Free Blood Wine by John Moss

well. She wore a T-shirt that proclaimed the beauties of Toronto and displayed the CN Tower like a soaring phallic icon rising hard by the clam-shaped SkyDome. Miranda had not shaken it out to see the design when she bought it. She bought three the same, in different colours. The clothes were Miranda’s size. The skirt fit perfectly. The T-shirt was tight.
    â€œWhat?” said Miranda, leaning down. “Michelle?”
    â€œI’m trying to remember. My name is Elke.”
    â€œElke?”
    â€œI am from Stockholm. I have been speaking English since I was a small child. I studied wine in London and New York. I was here last night.”
    Morgan was surprised, not that she had been here before but that she was Swedish. He prided himself on a good ear for dialects and accents. Once she had explained, he could detect a slight Scandinavian lilt, but so vague it might be generational, something picked up from an immigrant parent or even a grandparent.
    â€œWhat else do you remember?” said Morgan.
    She did not respond. Morgan and Miranda helped her to her feet. They walked over to the office and Morgan tried the door. It was locked. He gave it a loud thump but there was no response.
    â€œLet’s walk,” he said. The three of them would have appeared from a distance to be strolling arm in arm. In fact, Miranda and Morgan were supporting the young woman, whose body seemed to be reacting to memory fragments at a visceral level that her mind could not deal with, aroused apparently by the smells and perhaps ambient sounds of her surroundings. Sometimes she would shut her eyes and nearly swoon, so they had to brace her upright, and then she would try to stride out as if they were holding her back.
    By the end of the runway, near the open-sided aerodrome, they wheeled and then walked back to the first of the warehouses. The sliding door was ajar. They slipped into the gloom inside and stood still for a moment, waiting for their eyes to adjust to the muted light.
    There were a series of vast cement cisterns down the centre and large fibreglass tanks or casks stacked high along both side walls.
    â€œNot here,” said the young woman suddenly and marched out the open door, with Morgan and Miranda trailing behind.
    â€œWhat’s not there?” asked Miranda.
    â€œThat’s where they mix their wines. I wasn’t in there.”
    â€œMix?” Morgan asked, struck by what seemed an odd term.
    â€œYes. The casks were filled with a Cabernet blend from Lebanon, I imagine.”
    â€œAre you sure?”
    â€œYes, I’m sure. And the cement vats, that’s where they’re mixing the Lebanese import with local wines.”
    â€œIs that legal?” asked Miranda.
    â€œI don’t know, I’m not from around here. I’ve never been to Niagara-on-the-Lake. Maybe I saw it on television.”
    They entered another wine shed, much like the first. The blond woman’s nose twitched. She walked around like a cat sidestepping unseen obstacles, catching odours hovering in layers and channels as she slowly passed through them. Miranda and Morgan watched.
    She returned to their side. “It doesn’t make a lot of sense,” she said.
    â€œWhat?” said Morgan.
    â€œRhône. They’re simulating a Rhône valley blend, the southern Rhône around Avignon. I’d say they’ve created a Frankenstein monster, an Ontario-Lebanese fake Châteauneuf-du-Pape with the seams and scar tissues disguised.”
    â€œDisguised by what?” Morgan was intrigued. If this is what he had been drinking, Carter’s Château N euf-du-Pape, it had seemed superbly blended.”
    â€œChemicals. And a master blender. It’s like having perfect pitch, there’s not a formula, it’s instinct.”
    â€œSo, if it fools the experts,” said Miranda, “then what’s the difference?”
    â€œBut it doesn’t, that’s just it. When is a