Vintage Attraction Read Online Free PDF

that? And what was wrong with me that I couldn’t? I didn’t pick up wine again for quite a few years, but I guess you could say the curiosity always stuck with me.
    â€œI’ve worked in restaurants since I was sixteen. It’s, like, the only world that’s ever made sense to me. So, after I got waitressing down, I started attending staff trainings about wine. I memorized the lists and could recite all the descriptors better than anyone, but it took me forever to figure out how the other servers were getting all these peaches and apples and blueberries they said they were tasting. I was thinking very literally and just didn’t understand it at all. I was like, ‘Do they put peaches and bananas and blueberries in the wine?’”
    I smiled and nodded, miming my sympathy for the uninitiated, but was aware as I did that until a few hours ago, I might have asked the same question. I hadn’t even realized—before tonight—there’d been a gap in my comprehension, that wine was supposed to taste like anything other than, well, wine.
    â€œAnd then one day it just clicked,” she said.
    â€œJust like that?”
    â€œJust like that.”
    Rallying to rejoin the discussion, Chef Dominique recited, in ascending order, the awards he and Bistro Dominique had won. The list referenced professional organizations, publications, and associations (some of which were now defunct). I’d never heard of many of them, but nodded after each as though I had. The last culinary distinction had been conferred four years prior. I got the feeling he was trying to downplay the enological accolades that Izzy had brought more recently.
    As Izzy and the chef regaled each other and me with their stories, I periodically looked at those who sat around us. I sensed they were watching our table in return. I wondered how many of the patrons at the bar, waiters, and valet parkers huddled by the door had already seen the Vintage Attraction season premiere, which, Chef Dominique had reminded me as we walked, aired tonight. It might even have been played here before the baseball game tyrannized the screens. A woman peered in our direction, silently gasped, and threw her lips and cupped hands to her friend’s ear. Was she whispering, “Oh my god, that’s her! That’s the girl from TV!”? It certainly appeared so. Were these people who recognized Izzy also sizing me up, speculating about who I was, what connection I had to a famous sommelier and her accomplished chef, what had brought me to sit at their table like this? These were the very same concerns that, if I allowed myself to sober up, would have perplexed me, too.
    I was full after half a burger. I usually ate like an ascetic and subsisted on monastery fare devoid of garnishes and seasoning, bowls of oatmeal or condensed soups, peanut butter sandwiches on dry whole wheat. My former student and occasional paramour Talia, a vegan, occasionally made me Trader Joe’s boxed organic mac and soy cheddar, which I’d become oddly fond of (both the product and the gesture). This sudden shift to brioche and ground beef and mayo and ketchup and lettuce and real cheese was an embarrassment of richness. On an adjunct instructor’s salary, it made sense to eat out as seldom as possible, but I wasn’t about to pass up the invitation tonight. When the check came, I didn’t want to seem like I couldn’t afford a share.
    I dug out my moldering billfold and reached a gold American Express, largely unfamiliar to me, despite its bearing my name. My parents had opened the account for me when I graduated from the University of Chicago. They hadn’t cancelled it and had been quietly paying the bills ever since. I only allowed myself to accrue charges in truly dire emergencies befitting a consummate bachelor of arts, like a foundering Craigslist Casual Encounter, or dining with a television celebrity. “We have the same card.