Wine and Fame

They babysitter greets us, hands off the kid. Leaves.

“Lily, this is Aspen.” Lily, a blonde toddler with wide eyes and a tiny nose, lifts her arms up—she wants Collin to pick her up. He does. “She’s being shy.”

“Hi, Lily,” I say. I make a smile. She looks at her daddy.

“You like a drink?” Collin says, walking upstairs with Lily. “White wine in the fridge, help yourself.”

I wander the floor—this is a large house. A colonial, but the furniture is modern. The dining room holds a blue-glass table—all glass, even the legs. Glass sheets extend from the kitchen walls, also translucent blue, in lieu of countertops. The walls are white stone, no pictures or outlets; the whole interior is white and frosted blue, stone and glass.

I find the living room—instead of a couch, three ball-chairs—and turn on the TV, a bathtub-sized flatscreen. Local news: posters on the Cal campus, down Telegraph Avenue. Pinned and piled over Berkeley.

“Find the wine, honey?” Collin stands behind my ball-chair. My crotch throbs.

“Where’s your wife?”

He sits down. “She’s in Russia.”

“I couldn’t find the wine.”

“It’s there.” I expect him to get up, go get it. He’s looking at me. I get up.

“It’s in the fridge door,” he says to my back.

I hear the words Basecamp Berkeley—he knows?—and, wine in hand, run back. “What?”

“Didn’t say anything, honey.”

My legs feel weak—overtired and excited. “Sorry.”

“You forgot glasses.”

I sit back down. “Your babysitter saw me. She didn’t look surprised.” I hear it again—a man’s voice: Basecamp Berkeley. The news! Collin is up, gone, getting glasses.

Posters all over Berkeley: Boycott the blasphemous Basecamp Berkeley Blogspot. No, Buy-cott. Crazy. Somebody hates me. The posters are incoherent.

Collin’s returned, has poured the wine. “Honey?”