The Grape Harvest - Part 3 #TravelFiction

Mike realizing he could do no more decided to live with his look as well as his garb and went for the door. Just as he pulled the handle his iPhone buzzed on the nightstand. Another fucking birthday reminder he thought as he went to the phone and saw the SMS - "maybe you shouldn't"

There was no number attached to the message yet this note was clearly not the work of internet marketing. Mike instinctively looked about the room now as the sun was breaking the fog in all directions and created individual search lights through the bits of dust as they appeared to be in perpetual flight. Of course there was no one there but this was now two cryptic notes less than 20 minutes apart in arrival and neither with a claimed author.

Mike was now off kilter and his stomach no longer knew the pang of hunger only the ill-ease of the unknown. It was clear his presence in Piedmont was no longer any kind of secret. On the clean side of the bed and from under the still fluffy pillow Mike retrieved a Beretta 84FS Cheetah .380 auto pistol and tucked it into the discreet holster in the pocket of his grey Hugo Boss trousers. He had hoped this might be a real vacation but it was now looking more like business as usual.

A shootout in the breakfast room of his favorite B&B in Italy was not exactly how he intended to start his morning, but he figured if its going down, let's get this shit over with.

Mike, much more at ease with a task in mind rather than the consideration of his own inequities calmly strolled down the two flights of steps to the breakfast room below. It was always nerdy to walk down the stairs with ones hands in his pockets he thought as his shoulders tugged his lanky body forward down each run of the staircase with his hands battened to the inside of his trousers and gripping the weapon confidently.

As Mike entered the classic Italian breakfast room he was surprised and relieved to see that the room was not empty as he had expected, but bustling with hotel staff and 3 tables of guests.

Table 1 was a mother, daughter, and two small puppies in very tacky sweaters. Clearly NE USA Mike thought. Table 2 was the ubiquitous German family of 4, Dad was pushing 50 with a reddish-brown mustache, a look of human disdain, and always the fucking orange juice and poached egg. The Mom was just about as ugly a woman as Mike had seen in sometime with cankles that actually pushed the walls of her shoes like rampant botulism in a 7 year-old tin can of Okra. The children were younger than one might expect from parents of this age, but Germans are often over 40 before embracing parenthood.

Of course it was a boy and a girl Mike thought smugly as he considered their khaki pants and brightly colored hiking shirts. He was convinced if there had been a shootout that it would have been the most extraordinary thing that Hansel and Gretel here would witness before retiring to a matratzenlager in some hut in the alps 60 years from now.

The room was rectangular with paned glass doors and windows on 3 sides. On the fourth wall was the entrance to the hotel, the breakfast buffet (sprawling), and the entry to the kitchen. Adjacent to the kitchen entrance were 2 Savoy doors leading out to the courtyard and ultimately the vineyards and car park. There was a small table set for two facing these doors, and at the table a youthful female with chestnut hair sat, sipping a cappuccino and gazing out into the breaking fog.

Here we go, Mike thought as he unconsciously hissed at 1 of the dogs in a sweater and made his way along the buffet towards the lone female. Sensing danger was not imminent he could not help but grab a very sexy looking triangle of Robiola di Capra Castagna and pop a small morsel of the cheese in his mouth. The taste of the 3 milk cheese stopped him in his tracks for at least 5 full seconds as the salty bite of lactic brilliance unfurled and laid bare its milky breasts before Mike's discerning palate. Mike, let loose an audible, "oh God" as he pushed his tongue to the roof of his mouth to force-press the salinity deeper into his taste buds.

The young woman recognized Mike's voice immediately, left her fix on the outdoors, turned around and said, "Dad?"

...to be continued

The Grape Harvest - Part 2 (Travel Fiction)

Mike looked over the note one final time. Was it Mary, the American who works for the winery? Who even knows he was here besides his agent and the villa staff? He was hungry so he was just going to have to find out. The mirror called to him one last time and he decided that the black V-Neck masked his cheese belly better than the light grey sweater he was wearing. He changed quickly and rubbed his hands down across his abdomen hoping he might smooth away a bit of the curd that had developed along his midsection.

Mike had always been lean and with a high metabolism. It was only recently that his drinking had begun to breakdown the muscle along his core and give his belly button a 270 degree look at the world. Belly buttons are not to be noticed he thought as he took in the largest breath of air he could manage while thrusting his shoulders back. He wanted to gaze a final time in the mirror before exiting the safety of his room, for what awaited him at breakfast.

Only moments before the note arrived, his entire life's ambition had been to devour unpasteurized cheese. Now just like every other time in his life it seemed, someone wanted his attention and that was suddenly the only thing that mattered. If this was some kind of joke Mike would be livid but in reality he knew he would be faking his anger because the truth was he did not want anyone to be there; other than cheese, salumi, and solitude. If the joke would be intended to give him a hard time for the way in which he insisted on anonymity with the hotel it would be a short-lived gaffe because if no one was there it would indeed be better than if someone was. Mike was now predicting, rationalizing, and imagining, which under normal circumstances serves an author well. On this occasion it was fear of seeing someone he did not want to that fueled his latent mania.

The door handle was just at his reach when he decided his hair needed water and that there was a potential flake of dry skin on the shoulder of his black V-Neck. Fucking skin of an elephant he thought as he stripped off the shirt and stood transfixed on the space where his right pectoral muscle met his underarm. Why can I not tone this fucking spot anymore? He thought as he pushed at the reasonable mass of muscle and the slightest amount of fat.

Mike turned on the hot water and stood picking remnant sleep from his left eye as the water heated. He always had an enormous amount of sleep on his lashes that seemed to multiply in the first 20 minutes of being awake. Today was no different and frustrated he grabbed the wash cloth again and rubbed hard at his eyes before looking back at the wispy lashes that used to be full and beautiful. After years of this ritual the lashes could no longer manage to grow at the pace in which Mike destroyed them with violent wipes across his brow each day and the incessant picking that accompanied his hours in the desk chair.

This is why he was here. Italy was a unique routine and place he could escape from the banal of his day-to-day life. However, over the years as Italy has adopted more and more of the comforts of America Mike's habits have followed him. Now, even his phone worked in Europe and the cost was so low it made no sense to turn it off. Even vineyards have Wi-Fi so he had been awakened this morning before dawn by a Facebook birthday reminder for a "friend" he had never met and didn't even like.

In this remodeled 16th century villa the floors were warm, the ceilings were high, and the desk staff spoke better English than Mike spoke Italian. He had thought of going to Vietnam to write this year but the humidity and the heat made him drink too much coffee and enjoy too many massages. The pink whelps on his back from his last Vietnamese massage remained visible and tactile for almost a month.

He wanted to be in Asia but they did not have unpasteurized cheese and they sure did not have Barolo. At the end of the day, the kind of drinking that Mike did was special. He liked to drink and loved to smoke but certainly did not enjoy paying for either. If he had to pay it was Ruche all the way and smoke was an option he could ignore because the price per gram exceeded his enjoyment of the herb.

After his eyes Mike ran the wash-cloth under his armpits pulling at the bits of curdled antiperspirant and tearing at a few hairs in the process. The little sting of pain was a morning reminder why he preferred to keep his pits shaved but could not in Italy as the 220 volt converters always burned out the motors on his electric groomers and he was just too lazy to use a razor there. At least he could still suspend one domestic habit. Mike always became a little aroused when grooming, because the transformation to beautiful was like the final touches on a sculpture of his own body. Yes, he was a little heavier than he wanted but he knew, when he could be rational, that he was much more tone than most men his age. Yet, hearing it from a voice of reason was not nearly so satisfying as hearing it from a woman.

It was time to go downstairs as he slid the V-Neck back over his head and adjusted   the fit on his shoulders to accentuate their maximum width. Mike loved V-Necks because a shirt collar touching his carotid artery and Adam's apple felt like breathing into a plastic sandwich bag. While his constant need to tug and pull at the fabric around his neck usually ruined shirts in about 3 wears.

As the shirt came to fit over his chest Mike pulled it down sharply to accentuate its length. Then he brushed at his shoulders and all the way down his shoulder blades with his left arm. His right arm was so stiff from use that it never served much of a purpose for dusting, scratching, or inspection of blotchy skin on the back. Now, he thought to himself, I am where I need to be to meet this mystery suitor.

Mike pondered the full bottle of Vera Wang for Men sitting in his travel bag. As much as he wanted to make an impression on his breakfast date be it male or female, he simply could not break with tradition and wear cologne on a day he would be wine tasting. It simply was not done, and while Mike secretly hoped he would find himself ensconced in some carnal cocoon later that day he was not willing to sacrifice the aromatics of one of the world's great wines for the sake of applied pheromones.

After so much mirror time Mike was concerned there would not be enough time to return to the room after breakfast and evacuate his bowels before his first scheduled tasting. Mike simply could not function in a state of relaxation and good humor with a full colon and his defecation strategy was now seriously jeopardized by the arrival of the mystery letter.

Although the need to release could be perceived as funny, Mike was always discreet about his private time because he knew deep down it was better to be the teller of a joke than the subject of one.

...to be continued.