A stranger comes to town. He brings a very expensive bottle of wine.
1.
An Ed Tech sales rep charges a case of his favorite wine to his expense account and gives one to the Dean of Fred’s University in a beautiful green satin-lined velvet bag. The rep believes it is understood that this is a very special bottle of wine
2.
Not much of a drinker, the Dean drops the bottle of wine on his sideboard and leaves it there for the better part of a year because he likes the green velvet bag. Late to a welcome dinner for incoming Fred’s U junior faculty, the Dean is looking for a gift to bring. He can’t bear to part with the velvet bag but takes out the bottle of wine. Since it comes from a sales rep, he assumes it is more re-giftable than the other re-gifted faculty bottles on his liquor shelf. The Dean can’t find his reading glasses and doesn’t bother to read the label or look up the vintage.
3.
At the end of the dinner the host, who is a teetotaller, is clearing off the drinks table and offers the last lingering Assistant Professor the remaining bottle of wine. On returning home, the new faculty member examines the label and contemplates trying to re-sell the wine online to pay off some of his crippling moving expenses or to make an interest payment on his overdue credit card. In the end, he decides his debt is hopeless, but he could get a good return on investment by bringing the wine to a special dinner with the Provost, who is a noted oenophile.
4.
The Provost immediately recognizes the high-value vintage, but it is not to his particular taste. He plans to re-gift the expensive wine at an important summer party but forgets all about it. The bottle of wine lies in a corner of the capacious trunk of his black Mercedes, parked outside his beach house, for over a month.
5.
The Provost’s Assistant finds the bottle when she is vacuuming the beach sand out of the Provost’s car and suggests re-gifting it to Fred’s University’s hated President. The President is a known philistine who will neither appreciate the vineyard nor notice that the wine has turned to vinegar in the Amagansett driveway. She and the Provost both laugh maniacally. They can hardly wait to regift the bottle.
6.
The hated President of Fred’s University adds the bottle to a large collection of gifted wines he keeps in the butler’s pantry of the unused chef’s kitchen in his sprawling McMansion in the rich white part of town. When his wife reminds him he needs a present for his Assistant, whatshisname, the President reluctantly passes on the bottle. He vaguely remembers the Provost, a notorious wine snob, saying it was a good year and hates to part with something that might be valuable.
7.
The bitter Assistant doesn’t drink alcohol, a fact that he has mentioned to his boss on multiple occasions. He can barely stand to look at the bottle, which seems like a representation of everything he hates about the President and Fred’s University in general. Scheming to get a better job, the Assistant accepts an invitation to a New Year’s cocktail party where he hopes to run into an affable Ed Tech Exec whom he thinks might provide an employment opportunity. He leaves the bottle on a table in the front hall and prays his boss shows up and sees it regifted with the exact same raffia ribbon and tiny pinecone the President’s wife decorated it with.
8.
An impoverished graduate student wait staff clocks overtime cleaning up the party and is thrilled when she is told she can take home any extra booze. She googles the vintage and realizes it is worth more than a week of catering wages. With great care, she removes the downmarket pinecone and stows the bottle at the back of the coat closet in her student apartment share where she hopes it will be protected from light as the internet suggests. Assuming the wine is also safe from her tippling boyfriend, the impoverished graduate student treasures the idea that she has an emergency fund for the relentless undergraduate loan payments hanging over her.
9.
A crafty roommate, looking to “borrow” a raincoat, finds the bottle. Coming from money, he is vaguely aware the bottle has the look of quality. Also, he reflects, it is so typical of his roommate to try to hide booze from her no-good boyfriend! The crafty roommate knows it is only a matter of time before the boyfriend finds the bottle, and figures he is doing a good deed when he takes it for his own. It will make the perfect gift at the Dean’s dinner his mother got him invited to.
10.
As the party is winding down, the Dean’s teenage son darts into the kitchen with his friends and tucks the bottle into the inside pocket of his oversized Carhart jacket. They drink the wine directly from the bottle in the Dean’s man cave while they vape and play Dungeons and Dragons late into the night. The next morning the son notices that the bottle has a fancy handwritten notecard, attached with a golden ribbon, and realizes there could be trouble. One of his friends suggests they refill the bottle with Cherry Coke, which they determine looks just like wine, and they carefully screw the top back on so it appears unopened. They wrongly figure the wine can’t be that expensive if it comes in a screw-top bottle and doubt the father would drink it anyway.
11.
Headed off to a weekend house party at the luxurious island compound of the Ed Tech sales rep, the Dean is again caught without a gift. His son, helping his dad wheel his luggage out to the Ed Tech limo idling in the driveway, volunteers to go back into the house and look for a bottle of wine in the pantry. The son returns with the still un-drunk Cherry Coke which he slides into the attractive green velvet bag his mother had thoughtfully hung from a peg next to the liquor. “I hate to give him the bag,” his father commented, “but I guess I owe him.”
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