The first couple of outings had been no more than car rides around town–Bess, Gallie and myself–with Gerard Bruce, the head of security, as chauffeur. Bruce carried a hand gun, and I had seen him put a much larger, nastier weapon into the car trunk. The excitement of getting off the TMA site, even for nothing more than a ride, had been exhilarating. But now, the third outing is the one Bess had been lobbying for. It’s a trip to the vineyards.
Bess has a yearning to learn about her once and never-was career as a talented winemaker. It’s both funny and sad. Funny that you’d want to reminisce about something that never happened to you. Sad because for all the marital misery, it would have been a better life than the one she actually had.
We drive up the slope of Red Mountain, and where in my day there will be twenty wineries, today there are only a couple. I point out to Bess where her Dog Star Winery will one day stand. Her smile is silly and beguiling. There are no vines there yet, just undeveloped land. I think of the times I’d been late to arrive there, to Bess’s savage irritation. But that’s just a dream now.
The winery we pick is in the style of a rustic Tuscan villa. We sit at the tasting room bar and sample the winery’s offerings, making appreciative and engaged sounds as the server talks about terroir and a winemaker who gave up a career in accounting for all of this. Through large plate glass windows we see acres of vines under the encroaching shadow of the mountain top as the sun begins to set. I look behind us to see Bruce sitting at his own table, on which sits a plastic bottle of water. He’s surveying the other guests with comic suspicion.
Bess wangles an introduction to the winemaker and is deep in conversation with him. If I know Bess, and if this Bess is like the one I know, then she’s contemplating a revival of the career she never had. But maybe it’s less innocent than that. He seems to be under her spell. It’s weirdly like home. I had never enjoyed wine stuff–the endless releases, events, parties–yet being here has a comforting familiarity. I always found the wine industry to be its own cure because, ultimately, it’s about nice booze.
Gallie and I are left to ourselves. Having downed a couple of indistinguishable yet apparently very different Cabernets gives me courage to take another run at the reasons I should stay. It doesn’t take long to realize that this was a mistake, and so I shut up and just hold Gallie’s hand. We speak nothing of matters TMA, of the strike or of the rescue plans. Instead, I learn about Gallie’s cat and Boris’s kindness in fostering it. It’s a topic so ridiculous for the Gallie I’ve come to know that I hang on every word. It seems that a man I had first taken as something of a little prick is really quite an Assisi. I admit that Boris has grown on me. I’ve never mentioned to anyone the high mantle that he was to assume, but wondered how many TMAers I might have come to respect if I’d gotten past my first impressions. Yet changing the timeline is one thing, but changing Joad Bevan, now there’s a serious challenge.
Gallie and Bess join forces to visit the bathroom. I see a risk there. Even stone cold sober, Bess would be a worry. But Gallie can handle anything, I think. I look around the bar which is now filling up. A guy a few seats up from me looks familiar. Not a TMAer, for sure. I suppose I was bound to see someone the young Joad had known. A teacher maybe? I’m at an age where teachers look like kids so it’s possible. An older kid from school? No, too old for that. I down another glug of wine and look at the shadows growing over Red Mountain. I turn back to the guy at the bar who is now looking at me. I smile and nod. Maybe he’s going to solve the mystery for me. He smiles back widely. My heart misses a beat. Oh Fuck! I leap from my seat sending it flying backwards and lope toward the women’s restroom. I notice Bruce has gone. I burst through the door and Gallie and Bess look up, startled from their conversation. A woman exiting a stall looks at me in horror before reversing back in.
“We gotta go, now.” I shout. “They’re here.” They ask no questions and follow me out. I see the kitchen entrance and run through the swinging doors. Kitchens always have back doors, don’t they? It’s where the chef goes to smoke. We run, navigating steel counters and cupboards toward the ‘Exit’ sign. We emerge in the back parking lot. Twenty yards away there’s a knot of men in conversation who don’t notice us. Again, I thank god for the incompetence of the slobs Asmus employs. But if we try to get to our car, we’ll be seen for sure. Where the hell is Bruce? Asmus’s goons are standing between us and where we need to be, although without Bruce and his keys, the car is useless to us. I point to the beginning of the vineyard that borders the parking lot. Crouched, we run into the vines. Then I hear shouting, but the heavy vernacular is impossible to understand.
“What happened to Bruce?” Bess asks. “What good is a
