Teddy Wayne - Kapitoil

She shook my hand. “You must be Karim,” she said.

“You are definitely Mrs. Schrub,” I said.

She smiled and looked as if she didn’t know what to say for a moment, then told me to call her Helena and offered to tour the house with me before dinner. She displayed many rooms to me, and after seeing all the expensive furniture in them, they looked similar to me, but possibly that’s because I don’t have mastery in interior decoration, e.g., in the same way that Mrs. Schrub couldn’t observe differences between C++ and JavaScript. But Mrs. Schrub informed me she had decorated the house herself and described the objects in detail, e.g., a “Louis the 13th armoire” in the master bedroom she had acquired from an antique dealer in Vermont, so I said each room was beautiful, which was true, except I was also afraid to touch anything in the rooms, and if you’re afraid or unable to touch or utilize something it makes it less beautiful to me, and although the rooms were littered with decorations, in some ways they still seemed dead.

Then it was time for dinner, and we moved to the dining room, where we sat at one end of a rectangular wooden table that had 16 seats. Mr. Schrub said he hoped I wasn’t too bored during the tour, and I quickly said that Mrs. Schrub was an informative guide and I especially liked the armoire. Mr. Schrub laughed and said, “Helena, do you think Karim really cares about the armoire ?”

“Not everyone is allergic to interior decoration. And Karim has a good eye for design,” she said, which was friendly but false, unless you consider theoretical design.

Andre served our dinners, and Mrs. Schrub had exclusively the salad. She apologized that we couldn’t use vegetables from their garden because of the weather. Mr. Schrub said, “Andre, would you bring up the ’93 Burgundy?”

After he left through a door in the dining room, Mrs. Schrub said, “Derek.”

His eyes linked with hers, and I looked at my plate to let them communicate in privacy, and then Mr. Schrub said, “Karim, do you like wine? Or would you prefer something else?”

I said, “I do not normally drink wine, but I would enjoy some tonight.”

Mrs. Schrub quickly asked me where I grew up, and I told her about Doha. She also asked about my family, which I valued, as the only other people who have truly inquired about them here were Rebecca and slightly Barron. Then she asked if I was “experiencing any difficulty acclimating” to life in the U.S. as “a citizen from an Arab country.”

I took a few moments to strategize an answer, as I didn’t want them to think I was ungrateful for being here or make them uncomfortable around me. So I said, “Americans are hospitable, although sometimes they do not know as much as they should know about the rest of the world considering how powerful they are.”

“I agree.” Mrs. Schrub put her fork down. “I very much support the Palestinians.”

Mr. Schrub smiled to himself as he cut his steak. “The lion’s share of people from my country agree with you,” I said.

Mr. Schrub laughed loudly and turned to his wife. “You support the Palestinians? That would be like someone from Qatar saying to you, ‘Just so you’re aware, I deeply support the IRA.’”

“I simply wanted Karim to know that not all Americans are willfully ignorant about foreign affairs,” she said, and I wished I hadn’t responded to her statement.

“You hear that, Karim?” Mr. Schrub said. “Not all of us regurgitate our opinions from TV news. Some of us do it from NPR.”

Mrs. Schrub looked down at her salad and Mr. Schrub leaned over to her. “Honey, I’m just joking.” He kissed her cheek. “Still love me?”

“If I have to,” she said. For a few seconds I had a mental image of Rebecca’s hair creating a tunnel over my head, but then I forced myself to focus on the Schrubs.

Andre returned with a bottle of wine. He showed it to Mr. Schrub, who nodded, and then utilized a corkscrew made of black rubber that depressed itself into the cork and removed it with ease. Its efficiency and reduction of human error and labor was impressive.

Andre poured a small amount of wine into Mr. Schrub’s glass. Mr. Schrub made a circular motion with the glass on his personal white tablecloth and the wine centripetally orbited around the interior. He inhaled the scent of the wine, then tasted it and gargled as if it were mouthwash. He said “Very good,” and Andre poured him a full glass and the same amount for Mrs. Schrub and me. He also poured water for us, which made me feel like when the doormen at my building perform a service (opening a door) that I prefer to do independently.

Mrs. Schrub didn’t drink her portion yet, so I wasn’t sure if it was rude merely to drink the wine without copying Mr. Schrub’s routine. I made the circular motion with my wineglass, but some of the wine spilled over the edge and stained my white tablecloth.

“I am very sorry,” I said, because it’s good to acknowledge your error in front of your employer before he does.

“That’s all right — it’s just cotton, we can throw it out,” said Mrs. Schrub. “Andre, would you fetch Karim a new mat?”

Mr. Schrub later said the wine had “too many apple notes for a red,” although I enjoyed it much more than beer and especially liquor, but I was careful not to have more than one glass. Mrs. Schrub had just one glass as well, but Mr. Schrub consumed the rest of the bottle. When we finished eating, Andre said the dessert would be ready soon, and Mr. Schrub asked him to bring up a dessert wine, then said he would retrieve it himself and invited me to see his wine cellar.

He led me through the door Andre went through and downstairs to a steel door. Mr. Schrub checked an instrument panel outside the door and said, “You want it at 55 degrees and 65 % relative humidity.”

He opened the steel door and we entered a room whose light powered on automatically to a low level so it looked like the production of many candles. Horizontal bottles of red wine occupied hundreds of slots on each wall. The different colors of their upper covers made a beautiful random pattern like a Jackson Pollock painting. Mr. Schrub went to a corner and selected a bottle immediately. He quickly told me about the different brands of wine and which ones he preferred (red wine more than white wine because it is more complex, and I predict I would agree with him for that reason).

Before we left he said, “Here, I’ll show you my baby.” He walked to a vault in a corner of the room I had not observed before. I looked away as he deciphered the combination and retrieved the bottle protected inside.

“1945 Bordeaux.” He turned the bottle in his hands as if he enjoyed the feel of it as much as the potential taste. “Arguably the vintage of the century for Bordeaux.” He held it out to me with both hands. “Want to see it?”

He handed it to me, but I was very nervous, like I was when my parents took Zahira home from the hospital for the first time and they let me hold her and I was afraid I would drop her because she was so small. I kept thinking that if I ever dropped her she would be ruined forever, like it would be if I dropped the wine, which is foolish because humans are mostly strong and repairable, but in some ways they aren’t.

“When are you going to drink it?” I asked.

He shook his head and took the bottle back. “I’ll never drink this.” He observed it again for several seconds with a smile on his face as he held it near his chest, then replaced it in the vault.

I had baked baklava as a gift and brought it down for dessert, and we also had delicious sorbet and raspberries and wine, and Mr. Schrub consumed two glasses of dessert wine even though his wife and I only drank one glass each. Mr. Schrub yawned and said he was exhausted and he had planned a big day for us tomorrow, and asked if I minded if we all retired early for the night.