HOLLY
A few days later, it is early evening, and I am at our dining room table with Jessie and Nat, pouring a flight of wines for us to taste. Nat has a pad of paper in front of her (how retro!) and has just crossed off another suggestion from her list. “Okay, Holly’s idea, ‘Once Upon a Wine,’ is out, as is ‘The Vintage Point.’” Nat looks over at Jessie as she continues, “You also killed my idea, ‘Que Syrah, Syrah.’”
“Because we’re not serving only one type of wine,” Jessie pipes up defensively.
“Which is the same reason you didn’t like ‘Don’t Get Me a Cab,’” Nat says as she crosses out another line on her page.
“No, I just found that one to be a passive-aggressive snipe about my taste in wine.”
“I don’t think it was passive…” I think aloud.
Nat continues reading from the elimination round. “Holly made a face at ‘Wined-up Dolls.’ And ‘It’s Ireland Somewhere’ doesn’t even make sense—they don’t make wine in Ireland. Next.”
My face lights up, “How about ‘Corkscrewed’?”
“We are not putting the word ‘screwed’ in the name of our bar,” Jessie tells me firmly.
“Why not? People will want to go there either because they already feel that way…”
“Too dark…” Nat says, shaking her head.
“Or they want to get—”
Jessie shuts me down with, “I’ll give you a thousand dollars not to finish that thought.”
I shrug, finish pouring a Meritage from the Central Coast of California, then watch quietly as Nat and Jessie take a minute to stare into space with writer’s block. We’ve been working on the name of the bar since the day we bought the place. So far, we could have started each morning with a pitcher of margaritas and a TV remote ready to hit “Play Next Episode” twelve times in a row, and been at the same place we are now with the name.
Some days the Muse not only refuses to visit, she texts you to say she went to Cabo for the week.
Dead silence in the apartment. I separate my index and middle fingers into a V, press down on the bottom of the wineglass of a relatively young Pinot Noir from Oregon, swirl the glass a few times, and stick my nose in the bowl, giving myself something to do while I rack my brain for more ideas.
“‘Pinot envy’?” I ask, raising my voice an octave at the end.
Nat winces. She absentmindedly runs her fingers through her shiny, dark brunette pixie cut as she stares off into space, thinking.
I realize I am absentmindedly twirling my own long straight hair.
I take a sip of the Pinot. “This one needs a few minutes to breathe.”
Nat sniffs it. “That one needs a bottle of orange juice and some brandy, fruit, and ice cubes.”
Jessie eventually snaps her fingers. “Oh. How about ‘A Clean, Well-Lighted Place’?”
“You want to name the bar after a short story about the inevitability of death?” Nat asks, mildly horrified. “Why don’t we just call it ‘We’re All Gonna Die. Everybody Drink’?”
Jessie’s eyes widen. “Wait. That’s what that story’s about?”
“Yeah. Remember, the old man sits in a corner by himself getting drunk, and the young waiter with the hot wife waiting for him at home just wants to call it a night, and the middle-aged guy is all pensive because he knows he’ll be the old man one day.”
Jessie looks crestfallen. “Crap. How depressing. See, this is why we shouldn’t read the classics at sixteen. No one should take AP English until they’re thirty. How about ‘Grapes of Wrath’?”
Nat narrows her eyes at her. “Honestly, would you ever go into a bar with the word ‘wrath’ in its name?”
“I would before I’d go to one with ‘screwed’ in its name,” Jessie counters. “‘Grape Expectations’?”
“Do you want to know what that book’s about?” Nat asks in an almost threatening tone.
“I’m gonna say no,” Jessie answers tentatively. “‘Waiting for Merlot’?”
“I am seriously going to make you take an English class,” Nat threatens.
Jessie shrugs her shoulders sheepishly, then takes a sip of one of the reds. “This one’s good. We should definitely have it on the menu on opening night.”
Nat barely suppresses an eye roll. “A Bordeaux. How original.”
“Don’t give me that look. At least I’ve moved on from Cabernet Sauvignon,” Jessie announces proudly.
Nat sighs. “That particular Bordeaux is made from almost fifty percent Cabernet Sauvignon grapes.” She points to a different glass of red. “Try that one. It’s a Carménère from Chile.”
Jessie sniffs it and makes a face. “It smells like cigarettes.”
“Tobacco,” Nat tells her. “Nicely done. What you’re smelling are notes of leather and tobacco. Now take a sip.”
Jessie moves her glass up to sip, then promptly does a spit take back into her glass. “Ewww!” she exclaims, then grabs a napkin, sticks out her tongue, and scrubs. “Why on earth would someone want to drink tobacco?!”
“For the same reason you might want to taste cow dung. Because it shows you have a sophisticated palate.”
Jessie stops her tongue scrubbing just long enough to snap, “So there are people out there drinking wines tasting like poop to be sophisticated? I call that bullshit.”
“Cow dung,” Nat corrects.
“It’s still on my taste buds,” Jessie howls, grabbing a flute with a small amount of sparkling wine in it, gargling with it to kill the taste, then spitting it in the cardboard spit cup in the center of our table. Jess looks over to me. “Holly, help me out here. Can we agree not to put any wines with cow dung notes on our menu?”
I shake my head. “Are you kidding? A lot of Burgundy lovers like the complexity that it adds, and at over a hundred dollars a bottle, I like the extra tip it adds.”
“Wait. You guys are not seriously telling me we’re going to serve a wine that tastes like cow dung, are you?”
“It’s your third wineglass from the right,” Nat tells her. “Wholesales for thirty-six dollars a bottle, we’re charging twenty-eight a glass.”
“Ka-ching!” I say happily as Jessie takes her third-from-the-right wine stem, gingerly dips her nose into the center of the bowl, and cautiously takes a whiff. She eyes Nat. “I’ll admit I don’t smell poop.” She dips her nose farther into the glass. “But I’m not smelling anything fun in here either.”
“It’s not your thing—that’s totally fine,” Nat says. “There’s no right or wrong wine to love. Everyone’s taste is different, and that’s a good thing. It’s like men: If we all wanted the Jared Letos, the Ryan Reynoldses, and the Idris Elbas would wither on the vine, and that would be a shame.” She pushes a glass of white in front of Jessie. “How about his one?”
Jessie leans in and sniffs. Her face lights up. “Oh, now, see, this one smells like bubble bath.”
“That’s a Triennes Viognier from France, and what you’re getting there is a combination of honeysuckle, orange blossoms, and flowers.”
“Huh,” Jessie murmurs. “Turns out I like white wine too. Okay, more ideas for names. Go!”
“‘Something Fabulous’?” I throw out.
Nat juts her chin back and forth quickly, debating. “It’s like, it’s good, but not great. I’ll date that name, but I won’t marry it.”
“Oh! ‘Nice Stems’?” Jessie suggests.
Nat begins doodling a flower on her pad. “We’re a wine bar, not a florist. ‘Hollywood and Wine’?”
“We’re in Echo Park, not Hollywood,” I point out.
And we’re back to thinking. I take my small pour of Viognier and head over to our living room window. It’s almost 7:05. Time for my nightly peek at perfection. I pull the curtains back slightly to make sure he’s not home yet.
I sniff the white Jessie likes. It’s okay—smells a bit too flowery for me. But, like Nat says, we can’t all like the Jared Letos. My tastes these days run more toward the Chris Hemsworths of the world.
“‘Love the Wine You’re With,’” Jessie suggests quickly.
Nat eyes her dubiously. “Like the Crosby, Stills, and Nash song? What are we? Seventy?”
“No. Like when you come here, we will find you the wine you will love. The wine that you’ve been searching for, dreaming about. Your wine soul mate. You might not like the wine everyone’s drinking this month, the Jared Leto wine, if you will, and that’s okay. When you come to our bar, we will introduce you to the wine you love, your Justin Trudeau wine, or even your Chris Hardwick wine, and you’ll love the wine you’re with.”
Nat makes a face, “Justin … the Canadian prime minister?”
“What? He’s hot.”
“I suppose. Anyway, what you’re saying is the opposite of loving the wine you’re with: It’s being introduced to the perfect wine. The winning wine—like the winning guy. Oh! How about ‘FTW: For the Wine’?!”
Jessie mulls it over in her mind. “I don’t hate it,” she says cautiously, then turns to me. “Holly, what do you think?”
I look out the window. Still nothing. Maybe he got a last-minute modeling gig that ran late.
I turn to Jessie and pout. “I think that you are so fucking lucky to have a great guy like Kevin, who is a decent human being and loves you more than anything in the world and takes you to the opera, even though he can’t stand it, and who knows to buy you cookie dough ice cream, and makes you breakfast in bed on Sundays.”
Nat points to Jessie and deadpans, “Or we could go with Holly’s suggestion. Maybe shorten it to ‘Cookie Dough Ice Cream.’”
“I’m sorry,” I exclaim in exasperation, “but Kevin’s amazing, yet you’re barely talking to him right now just because he was scared of commitment, which most men are. You don’t even get how lucky you are and the world is so unfair and when is it my turn to be loved?!”
Jessie seems at a loss for words. She stammers a bit, “I told you … after he left town, he called me and we made up.”
I eye her suspiciously. “Actually, your exact words were, ‘We pretty much made up,’ which really means, ‘Yeah, I say he’s my boyfriend, but I’m still pissed, and now, subconsciously, I’m looking. Whether I’ll admit it to myself or not.’ It’s like the opposite of when Nat tells us she’ll never see Marc again: We know subconsciously she’s not looking, which means she’ll see him over and over until someone new shows up unannounced.”
Nat rubs the bridge of her nose, silently wincing at my indiscretion as Jessie’s jaw drops. “You didn’t break up?”
“Yes, we did,” Nat tells her conclusively.
Jessie frowns and asks in an accusatory tone, “Last month?”
Nat shrugs and grabs a glass of wine to hide her face behind. “I may have had a minor slip-up. Hardly worth mentioning.”
Not deterred from my rant, I tell Jessie bitterly, “To paraphrase Paul Newman, it’s like you have filet mignon at home, and even Nat has a fast-food hamburger out. I don’t even have a juice cleanse to look forward to in my life.”
Nat turns to me. “You’re not by the window waiting for that guy to come home from work and get his mail, are you? Because if so, that’s creepy.”
“Not nearly as creepy as what I’m going to dream about him doing to me tonight,” I confess. “Oh, wait! Here he comes!” I immediately throw myself down on the couch in splayed position so that he can’t see me through the window.
“That does it,” Nat decrees, pushing her chair away from the table and standing up. “This ends today.”
“Sounds like the tagline from a bad action movie,” Jessie says as Nat marches to our front door in determination.
I panic as Nat opens the door. “Wait! What are you going to do?”
But Nat’s out the door before she answers.
I quickly run out the door. “Nat!”
“Holly, I just need to check my mail before we head out on that double date,” she says to me a little too loudly, then she flashes her mail key for me and Hot Neighbor Guy to see.
Oh, my God. He’s right there. He’s standing there, less than five feet from us. Nat, please don’t say anything. Please, please, please …
She does. “Hey. You must be the new neighbor. I’m Nat. This is my roommate Holly.”
Adonis puts out his hand to shake Nat’s hand as I scoot in behind her. “Nice to meet you. I’m Sven.”
Like he couldn’t be more perfect—he has an accent too! It’s … actually I have no idea what it is. I just know it’s hot.
“Sven?” I repeat, mentally filing that information away for Google later. “You seemed more like a … Lars?”
Nat turns her head to me slowly and widens her eyes at me so wide she looks a girl from a Margaret Keane painting.
Sven smiles, clearly not sure what to make of me. “No, it’s Sven. I’m from Sweden.”
“Sweden. See, I would have guessed Norway,” I say.
Nat shakes her head ever so slightly at me to signal: For the love of God, stop talking. Then she turns back to Sven. “Did you grow up in Sweden?”
“Just until I was ten. I was born in Gothenburg,” Sven tells her, pronouncing Gothenburg the way we would pronounce it here.
Nat beams happily as she exclaims, “Yeutebory.”
Sven is visibly surprised. “Du talar Svenska?”
“Nej,” Nat answers, then switches to English. “But I can pronounce pretty much every major city in Europe. I need to for my job.”
“Oh, What do you do?” Sven asks, clearly interested.
“I’m a … was a … game show writer for Million Dollar Genius!”
“Really? I love that show. I used to watch the British version when I lived in London. Is it true that they tell the contestants what types of questions to expect ahead of time?”
“No, no. That was made illegal in the 1960s. Sadly, the guy who knows the name of the dog from GTA really doesn’t have a life.”
“Chop!” I answer proudly.
Sven seems intrigued. “I’m sorry. What?”
“The dog from Grand Theft Auto,” I answer. Then I add, “I don’t really have a life.”
Good, Holly. Tell the man you’re in lust with that you don’t have a life. Really sell it.
Nat takes pity on me and turns to Sven. “She’s kidding. Holly leads an incredible life. Did you ever watch CSI: Seattle?”
“Yeah … a couple times.”
“Holly played Veronica on that show.”
Sven’s face lights up in recognition. “Were you the tattooed computer prodigy?”
“Yes,” I say, my mind bursting with the thought: He knows me. Wheeeeeee!!!!! “But I would never have a tattoo in real life. That would be ugly. Like putting a bumper sticker on a … Unless you have one, in which case I’m sure it looks sexy as fu—”
“Holly…” Nat interrupts me loudly.
I catch myself. “Sorry. Are you a model?”
Sven smiles. And maybe blushes a little? “Um, no. I’m a computer programmer. Well, that’s an oversimplification. I write code for computers that are used both for American as well as European companies. It’s very dull, compared to what you do. So what else would I have seen you in?”
“A bar,” I answer truthfully.
At this, Nat laughs. “She’s kidding,” she tells him as she walks behind me and grabs both of my shoulders. “We own a wine bar that’s opening in Echo Park in a few weeks. Would you like to come to the grand opening? It’s on the twenty-seventh.”
“That sounds fun. I’d love to,” Sven answers sweetly as Nat pulls me away from him and leads me back toward our apartment.
“Perfect,” Nat says, continuing to haul me away. “I’ll slip an invitation under your door. You’re in Apartment 6, right? Erikson?”
“Yes. Sven Erikkson. Two k’s—the mailbox is misspelled.”
That’s why I couldn’t Google him! I think to myself as Nat continues to lead me away from my future conquest.
“Great,” Nat tells Sven as she pushes our front door farther open to make our escape. “Should we put you on the list as ‘Erikkson and guest’? Do you have a girlfriend? Or boyfriend?”
Brilliant. I could not love her more right now.
“No. It’s just me. Like I said, I just moved here,” Sven answers. “Do you want me to bring a coworker or something?”
“No, no. Just bring yourself,” I can hear Nat say behind me as she shoves me inside. I escape to the sanctuary of our living room.
“So nice to finally meet you. Have a great evening,” Nat tells Sven cheerfully, then practically slams the door shut, turns around, and falls into the door in exhaustion.
“How’d it go?” Jessie asks.
Nat appears pained as she asks Jessie, “You know how you have certain friends who are absolutely in-fucking-credible, and you have no idea why they’re still single?”
Jessie turns her chin to the left while keeping her eyes on Nat. “Yeeeeah.”
Nat shakes her head pityingly. “Holly’s not one of them.” She turns to me. “Wow.”
“I know…” I whine apologetically, letting my body drop onto the couch.
“I would have guessed Norway?” Nat continues.
“I short-circuited,” I admit in frustration. “What is wrong with me? Why can I not be myself around hot guys? I can be cool…”
“Apparently, you can’t,” Nat counters. “Like, on so many levels.”
I raise my index finger and point to Nat as I tell Jessie, “On the plus side, thanks to my awesome roommate, I now have a sort of date to the grand opening, not to mention a full name to research online: Sven Erikkson, two k’s, from Sweden. And for that, I am eternally grateful.”
Jessie looks up hopefully. “‘Eternally Grapeful’?”
Nat ignores the suggestion to ask me, “How on earth did women date before Google?”
“‘Who’s Drinking Gilbert Grape’?” Jessie presses on.
“I don’t know,” I answer, also ignoring Jessie. “You think they had to, like, listen to what the guy shared with them over dinner or something?”
Jessie, mentally exhausted, begins desperately suggesting names in rapid-fire. “‘Dinner Is Poured,’ ‘Wine Girls, ‘Wine Notes,’ Quit Your Whining,’ ‘Winenot?’ Snickers!”
“Snickers?” Nat repeats. “You want to name our place after a candy bar?”
“No, I’m getting snickers from both of you. If I were to name the bar after a candy, obviously it would be 3 Musketeers.”
Nat opens her mouth, but Jessie shuts her down before she can speak. “And don’t tell me what that’s really about, because no, I’ve never read it, and the only thing I know is the ‘All for Wine and Wine for All!’” And if you tell me they all die at the end, I’m just going to get upset and have to eat some Snickers.”
Nat shakes her head. “Seriously? Next time you get the urge to watch Bravo, promise me you’ll crack a book instead. The line is—”
“Wait,” I tell Nat. “I think Jessie just came up with our name.”
“I did?!” Jessie blurts out happily, her face glowing. “Oh, yay! Good for me! Which one was it? It wasn’t the Gilbert Grape one, was it? Because actually I hate that one.”
“‘All for Wine and Wine for All!’ No matter who you are, and what you like, we will find a wine for everyone.”
And, with that, we finally had our name.
Now all we needed to do was get the sign made, get it out on social media, finish redoing the ladies’ room, move in the rest of the furniture, teach those two how to use a cash register, and pick some wines for opening night.
And I had to Google Sven Erikkson. With two k’s.