Last Pour

Two years post-epilogue. Sloane POV. The forty-two-person commitment ceremony is over. The property is theirs. Sloane walks Natalie down the gravel of the cellar yard at ten thirteen on the night of the second wedding — barefoot, in deep green silk, with a six-hour-old gold band on her left ring finger that says In the kitchen — and unlocks the cellar door.

The commitment ceremony was at four o’clock on the second Saturday in October, and by ten that night the property was empty.

It had not, twelve hours earlier, looked like the kind of property that could be empty by ten. The cellar yard had been hung with the same warm string lights as the second gala, the long walnut had been moved out of the tasting room and onto the lawn for the dinner, the wedding china had been pulled from Eleanor’s house on Friday morning, and Marisol’s sister-in-law had, on Saturday at noon, brought up the same hundred and thirty-nine beeswax tapers in the same low brass holders, plus an additional thirty-six because the headcount this year had run, by Marisol’s careful written count, to forty-two.

Forty-two people.

This was, Sloane had registered on the cellar bench that morning at six-thirty, exactly the right number.

It was the working circle. It was the small good chosen circle of people the estate had — in two years and seven months — become. Marisol and Diego at the head table. Rosa Cruz in a deep green silk dress next to her cousin’s daughter, who was visiting from Mendocino, who Rosa had been — Sloane registered, with a small private working amusement — looking at across the table for forty minutes between dessert and dancing, which was a development Sloane was going to be reporting to Marisol on Monday morning over the figs.

Theo Park in dove gray with his husband.

Wren in a dark suit, who had flown out on Thursday from Brooklyn, who had been Sloane’s witness.

Eleanor at the head of the table again, in the cream wool sweater with the camellia, who had — for the second time in twenty-eight months — officiated. Eleanor at sixty-eight. Eleanor still pinning on the camellia in the kitchen mirror at the main house with Marisol’s hands at five-twenty, and Eleanor saying — into the mirror, with Marisol watching — I am ready, Marisol, and Marisol saying — yes, Eleanor.

Calder Whitfield with Beto. Henry Whitfield, who had — twenty-eight months ago, on the porch — said win, Natalie, and who had — at six-forty this evening, in his own charcoal suit, with a quiet Mrs. Vega-Rousseau, on the porch — kissed both Natalie’s hands.

Pablo and Hector. Diego’s brother. The Mendocino niece. Theo’s husband. The neighbors from the chardonnay block down the road.

Forty-two.

By nine-fifteen, the cars had started leaving.

By nine-forty, Eleanor — in the cream wool sweater and the small string of pearls and the camellia coming a little loose from a long day at sixty-eight — had been hugged on the porch by Natalie for one full minute, in a way that had to do with a Tuesday morning in October two years and three weeks before in a kitchen at a small round oak table, and Eleanor had said into Natalie’s hair, very quietly, I love you, dear, and Eleanor’s driver — Eleanor had, this year, agreed to a driver, finally, on a Saturday after sundown — had pulled out of the gravel at nine forty-three.

By ten, Marisol and Diego had gone home.

By ten-oh-five, Rosa had gone down to the cottage with the cousin’s daughter from Mendocino.

By ten-oh-eight, the property was theirs.

Natalie was on the back porch in the deep green silk.

She was not, this time, in the deep green silk from the gala two years ago. She was in a different deep green silk dress — a longer one, with a slightly lower neck, with a small dark green velvet ribbon at the waist — that had been made for her in San Francisco in August by a tailor Marisol’s niece had recommended and that Sloane had, in eight weeks, watched her try on six times. The dress fit her in a way that — Sloane registered, coming out the back porch screen with two empty crystal glasses in her hands — was, possibly, going to be a problem in the next forty minutes.

The lower clip was in. The hair was down out of it. The shoes were off — they were on the porch boards, a pair of cream silk flats Eleanor had bought her in Healdsburg the previous Tuesday — and Natalie was standing at the porch rail in bare feet on the warm boards, with her right hand on the rail, with the small gold band on her left ring finger catching the porch light.

The band was new.

The band was — as of four oh-six this afternoon, in the dining room, with Eleanor at the head — six hours old.

It matched, in a small specific careful way, the band on Sloane’s left ring finger that was the same six hours old, and that — like Natalie’s — had been engraved on the inner curve, in her grandmother’s hand from a sample she had given Marisol’s nephew at the engraver’s in late August, with three words.

The three words on Sloane’s were Tomorrow morning at seven.

The three words on Natalie’s were In the kitchen.

This had been Eleanor’s idea.

Eleanor had — in the kitchen of the main house at five forty-five on a Tuesday in early September, with a small notebook in her hand — said, I want — I want to give you something. For — for the rings. If you have not yet decided. I — I have a thing. About the rings, and Natalie had said yes, Mother, and Eleanor had said the most important sentence either of you has ever said to the other was not, dear, said in the dining room. And the second-most-important was not said in the dining room either. They were said in the kitchen, on a Sunday morning at six fifty-six, on stools, in front of Marisol’s back. And I — I would like for the rings — for the inside of the rings — to remember the kitchen, and Natalie had reached, across the marble, and held her mother’s hand for a count of ten, and Eleanor had said, into the small cleared space, that is what I have for you, dears, and the rings had been engraved that month accordingly.

Sloane crossed the porch.

She set the two empty glasses on the porch rail. She came up behind Natalie. She put both hands at the sides of Natalie’s waist, on the dark green velvet ribbon, and she leaned forward, and she put her mouth at the place at the side of Natalie’s throat where the small soft skin met the line of the deep green silk collar, and she said, into the skin, very quietly,

“Mrs. Vega-Rousseau.”

A small soft sound.

“Sloane —”

“Mhm.”

“That is the third time you have said it.”

“It is the seventh, in fact.”

“I have been counting.”

“Mhm.”

“Sloane —”

She kissed her, slow, on the place at the side of the throat. She did not, for a count of three, move her mouth.

Then she lifted her head.

“Come with me.”

“Where.”

“You’ll see.”

“Sloane —”

“Bare feet are fine. I’ve got a coat.”

“Sloane —”

“Come with me, Natalie.”

She walked her down the gravel of the side path in bare feet.

She had — this was the part Natalie would, over the next forty minutes, register, in pieces — planned this. She had been planning it since June. She had been planning it since the first wedding, in fact, two years and four months ago, on the wedding day, in the Bronco at six-fifteen, when she had registered, sitting in the driveway of the main house at six-fifteen alone, with the wedding shirt on, that she had not — at the first wedding — done the thing she had wanted to do at the first wedding, because the first wedding had been, in some specific careful way, the first wedding, and the first wedding had not been the wedding for the thing.

The thing was for the second wedding.

The thing was for the night the property was theirs, and forty-two people had gone home, and Natalie was barefoot on the porch in deep green silk with a six-hour-old gold band on her left ring finger that said In the kitchen, and the wood-stove smell of October had come up out of the river, and Sloane had — at nine forty-six — gone quietly to the cellar yard and unlocked the cellar door, and at nine fifty-three pulled the original bottle of the ’04 — the bottle, the one bottle of the original nine they had agreed at the kitchen island in November of year one to keep aside for the announcement of the new block, which had — three weeks ago, at six in the morning of the third of October — finally borne first fruit.

The wine was on the workbench in the cool of the cellar.

The wine was uncorked.

The single Burgundy bowl was beside it.

The single Burgundy bowl that had — twenty-eight months ago, in candlelight, on the long walnut of the tasting room — been the glass.

She walked Natalie down the gravel of the side path in bare feet, with her own work jacket around Natalie’s shoulders against the cool. They came around the corner of the cellar yard. She walked her to the side door of the barrel cellar.

She unlocked it.

She held it open.

“Sloane —”

“Mhm.”

“You did not.”

“Mhm.”

“Sloane Vega-Rousseau.”

“Mhm.”

“You are taking me — on the night of our wedding — to —”

“To the eleventh row.”

A pause.

“Sloane —”

“Mhm.”

“Yes.”

“Yes?”

“Yes, Sloane.”

She walked her in.

The cellar at ten thirteen on a Saturday night in late October was — Sloane registered, closing the door behind them — exactly the cellar she had rehearsed it being. Diego had — at eight oh-six this morning, with the small dry private working face he used twice a year — laid out, on her instruction, three things: one beeswax taper in the brass holder Marisol had gifted them last Christmas, on the workbench at the head of the row; the bottle of the ’04 and the single Burgundy bowl on the workbench at the foot of the row; and a soft folded gray blanket, on top of which sat the original gray waffle robe — the cottage robe, Natalie’s robe, which Sloane had taken off the closet hook of the cottage on the morning of the move thirty-three months ago and had kept folded at the bottom of the cedar chest at the foot of their bed — laid in the eight-inch gap between the eleventh barrel and the cool stone wall.

Natalie saw the candle first.

She stopped, six steps in.

“Sloane —”

“Mhm.”

“You — you put a candle in the cellar.”

“I did.”

“You — Sloane — you are — you are not allowed to put a candle in the cellar, Sloane, the cellar is —”

“It is a single candle, Natalie. It is in a brass holder. It is on the workbench, twenty feet from the barrels. It is, in fact, on a small ceramic plate. I have, in working cellars, in fifteen years, taken approximately forty-eight thousand small specific careful precautions, and tonight is not the night I am going to fail at one of them.”

“Sloane —”

“Walk.”

She walked.

She walked the eleven barrels. Sloane was on her right, half a step behind, with her right hand at the small of Natalie’s back through the deep green silk and the dark green velvet ribbon. They came to the eleventh barrel. They came to the cool stone of the original wall. They came to the eight-inch gap. They came to the folded gray blanket and the gray waffle robe.

Natalie stopped.

She turned.

She put both her hands on the front of Sloane’s wedding shirt.

“Sloane —”

“Mhm.”

“You — you have, with intention, recreated the —”

“Yes.”

“With Diego.”

“With Diego. Diego knew at six thirty this morning. Diego said bueno, mija, and laid it out for me before the ceremony.”

“Sloane Vega-Rousseau.”

“Mhm.”

“I love you.”

“I love you, Mrs. Vega-Rousseau.”

A very small involuntary laugh, into Sloane’s wedding shirt.

“Eight,” Natalie said. “Eighth time.”

“Mhm.”

“Stop counting, Natalie.”

“Mhm. Yes.”

She walked her, three steps, the rest of the way to the spot.

She put both hands at the sides of Natalie’s waist, on the dark green velvet ribbon. She bent her head. She kissed her. Slow, in the cool of the cellar, in the small specific careful way she had been kissing Natalie for thirty months, and Natalie’s hands came up off the front of the wedding shirt and went into Sloane’s hair, and Natalie made the small soft sound she had been making for thirty months, into Sloane’s mouth, and Sloane laughed once — quiet, low, a real laugh — into the corner of Natalie’s mouth.

“Tell me to stop.”

“Don’t.“

“Mhm.”

“Sloane —”

“Mhm.”

“You — Sloane — you have been — planning this —”

“For four months. I have been planning this for four months. Yes, Natalie.”

“Sloane —”

“What.”

“That is — Sloane — that is the most romantic thing —”

“Mhm.”

“— a person has ever —”

“Hush, Natalie.”

She kissed her again, harder. Natalie’s hands went into her hair. Natalie’s hands pulled. Sloane made the small low involuntary sound she made when Natalie pulled — the one Natalie had, in two and a half years, identified as the most useful piece of small specific information she had been issued — and Natalie, with her face against Sloane’s, with her hands in her hair, said, in the working voice she used now in the bedroom on the second floor on the nights when Sloane needed to be in working order,

“On the blanket.”

“Yes.”

“Now, Sloane.”

“Yes, Natalie.”

She lowered her, slow, onto the gray waffle robe.

The gray waffle robe — folded once, on top of the gray blanket, against the cool concrete of the eleventh-barrel gap — was the robe from the night of the storm. The robe Natalie had been wearing on the cottage rug at three in the morning, in firelight, when she had said I do not know how to do this, and Sloane had said you’re allowed. The robe Natalie had walked the lavender path back to the main house in at six-thirty the next morning in still-damp boots. The robe that had been — Sloane registered, lowering her wife of six hours onto the gray waffle of it now — at the bottom of the cedar chest at the foot of their bed for two years and seven months, untouched, waiting for tonight.

Natalie, on her back on the gray waffle on the gray blanket on the cool concrete, in the deep green silk that the dark green velvet ribbon had now come loose from at the side, with her hair out of the lower clip and the lower clip on the workbench three feet away, looked up at Sloane in the candlelight and said,

“Sloane.”

“What.”

“The dress.”

“Yes.”

“Off.”

“Slow.”

“Slow.”

“Yes, Natalie.”

She undressed her in the cellar in the gold of the single beeswax taper twenty feet down the row.

She did it slow. She had done it slow at twenty in a hotel in Oakland with a girl whose name she could no longer remember; she had done it slow at twenty-eight in a Bordeaux flat with a sommelier she had been in love with for six weeks; she had done it slow on the night of the storm in the cottage thirty-three months ago, and she had, in eleven years and seven months of doing it slow, never done it as slow as she did it on the cool concrete of the barrel cellar at ten twenty-one on a Saturday night in late October two years and four months after she had married Natalie Rousseau in this estate’s dining room.

The dark green velvet ribbon. Off, slow.

The deep green silk down the shoulders. Slow.

The black silk bra — the same set Natalie had worn on the night of the speech in the kitchen, two years and three weeks ago, that had, in two and a half years, become the set — off slowly. The black silk underwear off slowly. The small gold band on the left ring finger left on, because the ring was, on principle, not coming off.

Natalie’s hair on the gray waffle.

Natalie’s left hand on Sloane’s neck, with the small new gold band cool against the skin at the chain.

Natalie’s right hand pulling, again, in Sloane’s hair.

“Sloane.“

“Mhm.”

“The wedding shirt off. Now, Sloane.”

She unbuttoned the wedding shirt. She did it without looking down. She kept her eyes on Natalie’s eyes in the gold of the cellar. She undid the cuffs. She slid the shirt off her shoulders. She was not, under it, wearing a bra — she had not, on the wedding day, worn a bra under the wedding shirt, on principle, because on the second wedding day Sloane had decided she was going to be a woman who, on her own wedding day, did not wear a bra — and Natalie, on her back on the gray waffle in the cellar, made the small soft sound she made when she registered information she had not been prepared for.

“Sloane —”

“Mhm.”

“Under the wedding shirt — you —”

“Mhm. I know.”

“You — you absolute —“

“I know, Natalie.”

She unbuttoned her own dark trousers. She slid them off. She slid the boxers off after.

She came down to her on the gray waffle.

Skin. Skin in the cool concrete. Skin in the gold of the single candle in the brass holder twenty feet down the row. Skin and the small soft jersey of the gray waffle and the cool of the gray blanket under it and the cool of the original eleventh-barrel stone against the side of Natalie’s right shoulder.

She took her time.

She had, last night, on the kitchen island at midnight in the white linen robes they had been wearing at the rehearsal dinner, finished a small specific careful inventory of everything she was, on the night of the second wedding, going to do to her wife in the eleventh-barrel gap. The list had been four items.

She did them all.

She brought her there once, slow, on her hand at ten forty-one, with the candle steady twenty feet down the row, with both Natalie’s hands now in Sloane’s hair, with her thigh shaking against Sloane’s hip. She brought her there twice more with her mouth, once at ten forty-eight and once at ten fifty-two. And at ten fifty-six, naked in the gold of the candle in the eleventh row, Sloane held the single Burgundy bowl of the ’04 at twenty-three years old up to her wife’s mouth and watched Natalie drink, slow, and pass it back, turned a quarter turn so Sloane’s mouth would land where Natalie’s had been, and Sloane drank with her mouth on the warm of the rim where her wife’s had just been, and she set the bowl down on the cool concrete, and she lowered Natalie back down onto the gray waffle, and she finished her one more time — hard, at eleven oh-nine, with the small new gold ring on Natalie’s left hand pressing against the back of Sloane’s neck where the chain was — and she registered, with absolute clinical clarity, that this was, possibly, the single most efficient ninety minutes of her professional life.

She held her on the gray waffle for a long count, with the cool of the cellar coming back into the air now that they had, both of them, gone still, with the candle still steady at the head of the row.

Natalie said, into Sloane’s collarbone, quietly,

“Sloane.”

“Mhm.”

“On the porch tomorrow. At seven. With Marisol. I want to bring up the half-glass that is left, and I want to drink it on the back porch with Marisol, with three glasses, with what is left in the bottom.”

“Yes.”

“All right.”

“All right.”

She took her up.

She blew out the candle. She picked up the gray waffle robe. She picked up the gray blanket. She picked up the small Burgundy bowl. She picked up the half-empty bottle of the ’04 with two fingers around the neck.

Natalie picked up the lower clip from the workbench.

Sloane locked the cellar door behind them.

They walked, in the cool of the late October night, the long slow gravel path from the cellar yard back across to the back porch of the main house. They were holding hands. They were not, in any way, looking at each other; they were looking, instead, at the tall outline of the house against the dark of the ridge, with the small low warm of the bedside lamp on the second floor visible in the bedroom window because Sloane had — at four-twenty this afternoon, before the ceremony — turned it on for tonight on purpose.

They went up the back porch steps in bare feet.

They went up the stairs of the main house, and they went into the bedroom on the second floor, and Sloane set the half-empty bottle of the ’04 on the right-hand bedside table next to the small framed photograph of her mother in 1989, and Natalie laid the gray waffle robe in the cedar chest at the foot of the bed where it had lived for two years and seven months, and they got under the white linen.

Sloane lay on her back in the new bed at eleven thirty-eight on a Saturday night in late October on the night of the second of their two weddings.

Natalie was on her side, against her side, with her hand laid loose on Sloane’s stomach, with the small new gold band on her left ring finger cool against the warm of Sloane’s skin under the linen.

She turned, slow, in the linen.

She put her thumb under Natalie’s chin.

She lifted Natalie’s face the inch and a half it took for Natalie to be looking at her in the small low warm of the lamp, and she said, into the small warm space,

“You taste like home.”

A small soft sound. A wet one. A long laugh.

She turned out the lamp.

She kissed her in the dark.

She slept, finally, with the woman she had been waiting thirty-six years for and had now, on the record, for the rest of her life, warm against her side under the new white linen, with the half-empty bottle of the ’04 at twenty-three years old on the bedside table beside the photograph of her mother in 1989, and the small new gold band on her left ring finger that said, on the inner curve, in her grandmother-in-law’s handwriting,

Tomorrow morning at seven.

She did not, in any way, dream.

She did not need to.

She had — she had, in two and a half years — woken up.

Hope you enjoyed it. 🍷

If Last Pour is the first thing you read of this couple — start at the beginning.

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