Isn't It Romantic?

Pierre understood just enough to be speechless.

Owen heaved up the cellar doors and paused. “Say, ‘Go Big Red!’” Pierre began, “Go . . .” but Owen elbowed him. “I was just joshing ya.” He let the doors bang wide, scattering indignant insects whose only home is the grass. “My reds are big, I’ll grant you,” he said, “but they’re also surprisingly complex, with just a hint of black currant and a strong, durable finish.”

Owen and Pierre rumbled down the wooden steps to an underground root cellar that held tall racks of hundreds of bottled wines. Owen screwed an overhead sixty-watt light-bulb tight to illuminate the cellar, and Pierre considered his precise arrangements and his orderly tools and charts. At least here Owen was perfectly organized.

Pierre asked, “Tous ces vins. . . . Yours?”

Owen nodded. “You want a taste?”

Pierre shrugged noncommittally, like a high school kid trying to be cool. And then curiosity carried the day and he said, “Okay.”

Owen went to a rack, got out a high-shouldered bottle, and proudly held it up to Pierre. “Big Red, that’s our brand name. And see here on the label? Miss in boo-telly ow chat-o.”

Pierre corrected, “Mise en bouteille au château.”

“Means I make it right here. And on the flip side,” Owen said, delicately giving it a half revolution, “the complete Husker football scores for that vintage.”

“Alors,” Pierre said.

“I’ll just open her up. Well, not that one.” Owen got another. “Here we go.” Owen uncorked the wine with great effort and gently decanted it over a candle flame while saying, “Maybe you and me could get some kind of deal going. I mean, I didn’t just fall off the turnip truck. Who’s going to take a red wine serious if it comes from Nebraska? We aren’t especially known for our viticulture here, and you have to go clear to Omaha to find a good oenologist. But if you were to put your name on the label or just represented it some way, you could get my lovely darlings the admiration I personally think they deserve.” Owen handed him a half-filled, red plastic cup. “At least those are my main bullet points. You can take the agenda any way you want from here.”

Pierre suspiciously assessed the aroma of the purplish wine. “Ce n’est pas du vin, c’est du sarcasme.” (This isn’t wine, it’s sarcasm.)

“Don’t judge that pretty miss too quick now. You gotta give the shy ones a second or two to introduce themselves.”

Pierre sniffed again. “C’est charmant. D’une manière brouillonne.” (Charming. In a slovenly way.)

Owen assumed praise. “You don’t know how it pleases me to hear you say that. All my friends think my reds are real tasty, but you, you’ve got a highly trained palate and an Old World discrimination that’s woefully lacking in these climes.”

Hopelessly, Pierre drank as if to debase himself, as if he were quaffing Sterno. He was prepared to wince, and his hand shot to his mouth as he forced a swallow, but then he just stared ahead, wide-eyed and mystified, for the finish of the wine was excellent, wholly unlike the poison he’d expected. “She has changed clothes!” he said.

“Oh, much better than that,” Owen said, smiling. “She’s shucked them off, and she is sheer beauty.”

“Mais oui,” he said, “it’s so!”

Owen swished the wine from side to side in his mouth with a milk churning sound and then let it ooze down his throat. “A hint of cherries and green cigar in this one, isn’t there?”

“Il y a quelque chose.” (There is something.)

“The secret’s the water. All my grapevines are fed from Frenchman’s Creek. We got our own little microclimate along those ruddy banks.”

Pierre sipped again, evaluated, and offered flatly, “C’est bon.” (It’s good.)

“Music to my ears,” Owen said.

After finishing his plastic cup, Pierre handed it to Owen for more.

Owen got down another bottle of Big Red and grinned as he examined its vintage. “We beat Florida State in the Orange Bowl this year.”

8

At four o’clock, Carlo Bacon locked the front door to the Main Street Café, put on his kitchen oven mitts, and hauled out of the Chefmaster oven a tray of lamb spring rolls that he’d later dress with mango chutney. On a butcher block table was a yellow King’s Ransom rose with a handwritten tag that read “To the fairest.” Clenching the rose in his teeth, he took off his “Kiss the Cook” apron, went out the kitchen’s screen door with his tray of hors d’oeuvres, and headed toward his garage apartment behind Mrs. Christiansen’s rooming house.

Against the tool bench wall of the garage was a freezer a sizeable Angus could ruminate in. Humming “You Saved the Best for Last” he wrapped the tray of spring rolls in cellophane and nestled them inside the freezer next to a tray of wild mushroom risotto cakes and frosted containers of crab cakes and scallops enclosed in bacon. Waiting for his free time tomorrow was the four-tiered wedding cake of marzipan and chocolate ganache. The field greens with Cockburn pears and the main course of lobster and filet mignon he would have to prepare on the morning of the ceremony.

Carlo trudged up the garage stairs to a grandmotherly apartment furnitured in Mrs. Christiansen’s hand-me-downs, and immediately dialed Dick Tupper’s phone number. “Dick?” he said. “Carlo. What’re you doing?”

“Getting into character,” Dick said.