By Walter Agnew Moore II,

The best thing about working in a store where they have wine-tastings is that you work in a store where they have wine-tastings. Simple, obvious, no less true because of that.

Tuesday night finds me pink-cheeked and animated at the market across from the clock tower in the village, 4th or 5th glass going down, scrapping over the Spanish Olive dip. I tell the wine rep which two bottles I liked the best, and he corks them and puts them in my hands to take home.

I don't remember if we bagged them, or if I walked home with a bottle in each hand as the cars went by on Euclid avenue.

The next day I go to the library to check my e-mail, it's closed, they're having a book sale over on one side. Smelling food, I nose over that way.
Turn the corner and somebody sticks a glass of Chardonnay in my hand. Two long tables full of free food. I guess it was free. It was free for me.

Friday night fellow language teacher Mary tells me about a film lecture at the Alliance Francaise. Some dude who writes for Le Monde, I hem and haw, and she mentions there's a free throw-down afterwards. Actually, she calls it a "reception".

I sit through a tedious lecture that manages to be about as interesting as reciting the specs of washing machines, except towards the end, where the French guy finally got all French and started insinuating that Hollywood was forcing French theaters to serve le popcorn, but escape came at last, and it was time to go scam food off the reception, somewhere off on the northern slopes of Shades Mountain. No way to get there from here.

Mary thought it would be a good idea to ride with me in the Tracker. Poor girl probably thought it was a car, and not a semi-enclosed 4-wheeled motorcycle with shocks like trampoline springs. She showed bravery though, as I blared the horn revving up over Red Mountain and down again, narrating "...and it was night a lot like tonight that I totalled this thing in Mexico, looked like a stomped beer-can—BEEEEP—LEARN TO DRIVE YOU SUMBITCH!"

At the reception, I made friends with a 60-ish Frenchman, a pied-noir with either a cop or mafia aura about him, we hit the gros rouge and had a laugh.
Word got out that I was Albanian instead of Alabamian, who knew.

Mary ditched me, I asked her if she was scared to go back down the hill in the Tracker, she said "no", and smiled, but her eyes were wide and glassy.