Sideways (26 page)

I waited, powerless, still erect, and possibly falling in love, while Maya—now swaddled in a white terrycloth robe—walked over to the main office, vanishing wraithlike into the darkness. When she came back, she simply and silently took me by the hand and led me a short way down a gravel path to another, identical, cabana.

Inside, there was a fire hissing and spitting. The ’90 Jayer Richebourg she had tempted me with at Terra’s three nights before stood uncorked on the table.

“Maya,” I said. “This is just all so incredible.”

“Shh,” she said, putting an index finger to her lips. “It’s my treat.”

She deftly uncorked the Richebourg, poured two glasses, and handed one to me. We sat down next to each other on the small bed and tasted. It was another remarkable expression of Burgundy’s viniferous splendors, different in subtle ways from the La Tâche, perhaps more powerful and explosive, definitely more voluptuous.

We shared tasting notes for a moment, but our passions quickly flared up again, heightened now by the wine and the romantic ambiance. Maya took my glass away and placed it with hers on the end table. She turned and smiled. The upward light of the fire made her look even more beautiful, if that was possible. I smiled back and she moved toward me, falling on me and pushing me down to the mattress. She maneuvered herself on top of me and with deft hands quickly removed her bathing suit. All the while her mouth was firmly planted on mine in a tight, heart-stopping kiss. Her warm skin felt sumptuous against mine and I let myself completely go.

“Are you clean?” she whispered, pulling away far enough to look into my eyes.

“Yeah. Long periods of abstinence have their virtues.” She chuckled. “I’m not on the pill, so don’t climax inside me, okay?”

“Okay,” I said.

She kissed me some more, then reached over to the end table, took one of the unfinished glasses of Richebourg, and lay on her back. She took a sip of the wine, closed her eyes, and sighed. With her eyes still closed, she held out the glass and instructed, “I want you to christen me with some of this, and then do what I was doing to you outside.”

I accepted the wineglass from her and braced myself with a sip. I shifted to the region in between her legs. Hovering over her, I teasingly tipped the wineglass and trickled a little of Burgundy’s finest on her bellybutton. She giggled. I moved lower and poured a few more nectarous dribbles on her pubis and dyed it ruby red. She moaned audibly when I parted her legs and gently fingered her open and sampled the Richebourg sans Riedel. Palate properly whetted, I spelunked for her clitoris, tasting Bourgogne Rouge and

After years of mostly frustrating experimentation I had finally discovered the perfect Pinot pairing.

It was after midnight when we finally packed up, left the Cedar Spa, and drove down out of the mountains. Jack sat shotgun, while Maya and I nestled in each other’s arms in the backseat. Periodically, Jack would throw us a backward glance, flashing a smile that was both happy and sad—thinking perhaps of these times that we would never share again and how that was something already to be mourned.

Terra dropped Maya and me off at the Hitching Post and then she and Jack continued on to her place. Maya and I shifted over to her car and she ferried me back to the Windmill Inn. I wasn’t sure if she wanted to spend the night, but we still had a half bottle of the Richebourg, so I invited her in for a nightcap.

Inside the room, the red message light on the phone wasn’t blinking, which completely surprised me. Maya eased onto the edge of one of the beds while I rinsed out the Riedels in the bathroom sink. I poured off the remainder

“What’s that?” Maya asked, gesturing to Brad’s Remington still propped up against the wall next to the cases of wine. “You guys hunting?”

“No.” I tried to laugh it off. “It’s a long story.”

“Tell me,” she said. “I want to hear it.”

So, reluctantly, I told her the story of the aborted boar hunt that almost ended up in homicide. She laughed so hard I thought I saw tears pool in her large, flashing eyes.

“You guys
are
nuts!”

“How were we supposed to know he was going to shoot at us?” I said.

Maya shook her head, still laughing. She sipped the last of her wine and asked, “What do you think of this Richebourg?”

“Beautiful,” I said, bending my head back and savoring the last of a wine I probably wouldn’t experience again for some time.

“Compared to the La Tâche?” She stifled a yawn.

“They were just both literally transporting,” I said. “I think if I could die now, I would. What do you think?”

“Two vineyards so close and yet producing wines so remarkably different. That’s what makes wine so fascinating.”

Our eyes melted into each other’s. I set my glass down, stood and turned and sat next to her so that our bodies were touching. I bumped my shoulder against hers. She set her glass aside and then fell into my arms with a womanly warmth. We began a long, truly ardent kiss, as though

In the dark, sated and resting under the covers, Maya lit an American Spirit cigarette she had rummaged out of her purse. I bummed one from her and we lay in the quiet of the room, blowing smoke up at the ceiling, each engrossed in our own thoughts. Mine were simply: I’m in love.

“How’s your book coming?” I asked.

“Good,” she said. “About halfway through.”

“I’d love to read it.”

She turned and smiled at me and I smiled back, our faces illuminated by the pale light of the parking lot seeping through the curtain.

After painful consideration, I cleared my throat, the weight of our little world descending on me. “I have a confession,” I said haltingly.

“You’re married.”

“No,” I said. “That part’s true.”

“You’re having trouble getting over your ex-wife and are wary of pursuing a new relationship.”

“Why? Did I talk about my ex the other night when I was drunk?”

“Well, you called her from the restaurant,” she reminded me, taking a drag of her cigarette and exhaling dramatically. “You must still be very attached to her.”

I blew smoke in a sigh. “I suppose in a way I am and always will be.” She bent her head and looked at me in the dark but didn’t say anything. “But that isn’t what I wanted to confess.” Her cigarette sizzled next to my ear, as she waited for me to continue. I took a deep breath and came clean: “Jack … is getting married this Sunday.”

Her hand with the cigarette froze in front of her lips as she bore the full nuclear winter of my words.

I barreled headlong into the details, fully aware I was ruining a perfect night. “I’m the best man. We’re having kind of a last blowout before he becomes domesticated. I just thought I should say something because I understand Terra is kind of stuck on him.”

Maya slowly brought the cigarette to her lips, dragged deeply, and exhaled two columns of smoke through flared nostrils. “Well, that’s great. Fucking great.” Her anger was palpable and her words throbbed with raw emotion.

“It’s why I didn’t want to join you the other night. I didn’t want to encourage the whole thing. Point of fact, I tried to talk him out of it.”

Maya stiffened next to me, partitioning the space between us. “Do you know what your asshole friend said to Terra?”

“He’s an actor,” I said with disdain. “I can only imagine.”

“She’s going to be beyond hurt when she realizes how used she’s been,” Maya said, folding her arms across her naked chest, a chest I would probably now never see again.

“Well, I guess that’s part of the reason why I’m finally telling you this,” I said, hoping against hope that she could distance me from Jack and his outlandish behavior.

“I wish you would have said something earlier,” she said harshly. “I think maybe you had a moral responsibility.”

I sat up in bed. “First of all, Maya, I was a little drunk, and when I’m drunk, surprisingly I’m careful about what I say, and at the time I didn’t want to risk alienating my friend. And I thought that maybe for Terra it was just a fling, I didn’t know.”

“She’s been completely lied to,” Maya said without meeting my eyes.

I didn’t say anything. There was nothing
to
say. My words rang hollow and anything I said would have dug a deeper hole.

Maya squashed her cigarette in a glass ashtray on the nightstand, then lay back down. She breathed in short bursts through her nostrils. “I don’t blame you, I guess,” she said, less critical. “But whether you like it or not I’m going to have to tell Terra, just so she doesn’t get massively hurt when she finds out a couple of weeks from now that your asshole friend is blowing her off and driving her
fucking insane!
” Her words echoed in the room.

I finished my cigarette and put it out. “What kind of things did Jack say to her?”

“Oh. That he loved her. That she was the only woman in ages who had rocked his world, how he was considering moving up here, getting a place with her, commuting back and forth to L.A. Other than that, I’m sure he was pretty fucking honest.”

I squeezed my eyes closed; I wanted Maya to see me wince in disgust. I could easily picture Jack, liquored up, whispering those disingenuous endearments until Terra melted, until her knees weakened and she knelt before him and unzipped him because he was the one. “I think he believed every word,” I said to Maya. “Shockingly.”

“But he’s getting married.”

“I have no answer for that,” I said weakly.

“Why do men say such outrageous things to women, knowing it’s going to hurt them?”

“I’m afraid the majority of men are pathological liars. They’ll do anything, say anything, to get a woman’s clothes off. It’s in their DNA. Some have more of the bad

Maya laughed sardonically, but her laugh quickly faded.

“If it makes Terra feel any better, a couple of days ago Jack was actually considering calling off the wedding. I think he really is taken with her, however ludicrous that might seem.”

“That’s crazy,” Maya said.

“He’s an actor. They’re inveterate liars, and they’re
all
fucking kooky.”

“What’s his fiancée like, if I might ask?”

“Gorgeous. Comes from a wealthy family. Everything a man could dream for.”

“Figures,” she snorted. “What would she think if she knew what was going on?”

“I guess ‘if she doesn’t find out then it doesn’t matter’ is probably Jack’s dumb-ass rationalization.”

“And you support that philosophy?” she asked uneasily.

“No. I said I didn’t. I was pissed off. But what was I going to do?”

“Are you like that, too?” she asked, gentler now. “You did say all men are like that.”

“I probably used to be. But I’ve reformed. I believe in fidelity. Hard as that may be to accept.”

She raised her head from my shoulder and regarded me with an expression of misgiving. “Is that why you got divorced? You cheated on her?”

My eyes strayed away from hers to the wall, fantasizing about another cigarette and rewinding the tape to that Edenic moment just before my confession. “There

Maya apparently couldn’t wait another moment, because she lunged for the phone. “I should call Terra right now and tell her all this.”

“Maya?” I grabbed her wrist and gently held her back. “We’re leaving Saturday. Just wait. He’s going to blame me, and you’re going to destroy a long-standing friendship. Remember, I didn’t
have
to tell you. Not that that makes me a saint or anything.”

Maya hesitated, then slowly replaced the receiver on its base. The annoying dial tone stopped. Sighing, she lay back down on the bed. I started to kiss her, but she didn’t want to be kissed and turned her face away coldly.

“Look, I’m sorry. I guess we’re just a couple of fucked-up guys.”

“Yeah,
hello
,” Maya singsonged, not intending it to be funny. The way she said it made me feel pitiful and I rolled over and sank into my own self-loathing.

We lay in the dark without speaking for a long time. I could feel her anger and disapproval, palpable as the crappy sheets that scratched my naked body. The heater came on and warm air started blowing into the room, momentarily drowning out the crickets and the sound of Maya’s breathing next to me. I wanted to gather her in my arms and hold her—it had been a long night and so much had happened and I was drained and desired the comfort of her body—but I sensed her affections had long since been withdrawn. Like all writers, I hate rejection, so I remained on my side, wretchedly alone, not needing her to verbally affirm our sudden disconnection. Eventually, we both drifted into an uneasy slumber.

Sometime in the early hours of the morning I felt a painful stab of yearning as I heard Maya slip out of bed and disappear into the bathroom. A moment later, the shower started running. I rubbed my eyes. Early dawnlight produced a salmon-hued corona around the edges of the curtains. We couldn’t have slept more than a few restless hours.

She came out of the bathroom, toweling off her hair, and dressed hurriedly. I didn’t get out of bed or say any-thing; I just followed her movements in the murky light and waited, letting her leave without saying good-bye if that’s what she wanted.

After Maya had finished dressing, she sat down heavily on the edge of the bed with her back turned to me and sighed. She bowed her head, unsnapped her purse, and removed her wallet. I could hear the rustling of bills being counted and I sat up in bed. She laid a raft of fifties on the covers as if she were a blackjack dealer spreading out a deck of cards.

“Maya?” I asked, puzzled.

“Now,
I
have something to confess,” she started.

I looked from her to the bills on the bed and back to her.

Her eyes strayed to the wall for a moment, as if she were wrestling with a dark confession. She sucked in her breath and said quickly but deliberately, “Jack gave me a thousand dollars if I would bust out my best bottles and essentially seduce you.”

I could feel my eyes blinking, struggling to bring
this
picture into focus. “What?” I said, staggered.

She combed a hand through her long, bed-tangled hair, visibly ill-at-ease. Her face looked sad and tired. “Of course I wouldn’t have done it if I didn’t want to, if I didn’t feel anything for you,” she continued. “Jack said