Lucky Ce Soir, page 16
He eyed the cookies, mentally counting. Then, his eyes wide with reluctance, he offered me the plate. I felt like scraping off most of them into my napkin, but I was above punishing his largess. “I’m fine, thank you.”
He seemed stunned. After all, the kid had born witness to my appetites many, many times. Not a proud moment, but a real one. I felt an urge to eat spinach in an odd kinship with Popeye. I yam what I yam.
Self-acceptance, a large step on the path to maturity.
Not that I was in any hurry. But at some point, life would become untenable if I didn’t grow a pair and get on with it. With Madame Bouclet eyeing me as she cradled her teacup and with Christophe hanging on my every move, I was closer to fish-or-cut-bait time than I realized. With both Teddie and Jean-Charles waiting for a falter—one to run, the other to pounce—bullshitting my way was no longer working. Jordan had warned me. Hell, everybody had.
The worst thing about all of it was I’d disappoint somebody.
In a blinding flash of that self-awareness I struggled with, I realized the only person I couldn’t disappoint was me. If I did, I’d lose myself altogether.
“Lucky?” Worry softened Madame Bouclet’s voice.
“Sorry.” With a slight nod, I gave Christophe the go-ahead to dive into the cookies, then I joined Madame Bouclet in enjoying our tea.
“Where did you go?” she asked.
I gave a self-conscious shrug. “Life.” Both an ineffective and apt explanation.
“It is a bit much these days, isn’t it?”
“How is Jean-Louis?” I caught myself. “I’m sorry. How is M. Bouclet?” In France, using given names was by invitation only. So far, mine hadn’t been delivered.
She waved a hand. “Please. No formality. You are family.”
An elegant upgrade. Christophe beamed. “Jean-Charles and I have much to work out.”
“With time, all is possible.” She fussed with her grandson, moving his plate closer and his mug of hot chocolate back from the table’s edge.
Sure signs I needed to change the subject. “And Jean-Louis?”
“Resting comfortably. He is home from the hospital only now, so he is very tired. I told him you were here. He is weak but excited to see you.” Her cup clattered against the saucer as she replaced it. “If you could, please keep that in mind.”
“Of course. Toward that end, perhaps you could give me some insight.”
She puffed up like a little bird perched on the edge of the chair, pleased that I’d asked. “I’ll try, but the wine business is Jean-Louis’s work.”
I didn’t believe it for a minute, but I played along. “What can you share about Enzo Laurent? He and your husband met regularly in the wine cellar here, but for the world, they pretended to be adversaries.”
She gave me some shrewd side-eye. “Most of business is a game, is it not?”
“Indeed. I see how a perception of antagonism would drive the price up. The two families could start shooting at each other any moment, so grab the wine while you can. The producers gain from the higher prices, but the distributor not so much.”
“Correct. Make no mistake, the wine, it is very good. But there are many good wines and wine drinkers can be…how do you say it?”
“Fickle?”
“Yes, fickle.” She focused on pouring some more tea. At the raised pot, I extended my cup.
“Thank you.”
She didn’t look at me as she placed the pot with measured care on the silver tray. “You think Enzo is behind the theft?” She tucked her hand in her lap to hide its shaking.
“No.”
That shot her eyebrows toward her hairline.
“You want him to be guilty?” I thought about shooing Christophe out of the conversation—he was riveted—but it wasn’t my place to do so.
Crumpling a bit, she wilted. “I don’t know what I want. That’s not true. I want my husband to be well, the wine restored to our cellar, and for the fault to rest outside of our family and our friends.” She let me see her worry. “The Laurents and the Bouclets, there is much history between our families. This is a precious, priceless gift.”
“But Jean-Louis canceled the contract.”
“He is sick and not thinking well. An old sick man is not a good businessman. I tried to speak with Enzo. I knew he would be angry, but I can usually talk to him, make him see things as they are.”
“But he wouldn’t listen?”
“I never got the chance. His assistant wouldn’t let me in, nor would she put my calls through. She said he’d told her to do that.” Hurt glistened in her eyes.
“I’m sorry.”
She straightened, anger now pushing back the worry and sadness. The warrior was back. “He would never do such a thing! We have been…friends…for a long time.” Her intonation was turgid with subtext. She glanced at her grandson, and then added a bit of pleading in the look she gave me.
With great effort, I kept my expression bland. “The assistant kept you from seeing him? What is that woman’s name anyway?”
“Daria. You don’t like her?” A smile ticked up one corner of Madame Bouclet’s mouth.
“Cold and calculating.”
“You read people well.”
“Only when they don’t matter to me. Does she have a history that might be interesting?”
“I have no idea. Frankly, all of us were confused that Enzo kept her on.”
“Not exactly the person I would want interacting with my customers.” I abandoned my tea. When it was hot, it was marginally interesting. Now that it was tepid, it tasted and looked like dirty dishwater.
Madame Bouclet’s intensity dimmed, and her features softened. “This time is very difficult for her. Her son, you see, he is very sick. I saw them at the hospital. The boy didn’t look well, even thinner than I remembered him, and so pale.”
Sympathy welled. The photo on her desk. Her son. Damn. “What is he fighting?”
“Something he’s been battling his whole life. I’m not really sure exactly what. They didn’t expect him to live. It’s a miracle he’s lasted this long. A mother’s will is very strong. I think she’s willed him to live, but the time is running short, I fear.” She stroked her grandson’s hair. “The boy, he used to play here all the time. Remember, Christophe? You used to play hide and seek. You both knew all the best places to hide.”
“No. I’m sorry.” The boy looked sad at disappointing his grandmother.
“It’s not important. You were so young.”
“May I be excused?” Christophe had polished off the cookies and reached his tall-people tolerance limit.
“Sure, but could you wait for me in the kitchen? Ask the cook to get you a few more cookies.” I ignored Madame Bouclet’s pinched mouth of disapproval. “Family.” I shot her a smile.
That got a laugh. Making progress.
Once Christophe was out of earshot, I resumed the conversation. “Enzo Laurent. Any family?”
“The tea doesn’t seem to be to your liking.” Madame Bouclet’s smile wavered.
“No matter how hard I try, I’ll never be a tea person.” In the U.S., my confession usually earned a nod of, if not agreement, then for sure sympathy. Here it could earn me five to ten without parole.
“Perhaps it is late enough for something a bit more refreshing.” She moved her foot to the right and pressed. Somewhere in the bowels of the building a bell chimed.
My sentence had been commuted! And by the least likely judge.
Lurch appeared like magic. The long neck of a bottle of bubbly peeked from the silver ice bucket he carried.
“Would you like to try some of the crémant we are experimenting with? It’s not the right season for rosé, or we’d critique that.” Either she’d been briefed as to my proclivities, or she was a woman after my own heart.
“Rather forward-thinking for a House of Bordeaux.” A satisfying pop, muffled by good technique, heralded happy hour.
“The wine industry is changing. So much competition from all corners of the globe. Sparkling wine and rosé are the two fastest growing segments. Other, more eclectic varietals are catching on as well, although only in small numbers at this point. But it is wise not to be complacent.”
Lurch removed the tea service, replacing it with two tulip flutes filled with light golden liquid sparkling with tiny bubbles. Madame Bouclet held it to the light. “It is ready for market.”
I tasted it and agreed. “Very nice. Now about M. Laurent.”
“He has no family. No siblings. His older brother died when he was young, a genetic disorder of some sort. It was all very sad. As the oldest and the only, Enzo didn’t want to accept the responsibility for the family’s legacy. He ran away to Oxford. Earned a D-Phil in Philosophy. He wanted to change the world.” She got a little wistful at that last bit.
The light dawned. “You two…?”
“Yes. We were in love and wanted to be married. Our families, while reluctant at first, accepted our wishes, but they wanted us to wait. We were very young. Then Enzo’s brother died, and then Enzo went away. The world changed. My father forbade me to follow him.” She twisted her pearls as she talked. “I’ve always wondered if I should have defied him.” Her eyes misted. She blinked away the tears.
“And you married Jean-Louis instead.”
“Enzo wasn’t coming back, or so he said. He was in a very bad state of mind. He was happy in Oxford. It was his place. My place was here and in the vineyards. My family was not wealthy. My father was one of the leading négociants, but that is not the same as a landed family.”
“Then Enzo came back.”
“Yes. It is a very Catholic country. There was nothing we could do.” She finally gave her pearls a rest and accepted a freshening of her bubbles by Lurch.
“Enzo never married?”
“No.”
“No children?”
“None claimed. Like most wealthy, powerful men, he had mistresses, and there were rumors of a love child, but only that and it was a long time ago.”
The whole thing broke my heart.
No wonder Jean-Louis took up the sword against Enzo Laurent. Despite common perception, the battle had nothing to do with wine.
As usual, when men go to battle, there’s a woman at the center of it.
On one level, it was nice to be reminded that not everything was about money, despite the Americans’ single-minded dogged pursuit of filthy lucre.
“Jean-Louis has been carrying this for his life. We all have. I’ve done my best to be a good wife, to bear his children and support him.”
She gave him everything but the most important thing, her heart. Not that it was her fault—we love who we love. Sometimes, in doing so, we sow the seeds of our own destruction. Or at least, we construct our own prisons.
And love was supposed to be this glorious, euphoric thing.
Nothing about this story made me want to sidle off the fence. But the old Vegas adage echoed in my ear: you limit the downside; you limit the upside. I could trot out probably ten clichés along the same line, but in the interest of growing up, I resisted. “When Frank Liu told Jean-Louis that Enzo was undercutting his price, selling his wine on the cheap, Jean-Louis was locked and loaded for a fight to the death.”
“He hasn’t said so, but I think, before he dies, he wants to punish Enzo, to make him pay. He is dying. This was his chance. But the whole thing was really my fault. I should pay.”
“And you have. Early on, your husband could have released you. He could have told the Church and had your union annulled.”
She looked surprised as if the thought hadn’t occurred to her. “That would’ve been scandalous. We all would have suffered.”
“Until the public’s attention turned to the next salacious tidbit.”
“Perhaps. But Jean-Louis is a proud man. His son is much like him.”
Was there a veiled warning in there? Or was I reading something I wanted to hear in her words? If overthinking was a professional sport, I’d be world champion. I shelved my insecurities for the moment. “Is Jean-Louis strong enough for a few questions? I’ll try to be quick.”
“He would be most upset if you didn’t see him. But finish your crémant. He will be desperate to know what you think. It is his pièce de résistance, or so he says.”
I was happy to do as she asked. “Bordeaux far outshines crémant on the wine snobbery scale.”
“But it is his creation. The family wine he says was created centuries ago. All he does is quality control. And winemakers are remembered for what they create.”
Maybe they aren’t remembered as much as celebrated through the product they leave behind. A nuance only a weak ego would worry about.
“If Jean-Louis is expecting us, let’s not disappoint him.”
Chapter Eleven
THE ROOM was warm; too warm, with a fire flaming in the corner grate. Yet Jean-Louis huddled under a pile of blankets six inches thick. The outline of his emaciated frame was barely visible. The blankets were tucked just under his chin, leaving his face exposed. In the few intervening hours since I’d seen him last, his cheeks had hollowed. His eyes had disappeared into dark caverns. Sutures closed the gash on his forehead, but nothing covered the wound other than a film of medicine. Blood underneath the skin purpled the area around the wound—a garish insult to an old face. His bones formed an even sharper scaffolding to hold the drape of his translucent skin that exposed the latticework of blue veins underneath, the mask of the very old who were losing the battle. I’d seen it before. I never wanted to see it again.
“Has Jean-Charles been by?” I asked as I pulled a chair close so he didn’t have to strain to see me.
“Yes, just a bit ago.” Effort rasped his voice, roughing it up like coarse grit sandpaper. His cough, deep and determined, had a phlegmy rattle. “He is chasing the wrong bit of hate.”
Hate. “He hates Enzo Laurent that much?”
“No, Enzo can be a boil on his ass, and mine, from time to time. But together we all are stronger. The hate is not his. But he must tell you, not me. He loves you.” Jean-Louis’s look told me he saw the difficulties, felt the conflict, prayed for the resolution. “We need him. The House of Bouclet needs him here.”
“We all know some choices are impossible. Despite the American advertising machine, it is impossible to have it all.”
“Yes, but there is responsibility.” He wheezed at the effort.
“To whom? We owe it to ourselves, yes. And perhaps our families when much is at stake, and there are no other choices. But don’t we owe it to the ones we love as well? What is the priority that results in the happiest, most productive balance? To force someone into a life he doesn’t want? To force him to give up a love he needs? Will he be the best choice to serve your needs?”
To answer honestly would kill him. It would vilify his choices, especially regarding those he loved. His decision not to release his wife had doomed him to a life of suffering. Hadn’t he learned anything?
“You are saying I should let Jean-Charles go be with you.”
“Not at all. I’m saying you should let him choose.”
“If he chooses to stay, you are willing to live with that?”
“Of course. I love him. I’m not saying it would be easy. But, if you love somebody, you want the best for them. And they get to decide what that is. That’s how this gig works.”
“You are a better man than me.” The idea deflated him further.
“On the contrary, I only talk a better game. I know what’s right. So do you. Doing it is a whole other level of sacrifice. The jury is out as to whether I can handle it or not. I’ve been accused of being a tad controlling. Not my best thing, but it’s part of me.”
“You are wise and kind to an old man who has made many mistakes.”
“The crémant is not one of them. It’s lovely.” I wanted desperately to lighten his load.
But a lifetime in the making, it was a boulder too heavy to shift. He pushed himself higher in the bed, an effort that had him breathing as if he’d sprinted all the way here. “If Jean-Charles turns his back on all that he is, then he will live with the consequences for the rest of his life.” He glanced at his wife. His pain was clear.
It wasn’t that she didn’t love him. She did—that much was evident. But her love sprang from a duty, not a passion. A world of difference. One brought joy, the other only pain and regret. And, not to make the whole thing about me, but he might be overplaying this entire scenario just a wee bit.
“That’s how this whole thing works. Each choice carries a consequence. Hate carries the worst of all.”
“I cannot tell you what you want to know. Jean-Charles will have to.” The rattle of illness punctuated his words.
“Then it’s a good thing I’ve not come to talk about hate, but rather about wine instead.”
That relieved his pallor a bit. Now it was just gray rather than the unhealthy blue-gray when we had arrived. I’d always thought that it took years of abusing one’s health to achieve such a bilious color. Apparently not. It seemed like dying also did that. Duly noted and filed with all the other things I’ve told myself not to do, but routinely ignored.
“Wine.” He said the word with a reverence normally reserved for saints, if you believed in that sort of thing, and sainted relatives if you didn’t. “She is a jealous mistress, I warn you.”
“Vices and passions share that quality. But that’s not why I’m here. I’m trying to figure out two things: why someone marinated Victor Martin in the last of your best vintage of Estate Laurent and then why someone stole all the wine from your cellar. The motivations seem the same: money. I understand the first—the smaller the supply and the higher the demand, the greater the profit. Assuming Enzo Laurent is our prime suspect.” He started to argue. I raised a finger, and he stopped. “Just a theory. You’ll like where it leads. Enzo would not gain anything by destroying all the wine he had to sell. But one damning bit of information—he knew about your wine cellar.”
“He wouldn’t disclose its location. I often stored wine for him. There are not many safe places to keep very valuable wines. They need to be kept at the right temperature, of course, which often makes it difficult to find discrete places. You understand?”
