Wine on time - Contest #StorieDiVino

Every self-respecting story begins with a murder. Mine doesn't. Mine begins with a bottle of wine.

A bubble of carbon dioxide clung to the bottom of a bottle of Lambrusco, trying in every way to resist the force of Archimedes. It had watched its fellow bubbles drift away before its gaseous eyes and disappear into the ruddy turbidity above it. It imagined that if it were to detach from the bottom of the bottle it would burst, and all the molecules it was made of would be sent bouncing this way and that, splattering ungracefully somewhere. It was actually right, but it couldn't be sure of this, which is why it clung to the glassy bottom of the bottle. For a little while longer. Just long enough for me to finish slicing some salame. My friends, meanwhile, were in the living room chatting, waiting for me to serve the aperitivo. Mara was twirling locks of hair around her index finger, draped elegantly over the back of the sofa, while Luca, the dashing nuclear physicist, was explaining to her how her body was composed of ninety-nine point nine percent different molecules than the year before, yet she hadn't changed one iota. For her part, Mara, vaguely offended, pretended to enjoy her interlocutor's humor, alternating between blank smiles and quick glances at her watch. Saint Augustine said: "time does not exist, it is merely a dimension of the soul." For different reasons, Luca held the same thesis. As for me, I have only ever dwelled on the abstruse definition of the second, the primary unit of measurement of time, whereas I am perfectly able to hold forth at length on timing, whose fickle existence I can confirm from direct experience: Hamšík's goal in the eighty-seventh minute against Milan, the cascade of salame slices, and the explosion of the carbon dioxide bubble are the glaring proof. "Shall we open the wine?" I let a good mouthful of Lambrusco flow fizzing across my taste buds as laughter escaped in the opposite direction in the wake of that delightful coincidence. There is no right moment to drink wine – it is always the right moment to drink wine. I am certain Saint Augustine would agree.

Whether it is true that ninety-nine point nine percent of my body no longer carries any trace of that encounter matters little, since after all this time I am still able to remember it.