Page 15 of Grape Juice
Who am I kidding? Henri is not an abstraction or some savory bit of gossip. He is right here with his fingertips hooked onto the doorframe. My reluctance is flimsy, performative for my own benefit, and he sees through it, a taunting grin etched across his face. But hell, agency isn’t about making the righteous choice. It’s about makingachoice—and I want to breathe this boy’s air.
I walk to him, and he weaves his arm through the crook of my elbow.
“What were you thinking about in there? You were so absorbed.” He opens the door for us.
I shrug.
“Fine, you’ll tell me later. Do you wanna know whatIwas thinking about?”
“Oui.”
“Your hands.”
I exhale through my nose and bite my lower lip, picturing my wounded fingertip in his mouth. Instinctively, I curl both hands into fists. “Go on.”
“You have crazy hands. Seriously, they’re never still. So much of your personality lives in them—I see it when you talk, when you work with grapes, when you cut food.When you do dishes, apparently. I like it.” He unfurls my fist and loops his fingers through mine, resting his thumb against my palm and pressing down as if to trigger some button-operated response.
“I have, indeed, been known to gesticulate.”
“You know, I think about hands a lot. They’re a thing for me. I’ve watched my uncle’s hands working the vineyards since I was a little kid. I’ve worked in restaurants for ten years. All this time, looking at palms and fingers. And your hands are specific. They’ve got energy in them, like they’ve always got something to say... even ifyoudon’t know what it is yet.”
He pauses, lifting one of my hands to his mouth, pressing his lips to my knuckles, resting there as if taking my temperature. For a moment, I relish the gesture for what it is. Then I look at him and sigh. “Henri, before—” Suddenly, I feel soap operatic in pressing him. Nothing in this is meant to be heavy. Summer camp, no? But I’m too tired of our convoluted rapport, this state of limbo, not to meddle. “What about Antoine? What about your girlfriend?”
He locks eyes with me, a certain wounded surprise settling into his face. “Antoine is just protective, OK? Paternal. It’s nothing against you. It’s just that heknowsmy girlfriend, knows how devastated I was when the bar closed. He thinks I’m gonna make some kind of rash decision and blow up my life. But he doesn’t understand: Charlotte and Ichoseto take a break. I wanted a change.”
“Charlotte...” I feel the contours of her name againstthe back of my teeth. It had been easy up until now to forget that she was a real person—with a distinct laugh and painted fingernails, probably. “OK, but... Charlotte, does she—”
“Look, can we not talk about this right now? We’ve been working all day. I don’t have the energy.”
I can feel him recede a bit, retreat into himself—and I want him back. I resent having ruptured the intimacy between us in my attempt to depose him. I’m not sure I evenwantto know more about Charlotte. Or Antoine. It seems just as likely that I’m simply trying to squelch my own—rare—inclination toward affection. Making things difficult for impossibility’s sake.
“Oui, oui, OK, désolée. You’re right.” I miss his lips on my knuckles.
“Merci... I appreciate it.” He pauses, looking down at his shoes, and slides his now-open hand into his pocket. For a moment, we stand like that, too far apart, and he shifts uneasily from one foot to the other.
“Ah! I almost forgot!” His voice is gleeful now. He unveils an envelope of gold foil and peels back each layer as if unearthing some historic thing to reveal two small rectangles of chocolate. “The best and darkest chocolate there is. So bitter, it’s almost savory. You love the taste of strange things. I thought you’d want to try.”
I reach for a piece and place it in my mouth: The texture is grainy and tough, like soil. It has the sour, acrid drone of coffee grounds or lemon rind, but underneath, it’s still chocolate—cautiously decadent.
Bitter things, I know, once signified danger. Way back when we were untamed and primal, it was how we detected poison—or at the very least, forbidden matter. Now we’ve been coddled into believing we needn’t heed warning signs. Everything has an antidote; danger is relative.
“Tastes like rot.” I swallow. “Like rot on purpose. The good kind.”
“Just like wine, no?”
“Precisely.” I grin in spite of myself.
He says the right things. And what am I to do with someone who keeps on saying the right things?
I watch as he fingers the hem of his linen shirt anxiously—another shift in demeanor. He seems to be shuffling between two modes of being: one flirty, breezy, and cavalier, the other apprehensive and withholding. I wonder if my own shaky indecision is radiating off me just as clearly.
“Alice, it’shard,” he blurts—as if he’s long been holding this particular statement, fully formed, poised at the front of his mouth. “I’m realizing that people hardly ever leave. They stay, and stay, and stay, like Ruby’s guy. They stay when all the feeling is gone, as long as things aren’t awful. We have no protocol for leaving something that is just fine. I don’t know how it’s done.” He toys with the edges of the foil wrapping, and his forehead creases in thought.
How strange it is to care for someone. Even with plenty of my own selfish Henri-related impulses to gun for, right now, I want to absolve him of his malaise. I want to carry it for him. “Well... I think it’s easy to assume that leaving isthe solution, but, I mean, you don’t get to arrive anywhere clean. Relocating doesn’t rewire your brain.” I put my hand over his to pause his restless fidgeting.
“Listen: I’d be lying if I said I wanted anything less than a new identity or, perhaps, a fresh code of DNA from this experience.” I realize I’m talking to my feet and look up at him. “But, unfortunately, I have to stay me, and you have to stay you.”
He laughs and chews on his lip. “You know...” He takes a step closer. The dark is so complete that the glowing squares of window light from the house appear like floating portals. “You’re quite wise, New York.” Another step closer. “I... I’d like to watch you do dishes more often.”
