Steak and Whisky

Fires ring the valley. Last night’s smoke painted the entire sky with sunset. Our foreign guests wanted a good steak dinner and we drove to it through an apocalyptic twilight. We sat under a floor to ceiling wine rack and talked, and talked not of business. I had a local cabernet and a rib eye and for dessert, since it was all on someone’s expense account, a splash of the Laphraoig – smoke and oak and a dozen gentle flavors that were carried like cold steam, like the swirling mist of a fumarole, through every permeable membrane. Home to bed, a smoke-red half moon rising, then this morning’s sunlight attenuated as if hesitant to start the day.