Chapter Two Satoshi #4
‘You know how to paint a picture.’ I gestured at the glasses in front of me. ‘Talking about wine like this is scientific. Technical. But the way you talk about it – that’s different. That’s art.’
I nudged glass number four toward her, an albarino from Rías Baixas. ‘You heard me break down this wine. Now you do it. Your way.’
Fiona looked at me almost suspiciously before she accepted the glass. ‘You said it had notes of lemon and green olive brine.’ She smelled it. ‘I definitely get that – the citrus and the saltiness. And—’ she tasted it ‘—there’s something almost like tonic water.’
‘Exactly. That slight bitterness. It’s like quinine.’
‘It reminds me of this day last January.’ She took another sip, letting the wine sit on her palate for a moment.
‘My brother Elias was here, and it was hot, so we took the kids down to Bellerive Beach. The girls were playing in the water, and Lex was lying next to me on a towel, nose buried in a book like usual, and Elias pulled out this little container of olives and these cheap canned gin and tonics, and we sat there eating and drinking together. The drinks weren’t very good – I mean, they were G&Ts in a can, you would probably rather die – but it was the first time in ages I didn’t feel completely miserable. ’
‘See?’
Her smile was sheepish. ‘That’s a bit too specific for your tasting notes.’
‘Forget my tasting notes. That’s not the point.
The point is that you’re good at this.’ I tapped the foot of one of the wineglasses.
‘I can give wine specs until the cows come home, but you know how to make a glass tell a story. And that’s how to make wine into what it should be about. Enjoyment. Appreciation. Pleasure.’
‘I don’t think I really understood that,’ she said, ‘before I met you.’
Those words stole the breath from my lungs.
‘One of the first things you ever told me about wine was that it was the opposite of shots.’ She looked into her glass, contemplative.
‘That instead of being a means to an end – something you drank to get drunk, that was gone in a flash – it was something to drink slowly. To stop. Sit. Sip. Savour.’
Those words were part of my standard spiel – I’d said them thousands of times – but coming out of her mouth, they felt brand new.
‘I’ve always remembered that,’ she said. ‘Especially this past year. Sometimes it feels like the world is spinning so fast I’m going to get flung off. But whenever I get to sit down with a glass of wine, then just for a moment, everything slows down. It’s… mindful, almost.’
She smiled at me. ‘Then I get to talk about it with you. And that’s pleasure, isn’t it? A lovely experience you can share with a friend?’
I defied anyone in the world not to melt when Fiona Fisher smiled at them like that.
‘Of course it is,’ I said softly.
She held up her glass. ‘To pleasure?’
I picked up one of the half-full tasting glasses and clinked it against hers. ‘To pleasure.’
She held my gaze as we drank. ‘This is obviously redundant for me,’ she said, gesturing with two fingers first at her eyes and then at mine, ‘given I’m probably never going to have sex ever again, good or bad, but it would be unfair for me to drag you down with me for the next seven years.’
I blinked.
She winked at me.
And something in me – a carefully erected barricade, constructed deep within my mind – cracked.
‘Fiona,’ I said, setting my glass down, ‘do you really think that?’
‘That I’ll never have sex again?’
I nodded. It felt like someone was slowly turning up the thermostat on my entire body, like there was heat in my bones and it was slowly spreading.
‘I’d like not to think it.’ She looked into her glass again. ‘But let’s be realistic. Men don’t usually come beating down the doors of single mothers on the verge of middle age.’
The flush, which had receded from her cheeks, started to reappear.
‘I’ve thought about getting on a dating app.
But I haven’t been single since I was twenty-one – I don’t know shit about dating apps.
And where would I find the time? I get one night a week to myself while the kids are with Jonah and Sadie, and I’m usually so tired I just fall into a boneless heap on the couch.
The thought of trying to date is exhausting.
The thought of trying to trust someone is unthinkable. And that’s—’
‘Fiona.’
‘—before you take into account that only, like, fifteen people live in Hobart, so I’d constantly be swiping past people I know.
Probably dads from the kids’ school – married dads – and then I’d know they were out there trying to cheat on their wives, and they’d know that the woman so stupid she didn’t realise her husband had an entire second family was out there trying to get fooled again and—’
‘Fiona.’
‘—I suppose the obvious answer is just to leave men out of the equation altogether and buy a vibrator. But the second I do, one of the twins will find it. And it’s not like I’m opposed to giving them comprehensive sex education or teaching them about pleasure and their own bodies, but I wasn’t planning to do it at the age of eight, and – oh my god, I can’t believe I’m talking to you about this!
’ She buried her face in her hands. ‘Why am I like this?’
‘Fiona, look at me.’
‘No,’ she moaned. ‘I’m just going to sink into the floor and sneak out later when you’re not looking. Don’t mind me.’
‘Come on. Look at me. Please.’
She dropped her hands slightly, fingers digging into her cheekbones just beneath her eyes.
‘You’re beautiful.’ I felt like I was standing on the lip of a volcano. Everything was burning, and I was on the edge, about to fall in. ‘And you’re lovely. Anyone would be lucky to be with you. Especially men, but also vibrators. They’d be so lucky.’
That drew a laugh from her, muffled in her palms. ‘Thank you,’ she said. ‘For not throwing me out all the times my mouth gets ahead of my brain.’
My mouth did not get ahead of my brain. I thought about it before I said it. I was on the very edge of the volcano’s crater, and the ground was shaky beneath me, but I probably had just enough strength left to step back from the brink.
But then she dropped her hands, and she smiled at me, and it was like sparkling wine in my veins, and I lost control of my footing.
‘We’re friends, right?’ I asked.
‘Of course we are.’
‘You deserve pleasure, Fiona,’ I said. ‘And if you need someone to give it to you, I’m here.’