Mid November, a month before her thirty-something birthday (her life was measured in moons and months these days), Dora woke up with a sense of impending doom. Outside, the rain was pounding down, and inside Dora’s head, the pounding
headache was like a mental alarm that goes off to remind you to get-going, get-going, get-going, before it is too late.

Bong. Bong. Bong.

Hormones, Dora told herself. Could this be an ovulation-headache? How crazy was she to be so desperate for a baby, with Avery back in college again: this query was so rhetorical, Dora didn’t even put a question mark on it in her mind.

Bong.

And there was something else to remember, something more day-to-day and practical. Ah yes, the wine to be bottled before the festive season set in. Tonight at 7:00 (the wine, not the season). Well, that was one thing Dora and Avery enjoyed (she tried not to think, “still enjoyed”). The busy camaraderie of the u-brew; the spontaneous conversations with strangers bottling their own brew; the jolly u-brew guru, Sal, telling merry tales to the customers.

Best of all, Dora always liked being there with Avery, who was often so quiet, withdrawn even, spending practically (or impractically, as Dora thought) all that time with
the screen, which had, as Dora imagined in her darkest moments, become the lover and friend she herself had once been. But at the u-brew, Avery became a different person:
warm and expansive in conversation with the other wine-makers and beer-brewers, moving confidently about the room, at home in the huge warehouse-style venue with century-old hardwood floors, steaming kettles, brimming vats, boxes and bottles and carts and corks.

Avery had the procedure down pat after Sal’s first demonstration, and with a cheerful confidence issued orders to Dora. Almost in awe of Avery then, Dora would
obey like a blissfully drugged automaton, would smile and nod vaguely. Dora liked being the quiet one for a change. It was almost a relief, a kind of mental disengagement she
usually experienced only during those rare, solitary pilgrimages to church, where ritual flowed over her like a dream. And tonight was bottling night!

Meanwhile, there was this day to be got through. Avery was out for once, headed to Wreck Beach for a day of sun and weed, so Dora had the apartment to herself.

Bong. Her phone.

Avery. Not arriving home till late, maybe 10pm.

Ah, but wait: the wine must be bottled this evening. It was all very well to say that Dora could do it herself. All very well to say that she was a confident and competent career woman; a dogged runner who had completed her first marathon a few months ago; a super hostess; a trusted friend; a good risk for a loan or a mortgage. Well, the list went on and on, didn’t it? But it wasn’t enough.

The truth was (and it was a silly truth) that Dora didn’t even know how to get to the u-brew on her own, or what it was called, even though she had been there half a dozen
times or more. She had always been with Avery. And there was the sheer awkwardness of getting there pulling the red wagon (their “vehicle”) full of empty bottles; it made a horrible racket as the wheels bumped along the sidewalk. Could she navigate this rattletrap craft alone? It had always seemed like a private joke when they did it together, but was somehow potentially humiliating as a solo act.

As for contacting beach-bound Avery for the address, she couldn’t bring herself to do it. She would have to find the place herself. What was it again? Dora was pretty sure it contained the word “Haven,” although she couldn’t find the listing for it.
Promptly at 6:45, nonetheless, she set out with her cargo of empty vessels, grinning sheepishly at those who gave her a surprised look as she wended her way by instinct through the urban wilderness of her Westside Vancouver neighbourhood. Dora felt better outside like this; a light rain kissed her face as she trundled along with her burden.

In her brown duffle coat, workday clothes, and sensible shoes, Dora fancied she cut quite a figure, pulling the wagon noisily behind her. She imagined what it would be like for others to see her—how it might give them a little smile—and she felt a growing sense of fun and adventure pushing aside her anxiety.

And then around a corner, there was the street—there was the alley—there was the u-brew shop! A port in a storm, its lights blazed to welcome her.

“Come in! Come in!” Sal exhorted as Dora peeked around the edge of the door. “It’s Rosebud!” Sal announced to a co-worker, recalling the nickname the staff had given the little red wagon the first time they saw it. “On your own tonight, are you? Well, let’s get you set up. You remember the drill. Ask if you have questions.”

It was really quite simple after all. Wash the bottles with the special solution in the sink—get out all the dregs, start afresh. Load the bottles onto the cart. Start up the machine that pumps the wine from the big carboy into the bottles, one by one. Put each bottle on the stand, press a button until it’s full, put it aside and get on to the next. Thirty-something bottles: a good crop, a good harvest. Now the corking! Put the bottle on the stand, pop the cork into the right spot in the contraption, and bring down the lever to shove the cork into the bottle. It was done in record time, without problem or incident.

A grandfatherly European, who seemed to have brought his entire extended family with him to the u-brew, chatted with Dora as she placed her full bottles back in their boxes. He didn’t actually call her “Fraulein,” but he might as well have. He was brewing some beer, himself. “Just like the old country,” he declaimed as he decanted.

A last half-bottle of Dora’s wine remained, from the bottom of the carboy. “House rules!” admonished Sal, fetching Dora a large, freshly-washed wineglass from a sparkling metal rack.

“Down the hatch!”

“Cheers!” Dora called gaily across the shop.

They saluted her with their beer steins. Sal cranked up the music, some long-forgotten tune from the eighties. Not forgotten after all! Girls just wanna have fun. And further back: Don’t fear the reaper. More cowbell!

When Dora left the u-brew, the falling rain had turned to snowflakes: a rare and wondrous thing in the westcoast urban jungle. With the deep spiritual contentment that only a half-bottle of raw red wine could furnish, her headache miraculously gone with the arrival of the period she both dreaded and welcomed, Dora ambled back to the apartment. She mumbled a vague greeting to Avery and tumbled into bed, where she slept soundly into the next morning…and no alarm awoke her, save the comforting voice of the CBC radio announcer, harbinger of a snowy and tranquil dawn.