A Drink for Failures

I came back to the hotel, after the move north, on business, the next year. I hesitated at first, but as I was packing my bags, I called down to the front desk for another miniature bottle of shampoo. It was lavender and peppermint, with a warm cedar note to round things out. All these years later, it sits on my vanity tray next to the rosewater and myrrh unopened. Sometimes when I'm drawing an evening bath, I'm tempted to add it.

It had nothing to do with our time together. But I stood on the threshold looking into the bedroom and at the bed that went unused, the couch we had shared framed by the two chairs we had our first drinks on that night.

The invitation to the hotel room was our formality when you had a layover in the Bay. We'd share the finest drink the mini-bar offered, and you'd tell me how things were back East. I'd tell you my show was doing great. You'd joke about room service, we'd hug, I'd leave. It was droll. It was routine.

The present aroma of shampoo half as sensual now as the poached langoustines and gnocchi alla romana room service brought up that night. You insisted we do something different this time and had already called down before I arrived. We ordered the same meal during our first time together in Paris, you said. Nine months later, we had Frederick.

We had six more years of each other, and then it was too much. Frederick was seven, and after the movers took the last of my boxes to the truck, I knelt down and ruffled his hair. I pulled his forehead to mine. I told him something you couldn't hear that caused us both to smile before we had the last hug in our home. If not for the receding hairline, you swore, he and I looked identical.

Over our second drinks, you spoke for the first time about what happened after I left. Strong as you tried to be for him, he wrapped his perfect little arms around your waist and pushed his perfect little cheek into your stomach with all his might. You said it was when he looked up to you and assured you that it would be okay that your strength faltered and you began to sob. Months, you insisted, before you did anything for yourself again.

Of course, I said, I had missed spending every day with Frederick, but I knew he was taken care of and he couldn't ask for a better mother. And he came out West for the holidays. Something, I noted, made all the more convenient by our mismatched upbringings. Just think of the richness and variety of life experiences he's had: learned the haftarah from your father and how to cut a hole in the ice from mine. You wiped a tear from your cheek and sniffled your lips into the smallest smile, and suggested maybe we get some fresh air.

We walked through Lincoln Park to a trail off Coastal. We found a small sandy clearing to sit, and I told you it had been tough after Dad died, but you already knew that. You wrapped an arm around my shoulders, and my head fell gently onto yours. And we sat there for a while.

I had taken a cab straight to your hotel and was embarrassingly underdressed for the November night. Your peacoat scratched the back of my arm as you tried to comfort me. I knew it wasn't yours. You had remarried, then divorced. You might have told me it was a gift intended for your ex, but he left you two days before your anniversary and you, as thrifty as ever, couldn't bring yourself to throw such a nice jacket out. That you told yourself it was progressive or fashion forward, but really its coarse threads rubbed against your skin the places where the liner ended in a way that irritated the memory you had of him. But I didn't ask. I did ask the name of the painting the night sky most reminded you of, and you said you couldn't remember, but it was by Caspar David Friedrich.

You noticed my shivering, and insisted, as nice as the view was, we head back to your room. We stopped at a boutique liquor store you knew. We chatted with the owner, and she suggested the '86 you picked was the superior vintage. She was right, but I wouldn't admit it. You had your victory at the shop. I wasn't going to let you have a second now that we were alone.

As you opened the bottle you boasted you had always been the better taste, and we should have had the petite sirah at the reception. I feigned an argument that the merlot was better for the season, the same argument you'd heard ad nauseum until the first bottle was opened and then never heard again. It was the recurring joke for the remainder of our marriage that you'd know the look on my face if I started to regret marrying you.

Wounded ego aside, your confidence that night was hypnotizing, and it was a superb wine. I didn't tell you that, but I should have.

You never saw that expression again, either. I know.

I wondered if you were looking for it now, any sign to suggest I wanted to be anywhere but here, as we sat feet apart on the midcentury hotel room chairs. Twelve years on now, I still wonder what you saw.

For a time, we blathered and half watched whatever old program was on Masterpiece Theater. We stole glances and drank wine. When the wine ran out, we drank the last of the mini bar, and went down to the convenience store. I convinced the attendant to sell us a box of chardonnay three minutes after the cutoff. You broke a heel celebrating our victory turning the corner from the store. For chivalry, I took my shoes off and we both walked the last two blocks to the hotel barefoot.

You poured us both a glass, the first sip of which took the chill from my bones. You sat next to me on the couch and picked at a couple of pieces of gnocchi with your fingers before eating them. I quipped about your years of finishing school, you said something about my Harvard, I had a sip from your glass, your composition turned to confront mine. I gulped and licked my lips with a barbed tongue, your back arched, my chest heaved, our eyes firm, and for a second we were like the old time.

Then I laughed a sloppy laugh. Your eyes softened and we fell about.

You asked if the wine was a song, what would it be. I took two sharp sniffs and waxed poetic of the inky aromatics of pepper and brambles, the way they lifted the vanilla notes like the libretto on Carl Maria von Weber's Die Macht der Liebe und des Weins. Leaning against the couch, you giggled knowingly and quickly bit your knuckle to hide it. I thought it was oddly coquettish for you at the time.

I wrestled with the perforated cardboard holding the bag to release more of the amber spirits. I don't know what it was you said right then, but I know that by the time I asked for the glasses from the table you were already halfway through reciting Hölderlin's Lebenslauf. I asked what it was, and you paused. Up to this moment, you started to say, the image of me and Freddie, a father sharing his last seconds of domesticity with his first and only child, gave you pause.

I sat on the couch next to you, placing your glass eye level for you on the table. Your head fell onto my knee and my hand into your hair.

You wondered if it had been a mistake even when you listened to the messages I left for the first six months after moving out West, bragging of some lay my local celebrity had scored me. And while we screamed at each other as the lawyers tried to work something out. And you yawned as you finished the thought saying it's hard to reconcile uncertainty.

Your head perked up and freed itself of my hand.

You looked at your watch and said you had a flight to catch in three hours. "Is it that late? My god, it is," I said.

You stretched to your feet, and we stood suddenly sober. Aware all at once of the mess of room service and empty mini bottles, our dirty soles and the awkward distance between us and me to the door, I tried and failed to maneuver around you and bumped into the table and the half empty bodies of the langoustines clanked together. I smiled sheepishly, you snickered, and we hugged. It was an embrace I remember. You kissed my cheek, remarked that you had a lovely night and I agreed. After a pause, I agreed it was again, with half a smile this time.

You saw me out the door. Frederick would be in touch about break, I recall. As I walked to the elevator, you said my name - the last time I remember - and said thank you.

It's an odd sensation standing in front of the elevators was. It must be like the wolf to a doe.

The elevator doors opened in front of me, but by the time I turned around, and without a sound, the door had closed.

I keep the shampoo bottle still, though when I have occasion to return to the old city, I stay elsewhere now.