Blush

by Jamie Brenner

If the winery was Leonard’s achievement, the house was her own success story.

After saying some hellos and agreeing to a few selfies—heavens, how she hated that cultural development—she

“You’re not a finance guy, you’re not a winemaker, you’re not a salesperson. What exactly do you do, Asher?”

“Yeah, I’m realizing that. I’m an adult, and this one is making me blush.”

They both had been obsessively following every bit of news about Princess Diana (whom they both still called “Lady Di”) and both agreed her wedding gown was a bit busy.

She couldn’t have it all. Life, especially midlife, was all about understanding that.

He’d never once asked about Bailey’s Blue beyond a cursory “How’s that little store of yours?” As if she were selling trinkets. Never mind that cheese was arguably as complex as wine. That maintaining a business in New York City was one of the biggest retail challenges imaginable. That she was as knowledgeable in her field as he was in his own.

“The first cheese on the board is Kunik, one of my favorites. I tell my students it’s a gateway cheese—even people who have only enjoyed American cheese before my class fall in love with Kunik and become more adventurous. It’s a mixed-milk cheese, just so buttery and decadent. I’ve paired it with the Viognier to balance it out with some acidity.”

“Next we have the Castelrosso. It’s an Italian cheese from the Piedmont region. You’ll see that the cream line is visible, and it will progress as the cheese ages,” Leah said.

“Finally,” Leah said, gesturing to the third cheese on her plate. “Classic cheddar. This particular one is Stockinghall, named after a building at Cornell University. I’ve paired it with our Merlot.”

Sadie felt a flicker of concern, but only briefly; it couldn’t compete with her own self-absorption.

“There’s a time in every relationship when one or the other person is dissatisfied,” Vivian said. “The key to a lasting marriage is that the desire to end it never occurs to both parties at the same time.”

For the Sauvignon Blanc, we’re going with the like-with-like: Capri, a pasteurized goat’s milk cheese from Massachusetts.

Barely out of her teens, she had traded her ornamental existence in Manhattan for the promise of something more meaningful with Leonard on Long Island, only to be relegated to ornament once again.

“Italo Calvino, in The Uses of Literature, said: ‘A classic is a book that has never finished what it has to say.’”

“And one cheats oneself, as a human being, if one has respect only for the style of high culture, whatever else one may do or feel on the sly.”

Leonard rolled his eyes. “I’m supposed to tell people to go online to look at videos of my son’s fiancée in a bathing suit?” “Exactly! Thanks,” Bridget said.

There might have been no setting on earth more perfect for social media than a vineyard: