I slid onto a stool. ‘I wasn’t expecting me either when I woke up this morning, but here I am.’
He studied me. ‘Are you okay?’
‘No,’ I replied honestly. ‘I’m not.’
‘Can I get you a drink?’
‘First,’ I said, ‘can I pay for the keg?’
He was still studying me. ‘You don’t have to.’
‘Yes. I do.’
It was such a small thing, but I had to do it. I owed so many people so many things that I could never repay – owedhimso much I could never repay – but this, at least, I would make good.
Satoshi offered me the EFTPOS reader. I tapped my credit card against it. ‘Will you answer a question for me?’
His expression was unsure, but after a brief moment, he replied, ‘Of course.’
I glanced around the bar. It wasn’t full; apart from me, there were only two people, having a quiet drink near the crime shelves. ‘Could you close early tonight?’
‘Maybe? The kitchen’s already closed and I doubt anyone else will come in. Boxing Day isn’t normally a big trading day for us, it’ll pick up in a couple of days when the Sydney to Hobart yachts start coming in. Why?’
‘Because I’m only married until midnight,’ I said, ‘and I need to cheat on my husband.’
Chapter TwelveSatoshi
Tasting today: 2017 Sauternes, Bordeaux, France.
Although rich and golden and sweet on the palate, many wines from this vintage do not live up to Sauternes’ stellar reputation. If you pay attention, you can taste the sickness that plagued the grapes.
There is a moment, sometimes, when you try a truly transcendent glass of wine, where the world narrows to a single point.
Sometimes you know it’s coming. You go through the ritual of tasting, and it builds, sign upon sign, a golden equation, all saying that what you have in your glass is special.
Sometimes, though, you don’t, and it hits you like a runaway train – something ordinary which turns out to be extraordinary, bursting on your palate in a way which makes you want to burst into tears in turn.
Either way, though, a sommelier must be able to pull that wine apart, to analyse it, to break it down. So after that single, transcendent moment, you start to think, and the more you start to think, the more you start to question, until eventually, sometimes, you realise that what you have in your glass was not quite what you thought.
‘I’m only married until midnight,’ Fiona Fisher said, a spark in her eyes as she looked at me across the bar, ‘and I need to cheat on my husband.’
The world narrowed to a single point.
Fiona, with me. Her body against mine, her hands fisted in my hair, her breath in my ear, my name on her lips. One sparkling image, for one sparkling second.
But then the second passed, and another, and another. The words she had said broke open in my brain – flavours bursting anew against my palate as I took another sip – and this time, they were not so pleasant.
She hadn’t said,Satoshi, I want you.
She hadn’t said,Satoshi, I need you.
She hadn’t said,Satoshi, I love you.
She hadn’t even said my name at all. Because this wasn’t about me.
It was about him. She had come to me late at night, when the bar was empty and no one would see us together. For an ending, not a beginning; an exorcism, not an embrace.
‘You don’t have to say yes, obviously.’ She tucked a stray strand of hair behind her ear. ‘You don’t owe me anything, Satoshi. But if… if you…’
