GFreihalter via Wikimedia Commons; modified
for canon chapters, see Table of Contents
Cedric had never drank wine—and now witness to the time it had taken him to recover, he was sure he never wanted to drink it again.
On Monday morning he was bound for a desolate patch of wilderness at the northernmost point of Manhattan. Thirty-five hours remained to satisfy the requirements of his “conditional discharge” and be rid of the mark against his record.
Picking up broken syringes and cigarette butts was decidedly unglamorous. But when he freed bushes from tangled plastic and wire, he hoped their leaves would again get green in the Sun.
Though he presently strode into a new week, his mind wandered. He thought back to Davian’s townhouse in the West Village. With Myrtle as the third, they had dined at Davian’s table last Friday. His stomach had since shrunken; over the weekend he’d managed to choke down only scraps of food, the little he could before his innards begged him to stop.
Myrtle had come to him Saturday, after he’d missed breakfast and lunch. ‘Tannins,’ she’d blamed, as if knowledge could cure nausea. ‘You must drink water.’
But the recollection faded.
Cedric had left the foundling home in the early hours, as he had done every morning he was required to show at Inwood for community service.
Before he’d arrived in New York City, he’d never dreamt that people sold food on the streets. Most of the carts were small and otherwise immobile; they’d been hitched to the backs of pick-up trucks. The men always came to the same place.
A vendor was unloading a box of pastries from the passenger seat of his vehicle. “It’s you,” he said, seeing Cedric. “Hi, g’morning—”
The man was neither fat nor thin, and his white t-shirt suggested he was not yet fully dressed. He made eye contact with Cedric briefly as he passed between the truck and the cart. “Sorry, traffic—late, very late.”
“It’s fine,” Cedric said, spotting cans hidden beneath a fresh blanket of ice.
He’d never heard of tannins, but as he looked backward, he considered Myrtle’s excuse.
Had it been the wine, or the man who’d uncorked the bottle? What business did Cedric have drinking such stuff? Despite Davian’s lecture, he still didn’t know the difference between Burgundy and Bordeaux and he wasn’t sure he gave a damn about which was favored by Napoleon.
Davian’s hospitality had made him feel a stranger. The vegetables hadn’t come diced from the freezer. Napkins of cloth were intended to lie upon the lap. And he didn’t have a clue how he was supposed to eat with a fork on the left.
“What’d you want today?” the man asked, now towering over Cedric by way of the cart.
Cedric clambered back into reality. “Egg sandwich with cheese is fine, thanks.”
“Salt-pepper-ketchup?” He’d donned a black apron.
“Uh...” Cedric said, parsing through the composite word. “No, that’s OK; thank you.”
Davian was not ashamed of his privilege; he flaunted it. The few times Cedric had met the man, he couldn’t escape silken neckties and jeweled cufflinks. He drove a car too bold for Bond: painted gaudy indigo and flecked with quartz. And when he was amused by his own jokes, he flashed a set of impossibly straight, impeccably white teeth.
“Coffee?” the vendor asked while he lifted scrambled egg from the griddle.
“Yeah,” Cedric replied. “I’ll take a small coffee: milk please, no sugar.”
“D’you ever try honey?”
Cedric looked up and through the window, somewhat skeptical. “Honey—in coffee?”
“It’s how we like it,” the man said, placing a lid atop the steaming cup.
Cedric protested mildly. “I don’t usually like it sweet...”
“Maybe you try next time. S’good. Three dollars.”
Cedric slid his crumpled bills over the counter and remembered the decanter of wine like dust and flowers. Davian was a show-off and a braggart and he rarely stopped talking. Maybe it was part habit, and part custom. The wealthy were rarely wise.
Davian had stood to carve the chicken. And he’d raised his glass to offer a toast. But the elevation was a desperate façade: he had been on his knees the entire time.
Davian was trying to win him over.