“Right,” I say, pouring the last dregs of the bottle of red open on the bar counter into Henri’s glass, “we can’t put it off any longer.”
A long groan escapes his mouth but he accepts the wine and I know I’ve liquored him up now to be game for the task at hand. I don’t blame him for not wanting to stay inside. Not when through the frosted windows promise a different version of the evening. One where the streets are quiet, coated in a thin white blanket, and the only sounds are the crunch of snow underfoot and the distant hum of a car starting. Paris is quiet in the snow in a way I never experienced in Brooklyn. There, the kids seem to be a constant chorus and the snow plows immediately get to work erasing the Earth’s handiwork.
Focus. We need to get this done today.
“Mais…” Henri starts. I lean over the bar and give him a quick peck. There are no buts about it. We promised Antoine. I pull back and tap the folder I placed in front of him two hours ago.
“I said I’d help, but technically it’s not my job. So if you want me we have to do it now.” I slid around the bar and grabbed the stool next to him.
“I definitely want you.” His hand finds its way to my lap almost by second nature. I lose my focus under his gaze, my eyes meeting his…maybe there is just a little… The clock behind him ticks and I am jolted back into the present where there isn’t any time. Ruby’s flight lands in two hours and the dinner is at nine. We have to get this done. “Bien essayé.” I move his hand to the folder. “We don’t have any time, Henri.” “You Americans are always so worried about time.”
“Hey,” I give him an eye-roll and a smile, “a New Yorker, not an American, remember?” This earns me a quick peck on the cheek before Henri runs a hand through his hair and opens the folder.
“I don’t even know what we should be looking for.” He muttered something under his breath and began thumbing through the applications in the folder.
The applications for les vendanges came in massive cresting waves that nearly took out the tiny post office in Alsace. Antoine knew that I had been profiled for the Times about my experience working on his vineyard, but I am not quite sure he – or I for that matter – expected the response that followed.
Of course, it probably didn’t help that the reporter focused mainly on “the story between the vines.” The majority of the applicants were women in their mid-to-late twenties. So, Antoine had decided that this was the year he could pass his workload off to an unsuspecting Henri (“Alors, it was his face in the paper that launched the thousand letters, non?”) and take Bea on a cruise.
So here we were, on Christmas Eve, sorting through the pile of hopefuls despite promising to have our top four to Antoine last week. “Alice, he’s on an island somewhere quizzing the staff about the profile of a wine,” Henri had argued, “he will not be thinking of us.”
I disagreed. These were the people Antoine would open his home and his life up to. It mattered deeply who you were knocking knees in the vines with.
After Henri’s third groan for attention, I took a long sip of my wine and moved the folder in front of me. The first face was a young man from Napa Valley with unruly hair and a bright smile. “He looks like a new penny.” Henri smiled.
“What does a new penny look like?”
“Like opportunity. Eagerness to prove worthiness, shiny. Impressionable.” Henri leaned over my shoulder. He had showered before we came back over to the bar and I could smell the aftershave lingering behind his ear.
“D’acc. Should we spend the new penny?”
“Oui.” I plucked Tom – our penny – out of the folder and started a new pile. The yeses. I thought about my own application, the one Alec had helped me curate only two years ago. Time moved fast in a bar, but even faster when you spent a lot of time on planes back and forth between countries.
“Bah, c’est fini non?” Henri grinned, reaching for the wine opener and the bottle we had brought with us for Pietro’s dinner party this evening.
“Non.” I moved the wine out of his hands and pushed the folder back. “Three more.”
We spent the next thirty minutes or so combing through application after application before I finally relented and let Henri uncork the wine for the party. I had thought this would only take about an hour at best, but most of the applications were thorough and everyone started to look like a bright penny, begging to be flipped right side up and picked up for luck. But we could only pick four people.
The bottle – a rich red that felt like heavy velvet drapery and sounded like the echoes of an empty Sainte-Chappelle – was half finished before we found our next candidate. Marissa was from Portugal and had never left the country before. Her family had owned their own vineyard for decades, but Marissa was eager to learn more about French wines. Almost as much as she wanted to get away from the only place she’d ever known. Her paper and photo was placed next to Tom’s.
“We cannot open a third or I will tumble into the Seine.” Henri placed his forehead on the countertop. The bottle was nearly empty and we still needed two more people. The clock was ticking. Pietro had already texted twice in a flurry asking us to bring a million things from the bar if it wasn’t too much trouble. The streetlamps had come on hours ago and outside the window you could see the powdered sugar dusting of snow falling under the yellow lights.
“Can’t we just pick two people and head to dinner?” Henri asked with a mock pout. I smiled.
The paint of the bar name on the windows was chipped slightly and needed to be repaired. One of our bartenders quit last week to walk the Camino de Santiago after a dramatic breakup that the entire waitstaff endured the details of on smoke breaks. The wrong bottles of wine were delivered and sent back. Countless birthdays and anniversaries and even one divorce were celebrated here. But this place was home.
Two years ago I stood on these same tiled floors and decided to stay just one more day. One more day had since become an entire life and countless bottles of wine shared with new friends and family. Two years ago I had flown to France not knowing that once I climbed into that little blue Fiat my entire life would change for the better. I had been the penny waiting to be turned lucky-side up. Non. No, we couldn't just pick two people.
My phone buzzed and I flipped it right side up. Ruby had WhatsApped the group. Soz. Snow has the roads a mess and CDG is crazy at the mo. Be there as soon as I can!! x “Ruby just bought us some time.” I threw back the rest of my glass. There were times to appreciate taste and times to get drunk. I picked up the folder from where we had left off. Too young. No experience. Half-filled application. I parsed through the obvious no’s as quickly as I could, scanning to the best of my ability for any standouts along the way. I felt Henri’s hand skim along my back, his palm gently following the curve of my spine as I hunched over the folder squinting in the dim light of the bar. His fingers rubbed against the bump of my bra clasp protruding slightly through the thin material of my sweater. We definitely couldn’t have any more wine until we left or we weren’t going to make it to Pietro’s.
Thinking of the dinner made my stomach growl. Henri laughed before pressing his lips quickly to my temple and jumping up to head into the kitchen. I kept flipping through the applications until he returned with a chunk of ripped baguette in a dinner napkin which I accepted greedily, hardly looking up from my work.
“You know,” I said with my mouth full of chewy bread, “this isn’t really my responsibility.”
“But you do it so well, ma douce.” He leaned forward and took a bite of the bread out of my hands.
“You are no better than the pigeons outside Notre-Dame sometimes.” I laughed. “Yes, but you love me so much more than the birds.” He chewed loudly in my ear. I swatted him away, handing him the application I was currently looking at. “I think I found another one.”
Jonah worked in a restaurant in South Africa and was excited about the possibility of learning more about the wines that they served. He knew a lot about the regional bottles, but recently they had expanded to include more from Europe. He was twenty-two and eager to take on any of the roles required of him.
“And this is not because he is handsome?” Henri gave me a teasing look and pointed to Jonah’s biceps. I shoved a piece of bread in his mouth.
“Les deux?” I kissed Henri’s own arm lightly. We needed to finish this quickly before my focus was gone all together. And from the look Henri was giving me I knew he was fading quickly as well.
“Be right back. Keep looking, please.” I stood and headed over to the door marked mesdames.
By the time I returned, Henri had finished the last of his wine and was now holding an application out toward me. I accepted it eagerly, hoping he wasn’t drunk and teasing, offering me a fifteen-year-old pranking us or another half-filled application.
Julie looked smart and professional. She had a softness about her that reminded me of cutting into butter that melted slightly more than you expected. The exterior was all business, but the soft crinkle around her eyes told me another story. This was a woman who smiled, who was open. I looked at her resume. She was from a small town in the midwest that didn’t offer much in the way of wine or wine education. She had finished a sommelier course and was hoping to move to a larger city to find work eventually. She had, like Marissa, never left home before.
“She kind of…” I started scanning the photo again. Henri moved closer, holding the application between his thumb and forefinger, moving the photo slightly toward him again. “Looks like you.” He finished softly.
I think about my life up until this moment. The opportunities I have had and fought hard for. The ability to live in New York and try new things. I wonder what my life would have looked like if possibility didn’t always feel so inevitable to me.
“Do you think we have found our last volunteer?” Henri’s voice pulled me back into the present. He rested his head in the crook of my neck, his breath warm against my cheek. “Oui.” I placed Julie next to Jonah.
Once we let Antoine know our choices we packed up the things Pietro had requested we bring and disposed of the gift bottle of wine we had indulged in. The door closing was the only thing that could be heard when we stepped out into the cold. The snow glittered on the sidewalks, the streets were empty. I turned the key in the lock and pulled the handles once more to make sure the bar was truly locked up for the evening.
I turned back toward the street and my lips made contact with Henri’s, his hands cupping my jaw on either side, warming my exposed cheeks. I closed my eyes and let the heat of his mouth warm me from the inside out like a cup of hot tea. When he pulled back he smiled, snow coating his eyelashes. He placed a soft kiss on my forehead before pulling my hat down slightly and offering me his hand. The walk to Pietro’s was short from the bar, but the night ahead felt long and full of possibility.
