Berkeley writer, Simone Martel, is the author of a novel, A Cat Came Back, a memoir, The Expectant Gardener, and a story collection, Exile’s Garden. Her story, "Vitis Californica," is in Short Circuit #02, Short Édition's quarterly review.
Emma pads through the living room, over the thick, ivory carpet, and settles on the chaise longue with her wineglass. As she tastes the cold white wine, her gaze falls to the fields on the valley floor. Those huge squares of land, edged by irrigation ditches, bisected with roads and sliced into furrows, are the sheets of graph paper on which she daily works and reworks the inevitable mathematical problems. At these times, the magnificent view from Hillcrest feels more like a burden than a blessing. It's always there, distracting and troubling her.In the morning, the pickers arrive at the field