“I’ll bet you it’s the same bunch who broke into the house,” I say.
“What?”
“Didn’t Odette tell you? We got burgled.”
Lucy frowns. “She didn’t say a word to me.”
“I guess she didn’t think it was important,” I say, wishing now that I hadn’t mentioned it. “They didn’t take anything.”
“Why does she hate me so?” Lucy asks.
I look at her with surprise. “I thought it was the other way around.”
The village proper begins through a little archway that leads up an alley with two half-crumbled buildings on either side and, farther up, a reasonably intact house built of the stacked schist slabs that Lucy finds so enchanting, and one of three that she inhabits in her fantasies, after she’s reclaimed and remodeled the hamlet and turned it into Bloomsbury-sur-Mer. I wonder why she doesn’t just go ahead and buy it; it’s not like she doesn’t have the money. I’m about to ask her this when she gasps. I follow her gaze up to a second-floor window, which I’m pretty sure was boarded up the last time we were here. Now it sports a red curtain, incongruously jaunty in these ghostly surroundings. As we gape up, a little dog comes scrambling out the door, yapping furiously. Lucy shrieks.
“Calm down,” I say, “it’s only a puppy.” And a pretty sorry-looking one, too, already half-covered in mange and, judging by its uneven gait, lame. There used to be many more like him down in the village until the mayor decided that they put off the tourists. The dog skids to a halt before us, sticks out its jaw, and snarls.
“Pilou!”
The snarl subsides to a whine as it retreats back to the doorway, now obscured by a figure that I can only half discern in the shadow.
“Viens ici, connard!”
The figure steps out, blinking in the light. Being used to New York bums, I don’t get upset by bad grooming or wine breath, but this guy is in a league of his own. I can see Lucy’s nostrils dilating.
“How many times have I told you not to bark at pretty ladies?” He kicks the dog and, to my relief, misses. It scrambles off.
“Bonjour,” I say, nudging Lucy to follow suit. The bum sticks out his hand. He looks like any number of vagrants I’ve seen hanging around Paris metro stations, the ones with the plastic wine bottle and the cardboard sign informing you that they are homeless, jobless, HIV positive, or all of the above. I shake his hand, gingerly, and shove Lucy forward. The bum eyes her appreciatively. I guess it’s not every day he gets visited by a Nordic goddess. Having grabbed her extended fingers, which I then catch her wiping on the back of her shorts, he turns back to the dog. “Well, Pilou, it looks like we have company. Come in, come in!”
I follow him, giving Lucy little choice but to do likewise. I know she’s thinking Rapist and Murderer, but not only are there more of us, he’s puny enough that I figure we can easily jump him if he turns out to have sinister intentions. This is definitely the house Lucy had staked out for herself. Our host leads us through the penumbra to a stone staircase (in excellent condition) and up to the second floor, where he has evidently settled in. There’s a mattress on the floor by a litter of empty bottles, and a strange ripe smell, not unlike feet, that I trace to a row of sausages hanging from the ceiling beam. “Charcuterie artisanale,” I whisper to Lucy, whose eyes are fixed on a big hunting knife with bits of hair and blood still stuck to the blade. Through the shattered windows, the Mediterranean winks happily.
“May I offer you a drink?”
“Excuse me,” I say, “but who are you?”
He swats himself on the forehead and beams, revealing crenellated yellow teeth. “What am I thinking! Jean-Paul Albertoni, but everyone calls me Jojo. Please wait here: The kitchen is a mess!” He darts through a grimy curtain and returns with a bottle and three glasses, motioning us to follow him. We go back down and out the rear door, onto a sort of terrace with a collapsed wall at the end, the very one with the fabulous view where Lucy had fancied herself sipping wine at sunset while discussing Proust. Jojo must enjoy cocktail hour out here, too, judging by the empty glasses on a makeshift table he’s set up in a corner. What catches my eye, though, is a curious structure, like a big frame, upon which two animal skins are crucified, the raw side still glinting wetly in the sun. Yipping with excitement, the dog heads toward a plastic basin on the ground full of what looks like intestines and sticks his snout in. I decide to take in the view after all.
Our host uncorks the bottle and sloshes a brownish liquid into three glasses. “Apéritif maison!” I touch my lips to it; it doesn’t taste any worse than the thistle liqueur at the Marmite.
“You must be the American girls,” he says.
“Anglaise,” Lucy demurs.
“When did you move in?” I say conversationally.
“Move in?” He laughs like this was a really good joke. “This is my family’s house. Here, I’ll show you.” He leads us to back to the doorway and points up. On a mossy plaque encased in the wall, you can still make out the words Famille Albertoni and, below, an inscription: Lungi da me i falsi amici. Far from me, false friends.
“Our motto,” Jean-Paul explains.
“Nice,” I say.
He grins again.
“But”—Lucy hesitates—“this house has been empty for a long time….”
The grin subsides, his expression now doleful. “Yes, I was away.” From behind him I can hear the dog slurping away in the bucket.
“Ah,” says Lucy.
“I killed a man.”
Lucy’s eyes widen. I smile pleasantly. Santerrans are always showing off about killing people; it’s part of their mystique. The fact is, if they really ran around butchering each other right and left, people wouldn’t come here on vacation.
“That’s unfortunate,” I say.
“Yes—yes, it is. But he was a bad man, and nobody can say I didn’t serve my time.” Jojo’s gaze shifts pensively out to sea. “I have paid my debt to society.” He fixes his eyes back on us. “Still, I live with the guilt.”
Since there doesn’t seem to be a whole lot to say in response, Lucy and I remain frozen in our best cocktail-party poses, glasses aloft, elbow cradled in palm. I’m beginning to wonder if maybe he’s not kidding. There’s something about his eyes, a sort of creepy blankness like a heroin addict’s. If he’s really a maniac, it occurs to me all of a sudden, he may not be so easy to overpower.
“But I intend to become a productive member of society again,” he continues, brightening up. “I have a plan, to bring the hameau back to life, restore the houses, attract tourists. Look at this view!” He flings his arm out to encompass the vast turquoise swimming pool below, currently veiled in a milky heat haze, the green-black mountains, the pointe thrust up like a rocky fist. Then he stops, as if suddenly reminded of something. “Have you ever heard of agricultural tourism? I hear you can get a subsidy from the government.”
“I think you have to have a working farm,” Lucy says. “Goats and cows, things like that…. Maybe you should talk to the mayor.”
“The mayor, eh? Good idea! I’m sorry, are you hungry? Would you like a peach?”
“Thank you,” Lucy says, “but we mustn’t trouble you any longer. We have to go home and make dinner, for our children.”
“Ah, yes, the children…. It’s all for them, isn’t it, in the end?”
“Quite,” says Lucy, who I notice has slipped into her Victorian nanny act. Meanwhile I’m the one who’s getting nervous, warily eyeing the shotgun propped up against the wall and thinking that this guy is definitely nuts.
“But you haven’t finished your drink,” he protests.
“It’s delicious,” Lucy assures him, firmly setting our glasses on the table, “but we have to walk back down. We won’t get very far if we’re tipsy now, will we? …”
I’m thinking, This is when he gets mad and shoots us. Instead he says, “Come back and visit me, it gets lonely up here.”
“Oh, we will,” Lucy promises, extending her hand.
“Thank you so very much for your hospitality; it was lovely to meet you.”
“Let me walk you back—”
“No, no, you mustn’t trouble yourself any further.”
Amazingly, he doesn’t insist. He just stands there, looking resigned.
“Bring the children,” he calls after us. “I love children.”
“Wow,” I say, once we’re safely back on the path. “How did you do that?”
Lucy laughs. “I don’t know, I was trying to pretend I was Mum! Oh, my god, I thought for a moment that we were going to end up on those racks, guts to the wind…. D’you really think it’s his house?”
“It has his name on it.”
“Well, yes, but everyone has the same name around here. He might just be a squatter …”
“Or a poacher.”
“ … or an axe-murderer….” We burst out laughing.
“How do you think he knew who we were?” I ask when we’ve calmed down.
“Heavens, I’m sure they all talk about us…. I mean, what else do they have to do all day?”
“Well, anyway, so much for the uninhabited hamlet….”
“Yes, it’s rather sly of the mayor, don’t you think?” Lucy says. “I’m sure he knew all along.”
CHAPTER twenty-two
Back at the house, Jim is blowing on the fire for the barbecue, trying to get the coals hot; Odette, like Lucy, is convinced that charcoal starter gives you cancer. He straightens up as we approach, his sweat-dampened chest visible though his open shirt. He’s gotten really dark in the past few days—who would have thought someone from Kansas could turn that color?—and my breath catches momentarily as I remember fixing my eyes on those black nipples, the way you notice odd details when your mind is completely elsewhere, as I lowered myself onto him last night.
“Hey, guys!”
“Why do you call everyone guys, Jim?” Lucy asks coyly. “Do we look like men?”
“No way I’d ever mistake you for a man, Lucy,” Jim says chivalrously. Odette comes out with a tray piled with lamb chops. “Ah, girls, did you have a nice walk?”
“Fabulous,” says Lucy. “And we met the most interesting character, didn’t we, Constance? Mmmmmmm, that marinade smells divine. Can I make the salad dressing?”
I can tell Odette is taken aback by all this good cheer. I’ve certainly never seen Lucy like this. You’d think she’d be devastated that her pet real estate fantasy has been usurped by a smelly and possibly homicidal vagrant. Instead she chatted and joked with me all the way down the mountain, and now she’s actually flirting with Jim, whom she normally wouldn’t look at twice. Maybe she just needs to get out in the fresh air more often.
In the kitchen, Isabelle is busy at the counter. “Oh, hi there, I thought I’d feed the girls early, they get so wild at the table….” She drags on her cigarette and balances it on the edge of the table, ash poised to fall on the floor. When did she start smoking in the daytime? Before her is a box of crackers, a pot of Nutella, and a family-size jar of peanut butter—one of two she asked me to bring from the States.
“Oh, really? And what are you making?” Lucy asks.
“My specialty: peanut-butter-and-Nutella sandwiches. The girls adore them.” She picks up the cigarette again; the ash falls.
“Electra is allergic to nuts,” Lucy says.
Isabelle empties her wineglass and sets it down. “Oh, come on, Lucy, it’s all in your mind…. It’s such a neurotic Western thing; how come no one in Prague is allergic to nuts?”
“I don’t know, Isabelle, I live in London. What I do know is that if you feed them to my daughter, she will become desperately ill. And you know it, too, because I’ve told you, many times.”
Isabelle drolly rolls her eyes. “Well, sorry, it’s hard to keep track with all the restrictions around here….”
“I wasn’t aware there were that many. Surely you can see that Electra’s diet needs to be monitored.”
Oh, God, I think, please don’t try to reason with her….
“You know,” my sister says, like she’s just had an epiphany, “I’ll bet you there’s nothing wrong with her. I’ll bet you if you just let her live her life, eat what she wants, she’d be fine.”
“Like you do with your girls,” Lucy says.
“It’s not like I’m the perfect parent or anything, but anyone can see that she’s hungry all the time….” Isabelle refills her glass and points the bottle at us. “Anybody want some wine?”
“I’m sorry,” Lucy says. “I’m sorry if that’s how she strikes you.”
Richard pokes his head in. “Isabelle, the girls say you promised them a special treat.”
“I just found out Electra’s allergic to peanut butter.”
“Oh dear, yes,” Richard says, “terribly so. Can’t you make something else?”
“I’ll make her something,” Lucy hastily interposes.
“Don’t be such a spoilsport, darling. Can’t we just pretend for one evening that she’s normal?”
“I’m sorry, what did you say?”
Richard clenches his jaw; it’s a tic he gets when he’s being an asshole. “I said, can’t you just lay off her for an evening?”
Lucy looks disoriented. “Have you been drinking, Richard?”
“No, darling, I’m as sober as a judge.” He smirks. Sophie sidles past him and tugs at Isabelle’s skirt. “Mommy,” she whines, “we’re hungry.”
“Yes, honey, I know, but Electra can’t eat peanut butter, so now I have to make you something else.”
“Can we have scrambled eggs with ketchup and toast?”
“Oh, all right,” Isabelle says with ill grace. “But you’ll have to wait. She’s not allergic to eggs, is she?” she adds.
“No,” Lucy says quietly. “She isn’t.”
I go off in search of Jane and find her sketching behind the house, on the terrace Monsieur Peretti has annexed for his tomatoes. They look almost obscene in the molten evening light, red and swollen, straining at their vines. He doesn’t like us coming here—I can see him up on his balcony, glaring in our direction—but the mayor, who is pissed off at his rampant colonizing, keeps encouraging us, saying that the land is for everyone to enjoy.
“Oh, hi,” she says distractedly.
“I’m worried about Lucy,” I say.
“Hmm. Why?” She squints at something in the distance and rubs at the paper. “Oh, bugger!” When I try to see what she’s drawing, she snaps the pad shut. “Another one for the dustbin.”
“I don’t think she’s very happy,” I say.
Jane lets out a mirthless chuckle. “What else is new?”
“I was thinking maybe you should talk to her,” I say. “Richard’s being a real dick.”
“Isn’t that the nature of the beast?”
“What?”
“Sorry, bad joke. So, Lucy is unhappy.”
Well, put that way … back when we all lived together, Daphne had a way of prefacing comments about her oldest daughter with a resigned “Poor Lucy …” I remember wondering what on earth she was talking about; as children do, I still equated happiness with good fortune.
“Poor Lucy, she does have a bottomless capacity for misery. …”
“I have a feeling she’s trying to get pregnant again. There was one of those fertility sticks in the wastepaper basket in the bathroom,” I venture. “It can’t have been Isabelle’s.”
“You know, it’s always amazed me about you straights, that you think having a baby is going to solve all your problems.”
“Count me out. I have zero maternal instinct.”
“Oh, you’ll succumb like the rest.”
“I will not. I’d be a horrible mother.”
“Right, like that’s ever stopped anyone.”
“I think you’d make a great parent,” I say.
“Well, thanks for the vote of confidence, but it doesn’t seem too likely.”
“Why not? Lesbians have kids all the time. I mean, you coul
d adopt, or—”
“Get turkey-basted?”
“Yeah, whatever.”
Jane smiles sarcastically. “That’s very sweet of you, but to tell you the truth, I’m not all that fond of children. As Ogden Nash said, I consider that mankind achieved its zenith the day it achieved the adult.”
Suddenly it hits me that she really is upset about the breakup with Marge: That’s why she’s been acting so strange. And I haven’t exactly been supportive. “Why don’t you come and stay with me in New York for a while?” I say on an impulse. “You haven’t been in ages.”
“And what would I do there?”
“Take a vacation. We could hang out, like we used to. Hit the clubs….” Jane and I used to go dancing together all the time, to hokey dyke bars in the Village and the clubs downtown with the hot Puerto Rican babes. I even let myself get picked up a couple times, just to see what it was like. Jane thought I was a complete slut.
“Really, Constance, I’m a bit over the bar scene.”
“Why not?” I press on. “Maybe it’s just what you need, to get out, meet new people. There’s any number of women who would die to go out with you….”
“Marge not being one of them,” Jane says bitterly.
This is too much. “I never liked Marge,” I say.
“Really? That’s too bad, she’s quite fond of you.”
“God, Jane, would you stop being so English!”
“But I am English, just like you’re American and Odette is French. We’re forced to get along by circumstance. Do you think any of us would be here if it weren’t for this ridiculous memorial?”
“But,” I protest, “that’s not the way I feel about you at all!”
She pats my arm in a detached way that’s not exactly comforting. “Don’t mind me, I’m not myself today. I should go back to London. I have to sort out my life.” She looks out at the water again. Why are people always looking out to sea? There’s nothing there.
“Then why don’t you?”
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