Vintage Attraction by Charles Blackstone Page B

that, we tried out the separate Jacuzzi. We leaned against each other, a fusillade of water jets firing against our torsos. I stared at the gilded faucets and toilet handles in the bathroom. After a long soak, none of the day’s—none of life’s—accrued indignities seemed that outrageous after all.
    The Cellar Temperature dinner that night had us first boarding a shuttle bus to take us deep into the dark country night. The neighboring River Wildlife private club’s Lodge Restaurant was in a log cabin at the edge of a forest. There was little that hadn’t been hunted on the menu. A loaded rifle rack (fortunately chained up) stood by the wine cellar to underscore the theme. The guest list included a spiky-haired, trendily suited columnist and some PR girls from the magazine in black and pink Forever 21 dresses. Also at the table were, I’d learn later, some other food and wine world celebrities: Michael Lomonaco, a genial but reserved New York chef who’d once run Windows on the World; a mixologist and redoubtable chronicler of cocktail culture with an equally redoubtable Double Windsor, Anthony Giglio; and Laura Werlin, “The Cheese Lady,” who’d published a number of preeminent domestic and imported volumes. Izzy knew them all from the festival circuit.
    While plates of appetizers I didn’t recall anyone having ordered appeared and moved from hand to hand, people spoke casually about the Kohler Experience, the panels on which they’d sat, the presentations and demos they’d performed, and other cities they’d visited and would visit in the coming year. I obviously had little to offer a discussion like this, and was grateful they allowed me to just listen and quietly eat and drink. I looked, intermittently, at the empty seat across from me. Chef Dominique had received a last-minute invitation to have drinks with a Food Network executive he’d been stalking, and stayed behind at Riverbend.
    The entrees went down (not yet aware that the magazine was picking up the tab, I’d chosen the duck, which, for $46, was the least expensive option), and the diners began to pick and praise and offer bites of this and that to their neighbors. Servers decanted more bottles of wine and served them to us in giant glasses.
    As people ate, a table-wide lull befell. The sounds of silver touching plates had superseded the conversations. Then The Cheese Lady turned and asked Izzy how long she and I had been dating. We’d anticipated this question and rehearsed an answer before we’d even gotten to Kohler: we agreed to tell people who inquired that we’d been together “going on a year.” It seemed reasonable enough a courtship duration that we wouldn’t run the risk of panicking anyone with what might have appeared to be unchecked romantic impetuousness—only together a millisecond and now travel companions to boot? But Izzy, admittedly never one who lied well, stammered and unearthed the truth before I even had a chance to deliver our party line.
    â€œThree weeks,” she confessed to The Cheese Lady. Amid neighboring gasps, she said Izzy was putting her on. Then she looked to me to correct the figure and end the gag. I couldn’t, of course, and nodded.
    â€œI’ve dated men for three years and haven’t felt ready to go on a trip together,” The Cheese Lady said. She raised her wineglass to toast us. “There’s a phrase that comes to mind to describe a whirlwind courtship like yours, and that’s ‘holy shit.’”
    After getting up late the next morning, we checked out of Riverbend, had Bloody Marys served with beer backs for brunch in a pub, and set out for Chicago as the day’s sun was effusing from the Wisconsin sky. Though this time Izzy rode with me, the chef wasn’t far behind us. We managed to lose him, briefly, when we turned off at a roadside shack for apple pie and cider and to admire the