a short story

The woman who owned the wine store was named Maureen.

She was passionate about her craft. Hence why she was regarded as the finest winemakers at the time she lived. Times before my own, before yours. No matter when it is you read this, she will be centuries away from us.

I tend to write about people who are no longer alive. Oftentimes this doesn’t bother me. It provides my writing with a purpose. After all, graves are built for names and legacies alike. And it makes me feel good when I consider that the individual I’m including in my narratives is being reanimated.

Nothing is left of Maureen. Maureen built an empire when she was alive, but that empire has since been reduced to nothingness. Not even her last name remains. The name of her wine store. The year when she died. The name of possible lovers, friends, family. And of course, her wine. Everything about her is dead.

And wine ages well, so they say. But its taste doesn’t last forever.

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I only see a single moment of Maureen’s life in clear lines and solid color. One lonely dinner in winter, early in the year. I see her in her pale blue gown and her silks. I can feel the velvety blackness wrapped around her. And the smooth locks of chestnut hair, twisting like branches down her shoulders. I see her white, round face reflected on the dark glass. And hear the clink of her fingernails. And the drip of water.

And I can see past the little space between her eyebrows and know that, for once, she is thinking about the wine replenisher.

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Maureen had plenty of replacements for him. Many a helping hand. Placing bottles on shelves did not require for much skill. She didn’t think much of it then.

But now, she began to realize how difficult it was for her to piece it all together. She had never asked herself why the wine replenisher ran away.

The boy had looked the part, it’s true. Looked ready to sprint. His legs were long and spindly, like clothed needles. His shirt was constantly unbuttoned down to where his ribs connected. His brown chest was bony. Maureen had always implored that he button his shirt properly. While he always obeyed her, his apple-seed eyes bled into strokes of ink under his brow.

His hands were always so quick and slippery. The hands of one who cannot stay put. And the aisles were narrow and he must have been suffocating. Maybe that’s why he always unbuttoned his shirt. Maybe he had difficulty breathing among the bottles and the boxes.

Maureen had spent some time observing the way his long dark hands unboxed and replenished. He placed the bottles on the shelves, like one would relocate teeth within an open mouth. Long, jagged, purple teeth. Thin, dry, white lips. The shelves were fed every day. It wasn’t a test. His job had no trick to it, no real difficulty. But he always seemed to give himself pause before letting go of each bottle. He would sometimes look down at the curved purple mirror between his hands and watch himself, the way Maureen was doing with her glass that evening.

He spoke so little that Maureen kept forgetting that his voice was much too low for his age. That the words he said, the few times he felt the need to address her, appeared to resonate within the wide column of his throat and slither out thickly between his lips. His voice was like a salamander, crawling out of the rocks into the sunlight. Vibrant, rare, and ironically beautiful, despite its affiliation with the roughness underground. While he held defiance in his gaze, he often paused when talking. This always amused her.

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The wine replenisher had been strange. Maureen loved where she worked. She loved the product she made. She liked drinking. Not because she longer for oblivion, but because she found beauty in the blues and the pinks and the golds. She liked the shiver that went down her spine with each gulp. She liked having accomplished the impossible. She liked creating new flavors. And she always felt proud of the replenished shelves. She knew they would be replenished the next day.

But that night, as she sat with her cold drink in her hand, alone in the velvety black of the evening, Maureen remembered the wine replenisher with sadness and disappointment. She couldn’t recall the face of any other worker she’d had on the aisles. But she could see him on the glass she was holding. She could imagine him swimming in the pink-and-purple pool between her fingers. She could see the little bubbles as he coughed for air. And she could feel tears in her eyes.

When he walked to the barrels that day, the day he left, he threw back his head and looked back at her. The empty box was hugged to his chest. There was always a dent on his cheek when he made a trip to those barrels. It was present then, too. One would think that, in his arms, the box was heaviest when empty.

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THANK YOU FOR READING!

It took me a while to write this one. Funny, that I made the illustrations before actually writing the thing… I did it all backwards. I’ll bring back Maureen with a more in-depth narrative some other time, but until then, this is what I have, and I hope it’s enough.

To all of you, I say, have a great day, and please take it easy. See you next time!

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Copyright © Blanca Parga 2021

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