Lethal Vintage (4 page)

“What about you, Ms. McCoskey, are you also an artist, like everyone I meet in California?”

“I cook for a living.”

“I remember now. The restaurant. In Sicily everyone cooks. It’s not a job, it is part of enjoying life.”

“And are the restaurants staffed by volunteers?”

“Don’t be a joker. You should get serious and go to Sicily. It’s like your wine country, but with history. Americans can’t appreciate history. It means nothing to them. A cook from California has no roots. You’re like a caveman—excuse me, cavewoman—who just discovered the potential of the wheel, while over in Europe we’re driving Ferraris since you were born. But our Ferraris are out of gas, metaphorically speaking. The energy is greater here. You should take your youth and your energy and graft yourself onto a place like Sicily so you can draw from deep down in the earth.”

He rolled onto his elbow and reached for a pack of cigarettes. Everyone was smoking like it was the fifties and cigarettes were as good as vitamins. And in California! Where you can get arrested for smoking, thought Sunny, where no one even thinks it’s cool anymore, except maybe in the food business. Ironic that a habit known to kill your sense of taste and smell would thrive in the restaurant business. Of course, it was also known to ease the mind after the high-speed endurance test of a night working the back of the house. Franco offered the pack to Sunny. When she accepted, he pulled it back. “Don’t smoke. It’s very bad for your health. Seriously.”

“What about you?”

“I’m an old man and a European. The rules are different.”

“The rules are different for me, too, at least today.” She lit one and held it without smoking it and studied the pool, the white pavement, the tiny blue tiles shimmering under the water. “What would I eat in Sicily?”

He lifted his eyebrows thoughtfully. “Nothing special. Marinated olives. Anchovies in oil. Eggplant with tomato sauce. Fresh riccotta with honey. Fava beans. Stuffed peppers. Cured meats. It’s not what you eat, it’s the total experience of a culture and a landscape that culminates in each bite. You could go into a restaurant in the worst part of town in Palermo or even over in Reggio Calabria, sit
down at an old card table under a fluorescent light, and order anything off the menu and it would change your life forever.”

“You sound like a man who misses home.”

The music suddenly got very loud, drowning out whatever Franco might have replied. Anna came down to the pool dancing around, her head tipped back to the sky. She seemed high on something. It wouldn’t be the first time, thought Sunny. The girl always loved a party. She didn’t seem stoned. Cocaine, probably. Once there had been a rumor of heroin. Could it be true? Or was she just getting drunk? Whatever the cause, when the hostess started spinning in circles on the grass and laughing hysterically, it was time to leave. Sunny would wait until her head was reasonably clear of wine and then go. Tomorrow she would call Anna and apologize for not staying for dinner and see if she and Oliver had talked things through. She had a hunch they would. Anna was probably overreacting. A penchant for technology-driven voyeurism was the least of Oliver Seth’s faults.

The hazy orange light of sunset lingered over the pool and turned the lawn dark green. Troy Stevens sat hunched up at the foot of the chaise. “Don’t leave now,” he said, looking at Sunny accusingly. “What’s the point? You have to stay for the sunset. After that you might as well stay for dinner. If you leave now, you’ll get home to your lonely little miserable house with no one around to talk to and it will suck. Why are you in such a hurry to leave, anyway?”

“It’s not miserable. And I’m not in a hurry. I’ve been here since noon. Anna’s not even awake anymore.”

“Anna isn’t the only person here. Besides, she’ll get up for dinner. You should stay. We need you for ballast. You’re the only one who isn’t all uptight about something.”

“What are you uptight about?” asked Sunny.

“Me? I’m always uptight. I exist in a state of perpetual anxiety. But I mix it with perpetual torpor so I’m reasonably functional.”

“Why do you live in Barcelona? You’re British, right?”

“Guilty. Barcelona is a great city. Great art scene, great nightlife, good weather. Not like fucking London. I can’t take that freezing rain all winter.”

“And you share a place with Anna?”

“She uses my place as her Euro–crash pad. We used to live there together for real. Now she comes through town once a month, writes me a check, and opens her mail.”

“You mean you were a couple?”

“Two years.”

“What happened?”

“She met Oliver.”

“You mean this Oliver?”

“The very same.”

Sunny took the bottle of wine from the table between them and poured herself another glass. He was right. She might as well stay for dinner. By the time she was sober enough to drive, it would be dinnertime, anyway. “Does Oliver know? I mean, that Anna was with you?”

“Of course. I introduced him to her.”

“You’re kidding.”

“Definitely not.”

“So Anna lived with you in Barcelona until you introduced her to Oliver, who brought her back here.”

“It wasn’t that simple, but that’s the gist.”

“Somewhere along the way she dated this guy Jared, who is now dating Oliver’s sister. I guess it’s not that many men to have dated in a lifetime, but it’s a lot to have dated at one dinner party. It’s sort of odd that you’ve all stayed friends.”

“We’re not friends. I can’t stand Oliver, who is a shit of the highest order in my opinion. Jared seems like an okay guy. I met him in South Beach at Art Basel with Anna a couple of years ago. But I don’t really know his story.”

“What about Keith?”

“You mean Oliver’s lawyer? I just met him a few days ago.” Troy gave her a look, as if deciding whether to divulge a secret. “I’ll
tell you something I haven’t even admitted to myself. Until I got here, I didn’t know she was shacked up with Oliver again. He’s bought a couple of my pieces, thanks to her, mostly. One just last month. The one in transit that I’m here to install, if it ever arrives. I thought she wanted me to fly out here to make sure he didn’t put it in the bathroom, and to do a little performance as the eccentric artist. That’s included in the price. Instead, I seem to be here as some kind of handler.”

“What do you mean?”

“Haven’t you noticed? Anna likes to travel with an entourage.”

“And Oliver doesn’t mind. I mean you being here.”

“I assume he doesn’t have a choice. Anna does whatever she wants.” Troy pulled himself up. “I’m going to go get a shower and change before our grand repast.”

Sunny went in after him and stood in the kitchen, not sure what to do. She could hear soft exchanges from distant rooms, a door close, water coming on. The oven was on, baking a tray of herbed potatoes. Cynthia came in talking on the cordless and checked the potatoes.

“Shower?” mouthed Sunny.

“Downstairs,” whispered Cynthia. “Any room that’s free.”

The first room she went in was as posh as any swank hotel room she’d ever seen. The shower was big enough for four people and made of little one-inch tiles that faded from sandy brown at the bottom to rose to pearlescent to luminous white toward the top, like dip-dyed fabric. After a long shower, she put back on the clothes she’d arrived in, with one annoying exception. She’d forgotten to ask Cynthia about the bra and underwear she’d left in the bathroom upstairs. They were probably in the laundry, wherever that was. The bottoms of her swimsuit were still wet and she resolved to go without. Womankind had survived millennia without panties.
And men went regimental all the time. Wade Skord, vintner on the mount, had never worn a pair of skivvies in his life and proudly said so to anyone who noticed. Still, Sunny went up to dinner feeling half naked because she was half naked.

Upstairs, Anna sat in the living room wearing the white dress and sandals Sunny had seen in the closet earlier. The skin of her arms and legs glowed with the day’s sun, and her face wore a tranquil expression. A slender oval of gold sat on the ring finger of her right hand. A matching necklace with a thin gold disk lay on her chest. She looked like the queen of an empire.

“Intellectual property is the next big land grab,” said Oliver, holding his wineglass like a trophy. “We’ve consumed all the real estate. Now it’s time to colonize the estates of the imagination. The Information Age isn’t about facts. It’s about perception. Perception is reality. The next wave of wealth is going to be made from intellectual property—attitudes, ideas, instructions, code—and the wars waged to protect it.”

“What does that mean?” said Anna. “I never know what you’re talking about.”

“Code is the new gold. DNA, encryption, genetic engineering, software. It’s all code. Instructions for making a hidden world function. That’s the next Gold Rush. That’s why video gaming is so huge now. Code. Finding the secrets that keep the game advancing. In the not-so-distant future, ideas are literally going to shape reality. Real life will be nothing more than where you plug your game in.”

Dinner was over, the plates cleared. Oliver had pulled a few of his favorites from his wine collection, but no one could taste anything anymore.

“Even the old-school guys selling tangible products will have their paradigm rewritten in the context of intellectual property. It’s the unintended consequence of globalization. In a global marketplace, brand is everything because you have no other context for a product. Look at a brand like Mouton Rothschild. They’re not selling wine, they’re selling the idea of France, wealth, art, Grand Prix, beautiful women. The wine itself may or may not be the best value for the money. It doesn’t matter. The perception of the product is the actual value proposition. And in a world where perception is largely dictated by the Web, what gets posted has a tangible and sometimes tremendous effect on the value of your product. So you’ve got all these companies leaving their most valuable asset out in the parking lot with the keys in the ignition. All I have to do is set up a Web site saying Mouton Rothschild is actually just a lot of rotten grapes. The bloggers pick it up, mainstream media covers the blogs, and the share price takes a hit. Next thing you know, sales are down and the competition is moving in. We’ve known this for a while. Now we need to figure out what to do about it.”

“You’re talking about work,” said his sister. “You promised you weren’t going to talk about work tonight.”

“Somebody better change the subject or we’ll be in the office writing press releases all night,” said Keith.

Oliver ignored them and his voice grew louder. “We all thought the Internet had settled down into this nicely indexed tool designed to turn loose the inner librarian. Wrong. This has been the calm before a storm that’s going to reorganize the global economy before half the people know what’s hit them. It’s going to be fucking Armageddon, and TR Enterprises Ltd. is going to be driving the flaming chariot that rips the sky apart.”

Silence followed and Cynthia stood up. “We have chocolate torte for dessert. Anyone?”

Oliver smiled and seemed to forget all he’d been saying so passionately. He turned to Sunny. “Cynthia is the best pastry chef in the valley, hands down. Her chocolate torte is second only to my personal favorite, lemon meringue pie. You didn’t happen to whip up one of those, did you, Cynthia?”

Cynthia smiled and shook her head. “Not tonight. But I’ll see what I can do.”

They stayed a long time at the table under the stars and wisteria. After his pronouncements about the future of the global economy, Oliver didn’t say much more and eventually excused himself to attend to some urgent matter from his cell phone. Franco told stories about his childhood in Sicily, and Keith countered with his about growing up poor in Barbados. Finally the air cooled enough to drive them indoors and Oliver returned to pour cognac and port. Keith’s girlfriend arrived dressed in capri jeans, sandals with four-inch heels, and a lacey camisole. She came from Guam and looked like one of Gauguin’s Tahitian subjects. Her name was Marissa Lin. She gave Keith a kiss and went to Anna’s side, holding her hand and snuggling up to her the way some girlfriends do. Sunny had taken the comfortable chair, slightly distant from the others, and put her bare feet on the ottoman. Keith sat down on the edge of the ottoman and took up one of her feet, which he began to massage.

“You look tired.”

“A little. I got too much sun.” Sunny watched him rub her foot as though in a dream. She should stop him, but it felt too good.

“You look good with some color on that skin.”

“Thank you. What time is it?”

“It’s early.”

“Is it?”

“Relatively,” he said, switching feet.

Across the living room, Anna, Jordan, and Marissa were arranged like a liquor ad on the sofa, all legs, heels, and cocktail glasses. They were undeniably beautiful, each in a different way, though all with dark hair. Anna was tall, with golden skin and green eyes. Jordan was voluptuous, made up, and sexy in a Hollywood way. Next to them, Keith Lachlan’s girlfriend, Marissa, looked even more petite and delicate than she was. Nestled in among them was Oliver Seth, handsome in a boyish way, looking exactly like a man enjoying the hard-earned realization of his childhood fantasies.

Keith returned her foot to the ottoman and stood up. “Can I get you a drink?”

“I think I’m good for now.”

“You need a bump?”

“A bump?”

“A pick-me-up.”

“What do you have in mind?”

He gave her a knowing smile. “You like coke?”

“Lowercase C?” She shook her head. “Afraid not. Not my thing. Sensitive nose.”

“You’re kidding. Aren’t you in the restaurant business? I thought foodies lived on blow.”

“I’m more the double espresso type.”

“Good for you.” He went to join Oliver and the girls and Sunny left to prowl the house. She found Franco Bertinotti looking through the glass at the wine collection. He’d changed out of his black trunks into jeans and a linen shirt.

“This bastard really knows how to buy wine,” he said. “If somebody has to be as rich as Seth, I’m glad it’s him. At least he knows what to do with it.”

“Do you know how he made his money?”

“The usual way. Rob, pillage, and plunder.”

“Seriously.”

“My dear, I am being serious. No one achieves the rapturous decadence of your current surroundings without a great deal of compromise, on everyone’s part.”

Sunny followed the faint sound of talk punctuated by laughter. Franco, whom she’d been talking with for the past half hour, had gone to bed. The others had vanished. Now she tracked them to the double doors off the lounge with the red neon. Outside, a fire was burning in the fireplace next to the hot tub. From the doorway, she couldn’t see who was in the water, just outlines against firelight.

“Sunny! Come in. We’re getting warm,” said Anna.

“No bathing suits allowed,” said Keith. Someone giggled.

“Hush! It’s dark, anyway,” said Anna. “We won’t peek.”

“Don’t stay out in the cold, McCoskey,” said Oliver. “There’s plenty of room.”

“We’ll make room,” said Keith. Again a feminine giggle, presumably from Keith’s girlfriend, Marissa.

Sunny hesitated. Having grown up in Northern California, she’d seen a fair number of hot tubs and bare bottoms. The fireplace and the water certainly looked nice. And the only men seemed to be Keith and Oliver, both of whom would be kept in check by their girlfriends.

“Back in a minute.”

She left her clothes on the bed in the first room she came to, then took a towel from the bathroom and wrapped it around herself. No one took any notice when she stepped out onto the patio. She draped her towel over the rock wall by the fireplace and found an open spot in the tub, mortifyingly aware of the bare elements on
display by the murky glow of underwater lights until she could take cover in the froth. Oliver, soaking opposite, broke hot-tub etiquette and stared openly, watching her lean over and step into the water. Jordan, breasts buoyant as tub toys, sat next to him with a thick twist of dark hair clipped high on her head.

“You must work out,” said Oliver. “I was watching you swim earlier. You have great muscle definition.”

“Thanks for noticing,” she said, hoping he would catch the sarcasm.

She sank into the hot water and leaned her head back. Even with the glow of the lights under the water, the stars stood out in the black overhead. She closed her eyes. The water felt wonderful. When she looked up, Keith and his girlfriend had their heads together, whispering and laughing softly. Marissa had delicate features except for rather full lips that the dim light accentuated. Her delicate hands touched Keith’s head while they talked. Across from them, Anna, Oliver, and Jordan were discussing whether there was anything useful to be gained by reading newspapers. Oliver thought not, and Anna accused him of hypocrisy, since he read several daily. The only people missing were Franco, who was in bed already, Troy, and Oliver’s sister, Molly, and her boyfriend, Jared.

Sunny closed her eyes again, and when she next opened them, she saw that Keith had pulled Marissa onto his lap and was kissing her. Not a playful kiss. Mouths were open, heads were tilted, and, there it was, the hand moving to cup a bare breast. She looked away. Across from her, Anna was nibbling Oliver’s neck. Someone’s toes came to rest on Sunny’s calf. While she’d been soaking up the night air, some silent signal had been given, some gate lowered, flag waved, light changed from red to green. Now Jordan was taking a turn kissing Keith while Marissa sucked on her ear. The girl
from Guam locked eyes with Sunny and smiled, Jordan’s earlobe clamped between white teeth.