Naked Came The Vintner

It had been another gruelling day on Madison. We’d checked the screens when the markets opened, made sure nothing was too far out of line, sent a few e-mails to clients whose money was due to be reinvested soon and then had headed off, en-masse to yet another of Patrick Pelinni’s ‘favourite restaurants for lunch, another cavernous dining room where yet again he was greeted as if he was royalty. I was beginning to have some suspicions about Patrick and his background, particularly when he said he knew the owners of the restaurant and then regaled us with stories about their union backgrounds and Mafia links. Still, he’d fixed a few things for us including the problem with Jim Levinski so nothing was ever said or done. He picked up his monthly pay check and didn’t cause any trouble. Why should I rock the boat?

Lunch passed uneventfully, probably because Samantha was back in the UK for a week or so, and we headed back to Madison for the afternoon shift. Nothing much happened to ruin a nice quiet day – not even a call from Daddy asking for his usual daily update.

It was one of those hot, humid New York days. Not so hot that you needed to be within five feet of an AC unit but too hot to wear a jacket. It was one of those days when we all headed to Bryant Park for early evening drinks when the bell tolled 7pm.

Bryant Park on those warm summer evenings is like a huge open-air party. Gorgeous girls are everywhere, champagne glasses clink incessantly and the smell from delicious plates of sweet-potato chips lingers in the air making you hungrier by the second.

Now, I think I’m quite ok to look at. Not a hunk perhaps – just ok (see my profile), but in a crowd of several hundred other, infuriatingly, better looking guys than you, I’d had to think of alternative ways of attracting the opposite sex. Name-dropping the Chambers didn’t mean much to them. Languidly smoking whilst holding a glass of Bolli sometimes did the trick when they approached you to ask for a cigarette or a light but then I didn’t really fancy them. I couldn’t stand the thought of kissing a smoker – God no!

And so over the first few weeks of summer nights in Bryant Park I’d worked out an almost foolproof method for getting the attention of the opposite sex. ‘Excuse me’, I’d say, ‘I bought these glasses of champagne for my friends but they seem to have disappeared. Would you like them – free of course’. They would accept and I’d walk off to be with the boys from the office. Within five minutes max the girls would have sidled over to our group and that was it. How could they possibly refuse a night of free champagne and sweet-potato chips of course? Oh, and anything else which was going!

But it was on one night when our luck was out that a few of us headed over to 48^th and 8^th to a restaurant one of the guys, Joe Zambroski, knew. Joe obviously had some Italian blood in him somewhere despite the Polish surname and his knowledge of Italian restaurants in NY was second only to Patrick’s. Heading north east, it took us about 20 minutes to walk the ten or so blocks to a small place tucked down west 48^th street.

Compared to our usual eating haunts, Masseria was a tiny place, maybe about 50 covers but it was a

pleasant change from the heaving restaurants we were used to. Steve, my IT guy ordered the best Barolo they could come up with and I took a glass and went outside for a cigarette. I wandered, glass in hand around a tiny garden situated in a space next to Masseria. It was a memorial garden to those firefighters who had lost their lives in 9/11 and it caused a rare moment of reflection in my otherwise, live-for-the-moment life.

As I was just standing there looking at the plaque with the names of the dead firefighters from that particular ‘ladder’ as they called the vehicle they were assigned to, and feeling bit wistful (God – it was becoming a habit!), Steve called out that the waiter was about to take our orders. I went inside, ordered, and the three of us had a terrific meal. About 10.30pm Joe decided that he would be the ‘family man’ and set off for his home in New Jersey, leaving Steve and I drinking Barolo and putting the financial world to rights. About 11.30pm Steve uttered his now familiar words, ‘another bottle Nigel?’

We’d almost finished that bottle and Steve had mentioned the possibility of calling it a night when the waiters started to re-arrange the tables and chairs in the restaurant, a strange flurry of activity so late in the day. Steve asked what was going on and was told that “America’s most famous porn actress was about to arrive.” She was launching her new wine range and had chosen the Masseria for her official launch party. Apparently, we learned later, it had all been arranged several weeks before despite the last-minute activity in the restaurant and hence the reason why the waiters hadn’t presented Steve and I with the bill – the normal way of getting rid of unwanted diners to close the place.

It all rang a bell. In a quiet moment earlier in the day when I’d been flicking through the New York Times, I’d noticed an article entitled, ‘Naked Came the Vintner’ which didn’t quite compute when I’d read the piece – porn actress and wine! Was the title of the article a play on words I’d wondered?

Back to the Masseria and I popped out for another cigarette just as a black stretch limo glided up to the sidewalk. A dozen people poured out of its doors and headed into the restaurant leaving the peak capped, huge, black driver desperately trying to park in a space only slightly longer than his vehicle.

He saw me standing there and motioned to me to assist him with his parking. ‘Another six inches’, I said. ‘Cheeky boy’, I heard from behind me followed by, ‘how did you know what I was saying this afternoon?’

I turned and came face to face with a blonde dressed in a sort of cowboy outfit, complete with fringed hat. She was also smoking a cigarette. ‘Nigel Smarther-Blair’, I said. ‘Savanna Samson’, she replied. A quick look told me she had a stunning body but the face looked as if it had seen life. We passed a few moments talking about London, New York and the weather and then she threw her cigarette into the gutter and went inside.

When I returned, Steve was finishing the last of the Barolo and when I mentioned that maybe we should go, as we had a presentation to make to some potential investors in about ten hours time, he replied that with ‘America’s best porn actress’ in the restaurant, he was going nowhere. ‘Another Barolo, Nigel?’ he asked. Another rhetorical question!

Steve and I started on our sixth bottle of that delicious but expensive red wine and watched with interest as Savannah (pictured above) took control of her table of guests telling people where to sit and telling the waiters to start uncorking some of the wine which had been carried in from the limo. There was no problem in working out who the boss was.

About twenty minutes later Miss Samson headed off to the toilets and on her way back to her table, I called her over and said in a slightly slurred voice that I’d been a fan of hers for ages. ‘You’re so kind’, she said as I took her hand and kissed it.

‘Careful’, Steve said. ‘You don’t know where that’s been. Savannah (we were now on first name terms) shot Steve a look which would have shrivelled a lesser man and returned her gaze to me.

‘I just love the idea behind your new wine’, I said. ‘I’ve always loved Italian wine’. ‘I can see that she said’, pointing at the Barolo, ‘but you’ve got to drink in moderation Nigel. I was thinking about it but you’d be no good to me tonight.’ And with that she swivelled on her amazing legs and headed back to her table.

My head went into a spin. Me and Savannah Samson. A winner of countless porn awards including the porn Oscar equivalent of ‘Best Group Scene’ and ‘Best All-Girl Scene’.

I was wistful for a second time that night when Steve interrupted my thoughts and true to form, said, ‘another bottle Nigel?’