Plato's Cave During the Slicer Wars and other short stories by Terri Kouba
“Tina Steward as I live and breathe!” The portly man wiped his hands on a towel and enveloped the petite Tina in his fat pink arms. “Marjeta, come quick!” he shouted to his wife.
Tina had parked her Tesla in back and entered the restaurant through the kitchen door, with Ken following closely behind her.
A woman entered the kitchen. She was a female version of the man; portly, pink and oddly going bald in the same place as her husband, though not quite as advanced a case.
“Tina, you’re here.” She hugged Tina tightly. “Now all is well, once again.”
She motioned toward one of the sinks. “Quickly, wash your hands.” She handed them a drying towel when they were finished. She took hold of Tina’s hand and pulled her out of the kitchen. “I have just the table for you, by the fire. You’ll have warm bread before you can remove your coat.”
“Viktor,” the man said, thrusting his hand into Ken’s.
“Ken Richards.”
“Any friend of Tina’s is a friend of ours. Welcome to our home.” He directed Ken out of the kitchen with a push against his shoulder.
Ken didn’t think Viktor recognized him.
Marjeta kissed Ken on the cheek. “Anything you need, love, you just let us know. Our house is your house.” She directed him into a chair in front of the fire. “The fire will warm your skin. What you like to warm your inside?”
“Mulled wine or mulled apple cider?” Tina clarified for Ken.
“I’ve never had either. Whichever she is having,” he answered, nodding at Tina.
“Mulled wine it is, then,” Marjeta said, rushing off to the kitchen.
Ken looked around quickly. There were seven tables in the restaurant, all of them full. The lighting was soft and the tables were covered in alternating maroon and gold tablecloths. People had looked up from their meals when the cook and his wife ushered in the pair, trying to see who the new guests were, but no one had risen to rush to where Ken sat. He heard none of the whispering and giggles he usually encountered in public.
“Tina!” A teenager pushed through the front door.
Tina rose and returned another hearty hug. “Jiri.” She held him at his shoulders and looked him up and down. “You’ve grown almost four inches in a year, young man. What are they feeding you?”
“Six, but who’s counting.” Jiri turned to Ken.
“Ken Richards.” Ken shook Jiri’s hand.
Jiri’s eyes widened. “The actor?”
Ken nodded. At last, someone recognized him.
“Nice to meet you.” Jiri turned back to Tina. “Please tell me you’re staying more than just two days, this time. There’s someone I want you to meet, but she’s won’t be back in town until next week.”
“She?” Tina rubbed Jiri’s hair.
“Yes. She.” Jiri beamed. “Ana Marie Stovich.”
“The red head from the store?”
Jiri nodded.
“I met her last year, remember? She was dating Paul, if memory serves.”
Jiri nodded again. “But now she’s dating me.”
“And Paul? Are you two still friends?”
“Paul’s family moved to Kansas, if you can believe it. They said it was too expensive to live out here.”
“I can believe it,” Tina said, sitting down.
“Jiri, be a dear and take their coats at least,” Marjeta requested, returning to the table with a tray. She set down their drinks and a basket of bread next to a cup of honey-butter.
“You aren’t allergic to shell fish, are you son?” Marjeta asked, resting her fleshy hand on Ken’s shoulder.
“No ma’am.” He tried to remember the last time he had been called son when he wasn’t on a movie set.
“There’ll be a third person joining us,” Tina informed them. “Ken’s friend, Matt. He should be here in fifteen minutes or so.”
“I’ll get another mug ready.” Marjeta sighed and looked disappointed.
“He doesn’t drink. Mulled cider will do,” Ken told them. He looked at Jiri who was waiting, holding Tina’s coat. “I think I’ll hang onto the sweatshirt a while longer, until I warm up a little.”
“First time to Northern California, huh?” Jiri asked.
Ken nodded and shrugged. Apparently the natives could easily spot the tourists.
Marjeta stroked Tina’s cheek. “My dear, you look as radiant as always. I tell you it does my heart good to see you again.”
Tina squeezed Marjeta’s hand in her own. “As it does mine.”
Marjeta and Jiri hurried away, Jiri with Tina’s coat and Marjeta to take an order from a nearby table.
Tina handed Ken his mug of mulled wine. “It’ll warm your fingers. But be careful, Viktor keeps his mulls hot. You may want to let it cool for a bit before you taste it.”
Ken wrapped his fingers around the warm mug and let the heat penetrate his frigid bones.
Tina tore off a piece of bread and swiped it through the honey-butter. She stuck it in her mouth and smiled. “Ah, I’ve returned to heaven,” she said with a smile that lit her entire face.
She repeated the action and held the bite up for Ken to eat. “Here, try this.”
Ken hesitated and then leaned forward and ate the bread from Tina’s fingers. “Delicious.”
Ken took a sip of the mulled wine. “As is this.” He could feel the warm liquid sink into his belly. Suddenly the heat burst out and spread to his extremities. He took another sip. “Just what I needed.” He felt his face flush. He pulled off the SF Giants sweatshirt.
“I’ll take that,” Jiri said, walking by.
Tina rose half way and waved. “Matt’s here.”
Jiri walked over to the door and shook Matt’s hand. He pointed to the table where Tina and Ken sat.
Matt shook his head and spoke quietly into Jiri’s ear.
Jiri looked at the full tables and shook his head.
Tina rose and walked to where Matt and Jiri were standing.
Tina took Matt’s hand in her own. “Come.”
Matt pulled back. “I’m not supposed to sit at the same table with him. I just need a table in the corner, but within sight of him.” He pointed to a table on the other side of the fire. “That one there will be fine.”
“If you haven’t noticed, that one is occupied.” She pulled on Matt’s hand and led him to the table. “Tonight, you sit at our table. We’re all just friends, here.” She nodded to Ken. “And you can call me Tina the Leveler.”
Jiri took Matt’s coat. Matt looked quizzically at Ken.
Ken shrugged. “It’s like the lady said. We’re all just friends tonight.” He pointed at the empty chair. “Have a seat. I have a feeling we are in for a treat.”
“I’m sorry I couldn’t get here any sooner, sir. The corners on this road are like hairpins. I hope they didn’t cause you too many problems.” He motioned to the other eaters in the restaurant.
Ken laughed loudly. “Nothing, if you can believe it. I don’t remember the last time that I walked into a room and the ensuing commotion was about someone other than me.”
He took another sip of the hot wine. He looked at Tina. He didn’t know whether to be offended or relieved.
“Ah, you must be Matt. Marjeta,” she said, introducing herself. “Here’s your mulled cider. The pudgy man in the kitchen, besides being the best cook in America, is my husband Viktor. And I believe you’ve already met our son, Jiri.” She squeezed his shoulder. “Welcome to our home. We’ll see what we can do about getting the rooms upstairs ready.”
“We won’t be staying,” Ken interrupted. “I’ve rented a home in Sausalito.”
“How many rooms will you need?” She looked Tina expectantly, a sly smile playing on her lips.
Tina laughed. “Three rooms, Marjeta,” she said in a scolding voice. “There’ll be nothing for you to gossip about tonight. I’ve just met these two gentlemen on the beach less than an hour ago.”
“One can always hope,” Marjeta said wistfully.
&
nbsp; The smile left Tina’s face. “You know why I’m here, Marjeta.” Tina’s voice was sad and full of warning.
“Yes,” she said with a sigh. “But hope springs eternal,” she said pointedly and walked away.
“Tina!” a scrawny man with glasses shouted from the doorway.
“Herbert!” Tina shouted back, rising to her feet. She hugged him when he reached their table.
“You rascal. You said you wouldn’t be here until tomorrow.”
“The Tesla,” she explained, lifting her hands. “It is fast.”
“Herbert, meet Ken and Matt.”
Despite looking like a true impression of Ichabod Crane, the man had a firm grip. “Good to meet you,” Ken said.
“Ken. Matt.” Herbert talked very fast.
He turned back to Tina. “I hear congratulations are almost in order.”
Tina pointed at him. “Shush! Don’t you jinx it.”
Herbert held up his hands in defense and changed the topic. “Darlene is pregnant. Sixteen weeks next Friday.”
Tina brought her hand up to her throat and then clutched Herbert’s hand. “I’m so glad you both decided to try again. Give Darlene my best.”
“Out of the way, you wretched old man. Your food is at the door.” Marjeta said to Herbert. She carried a sizzling platter in heavy pot holders. She set the platter of oysters on the table. Jiri followed carrying three plates and sets of utensils.
“Ah, my food is ready and the mistress of the house is unceremoniously tossing me out into the cold, foggy night.” Herbert motioned to the box of food to go at the door. “See you tomorrow night, Tina. Nice to meet you gentlemen.” He turned to leave.
“Until then,” Tina said, raising her mug.
Marjeta pointed to the platter. “Deviled oysters, oysters Rockefeller and oyster puffs.” She turned to Tina. “Viktor wants to know which you like best, so he knows which to serve on the fourth of July.”
“I don’t know,” Tina replied, looking up. “His scalloped oysters that he made last year are going to be hard to beat. The ones with bacon and asparagus.”
“That’s what I said, but you know how stubborn he can be.” Marjeta returned to the kitchen. “Cooks and their quest for the perfect meal,” she mumbled under her breath.
“So do you know everyone here?” Ken asked after washing down his oyster with wine.
Tina looked around the room. She shook her head. “I don’t think I know anyone in the restaurant.” She failed to keep the smile off her face.
“You know what I mean.”
“You try going somewhere twenty-five times a year for twenty years and see whether or not you can remain anonymous,” she challenged him.
Ken thought for a moment. “I don’t think I’ve ever been in the same place long enough to do that.” He ate a oyster puff. “We moved all the time when I was a kid. I lived in Santa Monica for three years, once.” He shook his head. “When I go out in public, people call out my name, but when people know me, I don’t know them.”
Tina nodded. “Such is the price of fame. Where everyone knows you, but you know no one.”
“But here people meet me, shake my hand politely, and then turn their attention to you.” He still didn’t know if he should be jealous.
“I’m like family here. After my husband died…” She trailed off. “They worry about me too much.”
Marjeta returned with a large soup tureen; white glazed porcelain with blue flowers in the detailing.
“Fleur de lis garlic soup,” she said. She scooped the liquid into bowls.
Tina fingered the tureen. “A new French lily. Gorgeous.”
“It was a birthday gift from Jiri,” Marjeta said proudly. “But he spent too much.”
Tina dipped her nose and sucked in the odors.
“Ah, my favorite.”
She turned to Ken. “It’s like drinking tan silk.”
Ken’s eyebrows scrunched. Drinking fabric didn’t sound appetizing.
Tina waved her hand. “Try it.”
Viktor burst from the kitchen and stomped to their table. “Well, what is the consensus?”
Tina set down her spoon. “Oysters Rockefeller; familiar, comforting. The deviled oysters were brash, bold, exciting. But the oyster puffs, now there was a hidden surprise. Delicate pastry on the outside, creamy on the inside, with just a hint of….” Tina tapped her upper lip with her index finger. “Tarragon was it?”
“Ah ha! I told you she’d discover it,” Viktor shouted to his wife.
“Oyster puffs win the day,” Tina concluded. “Well done, Viktor. Well done.”
Viktor remained at the table staring back and forth between Ken and Matt.
“Matt? Which did you like best?” Tina asked.
“I like the bold and exciting. Deviled oysters for me. They were spicy-hot!”
“Ken?” she asked.
“How can I disagree with the guest of honor? The oyster puffs were sublime.” He nodded to Viktor. “As she said, well done.”
“Bah!” Viktor said and stormed back to the kitchen.
“He wanted to make oysters Rockefeller,” Marjeta confessed. “But he just can’t seem to find the ingredient that will make them stand out as unique.”
“Have him cut wedges into the oysters and marinate them in lime vodka for six hours,” Tina suggested. “I tried it once and Jake loved them.”
“Lime vodka? I don’t think Viktor would ever use lime vodka.” Marjeta laughed and her entire body jiggled.
“Then it will be a challenge to see just how adventurous a chef he is,” Tina suggested.
Ken took a sip of soup. “Now I understand when you said ‘drinking tan silk’. This soup is so smooth and delicious.” He took another sip. “But now you have to explain ‘Tina the Leveler’.”
Tina nodded. “There were different groups called the Levelers throughout history. The first Levelers were a mid-seventeenth century English political movement. They were labeled 'Levelers' by their enemies, who claimed that they were intent on bringing all down to the lowest common level. Their own manifesto was more socialistic and spoke of how everyone had the same God-given rights. It was more egalitarian than the lowest-common-denominator that their opponents claimed.”
Marjeta returned with a full roasted duck on a silver platter, surrounded by bundles of sage and lavender and covered in long lengths of orange peel. Viktor followed her, his hands full of cutlery.
“It smells fabulous, Viktor.” She nodded in the direction of the other tables. “But I think your other guests are going to go home and spread rumors about how you spoiled the movie star with your personal attention.” She quickly drank the last of her soup. “This is going to become ‘the place to be’ pretty soon if you keep up this special treatment.” She smiled at her friend.
“Ha!” Viktor said loudly. “Movie stars? No. Let this become ‘the place to be’ for physicists and professors and then I’ll be a happy man.”
He sliced off a duck leg and placed it on her plate. “For you, my little Tina.”
Marjeta scooped on honeyed yams, asparagus in an orange sauce and a spoonful of wild rice with cherries while Viktor served the men their fowl.
Viktor poured them each a glass of a deep red wine. Matt tried to cover his glass but he wasn’t quick enough.
“Bah!” Viktor said. “You cannot fully appreciate my duck with just water. You must have the wine. Enjoy,” he said as he and his wife retreated.
“Then in sixteen-forty-nine there were the Diggers, which were thought of as the True Levelers,” Tina continued. “The Diggers attempted to reform by leveling real property and the existing social order. They wanted an agrarian lifestyle based upon their ideas for the creation of small egalitarian rural communities.”
She swished her mouth clean with a large gulp of wine.
“There were the nineteenth century Levelers in Hudson Valley, New York. That was a property tax protest movement. And in Colorado today there is a Medical Mar
ijuana advocate organization called the Levelers and also a British music band called the Levelers.”
Ken looked up and raised his eyebrows. “And we should call you Professor Tina the Leveler because you like to smoke pot and listen to British music?”
“I’m getting there,” she said. She set down her fork and pushed her empty plate back slightly. She waited until Viktor arrived at their table. “Deliciously succulent, Viktor.” She rubbed her belly. “You are the greatest of chefs.”
Jiri cleaned away the dishes and removed the gold tablecloth, scooping up their crumbs in it. Then he placed silver plates on the maroon tablecloth. The firelight danced across the edges of the silver plates.
Marjeta brought out a platter and set it on the table. “Italian tiramisu cheesecake.”
“Yum, a new recipe.” Tina rubbed her hands together and turned to Ken. “Viktor may be the master chef, but Marjeta is head chef of pastries and desserts.”
Viktor gave each of the generous slices. He poured each a glass of light dessert wine.
“Mary Macaulay was the wife of the historian Thomas Macaulay. In the early eighteen hundreds she held a dinner party, one of many, of course. Now Mary thought herself to be a Leveler, a person who believed there should be no social barriers, that everyone was created equal. And throughout dinner she went on an on about how social structure is bad and that she should be able to sit at the table of the King and Queen.”
Tina took a bite of the dessert and savored it.
“Now you have to remember,” she continued, “that in England in the early eighteen hundreds, social structure is what kept the royalty apart from the plebes. The aristocrats ruled in Parliament, in business and in life in general. Toward dessert, one of her guests couldn’t contain himself any longer and called her bluff. He pointed out that if she didn’t believe in social structure, then she should call in her footmen and let them partake of dessert at her own table.”
“What are footmen?” Matt asked.
“Footmen are the men who rode on the back of the horse-drawn carriages. When the carriage stopped, they would put the wooden stairs down outside the carriage door and offer their hand as support so the carriage riders could step gracefully out of the carriage rather than jumping the three feet down to the ground.”
“Well, Mary Macaulay was horrified at the thought of lowly footmen eating at her table and she was said to be speechless throughout the rest of the meal. When the evening ended, on the way out the door, one guest supposedly said to another “That’s the problem with these Levelers. They always want to level up, not down.”
Ken and Matt laughed. She was a good hostess, Ken thought to himself. She had kept them entertained throughout the entire meal.
“Rumor is the guest wasn’t invited to any more dinner parties in that social circle.”
Matt smiled and picked up his wine glass. “This evening has been fabulous. Incredible food. Even better company.” He held his is wine glass. “To Tina, the great Leveler.”
“To Tina,” Ken agreed.
She showed Matt the same respect she showed him. He stumbled over his thoughts. And why shouldn’t she? He was an actor. Matt was a bodyguard. Neither made one better than the other. Maybe the tabloids were right. Maybe he was arrogant.
The three clinked their glasses and emptied them.
“Father asks that you three join him in the library,” Jiri said. “He saved his most recent purchase of his beloved amber blond nectar just for your visit, Tina.”
Tina rose. “Ah, cognac. Just what we need to close out the night. This way, gentlemen.”
Ken and Matt followed her through the now-empty restaurant. Ken didn’t remember seeing everyone else leave. He went the entire night in a public area and no one asked for an autograph, no one had propositioned him, no one tried to touch him. He couldn’t remember the last time he had felt so unfettered.
The library was on the second floor, or, more correctly, was the entire second floor. Here, as downstairs, a fire roared in the oversized fireplace. Marjeta and Viktor sat in leather chairs on each side of the fire. Tina walked in and kissed first one then the other on their cheeks.
“Perfection personified,” she said simply.
She sat in one of the three empty chairs and Ken and Matt filled the other two.
“I’ve eaten in some of the most expensive restaurants all over the world,” Ken told them. “And never have I had a better meal than I’ve had tonight.”
“The night is still young.” Viktor handed each of them a tulip-shaped glass of cognac.
Tina held it up and peered at the firelight through the golden fluid. “Good legs,” she said.
She held it up to her nose multiple times, sniffing it. “Pleasurable aroma.”
She took one sip, held it in her mouth, and then took a larger sip before swallowing her mouthful.
“Ah,” she released her breath.
“Round, soft bouquet. Fruity,” she added.
She set the glass base against her knee.
“It must be Grande-Champagne, from the hillsides just south of Segonzac.”
Ken turned to look at her. You’ve got to be kidding, he thought to himself.
Viktor leaned forward to the edge of his seat. “How did you know?”
Tina twirled the glass and gazed at the firelight reflected in the cognac. “It is a talent. An art, really.”
She looked up at Viktor and struggled to keep the smile off her face. “I saw the label on the bottle when I entered the room.”
“Oh, you!” Viktor threw a small foot-pillow at her and sat back in his chair. “You almost had me.”
“Oh no,” she corrected and pointed at him. “I had you.”
She set the pillow underneath her feet. “I just can’t lie to those I love.”
Marjeta reached over and squeezed her hand. She laughed and nodded. “You got him that time. That was a good one.”
They talked for an hour before Jiri appeared at the door. “Everything’s done. I’m turning in.”
He looked at Tina. “It’s good to have you here.”
“It’s good to be here,” Tina said. Everyone in the room said their good nights to the boy.
“Take it easy on them.” Jiri nodded in the direction of his parents. “You know what happened last time,” he said. He closed the door without waiting for a response.
Tina eyed Viktor. “I do remember a certain burnt breakfast, yes.”
“Bah! The gas burner was broken, don’t you remember? We had to call that guy, what’s his name, out to fix it three times before he got it right.” Viktor finished his cognac.
“Yes, dear,” Marjeta said simply. She winked at Tina when Viktor wasn’t looking.
Viktor rose. “I’m going to start the breads. You three can stay here and enjoy the fire.”
Tina jumped to her feet. “You’re trying to weasel out of it, is what you’re trying to do.” She motioned to Ken and Matt. “Come on, boys. We venture from the fire lit amber hollows to the icy frozen tundra.”
Ken and Matt shrugged and followed Viktor, Marjeta and Tina to the kitchen.
Viktor started measuring the ingredients for his bread. Marjeta set out five shot glasses. Tina walked into the freezer and brought out three bottles of Stolichnaya vodka. “Straight from the frozen tundra.”
Ken looked at the blue label.
“Ah, that wretched building is the Hotel Moskva,” Viktor informed him. “Red label is seventy-five proof, gold is eighty proof, but the blue label, my personal favorite, is one hundred proof vodka.”
Ken’s eyes grew.
Tina filled the five shot glasses.
Ken shook his head. “I don’t think Matt or I should drink any more. We’ve got an hour’s ride back home.”
“Bah!” Viktor shouted. “No one is driving anywhere tonight. The fog is heavy and both of you have had too much wine for me to even think about letting you drive.”
He pushed a glass toward Ken. ?
??Jeta has made up three rooms, she tells me.”
He looked pointedly at Tina. “And so all there is to do, is drink.” Viktor took his glass and swallowed the contents in one gulp.
“Viktor, you know the rules,” Marjeta scolded him.
“I’m baking. I make my own rules,” Viktor replied in a cloud of flour.
Marjeta turned to Ken and Matt. “Before you take a drink, you have to tell everyone something you’ve done since the last time you were together.” She took her glass in her hand. “For you two, just tell us something you’ve done in the last year.” She turned to Tina. “I started reading my old books in Czech again.” She drank the vodka in a gulp.
Tina picked up her glass. “I bought a Tesla.” She slammed her shot back.
Ken picked up his. “I sold my house in Southern California and my house in the Bahamas and my house in Tuscany.” He drank his shot.
Matt picked up his. “I got a puppy.” He drank.
“Aw, what kind?” Tina asked, refilling the glasses.
“A Dalmatian.”
Viktor was up to his elbows in flour. “Pass,” he said.
“I found Jiri’s collection of Playboys and did nothing.” Marjeta drank. “He doesn’t even know I found them. He’s almost an adult now,” she said sadly.
“I made a breakthrough in my research. I was able to stop a photon in mid-air, hold it in place, and then send it on its way again.” Tina drank. “The article was published in last month’s journal and it’s been one interview after another since.”
“Is that why Herbert is convinced you’re going to win the Nobel prize in physics this year?” Marjeta asked.
“Herbert is just vying for a free trip to Switzerland. There’s another six months in this year and a lot of new breakthroughs can happen in those six months,” Tina said.
Ken looked at her. He didn’t have any idea how to stop a photon in mid-air. He wasn’t even sure what a photon looked like. “I turned down six movie contracts.”
“I got married.” Matt drank.
“Getting married came after getting a puppy on the list of important things you did last year?” Tina asked, ribbing him.
“I’m going backwards chronologically,” Matt defended himself. “I got the puppy last month, I got married six months ago.”
Tina refilled the glasses. “Wait until I tell your wife about this,” she threatened with a smile.
Viktor reached for his glass with flour-covered fingers. “I found a lump on the back of my neck. Had it excised and the doctor said there’s nothing to worry about.” He drank his vodka and slammed the glass down on the table. “It’s good to be alive.”
Marjeta held the glass up in Ken’s direction. “I spent a night drinking vodka shots with Ken Richards.” She blushed, laughed and then drank.
“I published a book.” Tina drank.
“Congratulations!” Viktor told her. “What is that, book seven?”
“Nine,” she replied.
“Well, I wish I could say I’ve read them all,” Marjeta said. “But even though I have bought them, I have to admit I don’t understand them.”
“Physics is a language unto itself. You already read in English and Czech and Russian, I think that’s good enough.” Tina squeezed the rotund woman’s shoulder.
“I bought my daughter a tricycle.” Ken drank his vodka and slammed the glass down hard.
“Oh, how old is she?” Marjeta asked. She looked quizzically as Tina shook her head no.
“She would have been three on May 5th, but she was still born.” Ken gripped the table and hung his head. He was starting to get really drunk. He couldn’t remember the last time he drank this much.
Tina quickly refilled her glass. “All right! New game!”
“No,” Viktor and Marjeta said in unison.
Tina ignored them. “I bought Jake a birthday present. A Cambridge manuscript from the 15th century with the Agincourt Carol on it.”
She took a drink.
“Jake’s been dead four years,” she said.
She slammed her glass on the table. She leapt from the table and ran to the refrigerator.
“Foul! Out of turn,” Marjeta shouted.
“Oh no. We are not playing that game. Not this year.” Viktor followed her into the fridge for the eggs. “We’re playing the ‘what have you done lately’ game, remember?”
Tina pushed past him. She rolled up Ken’s sleeve and squirted a blotch of ketchup onto his arm.
“Arg. What are you doing?” he asked. Was the woman insane?
She pulled up her sleeve and squirted a larger blotch onto her own arm. “I think I spent more on Jake’s manuscript than you did on a bike.”
Marjeta refilled the glasses. “This is the woundology game,” she explained to Matt. “One of Tina’s favorites. To see who has the largest wound. To see who has been wounded the most, or feels the grief deepest.” She turned to look Tina in the face. “Or who hangs onto their grief the tightest.”
She pushed the shot glass to Matt. “You don’t want to play that game. Not with this woman. Now tell me what you did last year.”
“I learned how to scuba dive.” Matt took a drink.
Viktor reached in. “I vowed never to play woundology in my house ever again.” He drank quickly.
“Never make vows lightly, dearest Viktor,” Tina told him. “Especially ones over which you have no control to keep or break.”
“I promised to support my husband and his vows,” Marjeta said pointedly before drinking.
“I fired my assistant after I caught him selling my research to a rival company.” Tina took a drink. “Actually, my company caught him, but I fired him.”
“Cut-throat business, physics,” Matt commented dryly.
‘You’d be surprised,” Tina told him.
“I go to my daughter’s grave every Sunday. I take a chair and sit and talk to her for hours.” Ken took a drink.
Tina squirted his arm with more ketchup.
“I am drunk and am going to bed, if someone would be so kind to point in the right direction.” Matt took a drink and set his glass upside down on the table.
“I’ll take you, dearie.” Marjeta took his arm and they left, swaying slightly.
“Good night, Matt. See you Mañana,” Tina said. She turned to Ken and looked at him through the clear liquid in the shot glass. “Every night while I eat dinner, I tell Jake about my day.” She took another drink and squirted more ketchup on her arm.
Ken took over refilling the glasses.
“I lost my little girl, even before she was born.” He took a drink and Tina squirted ketchup on his arm. “After her birth, I held her dead body in my arms.” He had cried for hours, holding her. “She never took a breath. Not one.” He had never said that out loud before. He blinked as the words returned and echoed in his ears.
Tina stared at the shot glass of clear liquid.
“I lost my husband of twenty years.” Her voice was little more than a whisper. She cleared her throat.
“We were walking along a trail that winds through the city, holding hands as we always do. Used to do,” she corrected herself. “And a boulder just rolled down the hill, hit his head and crushed his skull. Just him. Not me. Not a scratch on me. Killed him instantly.” She stared at her right hand. “Ripped his hand from mine and he was gone.”
Her left hand shook as she took the drink.
Ken reached over and squirted ketchup on her arm.
“My wife committed suicide two months after our daughter was born dead.” The words came slowly as his tongue struggled to form them. Ken drank.
Tina squirted the ketchup.
“I don’t go any new places. I only go where Jake and I have gone before, so where ever I go, I know that he was once there with me. I would betray him if I were to go somewhere he couldn’t.” Tina took another drink.
“I left Hollywood because my friends kept on trying to make me leave my dead wife and child behind.”
Ken drank. “And I won’t do it.” His stomach cramped.
“I don’t have any friends.” Tina drank. “People can’t handle that I still want a life with Jake, even though he happens to be dead.”
“I haven’t been on a date in three years.” Ken drank. “I’m afraid they’ll die and I just couldn’t survive that again.” His head swam. He hadn’t told anyone that before either. What was he doing?
“I haven’t been on a date in four years.” Tina drank. “No one alive is as interesting as my dead husband.”
Ken looked at the ketchup splotch on his arm. “I have ketchup on my arm.” He took a drink with a lopsided grin and half of it dribbled down his chin.
Tina looked at her arm.
“So do I.”
She sounded surprised. She drank another shot and braced her hip against the table to remain upright.
He looked at the red paste on his arm and then at Tina’s. “I think mine is bigger than yours.” He drank. He blinked his eyes slowly.
“Not even close. I was with Jake for twenty years.” She drank.
“But I had two people who I loved die.” He drank. What was he saying? Was he speaking out lout or were these words just inside his head? In what kind of morbid contest was he competing?
“But I’ve been hanging onto mine for four years. It’s only been three for you.” She drank. She slammed the glass down onto the cutting board but her hand wasn’t flat and it skidded off the counter. The glass shattered on the tiled floor.
“Alright you two,” Marjeta said, returning to the kitchen. She handed the three empty bottles to Viktor. “Time to get you up to your rooms.” She reached for a cloth to wipe off the ketchup.
“No,” Tina shouted. “This is my wound. I won’t let you take it away from me.”
She stepped away from Marjeta and banged into a stack of pots. Marjeta caught them before they fell to the floor.
“It will get all over everything, Tina,” Marjeta pleaded with her. “You can still be morose and hang onto Jake, just let me clean up the ketchup.”
“No, don’t let them take it from you, Tina,” Ken rallied. He wouldn’t let them take his wound from him and he wouldn’t let them take hers from her either. He tried to stand but his legs were like gelatin. The room started spinning and he slammed his palms against the counter for balance. The sharp noise made him jump.
Tina moved away and stumbled against Viktor. “No. It’s mine.”
“It’s alright, Marjeta,” Viktor said. “We’ll clean it up tomorrow,” he said to his wife. He stepped over the glass shards on the floor. “Come on, Tina. I’ll take you upstairs. We all see your wound.” He sighed deeply.
Marjeta took Ken by his arm not covered in ketchup. “This way, Ken. Your room is down at the end of the hall.”
“Wake me at four if I’m not already up,” Tina shouted to Marjeta.
“In the morning?” Ken asked. “What time is it now?” He tried to focus his eyes but he could barely make out that there was a wall in front of him. He felt Marjeta tug on his arm and he changed direction to follow her.
“She means four in the afternoon.” Marjeta pushed against the leaning Ken. “And you should follow her lead on this. The best way to deal with a Vodka hangover is to sleep right through it.”
Tina had parked her Tesla in back and entered the restaurant through the kitchen door, with Ken following closely behind her.
A woman entered the kitchen. She was a female version of the man; portly, pink and oddly going bald in the same place as her husband, though not quite as advanced a case.
“Tina, you’re here.” She hugged Tina tightly. “Now all is well, once again.”
She motioned toward one of the sinks. “Quickly, wash your hands.” She handed them a drying towel when they were finished. She took hold of Tina’s hand and pulled her out of the kitchen. “I have just the table for you, by the fire. You’ll have warm bread before you can remove your coat.”
“Viktor,” the man said, thrusting his hand into Ken’s.
“Ken Richards.”
“Any friend of Tina’s is a friend of ours. Welcome to our home.” He directed Ken out of the kitchen with a push against his shoulder.
Ken didn’t think Viktor recognized him.
Marjeta kissed Ken on the cheek. “Anything you need, love, you just let us know. Our house is your house.” She directed him into a chair in front of the fire. “The fire will warm your skin. What you like to warm your inside?”
“Mulled wine or mulled apple cider?” Tina clarified for Ken.
“I’ve never had either. Whichever she is having,” he answered, nodding at Tina.
“Mulled wine it is, then,” Marjeta said, rushing off to the kitchen.
Ken looked around quickly. There were seven tables in the restaurant, all of them full. The lighting was soft and the tables were covered in alternating maroon and gold tablecloths. People had looked up from their meals when the cook and his wife ushered in the pair, trying to see who the new guests were, but no one had risen to rush to where Ken sat. He heard none of the whispering and giggles he usually encountered in public.
“Tina!” A teenager pushed through the front door.
Tina rose and returned another hearty hug. “Jiri.” She held him at his shoulders and looked him up and down. “You’ve grown almost four inches in a year, young man. What are they feeding you?”
“Six, but who’s counting.” Jiri turned to Ken.
“Ken Richards.” Ken shook Jiri’s hand.
Jiri’s eyes widened. “The actor?”
Ken nodded. At last, someone recognized him.
“Nice to meet you.” Jiri turned back to Tina. “Please tell me you’re staying more than just two days, this time. There’s someone I want you to meet, but she’s won’t be back in town until next week.”
“She?” Tina rubbed Jiri’s hair.
“Yes. She.” Jiri beamed. “Ana Marie Stovich.”
“The red head from the store?”
Jiri nodded.
“I met her last year, remember? She was dating Paul, if memory serves.”
Jiri nodded again. “But now she’s dating me.”
“And Paul? Are you two still friends?”
“Paul’s family moved to Kansas, if you can believe it. They said it was too expensive to live out here.”
“I can believe it,” Tina said, sitting down.
“Jiri, be a dear and take their coats at least,” Marjeta requested, returning to the table with a tray. She set down their drinks and a basket of bread next to a cup of honey-butter.
“You aren’t allergic to shell fish, are you son?” Marjeta asked, resting her fleshy hand on Ken’s shoulder.
“No ma’am.” He tried to remember the last time he had been called son when he wasn’t on a movie set.
“There’ll be a third person joining us,” Tina informed them. “Ken’s friend, Matt. He should be here in fifteen minutes or so.”
“I’ll get another mug ready.” Marjeta sighed and looked disappointed.
“He doesn’t drink. Mulled cider will do,” Ken told them. He looked at Jiri who was waiting, holding Tina’s coat. “I think I’ll hang onto the sweatshirt a while longer, until I warm up a little.”
“First time to Northern California, huh?” Jiri asked.
Ken nodded and shrugged. Apparently the natives could easily spot the tourists.
Marjeta stroked Tina’s cheek. “My dear, you look as radiant as always. I tell you it does my heart good to see you again.”
Tina squeezed Marjeta’s hand in her own. “As it does mine.”
Marjeta and Jiri hurried away, Jiri with Tina’s coat and Marjeta to take an order from a nearby table.
Tina handed Ken his mug of mulled wine. “It’ll warm your fingers. But be careful, Viktor keeps his mulls hot. You may want to let it cool for a bit before you taste it.”
Ken wrapped his fingers around the warm mug and let the heat penetrate his frigid bones.
Tina tore off a piece of bread and swiped it through the honey-butter. She stuck it in her mouth and smiled. “Ah, I’ve returned to heaven,” she said with a smile that lit her entire face.
She repeated the action and held the bite up for Ken to eat. “Here, try this.”
Ken hesitated and then leaned forward and ate the bread from Tina’s fingers. “Delicious.”
Ken took a sip of the mulled wine. “As is this.” He could feel the warm liquid sink into his belly. Suddenly the heat burst out and spread to his extremities. He took another sip. “Just what I needed.” He felt his face flush. He pulled off the SF Giants sweatshirt.
“I’ll take that,” Jiri said, walking by.
Tina rose half way and waved. “Matt’s here.”
Jiri walked over to the door and shook Matt’s hand. He pointed to the table where Tina and Ken sat.
Matt shook his head and spoke quietly into Jiri’s ear.
Jiri looked at the full tables and shook his head.
Tina rose and walked to where Matt and Jiri were standing.
Tina took Matt’s hand in her own. “Come.”
Matt pulled back. “I’m not supposed to sit at the same table with him. I just need a table in the corner, but within sight of him.” He pointed to a table on the other side of the fire. “That one there will be fine.”
“If you haven’t noticed, that one is occupied.” She pulled on Matt’s hand and led him to the table. “Tonight, you sit at our table. We’re all just friends, here.” She nodded to Ken. “And you can call me Tina the Leveler.”
Jiri took Matt’s coat. Matt looked quizzically at Ken.
Ken shrugged. “It’s like the lady said. We’re all just friends tonight.” He pointed at the empty chair. “Have a seat. I have a feeling we are in for a treat.”
“I’m sorry I couldn’t get here any sooner, sir. The corners on this road are like hairpins. I hope they didn’t cause you too many problems.” He motioned to the other eaters in the restaurant.
Ken laughed loudly. “Nothing, if you can believe it. I don’t remember the last time that I walked into a room and the ensuing commotion was about someone other than me.”
He took another sip of the hot wine. He looked at Tina. He didn’t know whether to be offended or relieved.
“Ah, you must be Matt. Marjeta,” she said, introducing herself. “Here’s your mulled cider. The pudgy man in the kitchen, besides being the best cook in America, is my husband Viktor. And I believe you’ve already met our son, Jiri.” She squeezed his shoulder. “Welcome to our home. We’ll see what we can do about getting the rooms upstairs ready.”
“We won’t be staying,” Ken interrupted. “I’ve rented a home in Sausalito.”
“How many rooms will you need?” She looked Tina expectantly, a sly smile playing on her lips.
Tina laughed. “Three rooms, Marjeta,” she said in a scolding voice. “There’ll be nothing for you to gossip about tonight. I’ve just met these two gentlemen on the beach less than an hour ago.”
“One can always hope,” Marjeta said wistfully.
&
“Yes,” she said with a sigh. “But hope springs eternal,” she said pointedly and walked away.
“Tina!” a scrawny man with glasses shouted from the doorway.
“Herbert!” Tina shouted back, rising to her feet. She hugged him when he reached their table.
“You rascal. You said you wouldn’t be here until tomorrow.”
“The Tesla,” she explained, lifting her hands. “It is fast.”
“Herbert, meet Ken and Matt.”
Despite looking like a true impression of Ichabod Crane, the man had a firm grip. “Good to meet you,” Ken said.
“Ken. Matt.” Herbert talked very fast.
He turned back to Tina. “I hear congratulations are almost in order.”
Tina pointed at him. “Shush! Don’t you jinx it.”
Herbert held up his hands in defense and changed the topic. “Darlene is pregnant. Sixteen weeks next Friday.”
Tina brought her hand up to her throat and then clutched Herbert’s hand. “I’m so glad you both decided to try again. Give Darlene my best.”
“Out of the way, you wretched old man. Your food is at the door.” Marjeta said to Herbert. She carried a sizzling platter in heavy pot holders. She set the platter of oysters on the table. Jiri followed carrying three plates and sets of utensils.
“Ah, my food is ready and the mistress of the house is unceremoniously tossing me out into the cold, foggy night.” Herbert motioned to the box of food to go at the door. “See you tomorrow night, Tina. Nice to meet you gentlemen.” He turned to leave.
“Until then,” Tina said, raising her mug.
Marjeta pointed to the platter. “Deviled oysters, oysters Rockefeller and oyster puffs.” She turned to Tina. “Viktor wants to know which you like best, so he knows which to serve on the fourth of July.”
“I don’t know,” Tina replied, looking up. “His scalloped oysters that he made last year are going to be hard to beat. The ones with bacon and asparagus.”
“That’s what I said, but you know how stubborn he can be.” Marjeta returned to the kitchen. “Cooks and their quest for the perfect meal,” she mumbled under her breath.
“So do you know everyone here?” Ken asked after washing down his oyster with wine.
Tina looked around the room. She shook her head. “I don’t think I know anyone in the restaurant.” She failed to keep the smile off her face.
“You know what I mean.”
“You try going somewhere twenty-five times a year for twenty years and see whether or not you can remain anonymous,” she challenged him.
Ken thought for a moment. “I don’t think I’ve ever been in the same place long enough to do that.” He ate a oyster puff. “We moved all the time when I was a kid. I lived in Santa Monica for three years, once.” He shook his head. “When I go out in public, people call out my name, but when people know me, I don’t know them.”
Tina nodded. “Such is the price of fame. Where everyone knows you, but you know no one.”
“But here people meet me, shake my hand politely, and then turn their attention to you.” He still didn’t know if he should be jealous.
“I’m like family here. After my husband died…” She trailed off. “They worry about me too much.”
Marjeta returned with a large soup tureen; white glazed porcelain with blue flowers in the detailing.
“Fleur de lis garlic soup,” she said. She scooped the liquid into bowls.
Tina fingered the tureen. “A new French lily. Gorgeous.”
“It was a birthday gift from Jiri,” Marjeta said proudly. “But he spent too much.”
Tina dipped her nose and sucked in the odors.
“Ah, my favorite.”
She turned to Ken. “It’s like drinking tan silk.”
Ken’s eyebrows scrunched. Drinking fabric didn’t sound appetizing.
Tina waved her hand. “Try it.”
Viktor burst from the kitchen and stomped to their table. “Well, what is the consensus?”
Tina set down her spoon. “Oysters Rockefeller; familiar, comforting. The deviled oysters were brash, bold, exciting. But the oyster puffs, now there was a hidden surprise. Delicate pastry on the outside, creamy on the inside, with just a hint of….” Tina tapped her upper lip with her index finger. “Tarragon was it?”
“Ah ha! I told you she’d discover it,” Viktor shouted to his wife.
“Oyster puffs win the day,” Tina concluded. “Well done, Viktor. Well done.”
Viktor remained at the table staring back and forth between Ken and Matt.
“Matt? Which did you like best?” Tina asked.
“I like the bold and exciting. Deviled oysters for me. They were spicy-hot!”
“Ken?” she asked.
“How can I disagree with the guest of honor? The oyster puffs were sublime.” He nodded to Viktor. “As she said, well done.”
“Bah!” Viktor said and stormed back to the kitchen.
“He wanted to make oysters Rockefeller,” Marjeta confessed. “But he just can’t seem to find the ingredient that will make them stand out as unique.”
“Have him cut wedges into the oysters and marinate them in lime vodka for six hours,” Tina suggested. “I tried it once and Jake loved them.”
“Lime vodka? I don’t think Viktor would ever use lime vodka.” Marjeta laughed and her entire body jiggled.
“Then it will be a challenge to see just how adventurous a chef he is,” Tina suggested.
Ken took a sip of soup. “Now I understand when you said ‘drinking tan silk’. This soup is so smooth and delicious.” He took another sip. “But now you have to explain ‘Tina the Leveler’.”
Tina nodded. “There were different groups called the Levelers throughout history. The first Levelers were a mid-seventeenth century English political movement. They were labeled 'Levelers' by their enemies, who claimed that they were intent on bringing all down to the lowest common level. Their own manifesto was more socialistic and spoke of how everyone had the same God-given rights. It was more egalitarian than the lowest-common-denominator that their opponents claimed.”
Marjeta returned with a full roasted duck on a silver platter, surrounded by bundles of sage and lavender and covered in long lengths of orange peel. Viktor followed her, his hands full of cutlery.
“It smells fabulous, Viktor.” She nodded in the direction of the other tables. “But I think your other guests are going to go home and spread rumors about how you spoiled the movie star with your personal attention.” She quickly drank the last of her soup. “This is going to become ‘the place to be’ pretty soon if you keep up this special treatment.” She smiled at her friend.
“Ha!” Viktor said loudly. “Movie stars? No. Let this become ‘the place to be’ for physicists and professors and then I’ll be a happy man.”
He sliced off a duck leg and placed it on her plate. “For you, my little Tina.”
Marjeta scooped on honeyed yams, asparagus in an orange sauce and a spoonful of wild rice with cherries while Viktor served the men their fowl.
Viktor poured them each a glass of a deep red wine. Matt tried to cover his glass but he wasn’t quick enough.
“Bah!” Viktor said. “You cannot fully appreciate my duck with just water. You must have the wine. Enjoy,” he said as he and his wife retreated.
“Then in sixteen-forty-nine there were the Diggers, which were thought of as the True Levelers,” Tina continued. “The Diggers attempted to reform by leveling real property and the existing social order. They wanted an agrarian lifestyle based upon their ideas for the creation of small egalitarian rural communities.”
She swished her mouth clean with a large gulp of wine.
“There were the nineteenth century Levelers in Hudson Valley, New York. That was a property tax protest movement. And in Colorado today there is a Medical Mar
Ken looked up and raised his eyebrows. “And we should call you Professor Tina the Leveler because you like to smoke pot and listen to British music?”
“I’m getting there,” she said. She set down her fork and pushed her empty plate back slightly. She waited until Viktor arrived at their table. “Deliciously succulent, Viktor.” She rubbed her belly. “You are the greatest of chefs.”
Jiri cleaned away the dishes and removed the gold tablecloth, scooping up their crumbs in it. Then he placed silver plates on the maroon tablecloth. The firelight danced across the edges of the silver plates.
Marjeta brought out a platter and set it on the table. “Italian tiramisu cheesecake.”
“Yum, a new recipe.” Tina rubbed her hands together and turned to Ken. “Viktor may be the master chef, but Marjeta is head chef of pastries and desserts.”
Viktor gave each of the generous slices. He poured each a glass of light dessert wine.
“Mary Macaulay was the wife of the historian Thomas Macaulay. In the early eighteen hundreds she held a dinner party, one of many, of course. Now Mary thought herself to be a Leveler, a person who believed there should be no social barriers, that everyone was created equal. And throughout dinner she went on an on about how social structure is bad and that she should be able to sit at the table of the King and Queen.”
Tina took a bite of the dessert and savored it.
“Now you have to remember,” she continued, “that in England in the early eighteen hundreds, social structure is what kept the royalty apart from the plebes. The aristocrats ruled in Parliament, in business and in life in general. Toward dessert, one of her guests couldn’t contain himself any longer and called her bluff. He pointed out that if she didn’t believe in social structure, then she should call in her footmen and let them partake of dessert at her own table.”
“What are footmen?” Matt asked.
“Footmen are the men who rode on the back of the horse-drawn carriages. When the carriage stopped, they would put the wooden stairs down outside the carriage door and offer their hand as support so the carriage riders could step gracefully out of the carriage rather than jumping the three feet down to the ground.”
“Well, Mary Macaulay was horrified at the thought of lowly footmen eating at her table and she was said to be speechless throughout the rest of the meal. When the evening ended, on the way out the door, one guest supposedly said to another “That’s the problem with these Levelers. They always want to level up, not down.”
Ken and Matt laughed. She was a good hostess, Ken thought to himself. She had kept them entertained throughout the entire meal.
“Rumor is the guest wasn’t invited to any more dinner parties in that social circle.”
Matt smiled and picked up his wine glass. “This evening has been fabulous. Incredible food. Even better company.” He held his is wine glass. “To Tina, the great Leveler.”
“To Tina,” Ken agreed.
She showed Matt the same respect she showed him. He stumbled over his thoughts. And why shouldn’t she? He was an actor. Matt was a bodyguard. Neither made one better than the other. Maybe the tabloids were right. Maybe he was arrogant.
The three clinked their glasses and emptied them.
“Father asks that you three join him in the library,” Jiri said. “He saved his most recent purchase of his beloved amber blond nectar just for your visit, Tina.”
Tina rose. “Ah, cognac. Just what we need to close out the night. This way, gentlemen.”
Ken and Matt followed her through the now-empty restaurant. Ken didn’t remember seeing everyone else leave. He went the entire night in a public area and no one asked for an autograph, no one had propositioned him, no one tried to touch him. He couldn’t remember the last time he had felt so unfettered.
The library was on the second floor, or, more correctly, was the entire second floor. Here, as downstairs, a fire roared in the oversized fireplace. Marjeta and Viktor sat in leather chairs on each side of the fire. Tina walked in and kissed first one then the other on their cheeks.
“Perfection personified,” she said simply.
She sat in one of the three empty chairs and Ken and Matt filled the other two.
“I’ve eaten in some of the most expensive restaurants all over the world,” Ken told them. “And never have I had a better meal than I’ve had tonight.”
“The night is still young.” Viktor handed each of them a tulip-shaped glass of cognac.
Tina held it up and peered at the firelight through the golden fluid. “Good legs,” she said.
She held it up to her nose multiple times, sniffing it. “Pleasurable aroma.”
She took one sip, held it in her mouth, and then took a larger sip before swallowing her mouthful.
“Ah,” she released her breath.
“Round, soft bouquet. Fruity,” she added.
She set the glass base against her knee.
“It must be Grande-Champagne, from the hillsides just south of Segonzac.”
Ken turned to look at her. You’ve got to be kidding, he thought to himself.
Viktor leaned forward to the edge of his seat. “How did you know?”
Tina twirled the glass and gazed at the firelight reflected in the cognac. “It is a talent. An art, really.”
She looked up at Viktor and struggled to keep the smile off her face. “I saw the label on the bottle when I entered the room.”
“Oh, you!” Viktor threw a small foot-pillow at her and sat back in his chair. “You almost had me.”
“Oh no,” she corrected and pointed at him. “I had you.”
She set the pillow underneath her feet. “I just can’t lie to those I love.”
Marjeta reached over and squeezed her hand. She laughed and nodded. “You got him that time. That was a good one.”
They talked for an hour before Jiri appeared at the door. “Everything’s done. I’m turning in.”
He looked at Tina. “It’s good to have you here.”
“It’s good to be here,” Tina said. Everyone in the room said their good nights to the boy.
“Take it easy on them.” Jiri nodded in the direction of his parents. “You know what happened last time,” he said. He closed the door without waiting for a response.
Tina eyed Viktor. “I do remember a certain burnt breakfast, yes.”
“Bah! The gas burner was broken, don’t you remember? We had to call that guy, what’s his name, out to fix it three times before he got it right.” Viktor finished his cognac.
“Yes, dear,” Marjeta said simply. She winked at Tina when Viktor wasn’t looking.
Viktor rose. “I’m going to start the breads. You three can stay here and enjoy the fire.”
Tina jumped to her feet. “You’re trying to weasel out of it, is what you’re trying to do.” She motioned to Ken and Matt. “Come on, boys. We venture from the fire lit amber hollows to the icy frozen tundra.”
Ken and Matt shrugged and followed Viktor, Marjeta and Tina to the kitchen.
Viktor started measuring the ingredients for his bread. Marjeta set out five shot glasses. Tina walked into the freezer and brought out three bottles of Stolichnaya vodka. “Straight from the frozen tundra.”
Ken looked at the blue label.
“Ah, that wretched building is the Hotel Moskva,” Viktor informed him. “Red label is seventy-five proof, gold is eighty proof, but the blue label, my personal favorite, is one hundred proof vodka.”
Ken’s eyes grew.
Tina filled the five shot glasses.
Ken shook his head. “I don’t think Matt or I should drink any more. We’ve got an hour’s ride back home.”
“Bah!” Viktor shouted. “No one is driving anywhere tonight. The fog is heavy and both of you have had too much wine for me to even think about letting you drive.”
He pushed a glass toward Ken. ?
He looked pointedly at Tina. “And so all there is to do, is drink.” Viktor took his glass and swallowed the contents in one gulp.
“Viktor, you know the rules,” Marjeta scolded him.
“I’m baking. I make my own rules,” Viktor replied in a cloud of flour.
Marjeta turned to Ken and Matt. “Before you take a drink, you have to tell everyone something you’ve done since the last time you were together.” She took her glass in her hand. “For you two, just tell us something you’ve done in the last year.” She turned to Tina. “I started reading my old books in Czech again.” She drank the vodka in a gulp.
Tina picked up her glass. “I bought a Tesla.” She slammed her shot back.
Ken picked up his. “I sold my house in Southern California and my house in the Bahamas and my house in Tuscany.” He drank his shot.
Matt picked up his. “I got a puppy.” He drank.
“Aw, what kind?” Tina asked, refilling the glasses.
“A Dalmatian.”
Viktor was up to his elbows in flour. “Pass,” he said.
“I found Jiri’s collection of Playboys and did nothing.” Marjeta drank. “He doesn’t even know I found them. He’s almost an adult now,” she said sadly.
“I made a breakthrough in my research. I was able to stop a photon in mid-air, hold it in place, and then send it on its way again.” Tina drank. “The article was published in last month’s journal and it’s been one interview after another since.”
“Is that why Herbert is convinced you’re going to win the Nobel prize in physics this year?” Marjeta asked.
“Herbert is just vying for a free trip to Switzerland. There’s another six months in this year and a lot of new breakthroughs can happen in those six months,” Tina said.
Ken looked at her. He didn’t have any idea how to stop a photon in mid-air. He wasn’t even sure what a photon looked like. “I turned down six movie contracts.”
“I got married.” Matt drank.
“Getting married came after getting a puppy on the list of important things you did last year?” Tina asked, ribbing him.
“I’m going backwards chronologically,” Matt defended himself. “I got the puppy last month, I got married six months ago.”
Tina refilled the glasses. “Wait until I tell your wife about this,” she threatened with a smile.
Viktor reached for his glass with flour-covered fingers. “I found a lump on the back of my neck. Had it excised and the doctor said there’s nothing to worry about.” He drank his vodka and slammed the glass down on the table. “It’s good to be alive.”
Marjeta held the glass up in Ken’s direction. “I spent a night drinking vodka shots with Ken Richards.” She blushed, laughed and then drank.
“I published a book.” Tina drank.
“Congratulations!” Viktor told her. “What is that, book seven?”
“Nine,” she replied.
“Well, I wish I could say I’ve read them all,” Marjeta said. “But even though I have bought them, I have to admit I don’t understand them.”
“Physics is a language unto itself. You already read in English and Czech and Russian, I think that’s good enough.” Tina squeezed the rotund woman’s shoulder.
“I bought my daughter a tricycle.” Ken drank his vodka and slammed the glass down hard.
“Oh, how old is she?” Marjeta asked. She looked quizzically as Tina shook her head no.
“She would have been three on May 5th, but she was still born.” Ken gripped the table and hung his head. He was starting to get really drunk. He couldn’t remember the last time he drank this much.
Tina quickly refilled her glass. “All right! New game!”
“No,” Viktor and Marjeta said in unison.
Tina ignored them. “I bought Jake a birthday present. A Cambridge manuscript from the 15th century with the Agincourt Carol on it.”
She took a drink.
“Jake’s been dead four years,” she said.
She slammed her glass on the table. She leapt from the table and ran to the refrigerator.
“Foul! Out of turn,” Marjeta shouted.
“Oh no. We are not playing that game. Not this year.” Viktor followed her into the fridge for the eggs. “We’re playing the ‘what have you done lately’ game, remember?”
Tina pushed past him. She rolled up Ken’s sleeve and squirted a blotch of ketchup onto his arm.
“Arg. What are you doing?” he asked. Was the woman insane?
She pulled up her sleeve and squirted a larger blotch onto her own arm. “I think I spent more on Jake’s manuscript than you did on a bike.”
Marjeta refilled the glasses. “This is the woundology game,” she explained to Matt. “One of Tina’s favorites. To see who has the largest wound. To see who has been wounded the most, or feels the grief deepest.” She turned to look Tina in the face. “Or who hangs onto their grief the tightest.”
She pushed the shot glass to Matt. “You don’t want to play that game. Not with this woman. Now tell me what you did last year.”
“I learned how to scuba dive.” Matt took a drink.
Viktor reached in. “I vowed never to play woundology in my house ever again.” He drank quickly.
“Never make vows lightly, dearest Viktor,” Tina told him. “Especially ones over which you have no control to keep or break.”
“I promised to support my husband and his vows,” Marjeta said pointedly before drinking.
“I fired my assistant after I caught him selling my research to a rival company.” Tina took a drink. “Actually, my company caught him, but I fired him.”
“Cut-throat business, physics,” Matt commented dryly.
‘You’d be surprised,” Tina told him.
“I go to my daughter’s grave every Sunday. I take a chair and sit and talk to her for hours.” Ken took a drink.
Tina squirted his arm with more ketchup.
“I am drunk and am going to bed, if someone would be so kind to point in the right direction.” Matt took a drink and set his glass upside down on the table.
“I’ll take you, dearie.” Marjeta took his arm and they left, swaying slightly.
“Good night, Matt. See you Mañana,” Tina said. She turned to Ken and looked at him through the clear liquid in the shot glass. “Every night while I eat dinner, I tell Jake about my day.” She took another drink and squirted more ketchup on her arm.
Ken took over refilling the glasses.
“I lost my little girl, even before she was born.” He took a drink and Tina squirted ketchup on his arm. “After her birth, I held her dead body in my arms.” He had cried for hours, holding her. “She never took a breath. Not one.” He had never said that out loud before. He blinked as the words returned and echoed in his ears.
Tina stared at the shot glass of clear liquid.
“I lost my husband of twenty years.” Her voice was little more than a whisper. She cleared her throat.
“We were walking along a trail that winds through the city, holding hands as we always do. Used to do,” she corrected herself. “And a boulder just rolled down the hill, hit his head and crushed his skull. Just him. Not me. Not a scratch on me. Killed him instantly.” She stared at her right hand. “Ripped his hand from mine and he was gone.”
Her left hand shook as she took the drink.
Ken reached over and squirted ketchup on her arm.
“My wife committed suicide two months after our daughter was born dead.” The words came slowly as his tongue struggled to form them. Ken drank.
Tina squirted the ketchup.
“I don’t go any new places. I only go where Jake and I have gone before, so where ever I go, I know that he was once there with me. I would betray him if I were to go somewhere he couldn’t.” Tina took another drink.
“I left Hollywood because my friends kept on trying to make me leave my dead wife and child behind.”
“I don’t have any friends.” Tina drank. “People can’t handle that I still want a life with Jake, even though he happens to be dead.”
“I haven’t been on a date in three years.” Ken drank. “I’m afraid they’ll die and I just couldn’t survive that again.” His head swam. He hadn’t told anyone that before either. What was he doing?
“I haven’t been on a date in four years.” Tina drank. “No one alive is as interesting as my dead husband.”
Ken looked at the ketchup splotch on his arm. “I have ketchup on my arm.” He took a drink with a lopsided grin and half of it dribbled down his chin.
Tina looked at her arm.
“So do I.”
She sounded surprised. She drank another shot and braced her hip against the table to remain upright.
He looked at the red paste on his arm and then at Tina’s. “I think mine is bigger than yours.” He drank. He blinked his eyes slowly.
“Not even close. I was with Jake for twenty years.” She drank.
“But I had two people who I loved die.” He drank. What was he saying? Was he speaking out lout or were these words just inside his head? In what kind of morbid contest was he competing?
“But I’ve been hanging onto mine for four years. It’s only been three for you.” She drank. She slammed the glass down onto the cutting board but her hand wasn’t flat and it skidded off the counter. The glass shattered on the tiled floor.
“Alright you two,” Marjeta said, returning to the kitchen. She handed the three empty bottles to Viktor. “Time to get you up to your rooms.” She reached for a cloth to wipe off the ketchup.
“No,” Tina shouted. “This is my wound. I won’t let you take it away from me.”
She stepped away from Marjeta and banged into a stack of pots. Marjeta caught them before they fell to the floor.
“It will get all over everything, Tina,” Marjeta pleaded with her. “You can still be morose and hang onto Jake, just let me clean up the ketchup.”
“No, don’t let them take it from you, Tina,” Ken rallied. He wouldn’t let them take his wound from him and he wouldn’t let them take hers from her either. He tried to stand but his legs were like gelatin. The room started spinning and he slammed his palms against the counter for balance. The sharp noise made him jump.
Tina moved away and stumbled against Viktor. “No. It’s mine.”
“It’s alright, Marjeta,” Viktor said. “We’ll clean it up tomorrow,” he said to his wife. He stepped over the glass shards on the floor. “Come on, Tina. I’ll take you upstairs. We all see your wound.” He sighed deeply.
Marjeta took Ken by his arm not covered in ketchup. “This way, Ken. Your room is down at the end of the hall.”
“Wake me at four if I’m not already up,” Tina shouted to Marjeta.
“In the morning?” Ken asked. “What time is it now?” He tried to focus his eyes but he could barely make out that there was a wall in front of him. He felt Marjeta tug on his arm and he changed direction to follow her.
“She means four in the afternoon.” Marjeta pushed against the leaning Ken. “And you should follow her lead on this. The best way to deal with a Vodka hangover is to sleep right through it.”