Perfect 22

Perfect

soppingwetpanties

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, merchandise, companies, events and incidents are either the products of the author's imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

All characters are 18 years or older.

Sometimes people are surprised where and when they find perfection.

Present Day -- Napa Valley, California

Dark storm clouds were gathering to the west over the Mayacamas, a coastal range of mountains separating Sonoma and Napa Valleys. It was mid-March, and heavy rain was forecast to continue for the next week. There were some mudslides in the hills above us, and our irrigation pond was spilling over into a seasonal creek. The creek, which ran the length of our twenty planted acres, was already a swirling mass of muddy water that threatened to overflow its grassy banks and flood the vineyard.

Libby, our eight year old rescue border collie, seemed to be the only member of our family that was overjoyed at the prospect of more rain. She surveyed the perimeter of our fenced estate every morning, and during the rainy season would wade through the wet marshland, her immaculate black and white coat turning a dirt brown, with clumps of grass wedged between her toes. She usually slept in my parent's room, and was forbidden from jumping on the bed, but muddy paws on my mother's favorite quilt betrayed last night's visit. Libby was pacing in front of me, ears perked high, waiting for the command to follow me as I started my usual morning trek through the rows of dormant grapevines.

She sprang forward as I gave the familiar curl of my fingers signaling permission to follow. Even though she was technically Mom's dog, I trained her as a pup and her first loyalty was to me. She was instantly by my side in her heeling position, wagging her bushy tail as if it was a metronome marking time for our brisk pace. I loved Libby as a sister. It would have been a tough pick if I was forced to choose between Libby and my brother Chas.

Chas was named after my famous great uncle, the one that purchased Greenleaf Estates in the late 1960's with the winnings from a successful night at the poker tables. I was told by the family's elders that my brother had many of the attributes of his namesake, including his passion for money, fast women, and faster cars. At twenty-eight, he was one of the eligible bachelors in Napa Valley, a scion of our famous Napa Valley family, a family known for a large wine estate that consistently produced high scoring and critic pleasing cabernet sauvignon. He was the face of the future of our winery, and its multimillion dollar brand, and was often seen in his late model Ferrari with a rotating group of women that cycled through his busy social calendar.

I did give him credit for being the visionary behind the lower cost consumer version of our pricey estate cabernet, using purchased grapes from Paso Robles. The Paso cabernet production topped 200,000 cases annually, and was easily our top seller. It wasn't our glamour brand, but it drove half the profits of our family owned business.

I'm Chas's older sister, Jamie (my parents thought I was going to be a boy and picked out this name, and liked it so much they used it even though I turned out to be a girl). Where Chas craved the spotlight, I'd always craved having my fingers sunk deep into the dirt ... the Napa Valley dirt that produced our flagship wine. I've also wanted to carry the flag for the company, and made no secret of my feelings to lead. However, I was viewed as a longshot at best for the head position that my father had occupied for more than forty years. My father was already a legend in the valley, starting his winemaking in the 70's with pioneers such as Robert Mondavi,

André Tchelistcheff (BV), Warren Winiarski (Stag's Leap) and Jim Barrett (Chateau Montelena). He was a larger than life figure, and had always been my role model as I carved my own way to the top of the wine profession.

Samuel was Dad's given name, the name of his great uncle, but he eschewed his first name in favor of his middle, David, so all of his good friends called him David, but his business acquaintances would often call him Sam. Mom called him Dave.

I was a farmer like Dad. I was happy being out in the vineyard at four a.m., in the dark and cold, under the glare of portable floodlights, helping the picking crew during the harvest, while my playboy brother was just rolling in from a night of partying at some new hot spot in Napa. I never shied away from hard work, starting at the bottom rung of the corporate ladder, a cellar rat washing barrels and hosing off sorting tables for sixteen hours a day. I worked my way up to Assistant Winemaker, with a staff of forty, and was responsible for both the production facility and the tasting rooms. Time was a precious commodity for me.

I had a reputation for demanding perfection, and it was a reputation well-earned after I took the lead in making our 100 point 2015 cabernet reserve. That perfect score put me in the Napa Valley winemaking elite. It's been hard living up to my own high standards. Late nights most of the time and no sleep at all during the harvest. But it was worth the effort, despite the cost to my personal life, or what was left of it.

My father retained the title of Chief Winemaker, but it was common knowledge his title was in name only, since I'd been in that captain's chair after Dad suffered a mild stroke about two years earlier. He'd pretty much recovered, but for a slight slurring of his speech and bouts of momentary muscle weakness. Dad tried to be with me as much as he was able, but he usually started to tire after about four hours of work, so I would take him back to the house in one of our ATV's so he could take a nap after lunch. Sometimes he would call me to retrieve him after his afternoon siesta and sometimes he was content to stay with Mom, who would happily boss him around her two acre rose garden.

Mom was actively trying to convince him to retire. She was worried about his health, and also worried that they'd miss their best years together, with him whiling away the hours in the vineyard or the production facility instead of with her. Wine ran in his veins, just as it did for me. He was always ready to go in the morning. He loved to walk in the barrel room with me, sampling the previous year's harvest, and trying to guess with me which barrels would be headed for the exclusive reserve.

Everybody loved my mother. There was always somebody in the kitchen with her, sitting at the oversize farm table, drinking from a fresh pot of coffee and eating coffee cake she'd made that morning. Dad always brought along a slice of coffee cake wrapped in a napkin when he hopped in the ATV with me at six a.m. My mom baked all the time, and it was a wonder she was able to retain her figure with all the cookies, pies and cakes that came out of her ovens. She was as outspoken as they come, and was always dispensing advice, or her opinion, solicited or not. She retired early from her job as manager for the town of St. Helena, and focused most of her considerable energy on her one grandchild, aptly name Elizabeth after my mother. Lizzy was then five, and lived with us along with her mother, and my little sister, Emily.

I don't want to hog this story with a full description of what I believe are Emily's issues, but suffice it say she was the princess of the family, and was always my Dad's favorite, so she always got her way. Her manipulative personality convinced Mom and Dad that her then husband Derek could be trusted with our company's finances. Derek was Emily's second husband (and now ex-husband), and most people, including Mom and Dad, believed the Derek absconded with $10 million of family money. After the divorce, Derek moved to Naples (not Italy but Florida), with his new wife, a twenty-five year old British model with garishly large fake breasts. He was the company's Treasurer until a week before $10 million was siphoned out of the company's offshore bank account -- an account that Derek set up. No one was able to trace where the money went, and of course Derek denied any involvement in the theft [ed. note -- see the story

Grand Cayman

for an account of what really happened to the money].

Chas was a big fan of Derek's, and the extra millions of monthly cash flow coming from the new product line caused there to be a pleasant problem, namely too much cash and no place to put it. Derek came up with the idea of an offshore captive insurance company and funding it with the company's rainy day fund. Of course after the money disappeared Teflon Chas claimed that it was Dad who endorsed Derek's fraudulent scheme.

My family was a living soap opera, I guess including me, which gave me plenty to think about during my solitary walks through the vineyard. I pulled the lapels of my well-loved Carhartt coat together to fight off the stiff breeze that whipped the rain into sheets, stinging my face with ice cold droplets. I lowered my head and forged ahead towards the area where one of the vineyard workers had spotted a break in the deer fence. Sure enough, a portion of the fence was crushed by a deer that had gotten trapped in our property. Deer are all muscle and no brains, and this one, probably a large buck, had rammed the fence until it collapsed. I used my phone to take a picture of the damage and texted it to our vineyard manager, Manuel. I was confident the fence would be repaired by the end of the day. Manuel never let anything linger in his in box, and a broken deer fence was a priority repair.

Libby had already stepped gingerly around the tangled metal, and I followed her carefully traced path, trying to avoid the sharp exposed ends of the shattered fencing. I continued my walk in the rain, watching for the small rivers of mud that were flowing across the path. My mind wandered again to the teasing from Dad the previous night over my unmarried status, and my unintended celibacy over the past few years.

I was over thirty and unmarried. I hadn't had a date in as long as I could remember, and wasn't interested in marriage. My passion was wine. I guess I didn't think about men that much. Besides the casual boyfriends in college (at UC Davis), and the rare dates I'd squeezed in after work hours, there wasn't much male companionship for most of my adult life. It's not to say I'd missed it. I didn't. I'd spent so much time mucking around the vineyard with my father and our work crew that I considered myself one of the boys. Ironically it was Dad, not Mom, who bugged me the most about having a boyfriend, and eventually getting married.

My reverie was disturbed when I heard a low pitched hum coming from the direction of the main cellar building. There was an aging set of pumps working full-time to expel water from the storage cellar that was located in a small natural depression surrounded by our vineyard. Dad picked the spot for the large stone building because the soil was too wet to produce a quality wine grape. Dad figured when he tunneled into the hillside that he'd just pump out the water during the rainy season, an assumption that was correct during a normal year but was unquestionably faulty during the current deluge. There were three pumps total, but having just one out of commission would pose a big problem.

I sloshed down a row where I remembered there was a weakened vine. The extra water didn't help it. I squatted next to it and leaned down to see that the trunk of the young vine was already rotting. I made a mental note to order a replacement vine from the nursery.

There was a flock of wild turkeys making a ruckus in front of me. They were noisy and dirty, and I despised their unwelcome invasion on our property. I signaled to Libby, pointing to the turkeys with my finger. Libby hurled herself into border collie warp drive, darting for the center of the flock, and scattering the startled turkeys. She reached one of the airborne birds and leapt, snapping her jaws and just missing the leg of a frightened turkey. She landed gracefully and whirled around to me, ready for my next command. Instead I praised her and rubbed her in that special spot behind the ears for a job well done.

With the stiff breeze creating a bone chilling cold, I remember thinking that my father was wrong about me. I didn't need a man. This is what I wanted. Even on a cold and rainy day, the every day pleasure of walking through a vineyard with my dog gave me more satisfaction than I could ever imagine from a relationship with a man.

Maybe it was my perception of my little brother that colored my judgment about men. Chas was a womanizer, and I had a front row seat to see all of his youthful indiscretions. I'd met more than my share of men like Chas, self-centered and willful. To them, I was nothing more than a bit of fresh meat. I felt sorry for his parade of young and impressionable girlfriends.

The welcome sight of our farm house emerged as I crested a small hill. The lights burned brightly and I could see puffs of smoke coming from the chimney. I came up to the back porch, using the door everyone used. I stomped my boots and scraped the muddy soles against the metal bar that was thoughtfully embedded in the concrete porch. I pulled the screen door open, hearing its familiar creak, and took at whiff of the fresh cinnamon rolls that Mom baked early that morning. I sat down in the small alcove to the kitchen to kick off my boots and pull up my wool socks.

I shuffled into the kitchen in my socks, hoping my slow gait would generate pity from my mother. She was facing away from me, looking out the kitchen window, but I was convinced she had eyes in the back of her head.

"Coffee?" I asked, plopping myself down on the nearest chair, hopeful that she'd serve me.

"Help yourself," she told me. She didn't even bother to turn around to acknowledge my presence. She wasn't going to be my servant. That stopped when I turned eighteen and went to college.

I hoisted myself out of the chair and skated in my socks to the coffee pot. Sitting next to it was a tray full of upside down mugs. I turned over the mugs one by one until I found one without permanent coffee stains on the bottom. No one in the family seemed concerned about the stain issue except me. The coffee was excellent. Chas was into coffee and turned Mom onto a roaster in Seattle. Perfect coffee ever since.

She finally got around to talking to me and asked about the pumps. Of course I didn't have her undivided attention. Mom was a multitasker. I think she invented it. She was still washing the dishes, listening to NPR on our Echo, and attempting to have a conversation with me.

Mom always got to the point and knew what was gnawing at me when she took a look at my face. I must have had a worried look. By the time I started to answer, she had already turned on the hot water to start rinsing the dishes, so I had to talk over the splashing water (and to her back). I told her that I was worried about them, but that Dad kept blowing me off. He was always chasing something new instead of paying attention to our core operations. We were going to get fucked sooner or later.

She turned off the water and wiped her hands on her flour stained apron. The one she made of course. She didn't offer any sympathy. In fact the opposite. She told me that Dave ignored most of what she said to him. That did change when Dad had a stroke. He'd become much more dependent on her and started to pay more attention to what she was saying. Maybe the same would happen to me.

My mood brightened considerably when she picked up a bowl of icing for the cinnamon rolls she just made. The smell of fresh baked rolls was overpowering and wonderful. She put a serving spoon in a bowl of white icing and drizzled it on top of the rolls, making a crisscross pattern until the bowl was empty.

The platter was placed on the worn tabletop. She tried to slap my hand when I made a reach for the platter because the icing hadn't set. She missed, and I snagged an edge roll before she could stop me. A dollop of gooey icing stretched and fell on the table as I tore off a corner roll and put it on my plate. I scooped up the errant icing with my index finger and sucked it off. Perfection. Super sweet, and a perfect complement to the cinnamon laced roll.

I took a sip of coffee and then my first bite of the warm pastry. Another reason never to leave. Good coffee and a fresh baked cinnamon roll beat almost anything I could think of.

Mom was now done with her chores and took a seat across from me. She brought a fresh mug of coffee. Her focus was on me, and she wanted me to talk first. I continued with my grievances with Dad, talking about the pumps and then about his other foibles.

His voice rang out from behind as I was talking. "Hey ... you guys talking about me?"

Dad managed to come into the kitchen without us hearing him. I'm not sure he heard our discussion.

"No ... ," I decided I'd tell a half-truth. "We were talking about the state of the sump pumps."

Dad reached for the serving plate and tried to fish a roll out of the middle. There was icing all over his hand and he didn't have the foresight to grab a plate first. A sudden weakness in his right hand made him drop the roll. The roll bounced once on the table and then fell to the floor. Libby was Johnny on the spot, pouncing on the fallen treat and mouthing it the moment it touched the ground.

Dad couldn't contain his frustration at his physical shortcoming. "Fuck!" he shouted, before his mind engaged to stifle his curse. I couldn't have said it better myself. The only winner here was Libby.

Libby cowered, but didn't surrender the roll that was safely in her mouth. Dad flexed his balky hand. "Sorry ... pardon my French." Mom shrugged and I didn't even react, other than to lean over to wipe the floor where the roll hit. I heard worse, and my father's cursing showed his spirit. I'd be worried when Dad didn't let a few choice words slip out from time to time.

"Here, let me help you," I offered. I picked up a knife to cut out and extricated a roll from the middle. We all knew that the rolls in the middle were the softest and had the most icing on them. He was cheating by taking one from there first. I was a good girl and was happy with my outside roll.

Dad took a seat between me and Mom and watched me slide a perfectly cut center roll on a clean plate and push it in front of him. Mom handed him his coffee, using the mug he's had since college. He grunted his thanks to the two of us and proceeded to demolish the first of what would be two. It didn't take much to make Dad happy, and right now he was very happy.

"Having Ted come out and see them on Tuesday," he said with his mouth half full. He was already eating the last bite of his first roll. He hadn't even touched his coffee. My mother was content to watch him eat. She always loved to watch people eat her cooking and baking, and being as good as it was, she did a lot of watching.

It was Thursday, and it was forecast to rain hard for the next three days. "Having Ted come on Tuesday might be too late," I said, stating the obvious.

"I know Kitten. I should have listened to you. By the time I got to Ted, he was booked solid for the next three days. He said he's been working sixteen hours a day for the past three weeks." Dad's remorse over his procrastination didn't stop him from taking a second roll off the serving plate.

I took a second for myself. It would have been selfish to let him eat alone. And having been a good girl and started with an outside roll, I took an inside one for myself. It was drenched with gooey icing. Good thing about working hard, and a lot of manual labor, I pretty much could eat what I want because I burned it up during the day. I rewarded myself by licking the excess icing that had run onto the side of the roll.