“Great. I’ve missed you. I was wondering when you’d come in to see me.”
“I’m sorry I didn’t come by sooner, but we’ve been running around forever, dealing with the cave treasures and getting the exhibit prepared.”
She smiled. “You and Derek always cause such excitement when you come to Dharma.”
I laughed. “Oh yeah, excitement is one word for it. Look, Derek is waiting for me over at Umbria, but can we get together for lunch sometime this week?”
“Absolutely. I’m dying to tell you about London’s latest claim to fame.”
“Oh no. Is she having triplets?”
China laughed. Our youngest sister, London, was always doing something that was so much more fabulous than any of us had ever done. For instance, when China’s darling baby, Hannah, was born, London used the occasion to announce that she was pregnant with twins. We loved London to death, but we also enjoyed giving her grief.
London, who had been named after London, Ontario, Canada, where my mother went into labor after a Grateful Dead show, never minded our teasing. As the youngest, she was used to it.
Rather than name their children lovely, classic, solid names, as my mother had described Elizabeth’s, my parents had chosen to name us after the cities in which we were either conceived or born. Because my parents had been rabid Grateful Dead fans, most of those cities were places in which the revered band had once performed. The one exception was my sister China, who was born after a protest march at the Naval Air Weapons Station at China Lake, out in the Mojave Desert.
I promised China I would call her in a few days and grabbed her for a hug good-bye, then jogged across the street to Umbria, where I found Derek in the middle of a Primitivo wine flight. Wine flights had been popular for years and were a good way to learn more about the different types of wines. A bar or winery would offer three half glasses of either the same wine from different vintages, or three red wines of varying color or richness, or three of the exact same wine that had been stored in three different types of oak barrels. Places were always coming up with new themes for their wine flights. It was a fun way to figure out how to distinguish one wine from the next.
The last time we’d visited Dharma, my father had been raving about the Primitivo grapes he had planted. They were said to possess the exact same genetic characteristics as Zinfandel, but the wines tended to be different in color, richness, and levels of earthiness. It made sense, of course, given what we already knew about the terroir.
Derek stood when he saw me approaching and pulled out a bar stool for me. “Darling, you’re just in time to rescue me from this diabolical bartender.”
“You poor thing.” I sat down and smiled at the man behind the bar. I’d known him for years. “Hi, Lance.”
“Hey, Brooklyn. We just added this Primitivo wine flight to our list. Would you like to try it?”
“Not tonight, thanks. I’ll just help Derek with his.”
I took a sip of the lightest of the three wines in the order. It was an old-vine Zinfandel from a vineyard up in Geyserville. “I like that.”
“I thought you would.” Lance handed me the second glass. “This is the Primitivo. It’s from Abruzzi in Southern Italy.”
I held up the glass and admired the color, then took a sip. “This is spicier than the first one.”
“I thought so, too.”
I took another small sip and savored it. “I’m getting a hint of toasted almond.”
“Very good, love. I tasted more vanilla than almond.”
“That’s the oak you’re both tasting,” Lance explained. He handed me the third glass. “Here’s the Barbera.”
I swirled the wine, feeling only slightly pretentious. But since this was wine country, I was hardly alone. “This color is beautiful. It’s the deepest of the three.”
“As it should be,” Derek said.
“This is the kind of wine that stains my teeth.”
“We’ll only have a sip or two.”
I smiled and took that sip and tasted its light, sour-cherry essence. “Strange that it’s so dark in color, but light in flavor.”
“That’s what makes it a perfect everyday wine,” Lance said. “Except for the unfortunate teeth-staining part.”
After a few more sips of the three wines, our hostess arrived and Derek paid the bar bill. As soon as we were seated at our table, I started to tell Derek about running into Josh Atherton. But before I could get a full sentence out, we were interrupted by our waiter, who approached with two fresh glasses of red wine and set them in front of us.
“We didn’t order these,” Derek murmured to the waiter.