The Cabin
Abstract
The chapter set at a West Virginia cabin near Woodstock, was not coming together. His editor felt the idea had merit, but that he ought to put it away for a while and work on other things.
A close friend whom he had not seen in decades was coming East to attend an unexpected family funeral. It was unclear whether she would be free to meet in Williamsburg on the return trip to southern Arizona, but he dropped the hint and had been rebuffed.
There would be his planned San Diego trip in late July and curiously enough, she too was scheduled to fly there at roughly the same time.
The Woodstock notion came to him while speaking with Nick, a business associate who was remodeling his secluded hunting cabin in West Virginia. The associate had purchased a large quantity of aromatic cedar paneling over several months and had kept him updated on the progress.
Nick had offered to let him use the cabin some weekend.
First, it had been that they would work over some of the details of the Woodstock chapter by email, then she had been unexpectedly called East on family matters. It took a long time but he suddenly sensed an opportunity to move the writing project forward.
A long shot possibility to further discuss Woodstock over a glass of wine in Williamsburg seemed worth suggesting. He recalled her mentioning the colonial village in southern Virginia he knew she admired with her research in genealogy, and fascination with colonial America.
Years earlier, she had served as literary editor of the same yearbook of which he had been photography editor, and they had shared more than the production of that high school summary. When it came to writing a manuscript on winegrowing in Virginia, it was natural he would recruit her talents.
Those same talents would often recur to him as he pored through notes taken in the wine cellars he had worked, and vineyards. The manuscript, after six months’ effort, had veered wildly, away from winemaking toward the schism created on November 8, 2016, and toward sexual obsession.
The rendezvous he had imagined at a secluded cedar-lined cabin in West Virginia while talking with Nick, would draw on his experience in the Shenandoah Valley hauling fresh picked wine grapes from Tom’s Brook near Woodstock up Interstate 81 to Sunset Hills Winery in Purcellville, and the time he had spent flying over the same countryside ten years earlier as a student pilot.
The woman in the story had not been her but someone else.
No, she would not be flying through Dulles International, or driving back West by way of Richmond or Williamsburg.
“…we take a hard right when we head outa’ here. Williamburg is straight, alas. :) …” she had emailed.
“Alas, nothing.” He returned, and some deep unspoken intuition prompted him. “San Diego in July?”
Who was it, some young woman he had spoken with lately, maybe at the café’, who had been wearing a surf shirt. When he asked, she said no, she was a surfer but not from San Diego. She was from Tucson, but the drive to San Diego was only five hours.
His trip was already set: it usually involved just a weekend while the family stayed on for a full week with relatives in Claremont and La Jolla...
At first he was amused at her response. It would take a day if she were flying back to Arizona, maybe two, and four or five days if she were driving. It was the first day of summer as these notions swirled in imagination, and suddenly touched down exactly at…
“…actually,” she had responded. “I will be flying to San Diego in late July…”
He swallowed hard as he stared at the cell phone, squinting in the bright sunlight next to viognier vines that Tuesday. He could barely read the digital screen outdoors.
It was, of course, all fiction, but somehow a fiction not to be resisted.
He had offered her, for the sake of authenticity and amusement, to play the woman’s role as he crafted the Woodstock cabin chapter. She could write the woman’s dialogue, or at least prompt him with what that sort of woman might say in those circumstances. They could write it responsively, as they had a successful and virtual reunion scene imagined at an internet café in Northern Virginia.
The fact they had been involved years before, would lend authenticity. Rendezvous later in life was unique and of some interest in adding spice as a subplot to the winemaking theme. Besides, he could never completely put himself in the role of a woman’s character, and he had learned from painful experience, the way a woman speaks and acts, were completely unpredictable when it came to such matters.
Writing a credible dialogue proved straightforward where he had experience, but almost impossible when emotional nuance would tell the difference between a wooden, unbearable conversation, and one that sparkled with life.
San Diego?
They had also corresponded about the virtual California beach they would explore, but at different times as their schedules placed them in San Diego months apart. It had been funny at first, and never quite as surprising as that initial scene in the virtual internet café.
He had an idea.
“…when you arrive in San Diego, the Registration Desk at the La Valencia in La Jolla, will have a small envelope marked with your name…”
“The envelope will contain a spare key, and a room number…”
“There will be an open tab at La Sala and Café le Rue at the Hotel. If there is anyone with you, sit them down, have them order something and tell them you will be back in an hour after our meeting…”
“…and, bring handcuffs…”
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