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Chapter 5
Hank
When Tim and Tom came home last night, I heard them laughing, teasing each other, occasionally roughhousing onto the floor. I sent them over with those jugs of apple wine expecting them to come right back, but apparently it turned into a dinner party with the new neighbors.
If I'd known, I would've gone over there myself and brought extra provisions. It seemed too weird to invite myself over, not even knowing who was going to be in the Geller house anyway.
Stan got their names from Charlie and I googled a little of their background. Turns out Anita and Earl are well respected nature documentary makers. From what I understand, she's the writer and the on-screen talent, and he does all of the camerawork and editing. It looks like a nice partnership. Kind of a dream come true for a lot of people, I suppose.
In one of their shorter films about monarch butterflies moving through Louisiana, there was a short sequence that featured a young woman. It's a sunlit, grassy swamp. The tassels on the ends of the tall green weeds sway back and forth in a breeze, with the sound of buzzing insects and frogs making a kind of intensely anxious soundtrack. The grasses move dramatically on the right side of the screen and then she appears, pushing her way through. As she disturbs the tall weeds, a thousand monarch butterflies take flight all at once. She stares up at them as they flutter through her hair and disturb the edges of her dress, her expression full of delight and wonder.
When I saw the video, I was transfixed and played that part over and over again. Something about her eager charm, her willingness to trudge through a swamp in order to be overwhelmed by pretty insects seemed so strange, so feral.
But I never really expected her to look like this.
Charlie tried to warn me. We stood in the kitchen piling food onto platters as he peeked through the door into the dining room. He said she was gorgeous. He promised I was going to like her. I didn't believe him.
But just look at her.
Stan’s covering her hand with his giant paw, and she hasn't pulled her hand away yet. Tim and Tom are practically licking their chops, and she hasn't punched either one of them in the face yet. She's totally unafraid. Willing, even.
Is that possible? Could she just fall into our laps like that?
She glances up at me, and I have to look away. It’s like a lightning strike, that bright blue flash of her eyes. Stan wants to know right away. He wants to pressure her. Tim and Tom just blurted it right out: would she flirt with all five of us. Just like that! They just laid it all out there.
Nice romance, guys. Real nice.
But she hasn’t run screaming from the room, and that’s a fact. I want to look at her, to see if I can tell what she's thinking. But I'm afraid she's going to look back at me. I'm not really sure I can handle it all just yet. I need to give it a minute to settle.
“So… that wine. It’s delicious,” she finally says, breaking the silence again. “You make all of that here?”
“Every drop,” Stan nods. “Well… for now. Charlie has some big ideas about taking us international. Expanding our options.”
“Seriously?” she asks, fluttering her eyelashes charmingly. “International? Like where?”
Charlie inflates with pride. If there's one thing he likes doing, it's explaining his grand vision for our stuff. You would think he was the Steve Jobs of the apple juice world. It’s a little over the top, if you ask me.
“Yeah, we’re totally serious,” Charlie brags. “We have been working this farm for about a hundred years. No pesticides, all natural by tradition. When all the millennials suddenly wanted everything organic, we were already set. We got big. Really big. Then we started making that apple wine…”
“Delicious,” she sighs, her cheeks going pink with the memory. Is it just me, or is she practically reliving it?
“Well, I sure am glad you think so,” Charlie continues. “We’ve got some people in Europe who seem to think the same way. We could go to Portugal, France, there's a few options. Bavaria…”
“I think Bavaria is not a country,” she remarks with a pretty little scowl. Her fair eyebrows bunch up just slightly in the middle as she concentrates, apparently laying out an imaginary map of Europe in her mind. “It's a region, right? In Germany? Like over by Czechoslovakia or something like that?”
“Yeah… that’s where our family came from, originally. It's actually a lot like this part of Pennsylvania. We could use everything we learned here, over there. I even have the farmstead picked out. I could show you sometime —”
“Oh, God, please don't!” Tim barks, rolling his eyes dramatically. “Seriously, Vanessa, if you let him go on like this he's going to drag out a PowerPoint presentation and everything. Please, I beg of you, don't!”
She smiles broadly, her cheeks dimpling in the middle of those sweet, round mounds. She looks so soft, I want to run my palms over that velvety skin.
“Nobody does PowerPoint anymore,” Charlie sulks.
“Well, you can show it to me later, maybe? I love hearing about far off places. My parents were always telling me to pack everything up to go someplace new. We basically went wherever the story would take us, mom always says.”
“That's pretty unusual,” Charlie remarks. “Do you like it? Moving around so much?”
She taps the side of her plate with the tip of her fork distractedly, shrugging one shoulder. The fabric of her dress slips down slightly and I see the ridge of her collarbone.
