The 'Geisters Read Online Free Page B

an old auto body shop sat under glowing orange lanterns and wide umbrellas outside the open garage door, getting happily buzzed before another work week.
    “That’s not fair,” said Michael, his voice taking a plaintive edge. “Ian’s just of a different generation.”
    “Fair enough,” she said. “What’s your excuse?”
    They’d both had some wine by then, and Ann’s tone was sharper than she’d intended. Two glasses ago, she might have stopped herself from pressing the matter.
    “You left me out to dry,” she said. “Ian Rickhardt treated me like a piece of property, a new car you brought home. He came over to check it out. Check me out.”
    Michael tucked his chin down, put both hands on the balcony rail, and pretended to study the seventh-day revellers in the café. “That’s not what was happening,” he said.
    “Wasn’t it?”
    “I told you he could be a little off-putting.”
    “Yes. You did. And it was off-putting. So off-putting you abandoned me.”
    Michael stepped back from the railing and held his hands in the air, a gesture of retreat. He stepped back through the doors and retreated further, to the kitchen. Ann looked away from him, down at the café. As she watched, one string of lanterns flickered, and went dark.
    Good
, she thought, and was immediately ashamed.
    Now, at the vineyard, staring out at the stand of fiery golden maple trees, watching the van make its way up the drive, and wondering if there might be some more of that delicious Gewürzt inside, Ann winced at the memory. She swilled down the last dregs of the wine from her glass, and drew a deep breath of the smell of this place—woodsmoke and loam—and turned to go back inside Rickhardt’s winery. This was the place that Krenk & Partners didn’t design, and from the look of it, wouldn’t have if they’d been asked: all glass and oak around the tasting bar, faux-Bavarian beams demarking a first-storey ceiling below a dark loft above, railing hung with even-more-faux grapevine. Home Depot had won that bid, no question.
    Rickhardt is a jerk. Also no question.
    Ann swung around the tasting bar and pulled the half-empty bottle of Gewürzt out of the cooler. She poured herself half a glass.
    He was a jerk. But so was she. She realized it when later that August Sunday, she’d come inside and started drying the dishes Michael was washing, and Michael had told her: “He wants to pay for the wedding. That’s why he wanted to meet you. He thinks of me as a son. I’m sorry you didn’t hit it off.”
    Ann took a sip, and then another. She started to take a third, but stopped herself as the wine touched her lip and set the glass down on the bar. The place would fill up in just a few hours with the guests at her Ian-Rickhardt-Productions wedding. From the sound of things, it was already starting.
    Outside, she could hear the van pulling up. For a moment, she considered finishing the wine. But she resisted.
    There would be plenty of time for wine later.
iv
    Ian Rickhardt’s list of guests was longest, at seventy-seven; Michael Voors’ list less so but still respectable at twenty-six. Ann LeSage invited just five people to her wedding and Ian and Michael both looked worried. But she insisted it wasn’t so sad as that. She loved four of them, and she was sure they loved her too, and that counted for a great deal.
    Jeanie Yang had been Ann’s roommate for two years at the University of Toronto, and together they had explored the delicate art of old-school pencil-and-paper role-playing games, the subtle art of Anime, and the numbing craft of single malt scotch. She was working across the border in a lab outside Chicago, but caught up with Ann in G-chat as soon as she got the invite and said she’d drive out.
    ANN: It’s a long drive.
    JEANIE: OMFG its not. im a midwestrn grl now. everywhere goods 5 hours drive.
    will lesley be there?
    ANN: ummmm
    JEANIE: :p
    It was not awkward in the least, Jeanie insisted, that also attending