The thirteenth bottle. Livia’s final lesson.
How do you know it’s the thirteenth bottle?
It’s got a big thirteen written across it.
We were supposed to drink all the wines in order?
Were we supposed to drink this bottle last, that’s all I know.
Last?
It’s the pinnacle. It’s the culmination of a whole eschatology of wine. It’s the wine all the others have been leading up to. That will make all of them make sense. We’ve been ascending a wine ladder, don’t you see?
Or descending it. It feels like we’ve been going down, down, down …
Maybe there’s been a method – of sorts.
A method in our drinking?
Thirteen bottles is the end of the course of anti-poison. It’s a cure. A cure in doses.
It really isn’t.
Maybe the thirteenth bottle turns lies into truth. Maybe it’s the messianic wine.
It really won’t be.
Work in Progress 