Page 28 of Grape Juice
“Well, it’s loud. It hurts a bit, feels like an affront—this constant cocktail of sirens, voices, car horns, rattling trains, music. But sometimes it’s hard for me to sleep without it.” I empty my now-overflowing bucket into one of the baquet lined up behind me. “And the din of restaurants—that’s the best part. What it sounds like to eat out.”
I’ve always likeddinas a word because it’s all wrong. Because it is a naked and tiny thing, nothing like the inside of a restaurant. Restaurants in New York sound like applause. Like winged insects stumbling around cardboard boxes. Like ice in a highball glass. Ice against anything, really. Likefor two, chilled red, she’s twenty-fivetoday, I’d recommend, how’s your mom, can I kiss you, have you read?Likewe hated it, grinning, over empty plates. Like swimming, like atonement. Everyone bathed in light that forgives.
“What aboutyourbar? What did it sound like in there?” I wonder if I’m slipping into sensitive territory by asking.
“God, so good. Like music—all the mismatched percussion of a thousand meals, conversations, occasions, rubbed up against one another. And in spite of the chaos, it all just worked together. Neversoundedlike mismatch.” Our knees bump gently through the vine that separates us. “Everyone looked so beautiful in there.”
I press my knee more firmly against his. “Tell me more.”
“Hmm... you’d look around and it was like all flaws had been sanded away; everyone left their anxiety at the door. No one ever sat silently. Peopletalked. Forhours. And I’d be in the back, taking inventory or restocking bottles, looking out at this absolutely mad, perfect room of bodies and wineglasses and secrets, and I’d feel like I’d unlocked a portal.”
I smile. “What happened at the end, then? What did it feel like?”
He exhales, slow and heavy. “We weren’t making enough money, our landlord sucked. We could hardly afford to hire real staff, which meant we almost never got away. I mean, we had all these bigideas... but we couldn’t pull them off without more support. And at a certain point, however magical it all was, it started to feeltedious. Nothing ever got easier. Then we had this big flood. The cellar—which was basically the most valuable part of the whole operation—got destroyed, and we just decided to call it.”
“God, I’m so sorry. That sounds brutal.”
“It was. It’s like what you said about a breakup: There was no funeral, no big ceremony—it just... ended. And with it, there was this whole chunk of my identity that was gone.”
“Have you thought about opening something new?” I’m tempted to reach for him, but I don’t want to slow or muddle his response.
“Of course, every day. But, with good reason, I’m terrified—it feels like something I can’t possibly bear to fail attwice.”
“OK, intheory, if you were opening a new spot, what would you do differently?”
“I’d open a place in Paris. There’s this little corner spot in the tenth arrondissement, right by Canal Saint-Martin. I know the owner. Old guy, family friend. Doesn’t wanna run his own spot too much longer. That’s the fantasy.”
“That doesn’t sound like a fantasy; that sounds like a very distinct possibility.”
“I’m just tired of introducing myself by saying ‘Hello, je suis Henri. I used to be someone.J’étais quelqu’un.’”
“Well, you don’t have to open a second bar to do that. In fact, ‘Je suis Henri’ is a perfectly fine introduction.” I feel for his fingers, nestled around a cluster of pinot gris. “I get it. I’ve spent so much of my life borrowing qualifiers.Being someone’s girlfriend or someone’s employee. It’s nice to be just Alice.”
“Juste Alice, ça marche. It works.” I can hear his grin even without looking up.
That night, we slip out of our beds and walk up the street, navigating by the light of our phones, searching for the spot where Henri parked his truck upon arrival, weeks ago. We lug blankets and towels to line the open-air bed of the vehicle. Once we climb in, it’s just us and the star-punctured night sky.
When Henri presses his mouth to mine, I know his taste, the rhythm of his tongue flicking around behind my teeth. I feel like it belongs to me. Like with appetite, with consumption, the more of him I swallow, the more I want. There’s a ravenous quality that makes it nearly impossible to sit across from him at dinner, to view him across the kitchen storing a platter for Bea without aching for physical contact.
When he comes inside me, he digs his nails into my neck, holding fast to my throat as I lean into his grip. I can feel the sharpest corners of his person permeating my skin—as if sex isn’t enough. I want him in my bloodstream.
Then, we sleep, curled into each other like parentheses. As I drift off, I wonder if there’s a metaphor aboutasidesburied in here.
In the morning, in the rearview mirror of the truck, I examine my neck, the chain of half-moon marks from his fingertips. I have the distinct thought that I hope they won’t heal, that they’ll stay with me as this souvenir of whatever it was that we were.
When I try to convey this to him, he smiles slyly. “Souveniris a French word, you know?Je me souviens: ‘I remember.’” He kisses me softly on the corner of my mouth. “Only in America do you need an object for remembering. You will stillse souvienseven when the marks are gone, I promise.”
XV
The following days unfurl like some half-drunk hallucination, something sketched in oil pastel. As if someone has turned up the contrast on planet earth, and fuck, have I never seen color before?
Henri and I sleep in the truck bed each night, rolling up our blankets and depositing them in the cab when the nascent sun starts emerging, before anyone else is up. In the afternoons, we pick together in the vines, finding every possible excuse to touch, skin against skin, even in the most mundane ways. I brush a fly off his arm, and he taps my elbow to catch my attention. We harvest figs and tomatoes for Bea; we shell peas together in the kitchen, standing so close, a ruler wouldn’t fit between us. At dinner, we sit together, our utensil-less hands in constant contact. We’re hardly a secret anymore. The opposite, really. But still, we feign some semblance of professionalism, delighting in our minimal acts of restraint.
After dinner, Antoine and Henri often take walks while Ruby and I read and brush our teeth together. Then, while I wait for the others to fall asleep, I write Emma cloying,indulgent emails about what it feels like to wake up in the bed of a Toyota Hilux amid receding stars, sprawling vines, emerging light. About this man whose very smell makes me want to use narcotics or write a poem. The ways in which our back-and-forth feels so comprehensively nourishing, I could live on it alone.
Once it’s late enough, I tiptoe out of my bedroom and into the kitchen to meet Henri, and I feel an outsized affection for the yearning creak of the floorboards as we creep our way out the front door.
This version of living is nothing short of enchanting. Impossibly so. But the problem is, time is passing. And with each day, we continue onward in our unspoken march toward the end of our tenure here. Harvest is finite, part of the horticultural circle of life. And when it ends, this small, guarded world we’ve built—Henri and I but also Ruby, Julian, Pietro, Bea, Antoine—will dissipate.
