#decanting

Firo put down his book and rose from his sofa to fetch a glass of water. When he returned, he found the chiamatore of the Martillo Family standing by his coffee table.

He dropped the glass.

In a flash, Ronny Schiatto closed the short distance between them and knelt by Firo’s shoes to examine the mess – or at least, the mess Firo imagined existed. He hadn’t actually heard the glass shatter, but Ronny’s torso made it impossible for him to assess the damage for himself.

“It’s no matter,” Ronny assured him, standing with the intact glass in one hand. “The glass didn’t break. I’m sorry for startling you.”

Firo flushed head to toe, and shook his head with near-frantic vigor as Ronny handed the glass over to him. “No, you didn’t…you didn’t startle me. I, uh, the glass was just a little wet is all.”

Ronny gave him a half-shrug in response. “Still, I suppose I should have announced my arrival when I let myself in – well, no matter. I stopped by to ask how you’re getting on, you see. That, and…” He smirked. Firo followed his gaze over to the coffee table. An unfamiliar brown paper sack sat upon it. “…I picked up a belated birthday present for you. It took longer to acquire than I’d initially anticipated.”

Childish excitement stirred in Firo’s gut, and it took all he had to maintain what he hoped was a mature, understated expression of gratitude. “Wow, really, Ronny? You didn’t have to get me anything – I’m only an associate, and you’re…” A high-ranking capo. The word associate left a bitter taste in his mouth, old frustration simmering in his bones.

“Nonsense.” Ronny waved a dismissive hand at the notion itself, and then took off his hat and held it to his chest. “You’ve always been close to the older members of the family. After all, you did come to us through our very own primo voto.”

“Yeah, but…” Firo looked away, embarrassed. “I mean…I’m gonna become an adult soon anyway, so…”

Ronny laughed, and the tips of Firo’s ears burned. “You’re sixteen. There’s still plenty of time left. …Well, no matter. The gift is a rather adult one as it is. Go on and take a look – I insist.”

Curious, Firo dutifully made his way back to the coffee table and reached his hand into the sack. His fingers curled automatically around cool glass – a bottleneck, he figured, and he pulled off the sack to reveal a wine bottle, Chateau d’Yquem and Lur Saluces scrawled on its label in elegant cursive. The wine itself shimmered smoky ambers and golds that he’d never known wine could be before. Then again, Firo didn’t know all that much about wine in the first place – he’d always dismissed it as a feminine drink. Any and all oenological nuances ultimately boiled down to red versus white as far as he was concerned.

“A 1921 Bordeaux,” Ronny explained, supremely smug. “Sauternes had a sublime September harvest that year.”

Sublime…huh. Firo had a sneaking suspicion that maybe this particular wine wasn’t your average cheap vintage. How had Ronny gotten a hold of it? Ah, well – the important thing was that Ronny had gotten a hold of it for him. He may have teased Firo over his age, but he had gone to the trouble of procuring a mature gift all the same.

“…Thanks, Ronny,” Firo said – a touch subdued, but undeniably touched.

Ronny preened, running a hand over his slicked-back hair, straightening his lapels. “No need to thank me… Though, if you must, why not invite me to stay for a drink? Unless you would rather save it for a special occasion.”

“Are you kiddin’, Ronny? This is a special occasion!” Firo enthused, setting his empty glass down on the table so that he could go fetch another. Ronny followed him into the kitchen as he talked. “You bought it for me, so it only makes sense for you to have some.” He snatched a recently washed glass from the drying rack along with a corkscrew from a drawer and barged back into the living room, all pride and eagerness.

Ronny lingered behind, propping the kitchen door open with a doorstopper. “Very well. Far be it from me to refuse a birthday request. And since it is your birthday, belated as it may be – you ought to have the first sip.”

Firo plunked himself down onto the sofa and clumsily uncorked the Bordeaux, immediately pouring some of it into his glass. As he brought the glass to his lips, it occurred to him that it might be impolite to drink without first pouring some for Ronny – indeed, without even waiting to drink with him – but then again, Ronny had said he could take the first drink, and he was dying to see if the wine was as good as Ronny had advertised…

So he took a sip.

And spluttered.

The wine had a slight gritty texture – that had thrown him off completely. And its flavors were by no means bad, but they were…muted, somehow. Tight.

“Oh, Firo,” Ronny tutted, and Firo shifted around in his seat to see Ronny leaning against the doorframe leading into the kitchen, his hands in his pockets and his left leg crossed over his right so that the tip of his shoe just touched the floor. The smirk he wore was a little too knowing for Firo’s liking. “Got a little ahead of ourselves, did we? No matter – leave it to me.”

Embarrassment tightened Firo’s chest – embarrassment different from before. Heavier. Sharper. Something like shame. He rose and moved to stand next to the sofa’s armrest so that he could better watch Ronny, who had retreated back into the kitchen for reasons Firo could not fathom. The chiamatore opened one cupboard, and then the one below it. “Ah.“ He reached an arm inside, and Firo pretended like he knew what for. When Ronny withdrew his hand, he clutched a strangely shaped glass bottle – one with a tall and narrow neck that gradually tapered outward into a wide bottom.

“A decanter,” Ronny proclaimed, turning it over in his hands. “How fortunate.”

Firo didn’t want to admit that he had no idea what a decanter was, so he settled for sharing a less humiliating truth. “I’ve never seen that before,” he said. “Uh, that is, I didn’t know I even owned it until just now.”

Ronny lowered the decanter, his gaze sliding back to the cupboard. “The apartment wasn’t empty when you first moved in,” he mused. “There were quite a few sundry objects left in the kitchen – a few jars, some old china… It was likely left behind with the rest.”

“I guess so.” Ronny’s hypothesis made sense. Firo hadn’t bothered to explore that much of the kitchen when he’d moved in – he’d preferred to stick to the same one or two plates and cutlery, a couple of reliable pots and pans. The minimum necessary to cook with and wash up – it was a way of life that suited him just fine.

Feeling rather useless, Firo trotted after Ronny back into the living room and hovered by the sofa while Ronny set the decanter down on the coffee table and picked up the bereft wine bottle with both hands, adjusting it so that his right hand gripped the bottle’s bottom. With his left hand he retrieved the decanter and moved to stand by the window, where late afternoon sun streamed through the windowpane.

Ronny raised the bottle until its bottom was level with his shoulder, and held the decanter several inches in front of his waist.

Wordlessly, he tipped the bottle downwards – and began to pour.

The Bordeaux fell at a remarkably slow and steady rate, a thin amber stream that trickled straight down into the decanter like translucent liquid caramel. Not one drop splashed over the decanter’s lip – and as Firo edged closer, he realized it was because the wine stayed firmly in the dead center of the decanter’s opening. Not once did Ronny’s aim falter, despite the unbelievable height. Firo’s jaw dropped despite himself, and he moved closer still, gaze focused solely on the arc of the wine and the decanter. Out of the corner of his eye – for a second, perhaps two – he thought Ronny let go of the bottle but of course that was just a trick of the light, because the bottle remained nearly horizontal mid-air.

Finally, the flow stopped. Reluctantly, Firo tore his gaze away from the decanter to look at the bottle itself. Only a centimeter or so of the Bordeaux remained in the bottle, cloudier compared to the clear liquid inside of the decanter.

“Sediment,” Ronny said, stepping forward to put the bottle down, “is a plague upon wines as the years go by. Decanting not only opens a good wine up, it filters the sediment out to the bottom, you see.” He took Firo’s glass and emptied the last droplets of wine back into the bottle, and then filled both Firo’s glass and his own with wine from the decanter.

His lips twitched upward. “Go on. Normally I would say a Bordeaux should be decanted one to two hours before drinking, and a Chateau d’Yquem three, but do have faith in my abilities, would you? Yes, go on. Drink.”

Firo took a seat and reached for his glass. The fruity aroma hit him before he even raised it upward – something like orange marmalade, or honeyed apricot. Sugary, to say the least. Exactly the sort of aroma that he’d have eschewed on any other occasion.

Ronny claimed the chair closest to the window and picked up his own glass. He took one whiff of the wine and sighed, “Ahh…crème brûlée,” with a knowing wink in Firo’s direction. Firo eyed him, sipping from his glass only when he saw Ronny doing the same.

Oh. The wine flowed like silk on his tongue, the grittiness from earlier having completely vanished. Rich sweetness overwhelmed him – nutmeg and orange, honey, and other flavors he had no hope of identifying. He sipped again. Another. A fourth, and before he knew it he’d drained his glass completely. Ronny laughed at him, swirling the wine around in his glass. “You ought to savor it, you know,” he chortled. “Wine is only an indulgence if it is savored. I would say, ‘well, no matter,’ but I’m afraid it really is a matter, Firo.”

Firo winced, really tired of the heat creeping up his cheeks, of feeling like a kid every time he was alone with one of the Martillo execs. “Sorry, Ronny,” he muttered. “It was…it was real good.” It was good – he hadn’t entirely expected to like it, and deep down he probably hadn’t wanted to like it either. But he had. In spite of himself, he had.

Ronny genially took the decanter, filled Firo’s glass again, and asked, “How are you getting along, Firo?”

Firo tensed. “What do you mean?”

“Well.” Ronny paused for another sip. “With the whole Gandor situation…I mean.”

Firo busied himself with the wine, a sharp ache between his ribs. “I…” He faltered. The ache spread to his lungs, terrible and familiar. “It’s…I haven’t seen them, if that’s what you’re asking, Ronny. Not for – not for months.”

“Calm down, now. I wasn’t accusing you of anything,” Ronny soothed, and the flush spread further across Firo’s face. He would never admit to something like embarrassment, but he couldn’t exactly blame it on the alcohol either – the last thing he needed was the shame that came with being a lightweight. He didn’t consider himself a lightweight anyhow, and even if he were he’d never let on that it was the case.

“Yeah…yeah, I know. I know. Just wanted you to know that I hadn’t.”

Ronny contemplated the wine in his glass – less than half left – and drained it, setting it down so that he could rest his elbows on his thighs and clasp his hands together. “I realize that it must be hard for you, the recent inter-family tensions.”

“No! No. I’m…”

The arch of his superior’s eyebrow made him rethink the “I’m fine” - he bit the inside of his cheek and took a moment to reconfigure his thoughts. “I’m sure it’s… The brothers don’t want this Ronny,” he said, belatedly realizing how defensive he sounded, how he was this close to pleading, regret and upset pooling within his stomach but it was far too late for him to self-modulate, “They – they’re even smaller than we are, they wouldn’t instigate, they—” They wouldn’t do that to me. They wouldn’t have wanted things to come to this.

“Firo,” Ronny said, those fox-like narrowing sharply, “If it comes to a turf war, what will you do?”

Firo’s heart stuttered, and he deliberately took a long, measured drink of the Bordeaux as a way of retaining what little composure he had to believe he still had. Ronny could be testing him, testing his loyalty – it was easier to replace an associate than an executive, easy as a snap of the fingers. Yaguruma had drummed the importance of loyalty into Firo’s head like he had all the associates’ heads before the notion of being a hotshot even entered their heads – and if it had, he took the time to verbally beat it out of them before they got any bright ideas.

I’m not special to the Martillos. Firo traced the rim of his glass with his thumb, his lips set in a thin, hard line. I have to believe that. I’m replaceable – that’s how I want it to be, anyway. As long as they’re safe, it doesn’t matter what happens to me.

He desperately wanted to argue that it of course it wouldn’t come to a turf war, but that would surely be the wrong answer. “If it comes to a turf war…I’ll stand with the Martillos.” He nodded to himself, pressing the wine’s rich aftertaste to the roof of his mouth. “You have my word.”

Ronny poured some more wine out into his own glass and settled back into the chair with a long exhale. “I won’t lie to you. The situation isn’t on the up-and-up, and things may very well go south from here. I wanted to make sure that you’re prepared for whatever happens, that’s all. That, and… Well…I’m no soothsayer. I can’t reassure you that the situation will resolve itself. But I know Keith Gandor, and I know Molsa Martillo – they’re not unreasonable men. If there’s anyone here who can resolve this, it’ll be them. Not Maiza. Not me. Not even you, perhaps.”

Firo frowned. It didn’t seem like Ronny was testing his loyalty anymore. No…no, more like Ronny was mollycoddling him, and Firo’s grip tightened on the glass – but no, that wasn’t it either. Reassurances sounded like talking down inherently at first – they always did – but…

You’ve always been close to the older members of the family.

“Firo,” Ronny murmured, a warm smile spreading across his face, “You are no ordinary associate, try as you might to deny it. We executives have watched you grow over the years, clothed you, fed you – why, we have cared for you like a Family and like a family. Of course your loyalty to the Martillos is paramount, but that doesn’t mean no one is sympathetic to your situation – no matter what Yaguruma may tell you.”

Then make me an executive. Guilt buried the thought instantly; Firo shook his head and took another long, deliberate sip of the Bordeaux so that the glass would obscure his expression somewhat. Finally he lowered it. “…Heh. S’like you read my mind.”

Ronny’s eyes gleamed under the light of the ceiling lamp. “Well, no matter.”

“…There’s no sense in pretending I’m not worried,” Firo admitted. “That’d be pretty stu—that would be pretty foolish, right? I just can’t figure out how it came to this. I can’t wrap my head around it.”

“Leave the figuring to the executives,” Ronny said, brushing his jawline absent-mindedly – and then he sat up straight. “No, my apologies. Of course you would wonder. What I mean is, don’t stay up all night worrying over what you can’t fix. Like I said, this is something that only the two Dons can resolve, most likely.”

Somehow Ronny had yet again hit upon the mark of things. Firo had been losing sleep the past week, fretting over the ongoing clash between two Families that were family to him above all else. “I’ll try, Ronny” he promised, doubt trickling into his voice. “…It’s hard.”

“Come, no more talk of turf wars and feuds.” Ronny topped up Firo’s glass, and did the same for his own. “We have half the Bordeaux to finish off and a week’s worth of news and culture to distract you with. Unless you’d rather save the Bordeaux for another time.”

“There’s no better time I can think of to drink it than now,” Firo said, shifting in his seat. “But…I don’t want to keep you busy when you don’t hafta be. Honestly I’m sorta surprised you haven’t “well, no mattered” your way out of here already.”

Ronny tapped his index finger against his jaw. “Why, Firo,” he replied. “Today I can think of no matter that concerns me more.”

Firo’s heart thudded with painful warmth against his ribcage. He nodded, and picked up his drink as Ronny did likewise. They clinked their glasses together, and a pleasant note rang out in the otherwise silent living room. Something loosened in Firo’s chest and he laughed, raising his cup in a salute which Ronny mirrored. They drank the Bordeaux as one.