Page 4 of Grape Juice
Pietro, the animated Italian, ushers us toward a twelve-passenger van parked at the edge of the property, waving his arms in the air like human windshield wipers, keys in hand. “Get in,bella, this is thetechnovan,” he shouts across the lot, urging me forward with a toothy grin. “That just means it’scool,” he explains. “When something is cool, my friends and I, we call it techno.”
We file into the vehicle, which is caked in dried mudand littered with supplies: buckets, clippers, gloves, bottles of water. I Tetris my way into the back and onto a bench seat while Julian flops into the trunk.
“Pardon, make room.” Henri’s boyish voice hits me like an amphetamine. At the sound of it, I’m awake.
He wedges himself next to me in a purposefully clumsy maneuver, wiggling his hips to shimmy his way into a space already clearly at capacity. He’s wearing the same baseball cap and a black nylon jacket, and he smiles at me sideways before reaching an arm around my shoulders. “Too tight in here,trop serré.” I can feel the warmth of him even through the sweatshirt I wore at Ruby’s urging. He grins like he knows exactly what he’s doing.
“No problem,pas de problème.” I smile back, briefly wishing there were fewer layers of cloth between us.
“Techno van! Techno van! Techno van!” Pietro chants rhythmically from up front, pumping his fist in the air.
Minutes later, he screeches the vehicle to a loud, needlessly dramatic halt and turns around sheepishly to survey us for a response. None of his passengers pay him the sort of glowing attention he seems to thrive on, and he shrugs. “Not far to go today!”
As we drowsily climb out, one by one, I realize I’m reluctant to give up my real estate in the crook of Henri’s arm. Stepping off the van’s running board, however, the scene is well worth the trade-off. The sun is slowly inching in, teasing its way out over the vines, and everyone looks haloed and ruddy in the half-light, the vines behind themextending toward infinity. The day laborers, most of whom, I was told, had driven over from neighboring towns, have already begun smoking hand-rolled cigarettes, and the ends pierce like hole punches through the muted light.
“OK, everyone listen up!” Antoine shouts, emerging from the front seat. “I will speak in English first—we have an international harvest crew this year. French second,ça marche?” His gaze shifts over to me and Ruby, flanked by Pietro. The island of ex-pats present. “Everyone, take a bucket andun sécateur—how do you say... clippers? I’m going to call your name and assign you a vine. You’ll stay there and pick until I tell you to stop.”
He unloads tall stacks of plastic pails from the truck as he explains: When we fill our buckets, we’ll findbaquets, large bins, throughout the vines where we can empty them, and the baquets will be hauled back to the winery intermittently throughout the day. I queue up to collect my tools, and there’s a soft tug at my elbow. “Stay next to me, New York,” Henri whispers. “We can practice your French.” His pointed focus on me is oddly reassuring.
As if on cue, Antoine points at the both of us, leading us to opposite sides of the same vine just ahead. He shows us how to use thesécateurto clip each cluster of grapes by the stem, holding the pearled ends so they don’t fall, how to use the edge of the tool to scrape outvinaigre, dried or rotten bits. “Pinot gris,” he says, holding up a dense bunch so perfect in its arrangement that it resembles an oil painting. “Goûte-le, taste it.”
I drop one of the pristine orbs in my mouth. It’s like ripe pear, permanent marker, jazz apples. I can feel it up front by my teeth.
I make my first snip and hear Antoine shout instructions toward Ruby a few rows away. It’s just Henri and me now.
“Alright, then.” Henri tosses a handful of grapes over the top of the vine and into my bucket. “You’ll speak to me in French, I’ll speak to you in English. It’s good for us. So tell me, what the hell are you doing here?”
“I’m here for work.On business.”
“I don’t believe you. No one travels overseas to crawl around in dirt... unless you’re in, like, witness protection.”
His English is much better than my French (I haven’t the slightest idea how one says “witness protection”en français). “I work in wine. I like wine. Those are good reasons, no?”
“I think you can do better.”
I offer him my professional spiel: a top-level summary of what it is to be a rep, Alec’s prestige, the industry cred I’ll earn from the presence of soil under my fingernails.
“You make it sound like you were forced. Surely you could have said no?”
Of course, Icouldhave said no. But it had hardly occurred to me at the time. Whether or not I’d have phrased it as such, I’d practically beenwaitingfor an opportunity like this—something to counter all the monotonous rhythms of work and play I had fallen into. “I wasn’t forced, no.” I rock my head back and forth indecisively, even knowingthat Henri can’t see me. “But I don’t think I would’ve made it here on my own if my boss hadn’t proposed it.”
“So youwantedto come. Is that so hard to admit?”
“Fine.” I sigh playfully. Already, I like more than the look of him—his buoyant readiness to spar, his immediate air of familiarity.
I take stock of the mounting fruit in my bucket. “To give you the short answer, I guess I’ve been bored at home.Je sentais ennuyée.” I prepare myself for the oral acrobatics that come with sliding in and out of a language so rubbery and untrained in my mouth. I don’t have the words to make my point properly—which is, more or less, that I have no patience for the specific malaise of apathy, especially when it belongs to me. I’d been looking for a jolt. I didn’t know how to trigger one all on my own.
“Jemesentais ennuyée—it’s reflexive,” Henri corrects, pulling aside a leaf cluster to look me in the eyes. The vine divides us like a verdant hyphen. “And have you been bored for a long time?”
“I’m not sure. That’s a hard question.”
“We have a lot of time. And a lot of grapes to pick.”
“The answer would require lots of backstory—and you,monsieur, are a stranger.”
“Ah, you don’t get it yet. Aboutles vignes. This is what we do here: We talk.” He clears his throat. “Amongles vendangeurs, there are no stakes—we don’t know each other in the real world. We don’t have friends in common. We don’t work in the same offices. I’m Alsace; you’re New York. So, all day, while we have no choice but to work rightacross from each other, we talk. It’s like therapy. Americans love therapy, no?”
A laugh escapes me involuntarily. “Certain Americans, yes.” I grind my teeth, tighten my jaw, weigh where to begin. In truth, proper therapy has never been easy for me; I lack the willingness to concede personal information without equal collateral from my conversational partner. I tend to bristle at the imbalance. “OK, how about you go first? Basic exposition. Tell me why you’re here. Then, I promise, I’ll share.”
