FICTION | Jess Rezendes Wine O’Clock

FICTION

WINE O’CLOCK

EXCERPT

By Jess Rezendes

Hours later, I trudge up the stairs of my apartment building carrying the unopened bottle of Sauvignon Blanc around its neck, like it’s being dragged against its will. The hallway smells like fried something, old grease, sickening, but behind each door is silence; it’s late. I unlock my own door, fumbling, drunk-tired. In the dark hallway, a shoulder bounces me off the opposite wall as I make my way to the kitchen. The bottle smacks against my thigh. I grunt at it, at my feet, at the empty apartment. Everything is my enemy. When I pull out my cell phone to light my way, there are two missed calls and four text message notifications on the screen: my mother, my husband, and a friend I had left without saying hello to. I resolve to message them later.

There is a white-gray smudge on the skirt of my dress, which I only just notice as I flip on the yellow-y fluorescent light in the kitchen that makes everything look worse than it is. The shame, the tiny panic of knowing it has come from my body is the instant reaction: snot? Deodorant? Toothpaste? Then I remember I’m panty-less. Admittedly I had done a lot of crying, even a few seconds of ugly, mucusy crying before I got it together, but I assume this is the kind of stain I fear. I had tried to be militant about which part of the skirt I kept between

my bare ass and whatever seat I was in, ran a hand over my backside each time I stood to make sure no moisture had made a spot there. This issue is something she would have helped me keep in check. A whispered, “you’re good,” in passing as I tried to be nonchalant, smoothing my palms against my own ass for the seventieth time.

I pull the dress up over my head and leave it in a heap on the floor, unclip my bra and fling it from my elbow. It lands next to the fridge.

If I die in this spot, they’ll find my nude body laying atop my black dress with its stain, the bra way over there, one of its hooks bent out of shape from getting caught on something months ago. The investigators would likely find all of these facts suspicious.

Why would she have taken her clothes off in the kitchen?

There’s a bottle of wine, maybe she was waiting for her lover to come over.

There’s a hook bent out of shape, someone took this off in a hurry. And her underwear is missing!

There’s vaginal fluid on this dress but no sign of sexual assault. No sign of trauma.

No sign of trauma, but she’s recently given birth.

Maybe it’s just deodorant.

The twelve-dollar bottle of Sauvignon Blanc is on the countertop next to the sink, label out, like it’s on display, a gift I’m proud of. This survivor. This miracle of glass and old grapes pulled from the twisted wreckage. Maybe this is our rusted iron cross beam and now I have it in my shitty kitchen. Maybe it should be behind glass with a white rectangle describing it: Sauvignon Blanc, 2020. Bottle discovered untouched in the disaster.

Who had gone through her bag and found it? Did they chuckle and say “not a ding on it,” and show it to the nearest person? Probably. They didn’t know her. They saw dead bodies all the time. I’ve heard stories about cops who snap photos at every crime scene so they can show their friends and family what they deal with, or worse, make jokes about it.

The overhead light makes the golden liquid glow, the bottleneck more elegant in its shoulder curve, its full body. Blue watercolor pinwheels cover the paper label. I pull open a drawer, retrieve the wine key, and use my nails to pull it apart. When the foam cork releases with a pop of relief, I smart. I open a cabinet and look at my wine glasses, but instead decide to swig from the bottle. It’s fruity and funky. I wrinkle my nose, then toast to the ceiling.

“It’s not good,” I say to her. I take another sip.

One of the most important tools the brain uses for survival is calculated prediction. A human sees an action, notes the consequence, and is able to predict the outcomes of future actions based on these sequences. This is oversimplified, of course; cognition requires a complex combination of neurons firing from different points in the brain.

The human brain knows and learns how to keep itself alive, but it does not “know” how to die. Yes, of course, it knows how death can happen, what happens; that is cognition. But it cannot fully accept the possibility of itself not existing; it does not truly fathom it. This too is part of survival. If one were to understand what it meant to one day not exist, then how would one overcome the fear of death long enough to find a mate and reproduce?

In the event of your death, if you’re lucky, there will be a gap

in time for the people who knew and loved you, when reality becomes too crisp and memories forever etch themselves in vivid color inside their memories. They’ll watch the sunrise as they fill their gas tank on the way to work the next day, orange and pink over the treetops, a giant stupid star shining on us as we rotate around it on this stupid planet. That disappears but always comes back. An innocuous instagram post from an ex will pop up and they’ll paste it into a text box to you, then they’ll remember, will still be stricken by the thought that you’re not at the other end of that number anymore. No one is. Not just “no one,” no person like you, with your expansive, specific you-ness. There’s no one to send it to, no one who will enjoy it the way they need it enjoyed.

All over, people will go about their business and then remember their business does not include you anymore, over and over. They’ll pause and remember, and then years later remember what it felt like to lose you, though somehow they’ve become numb to it. At first, it will be just a few folks whose deaths they must sidestep, then dozens. They will create a collection of memories of remembering the pain of remembering their dead. Is this declarative or nondeclarative memory? Will it become second nature, like riding a bike?

The bottle is half gone. I am sipping between telling her about the possible pussy stain on the dress and the way her father showed us around the cemetery where we buried her like he was hosting us in his home, how sweet it was, sweet to the point of nausea. His big glassy eyes, his quivering smile.

I have done this sitting on one end of my couch, turned toward the other like she’s there with me.

I have found the seed documentary streaming but I can’t

bring myself to play it, just let it sit on the screen.

I tell her that I sent my own daughter and husband away: “Having them here felt like holding back a sneeze.”

I am hit with jags of overwhelming sadness. I admit that I still cannot understand that she’s gone. Just gone, disappeared. It doesn’t seem real. I admit the cliche is true.

I drink more. I get to my feet, and sway a bit.

“I need a cigarette,” I say to her.

“You’re naked,” she says back.

“I’ll just put the pussy dress back on,” I say.

“Cigarettes will kill you,” she says.

I make my way back to the kitchen with the bottle in tow, the remaining wine sloshing. My pack of emergency cigarettes are in the freezer.

“Gotta die of something,” I say. Usually, I say this to be edgy, but tonight I see the inside of my lungs like the graphics in a television medical procedural. Maybe it was better not knowing it was coming, or at least, not knowing until a few seconds before it did. Maybe it was better to go from gliding along the pavement with a bottle of wine on your back thinking you’re on your way to giggle with your best friend, your sister, to being taken out by a blue Nissan Altima driven by somebody else’s mom.

I wrap my fingers around the handle of the freezer, but I don’t pull.

“Fine,” I say. “I’ll wait until tomorrow.”

I step back from the fridge and bring the bottle to my lips, tipping it up so the wine funnels in fast. As I lift the other foot back to spin myself around, it catches on the pussy dress. I am already off kilter, now full of three quarters of a bottle of wine on an empty stomach. My foot slides under me. I reach for the counter but catch a dish towel hanging from the stove instead,

which slips from the handle.

A scream escapes, a little one, from the back of my throat like a rotten yawn. When I hit the linoleum I feel it first in my shoulders, the back of my head, my tailbone; I hit hard. The bottle crashes beside me, glass splintering and wine splashing onto my naked, sad body.

I lie still. I close my eyes. The room spins. I am lying in a pile of wet, broken glass. Do I have to clean this up right now? I could sleep here. I could just sleep here on the kitchen floor.

I open my eyes to look at the skin on my torso, my flopped breasts, to check the arm that was holding the bottle for injury. I assess my lower joints for pain. There are retreating throbs but no blood, only shimmering remnants of my destroyed urn, crystalline beads of the wine that was always meant for me. I am faintly aware that I am crying again.

“I’m okay,” I say to her, “I’m okay.”

She is not here. I am drunk and alone. It’s just me.