With a gasp, Sally looked at Billy and Emmett and Woolly. And Billy looked at Woolly and Sally and Emmett. And Emmett looked at Billy and Woolly and Sally. Which is to say that everybody looked at everybody. Except for Duchess, who stared straight ahead with the inscrutable smile of a sphinx.
Then everyone was talking all at once. Billy was pronouncing it magic. And Sally was saying, I never! And Woolly was saying, Wonderful, wonderful, wonderful. And Emmett, he wanted to see the bottle.
So Duchess passed the bottle around and everyone got to see that it was empty. Then Emmett suggested, rather skeptically, that there must have been two bottles and two corks, and Duchess had made the switch in his lap. So everyone looked under the table and Duchess turned around with his arms extended, but there was no second bottle to be found.
Now everyone was talking again, asking Duchess to show them how he did it. Duchess replied that a magician never reveals his secrets. But after a proper amount of pleading and prodding, he agreed to do so, nonetheless.
—What you do, he explained after returning the cork to the bottom of the bottle, is take your napkin, slide the folded corner into the bottle’s neck like so, toss the cork until it lands in the trough of the fold, then gently withdraw.
Sure enough, as Duchess gently pulled, the folded napkin corner wrapped around the cork, drew it through the neck, and liberated it from the bottle with a satisfying pop.
—Let me try, said Billy and Sally at once.
—Let’s all try! suggested Woolly.
Bounding from his chair, Woolly dashed through the kitchen into the pantry where “Dennis” stored his wine. Grabbing three bottles of vino rosso, he brought them into the kitchen, where Duchess pulled the corks so that Woolly could pour the contents down the drain.
Back in the dining room, Billy, Emmett, Sally, and Woolly each forced their own corks down into their own bottles and folded their own napkins as Duchess circled the table giving helpful instructions.
—Fold it a little more at the corner like this. . . . Toss the cork up a little more like that. . . . Get it to rest a little deeper in the trough. Now pull, but gently.
Pop, pop, pop went Sally’s, and Emmett’s, and Billy’s corks.
Then everyone looked to Woolly, a circumstance which generally made Woolly want to get up and leave the room. But not after dining on artichokes and Fettuccine Mio Amore with four of his closest friends. Not tonight!
—Hold on, hold on, he said. I’ve got it, I’ve got it.
Biting the tip of his tongue, Woolly jostled and coaxed, then ever so, ever so gently he began to tug. And as he tugged, everyone around the table, even Duchess, held their breath until the moment that Woolly’s cork went pop and they all erupted into a great round of hurrahs!
And that’s when the swinging door swung and in walked “Dennis.”
—My, oh my, said Woolly.
—What in God’s name is going on here? “Dennis” demanded, using one of those W questions for which he expected no answer.
Then the swinging door swung again and there was Sarah with an expression of anticipatory concern.
Stepping abruptly forward, “Dennis” picked up the bottle that was in front of Woolly and looked around the table.
—Chateau Margaux ’28! You drank four bottles of Chateau Margaux ’28?!
—We only drank one bottle, said Billy.
—That’s true, said Woolly. We poured the other three bottles down the drain.
But as soon as Woolly had said this, he realized he shouldn’t have. Because “Dennis” was suddenly as red as his Chateau Margaux.
—You poured them out!
Sarah, who had been standing quietly behind her husband holding open the door, now stepped into the room. This is where she would say what needed to be said, thought Woolly, the very thing that he would later wish he’d had the presence of mind to say himself. But when she stepped around “Dennis” and had the chance to take in the scene in its entirety, she picked up the napkin from beside Woolly’s plate, which, like all the others on the table, was stained with big red splotches of wine.
—Oh, Woolly, she said, ever so softly.
Ever so heartbreakingly softly.
Everyone was silent now. And for a moment, no one seemed to know where to look. Because they didn’t quite want to look at each other, or the bottles, or the napkins. But when “Dennis” put the empty bottle of Chateau Margaux on the table, it was as if a spell had been broken, and they all looked directly at Woolly, especially “Dennis.”
—Wallace Martin, he said, can I speak to you in private.