Where Dreams Are Born

JANUARY 1-4

Most of the other items fell to similar tactics. She became better at it as item after item filled her basket. On the second floor “light hiking” linked with “cold weather” had gotten her a lecture about skipping polar fleece and going with the traditional layering of silk socks under wool. Including “year round” had added long underwear of Merino wool. “All weather” had added waterproof yet breathable pants from some company named by aliens, Arc’Teryx. Or maybe they were a dinosaur. But the price was the highest, over two hundred dollars, so they must be the best.

She threw in a black PolarTec fleece jacket with no one’s help at all. But the waterproof jackets were impossible. Even asking for help didn’t clarify the mess. The selection was larger than Saks designer racks and apparently each jacket had a different feature that made it particularly wonderful. She finally walked away when she learned that they all stopped at the waist.

Cassidy wanted something longer and warmer. Thankfully she knew right where to get that. Michael Kors had a beautiful, knee-length, down-filled coat in this year’s line. He didn’t make it in black, but there was a brilliant red one that would look great. That would make it easier to tolerate the massive damage she was doing to her shopping budget with clothing she’d wear only twelve times in her life. Eleven, she’d already been to the January lighthouse.

The basket was getting heavy. This was nuts. There was over a thousand dollars in there. Of course her agent had just e-mailed her about the London Times picking up her column in their Travel section with a query about a wine-only column in the Sunday edition; she was going international. Cassidy would justify this splurge as a proper celebration.

Back on the ground floor, she passed close to a counter covered in a nest of electronics. She was nearly attacked by an overeager boy who looked so healthy he’d probably climbed Vinson before his fifteenth birthday. With his eyes closed. Backwards.

“I see you’re going out in the weather,” she followed his glance to her basket. On the top were the red fleece watchcap that she’d chosen because it would match the Kors coat and the heavy gloves that she’d reluctantly chosen over the nice pair of sheepskin ones. “All weather” and “waterproof” had combined for the win there.

“Yes, I am.”

“Going off the beaten path at all?”

The two hours she’d spent slogging through the muddy forest of Discovery Park answered that clearly for her.

At her nod, the boy nearly exploded with joy.

“You’ve just gotta have one of these!” He waved something at her too quickly to focus on.

“What is it?” As soon as he stopped waving it about she saw the price tag of three hundred dollars and prepared to walk away.

“GPSs.” At her blank expression, he launched ahead. “Global Positioning System. These toys tell you exactly where you are. See?” He punched a couple buttons and a pair of numbers appeared. Numbers a lot like the ones she’d been unable to decipher on the outside of her dad’s lighthouse envelopes.

“Then you can key in your destination, latitude, then longitude. We’re west so we’re minus.”

So that was what the numbers on the envelope were, latitude and longitude. She felt foolish for not figuring that out, not that there was any reason she should have. She’d never seen coordinates in decimal form before. This whole REI experience been an adventure like Hansel and Gretel, always searching behind herself to see just where she’d dropped all of those IQ points she’d had before she walked through the doors. But hey, now she knew where Mount Vinson was. Or was it Vinson Mountain? Massif? She looked behind her, but didn’t see anything on the floor.

He continued stabbing at the keys like a pro then turned it to her. “And there you go.”

The tiny screen connected a green dot to a red one by a thin wandering line of red.

“The nearest Starbucks coffee. That’s your route. How you get there.”

She inspected it more carefully and could see that the line followed the streets of a tiny map. He tapped it and it zoomed in. A bright arrow pointed toward the front door.

“Do you have one of those that would show,” she clamped down on her tongue for a moment, “parks and other such places?”

He waved it at her again. “This is it. Look. I’ve loaded in Washington State detail and the National Parks and the Blue chart. This is really cool. Look.” More button pushing and he turned it back to her.

It showed a map in tan and white with tiny numbers on the white.

At her blank look, he rambled on. “Blue chart. Water. The blue stuff. It has all the coastline info.”

“Like lighthouses?” It slipped out before she could stop it.

“You bet!”

She’d clearly been labeled as a tourist.

“Did you know we have one right here in Seattle city limits? Here it is over in Discovery Park. Shows the water depth.” He aimed a ragged fingernail—probably broken while wrestling a grizzly bear for food—at one set of numbers. “There’s the lighthouse and how often her light flashes. Then you just toggle it like this and, bang, there’s the park and most of the trails. The maps are pretty good even down at that level. Hit this button and you get the topo overlay so you can see which trails go up and which ones down. It’s just the best.”

That last did it for her.

Cassidy didn’t glance toward the last covered bottle of wine. She always preferred to let a wine speak for itself. She had little respect for judges who looked ahead, setting their expectations before they had discovered what was really in the wine.

But this was different.

This was a blind-tasting challenge. Ten bottles of wine lined up on an immaculate white tablecloth. An okay ambience with a modern motif, the restaurant had been around six months or so.

They should have decanted the wines into identical carafes for a truly blind tasting, but at least the foil had been stripped away and the brown paper presentation was always more popular with the crowd.

The final wine’s color was splendid. A ruby red so opaque it was almost black. The initial nose was a bit closed, but the wine had been properly served at sixty degrees, nicely below room temperature. Another point to the event’s sponsor. A quick swirl revealed abundant tears running down the inside of the glass. And the wine opened a bit. She swirled again. Dark fruit. Brown spice. Tarragon. Even… No, she wasn’t going to jump to conclusions. A bad habit on one hand. And on the other, she had an audience.

The restaurant owner had done a nice job of marketing his “Ten on January Tenth” challenge, pulling more than just the usual crowd of oenophiles out of the woodwork. He’d promised some fine wines in the collection, both U.S. and European. The nice spread of free appetizers hadn’t hurt either, though they needed to be farther from the tasting table. Twice she’d had to cross to the far side of the dining room to make sure the scent was the wine and not his Italian herbs. The second time the owner noticed, and in moments the waiters had shifted the more aromatic foods to the farther end of the buffet. Good service.

The sip and quick intake of breath over the wine as it still swam on her tongue gave the expected results. Lemony, and a confirmation of the anise on the nose rode into the finish. She spit into the bucket and nosed the wine again.

There was something more. She didn’t have it yet.

Another swirl and sip. More air. Another spit. Exactly the same dark richness.

Ah, there it was: not something there, but something missing. Almost no tannins at all. A wine this dark, yet so clean; it definitely wasn’t mainstream. It was a true challenge wine to set apart the real tasters.

She opened her eyes and realized that the restaurant was completely silent. Every face was turned in her direction, even the early diners had stopped eating to watch her. Mr. Terence, that obnoxious cookbook chef who coyly avoided any request for his first name—it probably said “Mister” on his birth certificate—had peeked at the wine label and then crumpled his bit of notepaper. The restaurant owner had noticed and was scowling. There was someone who had just lost his next invitation here.

Cassidy didn’t need to look.

It took her several moments to come back to the wine, the taste still rolling across her tongue. To come back and realize that she really had done something; she had moved out of the crowd of being but one of many in the New York tastings. Here, in Seattle, the many were waiting to hear her verdict. Hers.

The temptation to dismiss the phenomenon as a big frog in a small pond was there. But Josh was here from Gourmet Week as well, which had made her nervous through the first four wines. He’d actually trained under Parker. He too wore a look of anticipation. He held up a piece of notepaper, carefully folded to show he was ready, and nodded for her to go ahead. Well, there was no avoiding it, and she didn’t need to on this one.

“Italian. Apulia.” Some of the diners’ faces blanked. “That’s the region. The boot-heel of Italy.”

Josh was grinning when she turned to face Mister Terence who was making a show of hiding the bottle.

“Taurino from the Negroamaro grape. The Notarpanaro Salento Rosso. Either the ’97 or the ’01, but I’d bet on the former.”

Terence’s face fell and Josh flipped open his slip of paper and turned it for her to see. He’d written just a number on it, “97.” The restaurant owner clapped his hands together and laughed, his teeth bright in his dark, Italian face.

“An exquisite final choice, Mr. Parrano. It truly completes the other wines. Even a rearrangement of your last name. A nice touch.”

He bowed deeply before taking her shoulders and kissing each cheek.

“Angelo.” He had one of those Italian accents that was designed to make a woman melt and it wasn’t hard to give in to it. “Please call me, Angelo, Ms. Knowles. Always Angelo.”

“Cassidy then.” She let herself melt a bit farther, her wine columnist attitude slipping off a little more.

He took her hand and raised it. “Ten wines and not a miss.” Josh had missed one, but a totally understandable mixup unless you’d specifically studied the Loire Valley Vouvrays. He’d gotten the region and grape, but not the winery. Mister Terence had missed the Vouvray placing it as an Oregon Pinot of all silliness, the Taurino, and three others, two of them quite obvious mistakes. Two of the three amateurs had bested his score though they both missed the Vouvray, a tricky wine because of its gentle voice, and the Taurino.

“A meal on the house. No, you don’t get to order, I will make the menu specially for you.”

Everyone applauded as he conducted her to a table set for two. Angelo looked around and waved for Josh to take the other seat; Josh might be happily married but he was an old friend and a lively dinner companion. Angelo left Terence out in the cold with the three amateurs to browse the free appetizer table.

“If you give me the meal, I can’t write it up. Conflict of interest.”

“Some other time, you come back and I charge you double. Not tonight.” He lowered his voice. “I’ve been waiting for an excuse to chase that hoity-toity Mr. Terence out of here, but you have taken care of that for me. He won’t dare show his face for quite a while to come. For this I am eternally grateful. And you are eternally welcome in my restaurant.”

She nodded, not minding being used to that end in the least, and then glanced at Josh. “Perhaps I could make one request about the menu.”

She raised an eyebrow and Josh laughed, then flipped open his slip of paper again. Angelo tried to look angry but he couldn’t hold it for more than a moment. He stepped back to the tasting table and, securing the Taurino from Terence with a slight tug, he placed it at their table.

“The meal shall match this perfectly.”

“Damn, you’re good!” Russell took another piece of garlic bread and mashed it around in the red sauce to soak up as much as he could.

Angelo’s kitchen was now in full swing. Dinner was happening with a crash of pans and calls back and forth across the cook line. Russell had grabbed some pasta and retreated to the sidelines to watch the mayhem. The kitchen ran with a smooth perfection that should happen only in movies.