The Wine Guy

Every time my dad would walk into the store to get a bottle of wine from his storage locker the wine guy was there.  He ran the place.  He had a sweet and very petite wife who insisted on offering me candy every time I went there even though I never once said yes.  The wine had to stay cold, so everything was cold.  I started where my Campbell Hall School sweatshirt.  The walls were covered in bits of wine boxers with unfamiliar French labels and dating back to the early 1800's.  The wine guy sat at very professional oak desk stained dark brown.  He had a leather chair with a high back that he would lean back in to observe things from a more enlightened prospective.  To me his was born with gray hair and winkles around his mouth.  He looked serious and like an elderly nine to five until I realized that every time I came in he was playing card on his computer.  He taught me poker first and then tried to teach me hearts.  I would sit with him, waiting for my father, in a round flower-print stool chair with my sweatshirt tucked under my knees.  Everything he said seemed to have twice the meaning both from his age and his deep cigarette voice.  Often I would watch him: his movement, expressions, and gestures.  His eyes would fix on something and he would stroke at his face.  Not just his chin, but his forehead and brow as if his were trying to smooth out the wrinkles sneaking in from the corners.  Always a serious and professional expression, occasional amusement, but I don't think I even say him smile.  In fifth grade, before Dylan's mom died and before my first kiss from a boy at summer camp, my mom halted me in the kitchen.  She looked the real kind of serious that I have rarely even seen her.  I was pressed against the white-tiled kitchen counter and her words seem to echo throughout the room.  After she told me he died, she got to the scary part.  After loosing quite a bit of money and apparently feeling depressed for a very long time, he decided to blow his brains out.  Tomorrow when I go to get a glass of orange juice from the kitchen my dad will make some comment about how my school is torture and then he'll say 'just shoot me' while using his thumb and pointer finger to make a gun that he has go of in his temple.  He laughs at himself.  I look at him and walk back to my room.1