The First Time I Met Suravi

Her face was unforgettable.  The rest of her being was just as indelible.  I first met Suravi Patel Livingstone in the heart of the Northern California Wine Country, during late Spring of 2010.  About to revisit my past, the future beckoned.  I couldn’t possibly have known that day my life would never be the same.

My dad had called, asking if I could come up for a couple of weeks from Southern California and help him sort some things out with the family winery business in Sonoma Valley.  Since Mom died, some of the things that she took care of were slipping, like the accounting, the web site and the marketing.  Because of my tech background, I often answered quick questions, or even did some programming for them.  But nowadays,  I had some sorting out of my own to do.

My own business had been floundering since the real estate bubble burst, and I needed a break.  My parents and I had talked about my projects over the years, but our perspectives were completely different.  Mom and Dad were in the wine business: physical, sensual and artistic.  I was in tech: cerebral, analytical, algorithms.  They had helped me through the collapse of my last company, not just consoling, but keeping the right attitude.

Always the good son, I drove up to Sonoma from Long Beach, and stayed at the house where I grew up, smack dab in the middle of the vineyards.  Oddly, it was a great place to be a kid.  I got to run amongst the grapevines, sampling immature grapes and making a sour face.  The crushing equipment and fermentation room were off limits unattended, but when Mom or Dad took me into the aging cellars, it was magic.  I remember the smells were so good: the burnt oak casks, the pungent yeast.  Even as a youngster, I appreciated the fine and ancient art of winemaking. 

It was good to be home, but odd.  Dad was getting on in years, and his decision-making process wasn’t as sharp as it used to be.  He was having more and more lapses as time went by, especially without Mom.  His wine newsletters had typos.  Checks weren’t being cashed.  Empty fermentation tanks lay on their sides unwashed.   I was glad to help out.  I owed him big time for a perfect childhood.

“Sorry to hear about your business problems, Chris,” Dad said after I arrived.  “It sounded like you had a great idea there.”

“Yeah,” I half-agreed, “it was.  I guess the timing for it wasn’t right, or the financing, or…”   I sighed.  “I guess the whole thing…we just couldn’t make it work.”

The early frost in the Northern California wine country that year had devastated the family business, too.  Thirty degrees at night for a week on those tiny little grape buds is a killer.  Mom and Dad lost half of their stock.  Not easy for a couple whose combined ages was approaching two centuries.  Then Mom died.

Dad said, “It’s kinda like the crop failures we had this year.  We think we know what happened, but not really.”

Dad and I were quiet for a few seconds.

“Damn.”

***

I had made arrangements to meet an old college chum at The Silverado Resort in nearby Napa after helping Dad for a few days.  The Silverado was an exquisite destination known for elegant service, impeccable dining, championship golf, and world-class croquet.  Croquet players at The Silverado are required to wear white, like Wimbledon.  I decided to go anyway.

I was sitting in the bar at Silverado’s chop house, The Grill, admiring the faux Italianate motif.  The entire resort had recently undergone a total, multi-million dollar remodel. They spared no expense.  They also raised the already exorbitant room rates and green fees.  It was almost tasteful without being too gaudy.

My college roommate, Al Ostrowski, and I had agreed to meet at The Grill.  Al was in San Francisco for a convention.  Big O had called me a few weeks earlier in Long Beach to let me know he was going to be in town.  I lived in Southern California.  He had a different definition of “in town.”  Then my dad called.  It all worked out.

Al was late for our lunch date, and seemed in a rush to leave once he got there.  He was now an executive with a big accounting firm in Chicago, and dressed formal-casual for a fancy bar: dark cranberry long-sleeved dress shirt with a polo player stitched above the left breast, powder blue cashmere sweater hanging nonchalantly around his shoulders, khaki slacks, cordovan loafers and no socks.  I figured he made in a year what I made in a lifetime. The Rolex on his wrist was a dead giveaway.  But I remembered Al was a really funny guy, and I liked him.

We were on our second drink.  Al was drinking Guinness Stout, and I was doing Baileys Irish Cream on the rocks.  “So, Chris, it’s been great catching up with you and all.”

I started to agree.

“…but I gotta run.  Stacey and I are going on a hot-air balloon ride in Calistoga in fifteen minutes.”

He was going to be late for that, too.

“So let’s do this again, huh?” Al said as he started to stand.

I stood up and reached out to shake his hand.  Al made a fist.  He wanted to do a fist bump.  As I made a fist, he stuck out his hand.  It was like “Rock, Paper, Scissors,” but dumber.  I finally slapped him on the back and said, “See ya, Al.  Give my best to Stacey.”

Al walked out of the bar looking down at his cell phone.

I sat back down, sighed, and looked for the waiter.  I needed another Baileys, quick.  Slumping back in the leather-wicker casbah chair after the waiter brought my new drink, I tried to think of nothing.

In the lobby, I noticed a tall, beautiful, exotic-looking woman with long, straight, black hair down to her waist, wandering among the other guests rushing to their rooms or the bar, whichever came first.  She had a lost smile on her face.  She was out of place, and exceptional.

I straightened up in my chair, and decided to go check things out in the parlor-motif-decorated lobby, leaving behind my beloved Baileys.  I casually sat on a big, round divan they used to have in the ’30s, like the one where Bogie tweaked the hired gun, played by Elisha Cook, Jr., in the hotel scene in “The Maltese Falcon”.   The slender, dark, alluring stranger I’d seen walking aimlessly was now sitting on the other side of the round divan, gazing at the bad artwork on the walls, the oversized flower arrangements in the giant Baccarat vases, and the cobalt and amber mosaic ceiling tiles.  Most of the other guests were checking their cell phones.

Off the lobby, god-awful music seeped out of the ballroom where a Stanford University reunion was being held.  A huge poster-board sign propped on a brass easel just outside the ballroom door announced the festivities to the foolish with promises of “reliving your treasured memories for nights to come!”

I risked a glance at my newfound friend.  She was wearing a long, red silk dress with a gold lamé sash around her waist.  Diamond stud earrings and a plain, gold link chain lay just below the neckline.  Shiny, black, medium-high heels balanced the gleam of her raven hair.  Simple, but elegant.  A name tag with the prominent Stanford crimson logo floated above the curve of her left breast.  I couldn’t read the name from where I was sitting, but I read her eyes as she noticed me staring.

Without blinking, I said, “How’s the reunion going?”

She studied me carefully.  Her expression seemed to focus.

“I walked in,” she said, “and got my name tag.  I looked around and decided I didn’t belong.”

I tried to look sympathetic.  It wasn’t hard.  Her slight, sweet accent spoke with such clarity.

“So I walked out.”

Listening to her, I wondered where she was from.  I noticed her tanned hands.  Long, slender fingers, short nails, shiny with no color.  And no wedding ring, either.

“And here you are,” I said.

Still keeping eye contact, she nodded once.  Her hair fell from behind her ear and covered her left eye.  She looked back at me and smiled through the strands.

“What about you?” she said softly.

I gave her the usual cop-out.  “Oh, not much to tell,” I said, while my fingers fidgeted.  I let my hands drop to my knees for safety.

I told her about my past, growing up nearby in Sonoma.  Sonomans always had an inferiority complex, like Avis always trying harder, or Chicago, The Second City.  They acted like the bastard child of the Northern California wine country, even with a crop of world-class winemakers and top-notch grapes.  Napa got the rave reviews.  We were tired of wine writers being “surprised” at the richness and quality of “this quaint Sonoma favorite.”  Ravenswood, for example, lived up to their “No Wimpy Wines” motto.

My family had been in the wine business for several generations, being ex-pats from Denmark in the late 1800s.  Prohibition was known as “The Difficult Years,” but the wine boom of the sixties and seventies propelled Mom and Dad to success in the industry.  By the time I was born in the early eighties, the California wine industry was maturing.  Highly cooperative family businesses were thriving.

I was telling her that I went to UC Davis as a freshman.

 “Let me guess,” she said, “Oenology 101, right?”

I blushed like a rosé.

“I didn’t belong,” I said.

She smiled.  “So, what do you do now?”

We sat and talked on the divan for what seemed like an hour while I bragged about my tech successes and skimmed over the failures.  It was easy to open up to her.  I barely missed my Baileys.

I watched her as she listened.  Her skin was flawless, the color of rich, strong espresso swirled with the perfect amount of cream, and a touch of cinnamon thrown in for zing.  I was mesmerized.

I was tired of talking about myself.  “And you?” I asked.

She explained that she had been a championship swimmer on a scholarship at Stanford, majored in computer science, minored in quantum physics, had been in a serious relationship (I noted the past tense) while going for her PhD.

“My father always wanted me to be a doctor,” she said with a slight smile.

I grinned back.  “Where are your parents?”

“Fiji,” she said with a wistful look.  Then she frowned.  “They didn’t like my husband.”

She explained she had a bad breakup shortly after graduating.  Her thesis was in artificial intelligence and his was in psychopathology.  Apples and oranges.  He didn’t get her; she didn’t get him.

The sunlight glinted off of one of her diamond earrings.  She leaned back and absent-mindedly touched her left lobe.

“I like your earrings,” I said. “They look like droplets of rainbows.”

She pulled her hand down and said, “They were a gift from…”

We sat quietly together for a minute.  She looked away from me for perhaps the first time during our extended conversation, toward the croquet courts, and swallowed hard.

She looked back at me.  “You’re so easy to talk with.”

“Thanks,” I said.  “You’re easy to listen to.”

She tilted her head back, tossed a fallen wisp of black hair back in place and laughed a throaty laugh.  I remember that laugh.  Practiced and natural at the same time.  Full of emotion.  Full of promise and hope.  My hope.

She glanced out the window and said, “Oh, my ride’s here.”

Damn!

“What’s your name?” I finally asked, as she started to gather up her things.

“Suravi.  Suravi Patel Livingstone.”

“Aha,” I said.  “Sounds like there’s another story there.”

We both got up, standing closer to each other than we had to.

“Yes, there is,” she said, reaching into her small purse and pulling out a red business card.  “What’s yours?”

“Christian.  Holst.  H-o-l-s-,” I said.

“Oh, I get it,” she said.  “Like the composer.”

I did a double-take as she handed me her card, our fingers touching for the first time.  It was like an electric shock.  I could feel the energy pulse through my body, causing my lungs to experience a sharp intake of breath.

She put the flat of her hand on my chest and looked at me as if to ask if I was all right.  She smiled, nodded, then turned and walked through the automatic door to the waiting driver.

As the lobby door hissed shut, I said “I’ll call you,” through the glass.  I realized I was standing with my nose pressed against the lobby window.

She stepped into the taxi, then looked back and waved at me with a big smile and closed the door.

The taxi pulled out of the curved Silverado Resort driveway.  As it passed through the large stone pillars with ornate, black, wrought iron gates, I saw her turn around and look through the back window at me.

Damn!