Malbec, he thought drunkenly, staring blankly at the label sitting on the center of the table, his mind unspooling like coarse thread. Malbec was an interesting word. He didn’t think it was very good wine, but he wasn’t going to hold that against the varietal. He wasn’t even sure that he knew a good wine from a bad, but this one tasted too much like raisins for him to enjoy it much, though that hadn’t stopped him from drinking it. Was it a place, he wondered? A word in French? Somehow it didn’t sound very French, to him, but wasn’t that where all wine came from, originally? The walk up the hill had been short, but it had taken them a long time to climb up and come back, with Emily walking so close to him, brushing her hand against his, holding on to his arm so that it pressed against her chest, smiling at him invitingly from the soft shadows beneath the tall, spindly trees that crowned the hill, her skin luminous in the radiant moonlight. His head had been spinning even before he had two glasses of wine.
