The Road to Recovery

My god did I get pissed last night. That's a statement, not a question. If the throbbing in my head is any indication of my condition I must have been pissed as a newt, blind maggoty drunk. I don't remember which particular poison I drank to arrive at the state I must have been in, but I do remember that at one stage there was a woman involved.

I rolled over and bumped into something soft and it moaned. My eyes couldn't quite focus but there was a woman in my bed, or was I in a woman's bed, I didn't know which but my flight or fight reflexes told me to get the hell out of there. I rolled back to my side of the bed and started to slide out as quietly as I could so as not to wake her but, if the sound I made was as loud to her as it was to me, I didn't stand a chance of making a clean getaway.

"Who the fuck are you, and what are you doing in my bed?" She tried to say but it came out as an almost indecipherable mumble. "Don't leave me." I stopped where I was. Her head rose from the pillow and she tried to focus on me. "What were you pouring into me last night?"

"How the hell do I know, and who are you?"

"I'm someone who'd better get to the bathroom in a hurry or you'll be wearing whatever it was that you forced down my throat." She scrambled out of the bed and sprinted out of the room. There was a loud thumping noise. "Fuck! That's not where I left the toilet!" This was followed by the sound of her trying another door that must have been the right one because the next sound was of her calling for her friends Ruth and Herc (this is the sound you make when you're throwing your guts down the toilet).

I stumbled from the bed and checked the clothes hanging in the closet, it was my hotel room. Breathing a sigh of relief I dragged out clean underwear and socks, a shirt and trousers. I noticed an I Pad and switched it on, checking the activities programmed into today's schedule. Jesus! I was supposed to be in a meeting in half an hour, there was no way that I could make it so I dialled the contact number listed against the appointment. "Hello, it's Mike Saunders, I can't make the meeting this morning. Is there a possibility of rescheduling it?"

"I'm sorry Mr. Saunders, but the meeting has been cancelled."

"What do you mean it's been cancelled?"

"It was cancelled because the company has been sold."

"What? The company's been sold?"

"Yes, don't you remember? There was a terrible argument over the sale."

"Oh, there was an argument you say, probably between me and Peter over the sale. Why doesn't that surprise me? And because he was the Board Chairman and had the majority shareholding he over-ruled my objections and the sale went ahead."

"Yes, I'm afraid you were very angry and told him to stick his sale as far as possible up his big fat arse."

"I told him that did I?"

"Yes sir, I'm afraid you did. That was when you threw the glass at him and stormed out."

"Did I hit him?"

"No sir, you missed, but you did break a window."

"Shit I must have been angry if I missed old Lardarse."

There was a noise behind me and I turned to see a very bedraggled, but otherwise not bad looking woman, swaying in the breeze and hanging on to the door jamb for support. "That was better out than in. Did we have corn last night? I don't remember having any corn but it was there."

"You're asking me what we ate last night. I don't even remember last night or how you ended up in my bed."

"Oh, it's your bed." She looked at me as if trying to decide whether to make a grab for her clothes and head back to the bathroom to change, or to try for breakfast first. Then a worried look came over her face. "Did we? You know what. . ." She felt between her legs. "Oh fuck we did."

I felt my pubes and there were traces of dried come matting them together. "I guess that we must have, I hope we enjoyed it?"

"So that's all you can think of, whether we, and by that you mean you, enjoyed it. I have no recollection of having sex with you or anyone else, but what I do know is that we obviously took no precautions and I can't remember whether I'm on the pill or not." She found her handbag where it had been kicked under the bed and rummaged through it, pulling out a contraceptive package. "What's the date today?"

"How the fuck do I know. No wait, I'll start that again. I'm sorry, but I really don't know. Wait," I looked at my I Pad again. "It's Saturday the fourteenth, shit that means that yesterday was Friday the thirteenth, it couldn't have been more appropriate." Memories were beginning to surface, not happy memories, what had I done? "I'm Mike by the way, Mike Saunders, and you are?"

"Millie Dawson. You don't remember much of last night do you?"

"I don't remember anything of last night. Are you married and have I left you to explain to an anxious husband why you weren't sharing the conjugal bed last night?"

"No, you don't have to worry about that."

"Just how did we meet? I assume that I met you last night and that you're not a friend of long standing that I'm insulting by not remembering."

"Last night was our first meeting. I called in to pick up my brother, he's a journo, from down stairs in the conference room. You were holding a press conference, something about your brother and the family company that he'd sold out from under you and how you were going to have to face the employees on Monday to tell them that they were all out of a job. You were angry but coming down from being much angrier, I think the media were behind you. Anyhow I wandered in and stood at the back of the crowd and listened. You don't usually lose it do you?"

"No, it's just that my bastard of a brother had sold out to an international company that has no concept of a principle that I'd inherited from my father and I'd carried on, and that's one of reciprocal loyalty, if you look after your employees they will look after you. Brother Peter on the other hand adopted a bottom line mentality when it came to employees. Look I don't want to burden you with my problems, at least not on an empty stomach, I don't know whether I ate or drank dinner last night but my stomach is crying out for something to soak up the remaining alcohol. Can I interest you in breakfast?"

"Sure, as long as it doesn't involve a hair of the dog or some disgusting hangover cure like raw eggs and Worcestershire sauce."

"Okay, leave it to me." I picked up the phone and asked for room service. "Hi, this is Mike Saunders in room 614, could I have breakfast for two? What I would like is coffee, muesli, a tub of vanilla flavoured yoghurt and a banana, no make that two bananas. That will be all thank you." As I hung up I saw the puzzled expression on Millie's face. "This is my usual breakfast it contains most of the essential food groups and it fills you up."

"Okay, I trust you." She came over and sat next to me on the bed. "You don't have to tell me about your problems but it might help to talk about it, like why does your brother need money so badly that he'd sell up everything to get it?"

"It could have something to do with the three ex-dumb blonde wives that he's supporting, or the on-line betting shops, or the casinos, or the expensive life-style he's used to. He always was a spoiled brat, even as a kid, but because he was the oldest he inherited the majority shareholding so in effect he was my boss although he had little if any involvement in the running of the company."

"The company meant a lot to you, didn't it?"

"It was my life, so much so that I never got around to getting married, the employees were my friends and all the family I needed. Now I'm about to lose them all."

Millie moved closer and put her arm around me and drew my head down to her shoulder like I imagined my mother would do when I was sad. "Listen to me Mike, the world hasn't come to a screeching halt just yet. After breakfast we'll get cleaned up and you can take me to my apartment so that I can change into something more suitable and then I'm going to introduce you to my world that hopefully will take your mind off your problems and give you a chance to regroup."

"Where are we going?"

"You'll see."

There was a knock on the door, breakfast had arrived. She stood and watched as I opened the tub of yoghurt and spooned a little into each bowl before pouring half of the muesli in on top. I then covered it with milk. "We'll leave that for about half an hour while we get cleaned up. You can have first use of the shower." I heard the shower hiss into life and her voice singing some song or other, I couldn't make out the words but it sounded good.

The shower stopped and I heard her heading to the bedroom. "Your turn." She called to me.

A quick shower followed by the removal of a promising beard, a squirt of the pits and, with a towel wrapped around my waist I headed for the bedroom to be confronted by a different Millie. "Wow, don't you scrub up well, it is you isn't it? You haven't slipped your sober twin sister in on me while I was showering have you?"

"I'm the curious one now. With a line of flattery like that I'm surprised that you haven't snared an unsuspecting female by now. I'll leave you to your attempts to obliterate the ravages of last night."

It didn't take long to almost succeed in covering the traces of last night's debauchery and I joined her in the kitchen, at least I assumed that it was supposed to be a kitchen, it had a small sink, a kettle and toaster, the small bar fridge with the overpriced drinks that I don't bother to look at, and a table with a couple of chairs. Millie had poured the coffee and sat looking at the two bowls. I took one banana and sliced it into her bowl followed by the other into mine. "I hope you like it, I find that after a bowl of this and coffee I can survive until dinner."

She picked up her spoon and scooped up some muesli with a slice of banana and popped it into her mouth. "Hey this isn't bad." She said nothing more while she worked her way through the muesli. "You're full of surprises, do you know that?"

"There's nothing strange about this, it's just something that comes from living on your own and trying to make life easier."

We finished up around nine-thirty and headed for reception and an interesting reception. After arranging for the valet parking guy to fetch my car the receptionist looked at me with a glance at Millie and a smirk on his face. "I hope that Sir is feeling well this morning?"

"On top of the world thank you for asking. I take it I was a tad rowdy last night."

"One could say that."

"I hope that I didn't offend too many of your guests."

"Hardly at all Sir, once you'd calmed down, that was after your brother left."

"He was here, why?" I wasn't actually asking him but he answered anyway.

"It appears that he came to explain the reason for what he had done but you invited him to do something anatomically and potentially painful with his explanations. I'm afraid that we had to restrain you until he had left. He was intent on calling the police but we managed to persuade him otherwise. Bad for our reputation you know."

"Thank you for that. So I calmed down eventually did I?"

"Sir did, and he can thank this young lady for that." He said nodding towards Millie "She talked calmly to you and then suggested that you should go to your room and sleep it off. You insisted that she accompany you which she did, along with the bottle of scotch that you bought. I assumed that a single malt anaesthetic was in order."

"It seems that I have a lot to thank this young lady for." Compared to the receptionist and myself, Millie was young, or youngish, possibly mid to late thirties and easy on the eye. The car arrived and I thanked the reception guy and Millie and I left.

"Where are we heading?" I asked as we pulled out onto the road.

"Head south, I'll tell you where to turn off." We drove for about ten minutes until we reached her street and her town house. I looked at the pictures on her walls and her books while she changed. Five minutes later she emerged in tailored slacks and a silk, at least it looked like silk, blouse, I couldn't believe that I was spending the day with someone this attractive.

We drove through suburbia for the best part of an hour before coming to an area covered in vines. "Turn here." She indicated a turn off to the left, the sign told me that we were entering McLaren Vale. "I'm a wine buyer for a retail liquor chain and this is my favourite part of the world."

"I don't know that I could face wine today."

"Nonsense! We're not here to get pissed, we are going to taste some of the best wines in the world and you are going to swirl and spit, not guzzle."

"If you say so." I could feel my stomach about to rebel.

"Down this road." Another left turn and about a kilometre later she pointed to a drive entrance leading to a large red brick building with an equally large stainless steel tank farm on the side. I parked out front and before we walked in she filled me in on the history of this winery and winemaker. "Steve has been around this district for decades and used to have a much smaller winery until he was bought out by a conglomerate for an obscene amount of money on the proviso that he didn't produce wine for at least five years. He bought this from the proceeds when his time had expired and set about building up this winery."

We walked into the tasting area to be greeted by the winemaker, at least Millie was greeted. "Millie, what are you doing here on a weekend?" He came around and gave her a hug.

"I couldn't get here for the launch of your new releases so I thought that I'd combine business with pleasure. Mike here is going to work his way through the range but I'll just stick to the new wines, if that's okay with you." While I worked my way through the whites, starting from the Riesling and Chardonnay on to the Sauvignon, Blanc Steve took me through the different styles and what I should be looking for in each. Millie joined in when we reached the new release Cabernet Sauvignon which was, as usual very good, to the Shiraz for which, over the years, Steve has won many prizes. "No surprises here." Millie told him. "How many cases of these reds can you allow me this year?"

"We're having to limit stocks to our retailers, how many would you be looking for?"

She took an I Pad from her bag and brought up a chart. "Can I have a hundred cases of the Cab Sav and Shiraz to start with, we're having a promotion of your wines to clear the decks for new releases, I'm sure that we can clear enough space to take that amount."

"I can do that, just for you, you know that don't you."

"Thanks mate, as usual, it's good to do business with you." We left, but not before I bought a dozen bottles of Shiraz. A couple of kilometres down the road we turned into a winery that had an unusual fence running beside the driveway, it was made up of posts and a top rail all made from large logs. "This is called 'Woodhenge'. An example of the previous owner's quirky sense of the ridiculous, they've even named a wine after it. Even though he died of cancer several years ago the people running the place now haven't lost sight of his philosophy on life. He was a real character, on top of which he made brilliant wines and the current winemaker has kept up the tradition.

It was a similar deal as before, I worked from the whites to the reds and Millie restricted herself to the new releases. Again there was a substantial order placed before we moved on.

Millie rang the next winery to arrange for us to have lunch in the restaurant that looked down over the valley. "This is another family winery, there's an interesting story about the original viticulturalist, he headed into Adelaide with a pocket full of money to buy land for a vineyard but instead bought a racehorse called 'Footbolt'. Now this nag was successful and won enough for the purchase of much more land than originally intended. While the early harvests were sold to other wineries, they've been making wine for decades and the current generation winemaker has expanded the range from the original basic wines to include many new grape varieties. They are still making wines from the original plantings and they're very intense wines. You'll know them when you taste them."

She was right, I caught a smile come over her face when I took a sip of the first of these old vine wines. It had my taste buds standing at attention and saluting with the intensity of its flavour on the palate. I looked at the back label and realised that I was tasting a tradition that went back generations, from the use of jumping around on the grapes with waders, to the use of open fermenters that helped to produce this product. I looked at Millie. "Wow!" That was all that I could say.

"There were people in the industry who said that d'Arry was stupid leaving the Grenache vines in when everyone else was ripping them out during the 'vine pull programme' of the 1980's but his decision has been vindicated by that wine." While we ate she took me through the history of wine in this region and how it had grown with the changing palates of the Australian wine consumer, of how a large amount of the premium juice from this region is still sent to other wine regions, and how a local trucking company grew from humble beginnings thirty odd years ago to having a vast fleet of 'B Double' tankers criss-crossing the continent. She gave me the impression that she knew a lot about this industry because she loved it.

I was enjoying the enthusiasm of this woman and had just about forgotten the circumstances of our meeting when it was time for us to head back into Adelaide. "You aren't used to this, are you?"

"What aren't I used to?"

"Asking a woman on a date?" She smiled at my confusion, did she want me to ask her on a date, or was she taking the mickey?"

"All right I have to admit that I'm out of practise but here goes, would you like to have dinner with me this evening?"

"No."

I was devastated, all the non-verbals were there, it was a given that she was hinting that she wanted it and what do I get? 'No'. "No? Is that it?"

"No, that's not it. I don't want you to take me to dinner, I want you to have dinner with me. Not in some fancy over-priced restaurant or some disgusting fast food joint, I want to take you home and cook you dinner."

Is there no end to the surprises with this woman? "I'd like that very much." Who am I kidding? I'd love that, I couldn't remember the last time that I had dinner alone with a woman in that woman's house.

"You do remember where I live, don't you?"

"No, you'll have to remind me." We had reached where I needed to turn off and I sensed that she was about to tell me to turn when I hit the indicator switch and turned.

"Okay, I asked for that, serves me right for being such a smart-arse." I parked the car and she led me up to her town house. Dumping her bag on a hallstand she pointed down the hallway. "If you need the loo it's down there, last door on the right. I'll rustle us up a coffee to keep us going until dinner is ready."

When I got back to the kitchen with my now empty bladder Millie was busy with meal preparations. There were two cups of coffee sitting on the bench top beside one of those automatic espresso machines that I'd been meaning to buy myself for years. I took a sip and decided that my next self-indulgent purchase would be one of these. "This is nice coffee."

"Yeah, I'm a bit precious about my coffee, you won't find instant anywhere near this place. I get freshly roasted beans from a factory not far from here so stale beans aren't an issue." I sipped my coffee as I watched her putting the ingredients into an unusual contraption. "I hope that you like curry, this'll be ready in about half an hour." She locked the lid and pushed a couple of buttons on the front of the machine. "This is an electric pressure cooker, it's great for curries and stews and stuff like that." She had just placed a half cup of rice into a rice cooker and switched that on. "Right, you have my undivided attention for the next fifteen minutes. Come." She picked up her coffee and led me into the living room where she switched on a CD player before sitting beside me. "I enjoyed today, very much."