Poster Boy

by Anne Tenino

  Other things were looking up (so to speak) as well. His thesis, while no more interesting than it had been last week, was coming along. He agonized less and simply regurgitated his thoughts into his laptop more. He’d edit it into something intelligible somehow. Eventually. The whipped cream on his sundae was that the bros had stopped being so needy. One or two of them still came by each evening, giving him puppy dog looks and asking him when he was going to come over for dinner, but they’d started walking down to the village at night, apparently having found a bar there. Jock said they were practicing their French on the local farmers, which sounded entertaining enough that Toby sometimes considered going to watch. So far he’d only considered, though.

  The cherry on top of his tired analogy was that he and Jock were communicating. No one had to manipulate the guy into sitting next to Toby; it was simply his spot now, and they took advantage of it. Talking to each other about inconsequential things, or sharing smiles when the bros did something new and stupid, or rolling their eyes when Noah kicked the back of Jock’s seat.

  Somewhat like a sullen teen, Noah had become silent and moody since the Heimlich incident. Toby and Jock both thought it was the result of the very obvious way Turbo had started avoided Noah at all costs. The rest of the boys seemed to know, and now the clown-car maneuver was regularly utilized to make sure those two guys sat as far apart as possible. Noah’d given up by Thursday and simply plopped himself behind Jock, pouty lip and all, glowering and hmmphing every time Jock told him, “If you don’t stop kicking the back of my seat, I’ll cut your foot off and sew it into your ass.”

  They were becoming just like a real family.

  Friday morning dawned beautiful after two days of a black mistral, where they were lashed with rain every time they stepped outside. They were coming up on the weekend, and he’d planned on not making the boys go anywhere. It wasn’t his problem that Professor Douche was a lazy bastard who didn’t see the point in visiting the historical sites the guys were learning about. He wasn’t repeating last weekend’s disaster. Instead, he was going to see if he could lure Jock away. He had the perfect place in mind, if the weather held. Nothing too serious, just a nice, relatively unvisited Roman aqueduct and grain mill ruin where they could climb around on the stones and sit looking out at the valley that led straight west to Arles. It was one of his favorite places in the area, and if he’d had half a brain (and no maternal demands), he’d have focused his thesis on it, instead.

  He forced himself out of bed when his phone alarm went off, stretched, spent an extra long time in the shower, and came out extremely relaxed and, he was certain, with an immovable smile plastered on his face. Until he got to breakfast late and Turbo told him all the croissants had been eaten.

  “There aren’t any left?” he clarified for a second time. He stood behind his chair, wondering whether it was even worth sitting down without croissants. Madame B made them with real butter every morning, not shortening like most people. They were amazing. “No one even has a bite I can have?”

  Gomer snatched something off his plate that looked suspiciously flaky and crammed it into his mouth until his cheeks bulged out, shaking his head violently.

  “I know where some is,” Ricky said, grabbing Gomer’s face and squeezing it, trying to force his jaw open. Gomer started whacking Ricky’s arm, frowning and making muffled angry noises.

  “Stop it,” Toby snapped. “I don’t need it pre-chewed, thanks. I’ll just have coffee.”

  “I’ll save some for you tomorrow,” Madame B said, coming past to pat him on the head after he sat down.

  Jock was even later than him, or he’d already left, but Toby didn’t ask. The guys had clearly figured out something was up between the two of them, and Toby didn’t want any more attention focused on it. His patience was rewarded when he got to the van and found Jock already there, talking to Danny, who’d left breakfast just after Toby got there. Jock smiled when he caught sight of Toby, and they had one of those moments they now had whenever their gazes met. Well, most of the time. Recognition not just of each other, but (unless Toby was an overly sentimental fool) of something important growing between them.

  Maybe the day would turn out all right in spite of his disappointing breakfast.

  Toby hoped for that right up through his third coffee and a couple thousand words on his thesis. He was getting really close to having the rough draft done. Just a couple more chapters or so. Then he could start to revise it and fill in the holes. Before he started the next section, he stretched and considered moving outside. The man who owned the café was so used to him by now, he brought Toby coffee on a schedule. This morning he’d also had a croissant, not as good as Madame Bouvinet’s, but it beat most of the ones in the United States all to hell.

  Maybe he’d take a little wander outside and around. Philipe never minded keeping an eye on Toby’s stuff if he just left it on his table. “I’m here whether your laptop is or not,” he’d said the first few times Toby had asked. Then he said, “Stop asking. Allez.”

  Toby caught Philipe’s eye on his way out the door, and received a nod in return. Place Favier was one of the few well-shaded squares in Saint-Rémy, which was nice a lot of the time, but after two days of rain in a country where it wasn’t supposed to rain, like, ever, Toby wanted to find a patch of sun. There was one over by the strange little tourist mercantile that sold tragically hip Provençalesque accessories for women, he thought. But when he found it, someone familiar was standing in Toby’s sun, peeking in the windows of the little store, face screwed up in concentration.

  Danny. “What are you doing here?” Toby asked.

  “Oh, hey, I was looking for you,” Danny said happily, turning to him.

  “You’re supposed to be at the campus.”

  “It’s lunchtime, dude. I walked into town for a change.”

  “I thought you said you were looking for me.”

  “Yeah. That’s kind of a change too.” Danny nodded, beaming at him.

  “How did you know where to find me?” If the boys could find him, his fratbro-free hours might be in serious jeopardy. Fuck. He’d have to find a new café, and break in a new Philipe.

  “Jock told me you hung out here.” Danny came toward him, two steps, then grabbed his arm before Toby even realized the threat. The next thing he knew Danny had shoved his face into the same window the guy had been staring into when Toby walked up. “Look at that big old purse, man. The, like, faded red one with all those little flowers and stuff? Do you think it’d make a nice gift for Monique?”

  “Oh God,” Toby groaned. “Please tell me that, if you did find some farmer’s daughter to defile, he’s not the type to want revenge. Or at least that you can take him.”

  “Monique doesn’t really like to talk about her parents. They both died when she was still a teenager, then she married real young and—”

  “She’s married?” Toby jerked out of Danny’s hold to round on him, brandishing his index finger in Danny’s face. “That is it. No more French literature for you.” He should have guessed Flowbert would be a damaging influence once they started calling Madame B by that name— Wait.

  “Thank God, dude, I hate that French lit class. But I don’t think my prof is going to let me skip without some kind of permission—”

  “Monique who?”

  Danny screwed up his face. “I don’t know Professor Medcalf’s first name. I mean, she’s not the kind of lady I’d just ask. She’s kinda bitchy.”

  “No. I mean who’s this Monique you’re thinking about buying a gift for?”

  Danny frowned at him. “You know, Madame B.”

  “Oh no,” Toby muttered, leaning against the wall of the store for support. “Okay, listen, I want to know nothing about this.” He straightened again and held his hands out, curling his fingers to illustrate the huge ball of potential disaster that he didn’t want to know anything about. “Nothing. At. All.” He couldn’t tell Danny not to see her, right? He and Madame B we
re both consenting adults.

  Danny blinked a couple of times. “All right, dude. If I buy the purse I’ll make sure you don’t see it.”

  “Yes, that, and also? I want no details at all about any extracurricular contact you may have had with her. Just so we’re all clear. I don’t know her first name, or that you and she sometimes look at each other all calf-eyed, or that you aren’t sleeping in your bed at night, okay? No. Thing.” He punctuated his words by slicing his hand in the air, just in case Danny needed visual aids.

  Oh Jesus. Danny’s lip, was it . . . ? Shit. Trembling. But he sucked it in like a big boy, nodded, and turned away, staring into the window again. Not before Toby saw how wet his eyelashes were, though.

  There were not curse words enough in the world to describe his inner pain. Toby’s, not Danny’s, because Toby knew what was about to happen, and he had to do it, because not only was he the resident advisor to this lovesick frat boy, but he was a decent person, and this was what he did. He helped people. So he took a calming breath and laid his hand on Danny’s shoulder. “I suppose, though, if you really needed to talk to someone . . .”

  “Thank you,” Danny said shakily, grabbing Toby for a rib-cracking bro hug, sniffing up his tears. “Tobes, I’m so confused, I mean, I’ve never met anyone like her, she’s so, like, French. And mature.”

  Please let this be an innocent boyhood crush, Toby prayed while leading a babbling Danny back to the café. Even something oedipal but one-sided is okay, I can deal with that. He knew a ton about Oedipus Rex. When they walked into the restaurant, he waved at Philipe and held up two fingers, then guided his charge to his table by the window and let the dude get it all out.

  It took over an hour, and Toby switched to wine after the first twenty minutes when he realized it wasn’t innocent. “You slept with her?”

  “It just happened,” Danny cried. When Toby shushed him, he managed to speak in a normal tone for a few sentences. “I asked her if she’d teach me how to make croissants, and she said I had to meet her really early for that, like the middle of the night, and I got there and her hair was down and she had this nightgown on you wouldn’t believe, man—”

  “OhGodno.”

  “It covered her from her neck to her ankles and it was all white and buttoned up and I couldn’t think about anything but taking it off of her.”

  “Please, I’m begging you, stop.”

  Danny didn’t hear him, too caught up in his memories. “I was doing all right though, you know, but then she made me knead the butter and it was all, like, slippery and squishy and it made me think about things, you know?”

  “No, I don’t. And I don’t want to.”

  “Then she got out her rolling pin, and it’s just this big . . .” Danny swallowed. “It’s a shaft of wood, and she was cleaning the flour off of it, using her hand.” He wrapped his fingers around an imaginary kitchen phallus, staring at them wonderingly. Then he started moving it back and forth, lovingly stroking the air. “And her fist was running up and down it—I couldn’t stop myself,” he finished in a bona fide whisper. “I don’t even know how it happened. One minute I was kneading butter, and the next I had her on the counter and I was kneading her—”

  “No.” Toby reached across and slapped his hand over Danny’s mouth. “No-no-no-no-no-no. I will listen to your existential angst, and your relationship problems, and even your oedipal longings, but I will not listen to you describe any physical acts with any women, am I clear?” Especially not a woman old enough to be his grandmother.

  Danny nodded, meeting Toby’s eyes over his fingers. Toby took a chance and removed his hand.

  “That was kinda too much detail, huh?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Sorry.” Danny ducked his head and fiddled with his coffee cup. “I just. I don’t know what’s going to happen now. I want to be with her again.”

  Toby chugged the rest of his wine.

  “But what if it was just, like, sex to her? I mean, maybe she does this all the time with her guests.”

  “Oh God.” They’d unknowingly walked into the den of a predatory cougar. Probably the grand high cougar of Provence. Who else would willingly take in a bunch of frat boys?

  “I feel like there’s something special between us,” Danny continued, leaning forward earnestly. “Sometimes when I look at her and she looks at me? It’s like, I can touch her mind or her spirit or, like, I don’t know. Her. Is that stupid?”

  Toby sighed. “No, it’s not stupid.” He patted Danny’s hand, because the kid seemed to need the reassurance so much. “I understand exactly what you mean.”

  Danny nodded, then turned and stared out the window a while, quiet and possibly even contemplative for the first time since Toby’d met him. “So what do I do now?” he eventually asked.

  Toby wasn’t sure if Danny was asking him, or the window, or something outside, but he answered anyway. “You tell her how you feel. You prepare for the worst but hope for the best.”

  Danny nodded slowly. “Maybe I’ll see if she wants help with her croissants again tonight.”

  “This time, make sure you guys actually get them in the oven, okay?”

  Danny grinned suddenly, back from whatever introspective place he went when he had need. “I will. Thanks, Tobes. I really needed that.”

  It wasn’t until they were walking back to campus that Toby thought to ask, “Is that why you came looking for me? To talk about, um, Madame B?” He just couldn’t with calling her Monique.

  “Oh yeah, dude.” Danny snapped his fingers. “I was going to ask a favor—one of the guys needs to do some history extra credit or he might flunk, so he’s going to need to go over to that big ruined castle tomorrow, you know? Les Baux or whatever. He’s supposed to do some research.”

  “It’s only the third week of the term,” Toby protested. “How could he be failing already?”

  “The professor’s an asshole.” Danny waved it off. “Anyway, can you give him a ride and stuff?”

  It had to be Gomer. “How come he didn’t ask me himself?”

  “I told him if I saw you when I went in for lunch, I’d ask.”

  Shit. Maybe he could do something with Jock on Sunday. “Fine,” Toby sighed. “Is it Gomer or Ricky?”

  “It’s Jock.”

  Danny kept moving even after Toby halted, staring after him. “Jock?” he called, then hurried to catch up.

  “Yup. Jock. He missed an assignment, and he can’t make it up, so . . .” Danny shrugged, stepping around Toby when Toby tried to get in his path to stop him.

  “That doesn’t sound like Jock.” He didn’t think.

  “Everyone fucks up sometime, dude,” Danny called over his shoulder. Toby couldn’t be certain, but it looked like he picked up his pace, walking too fast for Toby to catch him and ask him any more questions.

  Toby didn’t say much to Jock about Les Baux on the way home from town. He didn’t say much of anything, preoccupied not only with wondering why Jock needed the extra credit (which he wasn’t willing to ask outright), but mostly with Danny and Madame Bouvinet.

  “You okay?” Jock asked him at one point, leaning closer to his side of the van.

  Toby smiled over at him, one of those quick ones everyone knew wasn’t real, but rather was an attempt to reassure. “I just have a lot on my mind. Um, thesis stuff. So, we’re going to Les Baux tomorrow?”

  Jock nodded, sitting back. “Yeah. When Danny said you were going—”

  “Hey, Jock-man,” the person of interest himself called from his seat right behind Toby. “Did you take notes today in French class? I’m gonna need to figure out what I missed and try to make it up.”

  Jock and Danny fell into conversation—some of it in very academic, stilted French—and Toby sunk back into his thoughts. What did it mean for him if one of the residents he was nominally advising got involved with the woman at whose place they were staying? Was it really that big a deal? And yes, he’d essentially encouraged Danny to pursue
the relationship, but what else could Toby do? He just didn’t have the heart to tell someone else to put a lid on their pain. The dude probably wouldn’t listen to him anyway.

  That’s my story and I’m sticking to it.

  Friday night, Toby hung out with the guys instead of putting in more time on his thesis. He’d finally started making progress again after he and Jock had normalized relations or whatever.

  But of course the fratbros started in about beer terrorism again. At least they weren’t discussing tactics, like normal. Instead, Jules had a DVD one of his sisters sent him that Danny called a “training film.” Toby groaned inwardly, but he started watching it anyway.

  He’d kind of hoped Jock would walk him out later, but the guy had fallen asleep on the floor, just a pillow under his head. He looked utterly sexy with his shirt riding up and his jeans slung low, showing off a couple of his abs and a sprinkling of hair. If Toby craned his head just right, he could catch a hint of white waistband and the very masculine curve of Jock’s hipbone.

  Oh yeah, totally time for him to leave.

  Saturday morning was beautiful again, and as Toby lay in his bed looking out the window at a few fluffy white clouds, he was fairly sure his heart floated up there with them.

  Jesus, he really was kind of a sap, wasn’t he?

  There were croissants at breakfast. Many of them. Toby ignored the way Madame B fairly glowed, and the way Danny couldn’t stop smiling or humming, and he didn’t think about how the croissants got made. Instead he ate them with butter and jam, sitting next to Jock, their elbows bumping every once in a while, warm skin sliding against his. After he’d had three croissants and Jock had had God knew how many, he wiped his fingers on his napkin and said, “The sooner we leave, the more time you’ll have at Les Baux.”