Chapter Eight Satoshi
Tasting today: Bruny Island lager, Tasmania, Australia.
Wine is wonderful, but sometimes you find a beer so good you get carried away – like this hazy lager, which is brilliant (at least until you drink too much, too fast).
‘Let me guess,’ I said to Isamu, as he walked through the door of Tsundoku at about five pm on a Wednesday in early December. ‘Another meeting in town?’
There was no way he could have misread my meaning, but, ‘Yes,’ was all he said, tone mild as he joined me behind the bar. ‘I might crash on your couch tonight, if it goes late or gets boozy.’
I slotted some clean burgundy glasses into the overhead rack. ‘It’s interesting to me, your business partner, that I’m not invited to any of these meetings.’
Isamu started slotting clean glasses into the rack too. ‘Not every part of the business involves you, Sato.’
‘Not every part of the business involves you either. Yet here you are. Again.’
I held out my hand to him. He looked at me for a long moment before he relinquished the glass he was holding.
I slotted it into the overhead rack. ‘I’m taking an extra night off a week to study. I sponsored Charlotte through CMS Intro, and if she passes Certified in April, we’ll have another person who can run the floor. I’ve got everything under control.’
It was true, too. Work and study were both running like clockwork.
And there was no way a person could have Fiona Fisher sitting on their lap, face flushed from kissing, and say, No, stop, this is further than you wanted to go, when she tried to take her shirt off, unless they had things deeply, profoundly, aggressively under control.
… even if they’d had to jerk off twice in quick succession after she left and the fantasy of what might have happened if they’d let their control slip hadn’t stopped playing in their head for weeks.
Isamu pinched the bridge of his nose. ‘Sato…’
I was saved from another lecture by the Shaw sisters coming through the door. ‘Hi, Sadie,’ I said, practically elbowing Isamu out of the way. ‘Hi, Chess. Welcome back. I know you live in Sydney, but you’re here so often we’re going to have to start calling you a regular.’
‘Thanks,’ Chess said, pale cheeks flushed from the December heat.
‘What brings you down this time?’
‘She’s helping me look for a wedding dress.’ Sadie sat in the chair I’d pulled out for her. ‘I need another pair of eyes, and it felt insensitive to ask Fiona.’
I pulled out Chess’s chair and made a sound of vague agreement, ignoring the glint – halfway between suspicion and glee – in Sadie’s eyes.
It wasn’t the first time she’d looked at me this way since she’d caught us in the corridor at Abode, but if Fiona wasn’t ready to talk about our Thursday night arrangement, I wasn’t about to jump the gun. ‘What can I get for you?’
I got them settled with a bottle of Bibliophile kyoho akai, then went back behind the bar. ‘See? Under control.’
‘I believe you.’ Isamu held up his hands. ‘But I’m here now. My meeting isn’t till half-past seven. I can spell you.’
Chess was looking at us curiously, so I switched to Japanese.
‘If you’re so insistent on working, you can take the next customer.
But I don’t walk into the winery and say, “No, you’re working too much, Isamu, I’ll be monitoring the ferment today.
” You can’t just barge in here and banish me from my own bar. ’
‘I’m not banishing you. But I’ve got a couple of free hours, and you’ve got an exam to study for.’
I folded my arms.
He sighed. ‘Fine, Sato. Have it your way.’
We worked mostly in silence for the next little while. I let him serve every second customer. He didn’t protest when I insisted on serving the others. The reason we’d never had particularly good service chemistry was that we both always tried to lead, but tonight, it was surprisingly seamless.
‘How’s wedding planning going?’ I asked Sadie as she came up to pay, watching Isamu out of the corner of my eye as he talked Chess through my cocktail page.
‘Fine.’ Sadie tapped her card against the reader. ‘Although I never would have guessed it would be so much work. Our first wedding took about three hours to plan, tops. This wedding feels like it’s taking three hours a day.’
I handed her the receipt. ‘How many of those are devoted to Rosie and Georgia’s demands?’
Sadie grinned. ‘At least two and a half. Are you coming, Chessie?’
‘I’ll stay for another drink,’ Chess replied. ‘I’ve got some work emails to answer. Can I get a negroni, please?’
‘Let me make that,’ I told Isamu, as the sisters hugged and Sadie left.
‘I’ve got it,’ he replied, taking down bottles of gin, vermouth and Campari.
‘Yes, but—’
I was interrupted by my phone buzzing in my pocket, tearing my attention away from Isamu grotesquely over-stirring Chess’s drink. It was astonishing that I ever let him behind the bar at all, if he was going to dilute my beautifully crafted cocktails like—
Every single thought left my head when I saw the name on the screen. ‘Fiona?’
‘Satoshi.’ There was something breathy and desperate in her voice on the other end of the phone. ‘I need you.’
I abandoned the bar and strode towards my office. ‘What’s wrong?’ I kicked the door closed behind me. ‘Are you all right?’
‘I’m fine, don’t worry!’ She laughed. ‘Sorry – need is too strong a word. But I’m in a bit of situation, and you are uniquely positioned to help me look like a huge fucking hero.’
I pressed the heel of my hand to my chest, willing my heart to stop racing. Those whispered words – I need you – had sent me into two different kinds of cardiac arrest. ‘Of course. What do you need?’
‘I’m at Lex’s graduation barbecue,’ Fiona said, ‘and they’ve run out of booze.’
Her voice dropped. ‘All the other parents think I’m useless. Ever since Matt, they treat me like a joke. I turned up with seventy-two cupcakes tonight, and they acted like I was a dog dropping a tennis ball at their feet. But if I can save them from the horrors of their own poor planning…’
I was already moving. ‘Easy. What do you need? Wine? Beer?’
‘Both. The cheapest you have. I’ll pay for it, obviously, but I can’t quite extend to serving sixty parents Dom Perignon, you know? Plus, they’re already buzzed, they won’t appreciate the good shit.’
‘Everything I stock is—’
‘—the good shit, I know.’ There was a laugh in her voice, that champagne laugh, and my chest hummed. ‘But I believe in you, Satoshi. Bring me the very worst of your good shit.’
She paused. ‘Or, you know, send Charlotte or whoever. You have a business to run, and—’
‘Fiona,’ I said. ‘Drop me a pin of where you are. I’ll be there soon.’
She paused again. ‘Thank you,’ was all she said, but it turned my blood to mulled wine. It had been almost two weeks since I’d seen her, and I’d been aching for her.
My imagination automatically kicked into gear, but I forced all the delicious pictures it was conjuring away and headed back out onto the bar floor. ‘Isamu, I have to run out for a bit. Do you mind covering?’
‘Now you want cover?’ At some point while I’d been in my office, my brother had morphed back into his usual taciturn self. ‘I told you, Sato, I’ve got a meeting in half an hour.’
My mind, which was full of the breathy gasps Fiona made when I touched her, stuttered to a halt. ‘Wait, really?’
‘Yes. And I can’t miss it.’
I couldn’t – wouldn’t – leave my bar without a somm on the floor. That wasn’t something I was physically or mentally capable of doing.
But I had to go to Fiona. I had to. How could I let her say I need you and not be there?
‘Please, Onīsan.’ My lips felt numb. ‘Please.’
Isamu closed his eyes. He knew as well as I did that I wouldn’t use the formal form of ‘older brother’ unless I was extremely serious, extremely desperate, or both.
Then, to my surprise, Chess spoke. ‘That was Fiona, right? If she needs you, you should go.’
Isamu looked at her for a moment, then exhaled. ‘Fine.’
The relief hit me so strongly I almost sagged with it. ‘Thank you,’ I told him. ‘Thank you, thank you, thank you.’
Fiona was waiting for me in the school carpark. ‘Thank you!’ she exclaimed as I got out of the car. ‘Oh my goodness, Satoshi, I owe you big time for this.’
She was in a dark blue blouse, half-tucked into jeans, with sensible shoes. She was wearing minimal makeup, had her hair pulled back in a ponytail, and was the loveliest thing I had ever seen.
‘No problem at all.’ I bent down to peck her on the cheek, the faintest shadow of what I actually wanted to do, which was shove her up against the side of my car, wrap her ponytail around my fist, and kiss her hard. ‘If there’s a problem that can be solved with booze, I’m your man.’
I rolled my sleeves up to my elbows, folding each cuff three times over. ‘I might need some help carrying things, though.’ I took the trolley out of my back seat and hefted the keg of beer I’d taken from my cool room onto it.
‘Okay.’ Fiona’s voice was faint. I glanced at her as I hauled a case of wine out of the boot, and found her gaze fixed on my forearms.
I winked at her. She flushed pink. ‘Let me, um, go find some dads.’
The barbecue was on the school oval. I spotted Lex on the fringes of a gaggle of pre-teens, looking uncomfortably dressed up. I raised a hand to them as I wheeled the keg over the grass, and they visibly brightened as they waved back.
‘Everyone, this is my friend Satoshi from Tsundoku down on the Bellerive high street,’ Fiona announced, as I set the keg down next to the hastily-set-up trestle table on which the dads she’d recruited had put the cases of wine, ‘and he comes bearing booze!’
A cheer went up, and people began to converge on us, slowly but surely, like a horde of zombies. ‘So parents can drink, hey?’ I said, wiping my wrist over my forehead before starting to take wine bottles out of the cases. It was a warm night, and I’d started to sweat.
‘They sure can.’ Fiona’s tone was wry as she helped me. ‘You should have seen the despair when they realised they’d drunk themselves dry.’