Merlot Is a Terrible Alibi

“Leave that,” Paloma said. “We do not need it.”

“We need the exit route.”

“It can go around.”

“The inspector will hate that.”

“The inspector has not met this shelf.”

Alondra crouched anyway. “Then let us make introductions.”

Together, they shifted the boxes one at a time. Most held old menus, invoices, tasting notes, and discarded brochures from years when Bruma Alta had hosted weddings for people with money and bad taste.

The last box split at the bottom.

Papers slid across the floor.

A cassette landed near Alondra’s boot.

She bent and picked it up.

The plastic was gray with age. A strip of masking tape crossed one side. The writing on it had faded, but she could still read it.

17 May 2019 — engagement party.

Below it, in smaller letters:

Do not erase.

Her hand closed around the cassette.

Under the papers lay a folded sheet. Alondra knew her own handwriting before she opened it. The slant. The impatient loops. The way she crossed a seven as if it had insulted her.

At the top, she had written:

HALFWAY HOME

Verse one filled the page. The refrain had been crossed out twice. The final verse ended after three unfinished lines.

Paloma saw the sheet in her hand.

“Put that back,” she said.

Alondra looked up. “You kept it.”

“I did not know it was there.”

“It has your engagement party label on it.”

“My mother stored things in this hall. Berta stored things in this hall. People put things where they thought they would be safe.”

The answer landed badly.

Alondra turned the cassette over. Near the shelf sat an old portable recorder beneath a stack of ledgers. She picked it up.

“Does it work?”

Paloma came toward her. “Alondra.”

“What?”

“Do not.”

The recorder had batteries inside. Alondra pressed the lid open, slid in the tape, and shut it.

A click.

Then static.

Then a younger version of Berta laughing somewhere close to the microphone.

“Record this,” Berta had said. “She will deny every good part later.”

The hall vanished.

Seven years earlier, it had been full of candlelight, folding tables, and people Alondra loved enough to forgive for dancing badly. Berta had called it a harvest dinner until Alondra had pulled Paloma behind the far row of barrels.

Paloma had held two glasses of Merlot.

“This is dreadful,” Paloma had said after one sip.

“It tastes expensive.”

“It tastes like a shoe that studied disappointment.”

Alondra had laughed so hard she nearly dropped the ring box.

Paloma had looked at it then.

The jokes had left her face.

“Alondra.”

“I know,” she had said. “This is very dramatic. I hate that about me too.”

“You do not hate it.”

“No. I hate that you know me.”

Paloma had set both glasses on a barrel. The Merlot sat dark and still in the glass.

Alondra had gone down on one knee on the concrete.

Around them, the party kept moving. Someone called for more ice. Berta argued with a cousin about music. A song played from a speaker near the tasting room.

Alondra had held out the ring.

“I want the ordinary parts,” she had said. “The bad wine. Your shoes by the door. You yelling at me for leaving picks in the sofa. All of it. Marry me.”

Paloma had covered her mouth with one hand.

Then she had laughed once, crying as she did it.

“Yes,” she had said. “Obviously, yes.”

Alondra had put the ring on her finger.

Berta had appeared at the end of the barrel row with the recorder held high.

“If either of you spills Merlot on my floor,” she had said, “I will annul it myself.”

The tape warbled.

Paloma crossed the present hall and pressed Stop.

The silence returned all at once.

“I will not play that tape,” she said.

Alondra held the lyric sheet. “You did not have to.”

Paloma looked at the title. Her face did not give Alondra anything she could use.

“That song was never finished.”

“No,” Alondra said. “It was not.”

She walked to the folding table where she had left the rehearsal list. She found her pencil beneath a coil of cable and wrote beneath the final song.

HALFWAY HOME — TRY IN BARREL HALL

Paloma watched her.

“You are adding it?”

“I am rehearsing it.”

“It is not for the benefit.”

Alondra set the pencil down. “We will find out.”

Paloma looked toward the cassette recorder, then away.

“Rehearsal only,” she said.

“That is the first sensible thing you have said all morning.”

“Do not enjoy it.”

Alondra folded the unfinished song and put it in her pocket.

The letters on the list made no promises. They gave her work to do.

Paloma found the rehearsal list where Alondra had left it.

She stood beside the folding table with a broom in one hand and the page in the other. Dust had settled along her boots. Her sleeves were rolled to her elbows.

“This song comes off,” she said.

Alondra was kneeling beside a crate of light stands. “Which one?”

“You know which one.”

“That narrows it down to at least six.”

“Halfway Home.”

Alondra set a rusted clamp on the floor. “No.”

“It is unfinished.”

“So are most useful things.”

“It is personal.”

“All songs are personal. That is why people tolerate them.”

Paloma laid the list flat. Her index finger rested on the title as if she could press it through the paper.

“This is not the place.”

Alondra stood. The hall had grown brighter as the sun climbed. Dust turned in the strips of light from the high windows. Somewhere outside, a truck reversed with a stubborn electronic beep.

“No,” Alondra said. “You only like history after it has been boxed away.”

Paloma’s hand left the paper.

“That is not fair.”

“Fair is a very ambitious word for us.”

“I am trying to protect this event.”

“From a song?”

“From you deciding the barrel hall is a place to settle old scores.”

Alondra gave a short laugh. “I came here to play a benefit, Paloma. You are the one treating four lines in my handwriting like a structural threat.”

Paloma picked up the clipboard. “Choose something else.”

“No.”

The word landed cleanly.

For a moment, neither woman moved. Then a sharp crack came from the west wall.

The storage rack shifted.

A stack of banker’s boxes tipped forward. Paloma dropped the clipboard and crossed the room fast, but the top shelf had already folded at its middle. Cardboard struck the floor. A metal brace bounced once across the concrete.

“Are you hurt?” Alondra asked.

“No.”

“Good. That looked expensive.”

“It was old.”

“Old things can still charge you for breaking them.”

Paloma crouched beside the fallen boxes. Labels faced every direction. Catering invoices. Vineyard insurance. Equipment leases. Tax records.

One box had split open.

Thin file folders slid beneath an overturned chair.

“Leave those,” Paloma said.

Alondra had already bent to pick one up. “We need this cleared before the inspector comes.”

“I will handle it.”

“You have three people hauling chairs and one rack that just resigned from its job.”

“I said I will handle it.”

Alondra held up the folder. “It is paper, not a bomb.”

Paloma looked at it.

The label read: 2019—LEGAL / FINANCIAL.

Alondra felt something tighten low in her ribs.

“You do not need to read those,” Paloma said.

“That sentence has a history too.”

Paloma closed her eyes for one brief second. “Please.”

The word stopped Alondra more effectively than the command had.

Then Berta came through the side door with a crate of safety tape against her hip.

“What broke now?”

“The rack,” Paloma said.

Berta looked at the bent frame. “It had a long life. We should all be so lucky.”

“We need the exit clear,” Alondra said.

“Then sort it.” Berta set down the tape. “Keep what must be kept. Burn nothing until I have seen it. I am not losing a permit because somebody discovered catharsis.”

Paloma said nothing.

Berta looked from her to Alondra. “You two can take paper. You are both mean enough to it.”

Then she left again.

Alondra sat on the floor with a stack of folders beside her. Paloma sat three feet away, back straight, sorting invoices into neat piles.

They worked without speaking.

There were vineyard maps from before the new irrigation system. Repair estimates. A letter from a bank. Another from a law office in Querétaro. The date on its corner pulled Alondra’s hand still.

March 4, 2019.

She opened it.

Notice of default.

The words were formal. The meaning was not. The vineyard had missed payments. The bank intended to begin foreclosure proceedings if the balance was not paid by the end of the month.

Alondra checked the next folder.

March 18. Second notice.

April 2. Final demand.

Her ring had arrived in Austin on April 27.

She saw again the velvet box in her palm. The card. Necessary.