Love the Wine You're With Read online

  The Prius in front of me moves up all of six inches. I put my foot on the accelerator and scoot right up to his bumper to keep any commuters from sneaking into my lane.

  And I silently wonder how I got here.

  Karen’s voice softens. “I can keep putting you up for Mom auditions, and middle-management corporate roles, and you will book some of them. But only if you don’t yell at the director.”

  I take a pinched breath. “Okay.”

  Karen continues patiently. “No, it’s not okay. Hollywood is notorious for its age discrimination, and it sucks. I’m fifty—I get it. But at some point, you have to come to terms with who you really are.”

  “You don’t mean who I really am,” I correct her. “You mean how other people see me.”

  “How people see you is who you really are,” Karen argues. “Look, I gotta go. I almost forgot, good news: You booked the part of the madam on that detective show.”

  Ugh. “I got a callback for the part of the escort,” I remind her.

  “Well, that’s a step up, when you think about it. Who really wants to play a hooker? I’ll call you Monday with the dates.”

  And she hangs up without so much as a good-bye.

  I click off my Bluetooth and stare into the sea of cars blocking my way.

  This is so not what I need today. But Karen’s reaction was actually pretty tame for what I did.

  And I admit my outburst was a little nuts. But my day has been hideous. Plus I’ve earned the right to be a little nuts for a while.

  “Nuts” is probably the wrong word to be popping into my head. Or maybe it’s a deliciously politically incorrect word for me to have in my psychological toolbox—I’m not sure.

  A little backstory.

  Six months ago, my father died from an overdose of an antidepressant that he had been happily taking for years. He was over sixty and should not have been taking more than twenty milligrams per day. His doctor had him on fifty milligrams. And slowly, the medicine built up in his system and killed him.

  Up until six months ago, I didn’t even know that you could die from a toxic buildup of antidepressants, and I certainly didn’t know you could die from only fifty milligrams a day.

  And while I may not have been taking fifty milligrams per day of my antidepressant, I had been taking thirty milligrams per day for years.

  I started taking the pills just after college, and at the time they were a lifesaver. That first year of true adulthood was hideously awful for me. Auditions were hard on my ego, I was unceremoniously dumped by my college sweetheart, and I struggled to pay my bills. It was like all of the things that I just knew would fall into place after graduation instead exploded into five hundred different piles. The antidepressant kept me grounded, and it was supposed to be temporary.

  That was ten years ago.

  And while I would never go Tom Cruise on anyone (and I think Brooke Shields’s book was brilliant and took the shame out of postpartum depression), I have privately decided that, for me personally, if I have to pop a pill every day for the rest of my life to get through the day, it’s time to change my life instead.

  On the tenth anniversary of the day I started taking the medication, I chose not to refill my prescription. I weaned myself off by taking twenty milligrams a day for a week, ten a day during the next week, five the next, then stopping completely.

  That was a few weeks ago. And, while I have not had any suicidal thoughts or any of the other common side effects associated with quitting, let’s just say I’ve been a bit “passionate.” Which is good and bad. Yes, in the past week I’ve yelled at a potential boss I should have been kissing up to. But I also broke up with a guy who I knew was a jerk right off the bat but whom I kept seeing because I was lonely. And I’ve started going for runs to calm myself down—despite the fact that up until three weeks ago, the only I time I ever ran was to the store for donuts.

  I’m in this weird phase right now where I know what I don’t want in my life, but I can’t seem to figure out what I do want.

  Although, as I slog through Los Angeles Friday afternoon traffic, I realize I do know one thing I want: a donut.

  Maybe six.

  Chapter Eight

  NAT

  Let me come over later.

  No.

  As I sit at the bar of Wine O’Clock waiting for my friends, I scrutinize my text. I worry it comes off as harsh, so I add:

  I love you, but no.

  What if I came to the bar at midnight and drove you all home? I promise to be very sober, yet very charming.

  Your charm is how I got into this mess in the first place. ;) But Jessie hates you.

  She doesn’t hate me.

  Of course she does. She’s just so polite, she might as well be British.

  What does that mean?

  It means she hides her feelings really well. Holly, on the other hand, hates you but doesn’t hide her feelings at all. Not sure which is worse. I gotta go.

  Okay, how about this? You call me afte you get home, and I sneak into your bedroom with a bottle of Bollinger and your favorite chocolates. Then I’ll sneak out before Holly’s awake.

  I suddenly feel my gut clench. Marc isn’t promising to leave before Holly wakes up because she hates him. He’ll need to leave because he has to pick up his wife from the airport for her nine-day “fuck-my-boyfriend” vacation.

  “You are so lucky to be single,” Jessie announces, startling me as she tosses down her purse onto the bar and takes the seat to my left. “Please tell me that’s not Marc with a c.”

  The scorn in her voice when she says “Marc with a c” causes me to immediately stuff my phone into my purse. “No. Just got a text from Holly. She’s running late.” (Seems like a safe lie—Holly’s always running late.)

  “What are you drinking?” Jessie asks me.

  “Actually it’s a lovely blend from Argentina. It’s sixty percent Tempranillo and forty…” I stop speaking as I watch Jessie drain my glass. When she puts the empty glass down in front of me, I finish my thought. “… percent who the hell cares, you’re just getting drunk.”

  Jessie makes a face. “I thought you said it was a blend. God, I hate Tempranillo. How can you drink that stuff?”

  “Apparently I can’t,” I point out to her drily.

  Jessie signals to Dave, our bartender. “Hey, Dave, can you get me a glass of Cabernet from Napa Valley when you get a chance? The one with the vintage from a few years ago that I liked?”

  Dave nods. “The perfect choice, Jessie.”

  As Dave uncorks a fresh bottle, I shake my head at Jessie. “Honestly, could you be more predictable?”

  “Dave said it was the perfect choice.”

  “You tip thirty percent. He’d tell you white Zinfandel was the perfect choice. Try something new. How about a Super Tuscan from Montepulciano…”

  “We’re not getting the house. Kevin got cold feet,” Jessie blurts out.

  “What?” I blurt right back. “Did he say why?”

  “He hates beige,” Jessie answers.

  I’m confused. “He called you beige?”

  “No, he didn’t call me beige. He called the kitchen counters beige. Why would he call me beige?”

  “Well, beige is boring. I thought he was saying you were boring.”

  Jessie’s eyes widen into saucers. “You think I’m boring?”

  I quickly backpedal. “I didn’t say that. I was just asking if Kevin said that.”

  Jessie’s jaw drops slightly. “Because, if he did, it would totally make sense?!”

  “Okay, calm down. I’m on your side. Team Jessie. What happened?”

  As Dave pours Jessie her glass of Cabernet, she quickly brings me up to speed on her shitty lunch hour and her shitty day. While she rants, Dave instinctively knows not to interrupt. He silently puts the drink in front of her, then points to my empty glass. I nod for a refill, which he leaves to get.

  Minutes later, I sip my refill of Tempranillo-Garnacha blend
as Jessie finishes her story with, “So now I have a ton of money saved up and nowhere to invest it. All because of an old counter we could have had removed and replaced while he was in Germany.”

  “Huh,” I say.

  Jessie narrows her eyes into slits. “What’s ‘huh’?”

  Before I can answer, Holly magically appears, plopping down on the seat to my right.

  I turn to her, welcoming the save. “Hey, there’s our Happy Hooker.”

  “Yeah, bite me.”

  “You didn’t book the job?” I ask, a little surprised. (She had three callbacks.)

  “No. They went younger. I booked the part of the madam.”

  “Oh,” I say, trying to sound upbeat. “Well, that’s something.”

  “It’s a one-day shoot rather than the guest-starring role. It sucks and apparently it’s because I’m officially old.” Holly turns to Dave, who is now leaning against the back counter, waiting to help the next customer. “Dave, what do you have that’s yummy from somewhere weird?”

  Dave thinks about her request for a moment. “Something along the lines of that Cava from Spain you liked?”

  “No. I loved that, but let’s go with something totally different. Tonight, I want to experiment. I’m done being beige.”

  Jessie throws up her hands silently.

  Holly snaps her fingers. “Oh,” she exclaims, pointing to Dave. “New Zealand. Bring me something from New Zealand.”

  “How is New Zealand somewhere weird?” I ask.

  “Their Christmas is in summer,” Holly answers, as though the answer is obvious.

  Dave pours her a small taste of white in a large glass and explains, “This is a Sauvignon Blanc from the Marlborough region.”

  Holly slides two fingers over the bottom rim of her glass, then pushes the glass around counterclockwise, swirling the wine. She dips her nose into the bowl of the glass, sniffs, then sips. “Yummy. That’s all there is to say about it.”

  As Dave smiles and fills her glass, I can’t help but tell her, “You could say there are delightful notes of stone fruit and citrus.”

  “I could if I had any clue what a stone fruit even was,” Holly jokes. She notices Jessie’s sour puss. “What’s wrong? Why the look?”

  “Nat thinks I’m beige,” Jessie accuses, jutting her chin in my direction.

  Before I can remind Jessie that I never actually said that, Holly waves her off. “Oh, you’re not beige, you’re just predictable.”

  Not helping, Holly.

  “What’s the difference?” Jessie asks.

  “Beige is for people who either can’t or won’t make a choice about things. You always make a choice. It’s just always the same choice.”

  Jessie bugs her eyes out at Holly. “What? That’s not true.”

  Holly points to Jessie’s glass of wine. “Cabernet. Napa Valley. Probably a three-year-old vintage. Five to seven years old if you’re splurging. Plus you have that bottle of Insignia Cabernet you’ve been saving forever. How old’s that? Like, ten years?”

  Jessie looks like she’s going to cry. Holly seems surprised by Jessie’s reaction and quickly clarifies, “That’s not an insult. It’s a good thing. You’re like the solid person who knows exactly what she wants and loves, and has a step-by-step plan for how to get it. That’s why you’ve got the stable career, and you’re on a planned path to a house and marriage. I wish I was more like you. I wish I could be happy ordering the exact same wine every time, but I can’t. Sometimes I need to go to New Zealand.”

  Jessie looks down sadly at her wine. Holly turns to me, confused. “What’s wrong? What did I say?”

  “Kevin backed out of the house,” I tell her quietly.

  Holly’s shoulders drop. “Oh, honey.” She hops off of her seat and walks around me to pull Jessie into a hug. “But I thought you guys already made an offer. What happened?”

  “We went through the house one final time, and he freaked out over the beige counters in the kitchen.”

  Holly rubs her back sympathetically. “Did you tell him you’ll just replace them with white granite countertops and blue and white backsplash tiles?”

  Jessie does a bit of a double take at her apparent predictability but quickly recovers. “I tried. But he doesn’t want to buy the house. The kitchen was just the excuse. He’s not ready to make a commitment, but I am. That’s it in a nutshell.”

  “I’m sorry,” Holly tells her. “What can we do?”

  “Nothing. But thank you.”

  Holly gives her another hug. Jessie pats Holly’s arm, signaling she’s fine, and Holly returns to her seat. Jessie takes a sip of wine, deep in thought. Then she turns to us, exasperated, “You know what’s bothering me the most? It’s not that we’re not engaged yet—we’ll get there. It’s that he’s robbing me of control of my economic future. I have money. I’ve been killing myself at a job that I hate for years, and sacrificing everything from great haircuts to exotic vacations, just because I wanted to own something. I wanted something that was mine. And now, because of someone else, I don’t get to have something that I’ve worked really hard for.”

  Jessie gestures around the bar. “I mean, look at this place. The owner bought it less than ten years ago, just as the neighborhood was really taking off, and now it’s worth more than twice what he paid. I want what he has.”

  “You want a bar?” I ask her disapprovingly.

  Jessie shrugs. “You know what? Maybe I do. It would certainly be more fun than accounting.”

  “That’s not exactly a horse race…” I joke, trying to lighten the mood.

  Jessie takes a sip of her Cabernet, then asks us angrily, “Do you have any idea how tired I am of getting up at five thirty in the morning every fucking weekday, forcing myself into an ugly suit, girdlelike panty hose, and barely there makeup that takes me half an hour to apply, just so I can trudge through fifteen-mile-an-hour traffic to get to my downtown office and marvel at my view of a back alley? Then I get to reward myself for the trip by downing three cups of black coffee, and brace myself to listen to a bunch of douche bag clients who either make ten or fifteen times what I do or, worse yet, have inherited or married money, yet still claim poverty?” She looks around the bar. “If I had any balls at all, I would take my six figures in the bank, sink it into a bar in Echo Park, and change my life.”

  “Sink is right,” Holly tells her. “I’ve worked in bars off and on for over a decade. More than half of them fail by the end of the first year.”

  Jessie’s face lights up. “That’s right! You have bar experience. We should buy a place together. You could run it, I could handle the books. And we could both bartend.”

  “That’s what you took from my statement?” Holly asks her incredulously.

  “Really,” I agree. “All you need now is Judy Garland and Mickey Rooney to fix up the barn and put on a show…”

  “I have no idea what that means, but quit making fun of me,” Jessie warns me. “Think about it: Echo Park is the next Silverlake. If we bought a bar and held on to it for ten years, like the owners did here, we’d be sitting on a gold mine.”

  “Is that your accounting background talking or the wine?” I ask.

  “Both,” she answers without hesitation or shame. “Real estate is a solid investment, whether it’s a house or a business. And the only thing keeping me from moving ahead is fear.” She looks around the bar, nodding slowly and smiling. “Do you have any idea how rewarding it would be to handle books for something I actually care about? To feel like I was moving forward in some area of my life, and not just treading water?”

  She’s serious. Clearly that Tempranillo blend has already gone to her head. I now feel bad for making jokes, so I try to make amends by indulging myself for a second and joining her in her pipe dream. “You should make it a wine bar. That way I can help you pick the wines,” I say wistfully.

  “You absolutely could,” Jessie agrees. “You may have flunked out of sommelier school, but you’d be great at
picking wines. You know your Sangiovese from your Syrah. Plus you know words like ‘stone fruit.’”

  “Stone fruit just means a peach, or a nectarine, or pretty much anything with a pit,” I explain. “And I did not flunk out. I took a leave of absence.”

  “You can’t smell,” Holly reminds me.

  “Which is why I took a leave of absence,” I snipe at her.

  Jessie looks around the bar again, but she soon deflates. “Never mind. I’m not really going to buy a bar and quit my job. I’m just having a bad day. So let’s stop talking about it. I want to hear about yours, Holly. How did your tampon audition go?”

  “It got moved to Monday. But you know what’s funny: Remember how I told you just yesterday that I could not think of a more humiliating audition to go on than one for tampons?”

  “Oh, God, condoms?” Jessie asks.

  “Worse,” Holly answers.

  Jessie and I exchange a look. “Cat litter?” I guess.

  “Lower…”

  Jessie’s turn. “A minivan?”

  “Okay, as bad. I auditioned for a diaper commercial.”

  Jessie and I both take a second to absorb that. Really, that’s not so horrible. Granted, in L.A. our generation is hitting the reproductive snooze button so often that the clock is bracing for the next hit, but most of the country is having kids by our age.

  Jessie stays upbeat. “You know what? That’s a good thing,” she assures Holly. “You don’t want to play college hotties forever. Nothing wrong with playing a cute mom. I’ll bet—”

  “Adult diapers,” Holly clarifies.

  Jessie’s lips disappear. “Well,” she begins, struggling to accentuate the positive, “at least you’re not the younger wife in the Viagra commercials.”

  “That’s Tuesday’s audition,” Holly tells her. “And before you ask, they’re going after a younger demographic for that too.”

  “You know what works for younger guys’ penises?” I ask Holly in a deadpan voice.

  “Showing up with a six-pack and a pizza,” Holly snaps.