Chapter Twelve Satoshi
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…’
My last two customers chose that moment to come up and pay. I had never had to dig deeper to find my customer service smile. ‘How was everything?’ I asked, keying in the wrong price on the EFTPOS machine twice before I got it right.
Fiona got up.
Panic shot through my heart, a sudden lightning bolt through the fog. If she left – if I let her go – she might never come back.
She reached over the bar, picked up a cloth, walked over to the table my customers had abandoned, and started wiping it down.
And there it was, that potent, golden, addictive elixir, pumping through my veins: relief.
‘Have a good one, mate,’ one of my customers said.
‘I will,’ I replied faintly, as they left. ‘You too.’
Fiona couldn’t give me what I wanted. I knew that. I’d known it for a long time, even if I couldn’t admit it. The most I would ever be to her was a secret indulgence, kept carefully apart from the rest of her life. I would never be her home.
But that didn’t change how much I loved her. She was the best person I had ever met, and I’d told her there was nothing she could ask of me that I didn’t want to give.
I drained the last of a glass of disappointing Sauternes I’d been sipping, walked over to the front door, and snicked the lock.
Fiona straightened at the sound. Cloth dangling from her hand, she looked at me, and I looked back at her, heartbeat thundering in my ears.
‘Put it down,’ I said.
‘This?’ She held up the cloth.
‘Yes. I’ll clean before I open tomorrow.’
I had never once left the bar floor before cleaning down – the thought of it made my skin prickle uncomfortably – but I might never have this chance again.
Slowly, Fiona put the cloth down. ‘Good,’ I told her.
‘It’s your bar.’ One corner of her mouth quirked upwards. ‘You’re the boss.’
I might never have this chance again, because she might be the death of me.
‘I am,’ I said, ‘but you’re in charge.’
I crossed the floor to her in five strides. I didn’t touch her, but I held out my hand to her. Her breath was coming quickly as she placed hers in mine, and it caught as I kissed her knuckles.
‘Tell me what you want,’ I said. ‘Are we back to first base? Second? Third?’
She always blushed when I asked her to clarify her boundaries, but this time, Fiona met my gaze. There was something glittering in her eyes – not mischief, but something close to it. A challenge, maybe, or a test.
‘All of it, Satoshi,’ she said. ‘I want it all.’