Friends in Napa by Sheila Yasmin Marikar

Author:Sheila Yasmin Marikar [Marikar, Sheila Yasmin]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2024-04-02T00:00:00+00:00

8

Friday morning

Peninsula, Oakville

Raj loved to watch Peninsula wash over the uninitiated. The quiet delight as they stepped out of the Sprinter and onto the pea-gravel drive fringed by firs, oaks, and olive trees, where sparrows bounced from branch to branch. The realization that this was not one of those . . . pile-out-of-the-stretch, pile-into-the-bar, and take-five-splashes-of-wine-straight-to-the-face-type places, where you were elbow to elbow with bachelors and bachelorettes and all manner of sloppy human specimens hell-bent on getting sloshed.

The bewilderment, as they entered the arcade with its impossibly long reception table, a live-edge slab of a once-majestic tree, beckoning them to the part of the pavilion where the sun streamed through the thatched arches. The hushed exclamations of gratitude as they accepted a complimentary pour of vintage Krug, served in a gossamer-thin glass, as they moved, as if guided by some unseen force, to the place where the stone walkway ended and the lily-pad-laden pond—one of several at Peninsula, although they didn’t know that yet—began. Finally, the sheer astonishment, taking in the narrow column of water that jutted out over a canyon and the thickly forested Mayacamas Mountains beyond, creating a river suspended in the sky.

Then the cameras came out and ruined the mood, but that was to be expected. You didn’t see places like this every day. Though, maybe, when he ran this town, that would change.

He had first come to Peninsula with his father, when he was fourteen. They’d taken the jet—back when there was a dedicated jet, onyx with “Ranjani Realty” splayed across the side in gold, not one of the rent-a-ride affairs to which he was now accustomed. He had been as bowled over as anyone else, both by the surroundings and the unctuousness that ran down his throat and warmed him from the inside out, the notion that the contents of a bottle had the power to change your worldview entirely.

He had sheathed that visit in a snow globe, and every time he saw something that rubbed against his memory of wine country as a refuge for all that was rich and right, he felt a jolt of rage. Public Storages and 7-Elevens had no place in this world, this haven of the haves. The single-story homes with their postage-stamp yards, the AutoZones and Walmarts and tent encampments along the trail that cut through downtown Napa—those were the worst of all. Yountville, the town north of Napa, had done it right. Bouchon and Jean-Charles Boisset and nary a Dollar Tree in sight.

On this particular visit to Peninsula, he watched one member of their group more closely than the rest. How did she handle opulence? Did she fall all over herself, OMG-ing, taking it all in with a phone in front of her face, or did she take it in stride, as if she inhabited modern marvels of architecture and design all the time?

She had shat the bed the night before, dashing out of Upsilon like that. Good thing he and Seamus played poker together. He knew

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