by Nell Goddin
Somehow it still smelled like his father inside. Or more precisely, it smelled of oil and sawdust, which his father always smelled of. Maxime had a quick clear picture of his father sitting at the breakfast table, his face obscured behind the newspaper, grumbling about politics. I’m not in the mood for any maudlin memories today, Maxime said to himself, grabbing the screwdriver and making his way up the back steps to the house. Through the window in the door he saw Josette’s back, and he smiled even though it was late enough in the day that she had changed back into her jeans and T-shirt. He paused for a moment with his hand on the latch, admiring her backside for the millionth time.
He must have walked up the porch stairs without making noise, or perhaps Josette was not expecting anyone to be at the back door. Perhaps she was so intent on stealing the silver sugar bowl that she had blocked out everything else. In any case, she did not hear Coulon, and he saw her take the sugar bowl off the kitchen counter where it had sat for decades, and put it right into her straw bag.
He gasped. She was about to add a silver salt shaker when he yanked the latch and barreled inside.
“What did I just see?” he cried, his face reddening.
“Nothing,” said Josette, backing away.
“Don’t tell me nothing! I saw you! I saw you take it!”
“I’m sorry! I didn’t mean to!”
“Oh, my sugar bowl just jumped into your bag of its own accord?” He lunged forward and grabbed her by the wrist and twisted it just enough to hurt.
“Let go of me!”
“I don’t think so,” said Coulon. “You do know what will happen to you now? You’ve been caught stealing from the mayor. Obviously you are prettier than you are clever, because the penalties for such a thing are dire, Josette. Quite dire.”
She looked afraid, and he found, somewhat to his surprise, that he liked it.
“The silver left to me by my family is extremely valuable, though perhaps I needn’t point this out to you. But their value only makes the penalty worse, you see? If you had only stolen something cheap, well then, maybe the penalty wouldn’t be terrible. But as it is, family heirlooms and worth so much money….”
“Monsieur! Please, it was a mistake!”
Coulon laughed. “I am the mayor,” he said, having to push a pang of anxiety over André Lebeau out of his head. “And I can make things very, very bad for you. I work with the courts and know all the judges, or did you not think of that before you started pilfering?”
Josette moved to ease the pressure on her wrist but Coulon twisted it again so that she cried out. “Please, monsieur! I will return all of it. There’s more, at home. My mother—my mother forced me to do it. I never wanted to. I’m so sorry after everything you’ve done for me.”
Nice try, thought Coulon, but no.
“Prison is so uncomfortable,” he said, emphasizing the word. “And it does make me sad thinking of you that way. You did say only last week that you didn’t like asking me for a raise, which I gladly gave you, am I right? And this is how you repay me?”
Josette turned her face away and whimpered. She thought fast.
“Maxime,” she said quietly, her voice quavering just a little. “I…I am more sorry than I can find words to say. For me to take advantage of you, who have been nothing but kind—I am a terrible person. To hurt you…who mean,” she lowered her voice even more, “who mean so much to me…”
Coulon’s grip on her wrist loosened. He narrowed his eyes at her.
“I deserve whatever punishment I get,” she said, quickly glancing up at Coulon to see how he was reacting. “I only wanted to have a little bit of you at the farm, a reminder during the long weekends away from here. I know it was silly of me. It was wrong. But you must understand, Maxime…you must have realized how I feel about you?” she lifted her eyes to his, her dark lashes charmingly shining with tears.
“Well,” he said, “well.” He let go of her wrist and instead stroked it with his fingers. “I had no idea you were such a sentimental sort,” he said gruffly.
Josette nodded meekly. She stepped so close to Coulon that there was only a centimeter between them. “Kiss me,” she whispered.
And he did. Tentatively at first, and then ardently, years of pent-up desire finally allowed some release.
“You are a very bad girl,” the mayor said, taking her hand and pulling her toward the stairs and on to his bedroom. “A very beautiful, very bad girl.”
II
11
At the sound of raucous laughter, Frances looked at Molly with wide eyes. “What in God’s name is that?”
Molly grinned. “Probably the guests in the cottage. Two women, old friends in their mid-sixties. They are seriously enjoying themselves. Kind of thinking we’ll be like that when we get to be their age.”
“I don’t plan to,” said Frances, taking a sip of her wine. “Got any cheese?”
“As a matter of fact, I saw our favorite cheesemonger, Lela Vidal, at the market on Saturday. Got a brébis, a fantastic sheep’s cheese—help me eat it, it’s perfectly ripe. And what do you mean, you don’t plan to? You’d rather the alternative?”
“Oh, I don’t know, it was just something I said without thinking. I prefer to exist in total and complete denial that I will ever get the least bit old.”
“You are forty. I’d say that counts as ‘least bit.’ We’d certainly have said so when we were twenty.”
“Twenty-year olds know absolutely nothing.”
“That’s exactly what old people say,” said Molly. “At least your skin isn’t wrinkled. My face is starting to look like my grandmother’s knees.”
Frances cackled. “Okay, I’m feeling momentarily strong thanks to this amazing cheese—let’s talk wedding, if you’re up for it. I would like to have it here, but only if you’re not just willing but actually enthusiastic about doing it. And I won’t for one second be put out if you’ve changed your mind.”
“No, no, I’d love to do it!” Molly said, mostly telling the truth. “Do you have any thoughts about how you want it?”
“No. Absolutely not. Except…I don’t want the usual thing, you know? I don’t want what everyone else does, little sweet bouquets and lace and all that. It’s just not me.”
Molly had to agree. Frances was entirely more exotic, and after all, she had done the white dress and lace thing twice already. “We’ll put the decorations to the side for now. How about food? Hors d’oeuvres or sit-down?”
Frances pondered. She looked up at the ceiling, had another sip of wine, sliced a bit of cheese and ate it on a cracker. “Oh, I don’t know,” she said finally. “Every time I try to picture it, I think of my parade of ex-husbands, and the whole idea of marriage just seems hopeless and misguided and I want to forget the whole thing.”
“Have you tried quickly sweeping the exes out of your head and replacing them with thoughts of Nico?”
“Well, of course. I’m not a total moron, you know. But it doesn’t seem to do any good. And I can’t help wondering whether my brain is trying to tell me something…sort of like a mental ‘Go No Farther’ sign with a skull and crossbones, does that make any sense?”
Molly sighed. She loved Frances, and Nico too, but the tedious work of having to bolster Frances’s optimism about getting married in the face of her two divorces was rather wearing. At the moment she felt like snapping, Okay fine, don’t get married then! but of course she restrained herself. “It is tricky, knowing one’s own mind,” she said, helping herself to some of the brébis and moaning softly at how good it was.
“What, are you like the Dalai Lama now? Sprinkling your bits of wisdom all over the floor for the rest of us to gather up like rose petals?”
Molly looked at Frances. Frances looked at Molly. They cracked up laughing.
“Why don’t I talk to Nico? Maybe he has some ideas, and whatever he wants is fine with me. Thanks for stepping into this nightmare,” Frances said, standing up.
Loud shrieking from outsi
de, and the two friends went out through the doors to the terrace to see what was going on.
The guests staying in the cottage were outside, sitting at a small metal table Molly had set up just outside their front door, so that guests could sit outside without having to use her terrace. The women had a bottle of wine, more than half gone, and were bent over in hysterics.
“If that was a joke, you’re going to have to tell it to us,” said Molly, having walked over to say hello.
The women sat up, wiped their eyes, and dissolved again into helpless laughter.
“Frances Mayes, let me introduce Emily Scribner and Nancy Hackenberry. They’re from Portland.”
“I always said the worst thing about living in Oregon is how far it is from France,” said Emily. “Now that we’re finally here, we’re enjoying ourselves so much we may never leave.”
“Hey, that’s what happened to me,” said Frances. “She’ll start plying you with croissants from that place in town—”
“Pâtisserie Bujold? Yeah, we found that right off. Emily can smell a good bakery from miles away.”
Emily patted her belly. “Yep, though if we keep up this pace, I’m going to have to buy more clothes. My pants are already feeling a little tight and we only just got here.”
“Thing is,” said Emily, “we’re sort of celebrating. Well, celebrating and mourning both at the same time. Nancy’s husband died a few months ago after a long illness.”
“Oh, I’m so sorry,” said Molly, reaching to touch Nancy on the shoulder.
“Don’t be,” said Nancy. “He was a mean son-of-a-you-know-what, and there is not a person in this world who was sad to see him go.”
“Oh!” said Frances, taking to Nancy right away.
“I would have loved to take this trip years ago, but he wouldn’t let me. Well, it wasn’t like he forbade it or anything like that. But he would put me off, saying we just didn’t have the money that year, just to be patient. I’ll be sixty-five next month so I’d say I’ve been patient long enough!”
“That’s for sure,” said Emily. “And she was a fantastic nurse to that stingy man all through his illness. Leave it to Abner to linger on forever. Anyway, we’re here now. Nancy and I went to grade school together. This nut has been making me laugh for over fifty years. How about that?”
“We’re old friends too,” said Molly, gesturing at Frances. “There’s nothing better. If there’s anything I can do to make your vacation wonderful, please ask—you can knock on my door anytime.” She was about to head back to the main house with Frances when Emily said, “We’ve looked through the brochures for local sites, and some of them look fabulous and we’ll be sure to go see them: Beynac, Domme, and I think there’s a monastery somewhere that looked worth investigating. But…”
Molly smiled and waited, but neither woman said anything.
“Well, we’re interested in sort of…dark things, if you understand me, the uglier, stranger parts of history,” Emily continued. “Could you steer us to anyplace with, I don’t know, some kind of spooky tale that goes along with it, or a site where something terrible happened?”
“Now you’re going to think you’ve got a pair of weirdos on your hands,” said Nancy, pouring the rest of the wine between their two glasses.
“I’ll think about it,” said Molly. “One thing that springs to mind is the Museum of Torture, but it’s all the way down in Carcassonne, which is about three hour’s drive from here.”
“Torture?” said Nancy, her eyes lighting up.
“From the Inquisition,” said Molly. “It’s quite something. First, the ingenuity people have for causing pain is remarkable. And also, of course, the way they used religion as an excuse for their sadism…”
Emily and Nancy were looking at each other. “We said when we planned this trip that we would stay flexible,” said Nancy.
“Yup. I don’t have to be home for at least another month. Slow time at work, they don’t really need me until August. If you’re thinking what I’m thinking.”
Nancy nodded. “So, what’s your booking schedule looking like, Molly? Could we have the cottage for another week, maybe two?”
“You’re in luck, actually—just had a cancellation. I’d be happy to have you! As long as your interest in torture is purely theoretical?” she added, smiling.
They all laughed. Molly was grateful for the extra money and liked the women very much, and while she could understand an interest in the museum—she had been to it herself, after all—who was she to say that their interest was perhaps a little over the line? And what was that line, exactly? She closed her eyes, remembering some of the more chilling artifacts in the museum, and shivered at the memory.
“Molly!” shouted Frances. “You’re drifting off like a dotty old lady!”
“Excuse me?” said Emily, eyebrows raised.
“Joking,” said Frances.
Molly went off to find them a map, Frances left to find Nico and stress about the wedding, and the two guests went inside, tipsy from the lunchtime wine they weren’t used to, and planned their trip to Carcassonne.
12
André Lebeau, candidate for a seat on the council, had decided to do a bit of campaigning on rue Malbec in the late afternoon, hoping to catch people on their way home from work. He had a stack of printed flyers with his photograph on them along with a few bullet points of what he intended to focus on once elected, such as environmental concerns and improved tourism.
At first there were few people on the street, and André passed the time having a long conversation with Madame Vargas, who told him about how her husband kept wandering away from home and had to be found and brought back by the gendarmes or helpful neighbors. She wanted to know what, if he were elected to the council, he proposed to do about this problem. Old Madame Gervais came by, carrying a few provisions she’d bought at the épicerie in a string bag; she wished him well and asked him to say hello to his mother, whom Madame Gervais had known many years earlier when she taught school.
But eventually word got out that André was there, and a small crowd congregated on the sidewalk in front of the mayor’s house.
“I guess my question to you is, why are you running for office?” said a young man around André’s age. “You look like you’re mainly interested in working out. And les femmes,” he added with a wink.
“I haven’t lost interest in those things,” André answered, smiling. “But I’m glad for the chance to explain why I want to get on the council. It’s because of this: a friend of mine wanted to open a business over in Salliac. Nothing fancy, just a little shop where you could buy or rent sports equipment. He was buying second-hand skateboards, tennis rackets, all sorts of stuff, building up an inventory. But when he was all set to go, he couldn’t get the permit. He was at the mairie like a hundred times, trying to find out why his application kept getting rejected, and he couldn’t ever get a straight answer.
“Now we all know the country’s got an enormous bureaucracy, and you can like that or not, but when that bureaucracy is infiltrated by corruption, well then, somebody’s got to do something about it. And so that’s when I decided to throw my hat in the ring. Things like building permits, licenses, commercial permits—it may not be exciting or sexy, but that stuff has got to be dealt with fairly, don’t you all agree? Tell me if you think otherwise, I would like to hear what you have to say.”
Several people smiled at hearing the handsome candidate sincerely ask for their opinions, and the conversation went on for some time, with villager after villager talking at length, giving their thoughts on building permits, and sometimes losing track of the subject at hand and ending up talking about a movie they had just seen or what kind of cheese was best in fondue. André listened carefully to everyone. The younger women managed to get in the front of the crowd and gazed at him with unabashed interest. He had lived in Castillac only for the last year or so, having moved there from Poitiers or perhaps as far as Tours; no one was quite sure. His return
to his mother’s village was a definite positive, to judge from the warm expressions of the crowd surrounding the young candidate.
“So besides corruption, I want to take good care of our land and water, and develop more opportunity for tourism right here in the village.”
“What on earth would anyone want to see here?” said a young woman, and some of the others giggled.
“Oh, there’s so much beauty here in Castillac,” said André, looking at her and smiling, and the woman blushed furiously. “I can imagine tourists from all over the world wanting to flock here, if they only knew. Look how charming it is!” he said, gesturing at the street, which was certainly not objectionable, though rather ordinary for the most part. The mayor’s stately house was by far the most attention-getting thing in view, but the houses on either side of it were not in especially good repair or very lovely in any case. But the villagers were proud of Castillac, understandably, and they were pleased to hear such a good-looking fellow pay it compliments.
“You’ve got my vote,” said one of the young women, and the crowd murmured agreement.
“But for you to actually get anything done,” said an older man, “being on the council isn’t enough. You’re just one of seventy-odd. To have any real power, you’d have to topple the mayor himself.”
All eyes went to the mayor’s house, looking up to the fourth floor and back down again. The shutters were open, but standing on the sidewalk the villagers were too low down to be able to see inside, except for some sumptuous-looking curtains at the front windows.
“Eh, Coulon’s had his turn,” said André dismissively, as though he expected no competition at all from that direction despite the mayor’s three terms and being a native of Castillac.
