Air Canada to Toronto with a
change to another Air Canada flight on to Paris and then a quick regional flyer
to Nîmes. One way. It was a rush to make it, but at least it was with a
top-drawer airline. It had been years since Elliot had flown his native
country's national carrier, but he remembered it as having excellent service.

At the gate at LAX an Air Canada
representative informed Elliot that there had been some mistake, that although
he had purchased a business-class ticket, he was seated in row 23.

“Is business class oversold?” Elliot
asked.

But the ticket agent looked past Elliot
as though he were no longer there. Elliot asked again.

“Sir, please, there are other customers
in line.” The agent was a woman in her late forties, early fifties, mannish. Her
hair was up in a bun, drawn masochistically tight.

“I don't care,” said Elliot. “You
haven't finished serving me.”

“Yes, I have.” She was almost a
baritone.

“But I've booked and paid for a
business-class ticket. I want to know why I am being assigned another seat.”

“Then I recommend you call
1-888-247-2262.”

“What? Now?”

“Whenever you like. If you try now,
though, you will miss your flight. You have to turn off the cellphone once you
board.”

“Why should I call an 888 number when
you are standing right in front of me? There's a computer terminal right there.
You're perfectly situated to sort this out.”

“You're not a terrorist, by any chance,
are you, sir? I'm not going to have to call security, am I?”

The whole point of taking this flight
was how soon it was leaving Los Angeles. Vowing he would write a letter, to
which no one would pay any heed, Elliot stomped off to the plane.

Business class was almost
empty. There were a couple of sleepy-looking Air Canada pilots in one row and a
nattily dressed black man of at least seven feet in another — that was it.

The plane was old. The shape of the
cabin, the particular curve of the tubular enclosure, was familiar, but in
distant memory. Seat 23B was threadbare and stained — with coffee, Elliot hoped.
When he sat, his knees were against the seat in front of him. He would shortly
explain the mix-up to a flight attendant and move forward to where he belonged.
He searched the seatback pocket for one of the illustrated escape manuals to
determine in what model of — jet? surely it was a jet — he was to be riding. The
pouch hadn't been cleaned since the inbound flight and contained several plastic
wrappers, a couple of sections of the previous day's
Toronto Post and Leader
— a paper Elliot remembered as a vaguely
right-wing daily business rag — and crumbs. The edges of the three-way emergency
escape foldout were getting furry, and there were ridges and blisters in the
lamination. Elliot read that he was on a 737-300. He saw the problem: the
aircraft scheduled for the flight must have been unavailable for some reason.
That explained the trouble with his seat assignment and the antique flying
machine. As long as it got him to his Toronto connection.

A flight attendant now passed, looking
with disgust into Elliot's lap and counting under her breath. Judging from her
age and disposition, this woman evidently came with the plane. An occasional
visit to the barber, hot towels and the fixings, might cheer her up, thought
Elliot. He thought he would wait for another stewardess with whom he might bring
up his problem.

The other woman patrolling the aisles
in Elliot's section of the plane looked grumpier than the first. She sighed
loudly and closed the overhead storage bins with projected violence. Elliot was
too frightened of her to even ask for a glass of water.

Only after they were airborne and the
seatbelt sign had been switched off did Elliot go looking for the attendant
responsible for the business-class compartment. He found a man in his forties
with baby blue contacts and a carotene complexion.

Elliot explained his situation. The man
looked at Elliot's ticket, nodding as though he were agreeing, and then
shrugged.

“What a company, hey?” the steward
offered. “Piece of shit outfit.”

“They told me —”

“— to call an 888 number. Yes, I know.
Don't bother, you'll be on hold to Mumbai longer than the charge in your
cellphone.”

“I don't want to make a fuss about it.
I would like my seat in business class.”

“You can try in Toronto.”

“But then I will have already
flown.”

“I would really like to help you,” he
said, “but I think that's what they want me to do. They are trying, you know, to
make us take on the responsibility of the ticketing agents. Once they do that,
they'll start laying them off. I was supposed to groom the aircraft today
because the service in LAX didn't show — they haven't been paid in over a
hundred and twenty days. I'm sure you can see my point.”

Elliot shuffled back to 23B.

If the blood-pooling confines of his
seat weren't bad enough, an hour into the flight miniature screens dropped from
the ceiling and the in-flight entertainment commenced. The 737-300 did not
provide a choice for viewers: you got a package of Canadian news and a movie.

Some bald guy hosted the newscast. (You
would never see that in the States.) Life in Canada didn't seem to have changed
all that much. The RCMP were reported to be turning into a bunch of bumbling
crooks. Quebec separatism was back, having briefly waned, so the federal
government was announcing more spending in La Belle Province. The disgruntled
premier of Newfoundland and Labrador, wielding evidence of yet further Canadian
colonial malfeasance, was either righteous or insane. A woman in British
Columbia had fended off an attacking grizzly with her guitar. The hockey
playoffs, featuring two teams Elliot had never heard of, were, inexplicably,
still going, even though it was nearly fall — there was a danger they would
overlap with the beginning of the next season. That was Canada this day. There
followed some short travel features, an episode of
Happy
Days
, which Elliot couldn't remember as having been this terrible,
and then, one hour into his five of mile-high confinement, the feature.

Though he had never before seen a frame
of the finished film, the first few seconds of image sent a chill of recognition
down his spine. A poison began to transit from his optic nerves to his
sphincter. Here was young megastar Barry Hart, his face flattered by applied
hypoallergenic stage filth, eyes gleaming against the half minstrel, making his
way, solo, through the overgrown hills of Laos, somewhere in Mexico (near
Oaxaca, Elliot remembered). Elliot's Vietnam script was — he'd thought — a
transparent satire about the blood-soaked debacle in Iraq. But Marv Hinks over
at Warner read the whole third draft, enthusiastically, straight. He saw it
immediately as an action vehicle for Barry. So did Barry's agent, Herb Devine.
Elliot was only looking out for Marv's and Herb's feelings by not correcting
this misinterpretation. Why insult the guys? And hadn't Mike strongly advised
him against writing it in the first place, quoting,
for
like the hundredth time
, the George S. Kaufman chestnut “Satire is
what closes on Saturday night”? Elliot would, it was understood, reshape the
piece into the drama Marv thought it to be on the next pass. But Marv did not
like Elliot's next draft, in fact thought it “a step backward,” thought it had
lost most of what he enjoyed about the previous draft.