Feed Me Your Wine

The road unspooled. Three in the morning. The summons folded in my inside pocket, against my ribs. Karen. The judge. Tuesday. It meant: you lost.

The curve came out of the dark like a fist.

My foot searched for the brake. Nothing. I pumped. The pedal sank and didn't come back. The car kept going straight. The road turned without me.

The ditch took me.

The wheel in my sternum. The belt in my shoulder. Teeth clacking. The taste of blood in my mouth, hot, immediate, mine. Then nothing but the dark and the engine dying.

I stayed with my hands on my knees. I moved my fingers. They answered. I pushed the door open.

The cold struck me in the face. The kind of cold that teaches you fast that you're flesh and bone and that can change. No signal. No light. Trees. Jeffersonville nine miles out.

My forty-dollar Payless shoes. Snowmelt in the seams. In my socks within thirty seconds.

I walked in circles. My hands closed on their own until the cold became absence. Until the fingers were there but no longer mine.

That's when Timothy came back. The rocket pajamas. The dried chocolate at the corner of his mouth I hadn't wiped. His hand in my jeans, fingers in the denim.

Daddy when are you coming back.

Soon. I'd always said soon. As if the word had an address. As if the word were a place where you could live.

Headlights in the distance. I stood in the middle of the road and raised my arms. The car passed without slowing. The gust of air slapped me. The taillights, two red dots in the dark, shrank. I stood there, arms dropped, on the white line. There you go. That's what you're worth.

Then the brake lights came on.

I ran. My feet couldn't feel a thing anymore but they still struck the ground, heavy, foreign. Throat on fire. I grabbed the handle and pulled.

Heat jumped me.

I got in. Slammed the door. Shook. The cold, the adrenaline, the shame. All three at once. I couldn't tell which came from what.

I looked at the driver.

Brunette. Dark eyes. Clean jaw. Gray pullover, worn at the sleeves. A badge flipped facedown on the passenger seat. A first-aid kit with re-stuck Velcro. On her index finger, a callus where a ring had rubbed before it disappeared.

A perfume. Soft and warm on the surface, but underneath something darker, like a room locked for a long time in an otherwise open house.

— Fuck… thank you.

— Are you hurt?

— No. I'm fine.

She gripped the wheel.

— I almost didn't stop.

Pause.

— I drove past. I could have left you there.

— You came back.

She exhaled.

— In this cold, if I—

— You came back. That's all.

She nodded. Closed something.

— All right.

— Mike. Brakes died. A studio in Macon. And I'm not dangerous.

She looked at me.

— Sarah.

She pulled away.

— Had you been drinking?

The question on the back of my neck like an ice-cold finger.

— No.

Silence. Not empty. Full. She let it last just long enough for me to understand she had every right not to believe me.

— No, I repeated. Too fast.

— All right.

We drove. The heater purred. The snow thinned to slanted dust in the headlights. The road gleamed, black and wet.

You don't change.

Karen. Her exact voice. No anger. She'd left anger behind a long time ago. What remained was cleaner and harder. A statement of fact.

Timothy. The smell of warm soap behind his ear after bath time. His hand in the denim. Daddy when are you coming back.

Tuesday morning. Courtroom B. My soaked Payless shoes. My file photocopied crooked. Karen and her lawyer, a guy in a gray suit who speaks slowly because slow people look honest. The photos. The affidavits. The sentences that hurt because they're well written.

— Thank you, I said. Lower.

Sarah exhaled. Something inside her split by a millimeter.

— I was scared, she said.

— Me too.

The car sped toward Atlanta. My fingers stung. The blood was coming back.

— There's a thermos in the back, she said.

I turned around. The bare backseat. Just a thermos sitting upright in the middle.

I took it. Warm metal. I unscrewed the cap.

The smell rose. Mulled wine. Cinnamon. Brown sugar.

Eight months.

The last drink was a vodka-orange on a Tuesday, three in the afternoon, blinds down, Timothy at Karen's, nobody in the apartment to say a word. She'd even taken the dog. The lawyer had said: not another drop or we lose everything. And I'd held. Eight months. Two hundred and forty-three days where the body begged every night and every night I said no.

I didn't think.

I drank.

The wine went down and my body said yes. Directly. No negotiation. Like a lock that had never really been locked. Eight months in my throat in one swallow. The truth is I'd kept the door open. I'd always known it.

— It's good. Thanks.

— I make it when I drive in winter.

— You don't like the cold.

— I don't like being cold.

— What do you do?

— Pole dance.

I looked at her.

— Like…

— Like pole dance. Competitions, choreography. Discipline. I teach in four studios.

She said it the way you say plumber. A fact. A sentence that had passed through so many stares it had become smooth.

— On a pole.

— On a pole.

The image came. Automatic. Metal, sweat, thighs. I let it come. I let it rub.

— Doesn't it bother you to talk about it? With me. At night. A stranger.

— No. Why should it?

The true answer was too filthy to come out. Because I was a man and a man in a car at night is an animal of a specific species.

— Nothing. Forget it.

She smiled. Brief. The smile died.

— And you? Why Atlanta?

— Divorce. Hearing Tuesday. Custody of Timothy.

— How old?

— Five.

Her eyes widened by a fraction.

— Me too.

— What, you too?

— Divorce. Atlanta. Tuesday.

I laughed. The laugh that comes out when life starts stuttering. She laughed too, from the throat, small. A wall shifted between us, didn't fall, just moved by a centimeter.

— Your ex… what's he like?

She took a second.

— A man who believes what's mine is his.

— And you?

— Take it all back. Studio by studio. Wall by wall. Every cent.

— And him?

— His suitcase. And his mouth.

No hesitation anymore. A cold, honed steel. Ten minutes earlier this woman said I almost didn't stop as though the words bit her. Now she spoke of a man like a piece of furniture you carry down to the curb.

— He'll walk into that courtroom thinking he has a chance. He'll walk out empty. He won't even understand when it's done.

Her hands hadn't moved on the wheel. Her words were cut to the millimeter.

Her right hand was resting on the gearshift. I don't know when I started looking at it.

White. Soft in the hollow of the palm. The fingers around the lever, long and thin, the nails lacquered a dark red under the green light of the dashboard. The narrow wrist. The skin so fine you could see the blue of the veins underneath.

I looked at that hand and the world shrank. The heat rose all at once. Thick. Arms, belly, groin. The wine or something else. I thought about the backseat. Sarah on it. The first-aid kit crushed under the small of her back, the Velcro popping. Her red nails in my back. My eyes blurred for a second. I blinked. Beneath the cinnamon, beneath the sugar, the thing without a name was working.

You don't change.

You don't change the way you say: the tumor hasn't shrunk. Karen was right. That's why she'd win on Tuesday. That's why she deserved to win on Tuesday.

Sarah knew I was looking at her. Something tightened in her shoulders. A millimeter. Her fingers squeezed the lever one notch.

She coughed. A small dry sound. The signal women send when they don't want to name what's bothering them, because naming is admitting.

It didn't bother me.

It should have. I stayed there. Eyes on the hand. My heart in my throat, in my temples, in my belly. A dull, steady pounding. The thing that wants out of its cage.

Something was giving way inside me. First the shoulders. Then the belly. Then lower. And underneath, bare: appetite.

— The snow's calmed down, she said.

I didn't answer.

— We'll be in Atlanta around six.

I didn't answer.

— Want me to put the radio on?

Her voice too fast. Too high. Words to patch a leak.

I was still looking at her hand on the lever. A rich girl's hand. A hand that never wrung a chicken's neck. Take it. Turn the wrist over. Press myself where the blood beats. The image came, and it no longer looked like a fantasy. It looked like a plan.

— Mike?

Her voice had gone up a tone.

— Mike, are you with me?

I blinked.

— Yeah.

— The shock from the accident. It's normal.

— Yeah. The shock.

The leather creaked. Her hand left the lever. It went up to the wheel. Both hands up top now. The red nails disappeared into shadow.

I was looking at her chest. The gray pullover rising and falling. Rising and falling.

The phone rang. Sarah answered without looking at me.

— Yeah… I'm driving. Everything's fine. Go back to sleep. Me too.

A man's voice through the speaker. Low. The voice of a body lying in warm sheets. The voice of someone who has a place in someone's bed.

Me too.

She hung up. The silence came back and something cracked in my chest. She had someone. An inhabited space. A warm body to return to.

And me. A mattress on the floor of a studio that smelled of wet plaster.

— Who was that?

— My boyfriend.

— Your boyfriend. You're in the middle of a divorce and you already have a boyfriend.

She turned her head by a millimeter.

— That's none of your business, Mike.

I picked up the thermos. I drank long, slow, eyes in hers over the metal. I drank like I was taking. Not like I was receiving.

Then I put my foot on the dashboard.

The soaked Payless shoe on the clean plastic. The dried mud. The split sole. The gesture that says: I can. Your space is my space.

— Take your feet off.

Calm. But the air around her voice had changed.

I smiled.

— You know what… I knew you were gonna say that.

Silence.

— I knew you'd take this road.

I didn't know why I was saying that. Yes I did. I knew.

— It wasn't an accident, Sarah. I was waiting for you here tonight.

The words came out the way smoke comes out of a burning building. Because there's no going back.

— I've been waiting for you my whole goddamn life.

Sarah's face changed. Not a big movement. A slow slide. Fear entered her eyes. Her mouth opened on a breath that couldn't find a way out.

I moved my foot. Slowly. The sole scraped the plastic.

My right hand went down. It settled on my jeans, between my thighs. A slow gesture.

— What are you planning to do?

Her voice had no shape anymore. No politeness. Raw voice.

— We'll see.

The heater. The black road. The wine heating too fast in my belly. Her gaze full of fear with no set dressing.

And behind all of it, Karen, the lawyer, the judge, Timothy, Courtroom B, everyone who would have been right. And me in my exact place. Like always.

We'll see.

— It's women like you and Karen… you take everything. The kids, the houses. You shut the door and leave the guys to die outside. And then you tell yourselves you're the victims.

Sarah said, without raising her voice:

— If I hadn't stopped, you'd have frozen to death.

Seven words. A fact.

The fact entered me slowly. By gravity.

She had stopped. She had turned around. She had opened the door for me, given me wine, listened to my sentences. And me, in return, I had put my wet shoe on her dashboard and my hand on my jeans and my words like hands in her air.

I saw myself. All at once. The foot. The hand. Her eyes. I saw the man Karen described in the papers and I understood Karen hadn't made anything up. She'd just waited for me to show myself.

I pulled my foot back. I put my hands on my knees. They were shaking. It wasn't the cold anymore.

— It was a joke. It's disgusting. I'm sorry.

The snow passed, fine, slanted. Sarah watched me.

— All I want, I said, is Timothy. Take him to Disneyland. His hand in mine. That's all I want.

The sentence tore my throat open on its way out. I let it.

Sarah studied me a long time. The fear was gone. Something else.

— I almost believed you, she said. For a moment. Almost.

— It was a shitty joke.

— Yes. Almost.

The heater. The road. The leather no longer creaking.

— You'll never take Timothy to Disneyland, she said.

— What?

— You'll be dead before dawn, Mike.

She said it the way you say: we'll be there in ten minutes. The way you say: it's snowing.

I looked for the smile. The payback. The corner of the mouth that says: got you. Nothing.

Her face was closed. Smooth. Eyes that had been there from the start, beneath the other eyes, behind the other eyes, and had been waiting.

The laugh took me.

A belly laugh, an animal laugh, the kind that comes out when the body no longer knows what to do with the information it's receiving. I doubled over. The tears came. I pounded the dashboard with my fist.

— Fuck… fuck, Sarah… you're—

— Michael David Brennan. Thirty-seven years old. Born March fourteenth, nineteen eighty-seven, Augusta, Georgia. Fourteen-forty Vineville Avenue, apartment 6B, Macon. Warehouse clerk at Hendricks Supply. Assault and battery, May 2019. The victim was a woman.

— Two hours ago, you were at the Waffle King on 441. Steak rare. Coke no ice. Five dollars to the waitress. A wink. Have a good night, sweetheart. She's twenty and she smiled because it's her job to smile.

— How do you know all this?

— The brake lines.

The ditch. The dead brakes. Everything flipped at once, the entire night, like a skin being pulled off, and underneath it's red.

— Why?

— Karen.

The name fell. Heavy.

— Karen wants Timothy. All of it. She wants you to no longer exist. She paid me.

I tried to speak. The words stuck to my tongue.

— You're a—

— The wine.

The wine. The mulled wine. Cinnamon, brown sugar. And beneath the warmth, something else. No smell. No taste.

My eyelids grew heavy. My hands on my knees had become blocks. The world was compressing. The cabin was shrinking. Centimeter by centimeter. The air was thickening. Each second added a layer of something heavy. Irreversible.

One last idea of a gesture. My left hand left my knee. It crossed the air, the air was mud. I touched her shoulder. Small and hard beneath the fabric. The collarbone. I squeezed. I pushed toward the wheel.

The wheel turned. The car swerved. The gravel cracked under the tires. The sound of the end when the end is a detail.

Sarah corrected with a calm gesture. My hand slid and fell back. I no longer had the strength to lift it.

— Sleep. It's over.

My eyes closed. Sarah's perfume stayed.

The cold woke me.

Flat. Absolute. The earth beneath my back.

I was lying in a field. The sky above was black and open. The snow fell on my body. Each flake separate, distinct, patient.

I tried to move.

Nothing.

Not a finger. Not a muscle. My body was there, I felt every bone, every inch of skin against the frozen ground, and it wouldn't answer. As if someone had cut the wires.

A sound. Steady. Metal against earth.

I turned my eyes.

Sarah was a few yards away. She'd taken off her jacket. A tank top in the snow. Her bare arms. The shovel went up. The shovel came down. The frozen earth burst into chunks. The hole grew. Steady. Methodical.

My size. My length.

— Sarah.

A thread of air.

The shovel continued. Then it stopped. She planted it in the mound of earth. She wiped her forehead with the back of her hand. She came toward me. Her boots made a dull sound on the hardened ground.

She knelt.

Her face above mine. The perfume, intact. The dark eyes. Her white hand. Immaculate. Not a trace of dirt on the skin. The red nails, intact.

She leaned in.

Her lips touched mine.

A long kiss. Soft. Warm. Her mouth on my motionless mouth. The taste of wine, of cinnamon, of the whole night.

She pulled back. Her gaze held mine. The way you look at a place where you once lived.

— See you someday at Disneyland.

She smiled.

The smile of a woman who loves the work.

Too late.

She stood. She picked up the shovel.

The earth rose. Legs. Knees. Thighs. Each shovelful added weight and the weight clung to the body like a hand that won't let go.

— Good night, Mike.

Timothy came back. The rocket pajamas. The dried chocolate at the corner of his mouth. The smell of warm soap on the nape of his neck. The hand in the denim.

Daddy when are you coming back.

The earth covered the chest. The air came in less.

Soon, my heart.

The snow fell.

Soon.