Opposites Attack: A Novel with Recipes Provencal (13 page)

About all Alyce understood was “rosé champagne,” but it was enough for her to say, “Bring it on!”

He’d have to remember to put that expression in his notebook on her.

His toast was “To the new and improved Al-
ees.
” Hers was “To a birthday I’ll always remember.”

“I doubt that will be the case if you stay
friends
with Julien.” He waited until she had finished half of her glass before saying, “May I give you a social pointer?”

“Sure.”

He told her she should always say “
Bonjour
” to anyone behind the counter of an establishment she entered and “
Au revoir
” when she left. When she asked a stranger for help to use these magic words:
Excusez-moi de vous déranger, madame, monsieur. Mais j’ai un problème
.

“Excuse me for…”

“Disturbing you.”

“…but I have a problem?”

“Very good!”

She repeated it several times. “If the French are so polite, how come they’re stereotyped as being rude?”

He patiently explained that the French are discourteous only when given good reason. Foreigners, especially Americans, are astonishingly gifted at providing such instances. The only person allowed to criticize a French person was his or her mother. Yes, they insulted customers who complained. Who wants to have their reputation and integrity publicly questioned?

“In the words of Napoleon,” he said, “the French can be killed but not intimidated. This is the opposite of America, where owning up to mistakes and bending over backward for a customer—even if he is at fault—is typical.”

“Sorry, but that seems flat-out obnoxious. Especially if you’re being so nice to them when you enter and leave their store.”

He liked the soundness of her argument. “I will think about that.”

He slid lemon slices under the skin of the chicken breast, laid five sprigs of fresh rosemary on top, then put the bird in the oven to roast.

“Other than all that nonsense with the cavity,” she said, “that was pretty simple.”

He hated to admit she had a point. So he didn’t.

By the time Julien knocked on the front door she had almost finished her wine. He knew what a lightweight she was with alcohol and couldn’t wait to see what this night would bring.

But it wasn’t Julien. It was a florist delivering two-dozen red roses to Alyce.

“How can you squeal with delight over such an ordinary gesture? Let me see the card.
Hugs and kisses on your 27th birthday. Love, Nelson.
That is it?”

She looked around. “I don’t see anything from you other than cooking a dinner you’re going to enjoy as well.”

Damn her impertinence. He opened a cupboard and handed her a small, beautifully gift-wrapped box. He hadn’t used paper. He found a piece of amber Chinese silk, put that around the box, tied it with the leaf from a palm frond and stuck a twig of fresh lavender in it.

“Jean-Luc, it’s so beautifully wrapped. Who did it?”

“I did!”

“Oh.” She carefully removed the silk from his gift. “Cheez Whiz I can squirt!”

Her joyous laugh flew around the kitchen like swallows darting about a barn at dusk. She gave him a quick but warm embrace. “Thank you. How did you know I liked this?”

“Tragedy spreads quickly.”

“Where did you find it? I’ve never seen it here.”

“But of course, the Internet.”

She popped the top off and squirted a big blob on her finger as though she hadn’t eaten in two days and popped it in her mouth. Just as he expected a satisfied grin to spread across her face, she made a terrible grimace, ran to the sink, and spit it out.

“That’s
disgusting.
How did I ever eat that shit?”

Again she had him laughing harder than he had in a very long time.

With all the attention Nelson was showing her in emails and texts, Alyce wasn’t inclined to get too cozy with Julien. She hoped meeting Jean-Luc would be enough to satisfy him. But by the time he arrived she was more than a little tipsy. He was so cute and smitten that she thought, again, how not having someone to at least snuggle with on her birthday was so un-French.

She led Julien to the kitchen. Jean-Luc was standing at the screen door looking out at the swimming pool. A light breeze made his long gray hair move a bit. He turned and warmly acknowledged his visitor, who was carrying a bag with several of his books.

Jean-Luc held up one. “Horrendous translation.”

Julien offered, “I thought Al-
ees
might like to read some of your books in English and French to help her comprehension.”

He kept rummaging through the bag. “Crap, crap, and more crap.”

“Would you please, if you don’t mind, sign them for me?”

“If you insist.”

Alyce punched his bicep harder than she intended. “Why do you have a problem with someone liking your work?”

Julien inhaled sharply.

“Down, girl,” said Jean-Luc.

Didon was giving Julien a good sniffing. Leaning down and giving her a good chest rub, he said, “Poodles are very smart.”

“That’s a
poodle?
”

She directed Julien to the
toilette
so he could wash his hands. Back in the kitchen, Jean-Luc chided her. “What did I say about being polite, my delicate flower?”

“You said it was okay to be rude if someone was rude first. And you were rude.”

That shut him up.

Alyce and Julien sat on stools by the wooden counter as Jean-Luc entertained his captive audience with his cooking skills and stories—and more bubbly. At this rate, she was going to pass out on the floor before the food reached the table.

Jean-Luc raised his flute. “A toast to our birthday girl.”

She was surprised to feel a lump in her throat. Why did 27 feel so old?

Julien touched her glass with his. “To a real woman.”

Jean-Luc added, “To a woman beginning to blossom but who still has a few prickly thorns.”

She produced a most unfeminine guffaw and could not care less. “Takes one to know one.”

For a split second, she was glad they were settling into a friendship. Of sorts. Or was it the wine talking?

“Jean-Luc.” Julien looked to Alyce for reassurance. She had no idea what he was trying to say. He took a deep breath and it all came out in a rush. “As someone who wants to become a writer and eventually support a wife and family, your well-known financial difficulties are giving me second thoughts.”

He let out a long, weary sigh. “Most writers struggle to make a living for various reasons. For me, a lot of it goes back to when I was a child, when my father left. My mother quickly became poor and turned to prostitution.”

There was a detail Liliane had left out.

“She would flash me a roll of cash and call it ‘dirty money.’ She couldn’t spend it fast enough. As I got older, on my own, I had the same feeling about money that came my way. And the more I made, the filthier I felt and the faster I spent it until I was penniless. I was arrested for nudity and institutionalized after I gave away all my clothes. It caused such a sensation, my books sold like mad and I became even richer.

He tasted the tomato salad and added a pinch of salt.

“I was deemed cured when I accepted I could not handle money and turned mine over to a reputable financial adviser. Here’s the good part. He embezzled every cent I gave him and disappeared.”

Pieces of a giant jigsaw puzzle clicked into place for Alyce. How do you get over a betrayal like that?

He let Alyce try a bite of the tomato salad. The tang of the shallots and salt played off the sweetness of the local vine-ripened fruit. Jean-Luc had explained earlier that tomatoes were botanically a fruit, not a vegetable. These were so succulent there was no question he was right.

“It’s perfect. This could be the entire meal for me.”

“What about teaching?” Julien asked, after trying a sample for himself. “You would have a steady income.”

He winced. “I would either create false hope in those without talent or destroy it in those with it. I would have no time for my own writing.”

“Why not a grant? There are so—”

“A refined form of begging.”

“Surely a woman of wealth would take care of you.”

“Even more demeaning! In the words of St. Thomas Aquinas, of all of the seven deadly sins, pride is the deadliest.”

Alyce felt more than a little irritated at Jean-Luc. He could have whatever he wanted if he just let go of his ego. She was also starting to understand how hard it must be to be an artist, how a God-given gift could also feel like an incurable illness.

“I see why everyone wants you to write a memoir,” she commented. “Everything you just said is a lot more interesting to me than a guy falling in love with a horse.”

“Al-
ees!
” Julien scolded. However, he agreed a memoir was an excellent idea.

Jean-Luc’s eyes bore into her. She regretted what she’d said until he answered, “To write is to stand naked before the world. To write is to scavenge from every possible source, even from people you love, especially from people you love. No one is safe from a writer’s laser beam vision. But once you start thinking about what your wife, your kids, their teachers, their friends, their friends’ parents, your parents think about your writing, you lose integrity. And yet, what is the essence of true love? Caring about another person’s feelings. How do the two reconcile?”

Jean-Luc would not discuss the topic further, but said he would be glad to look at anything Julien had written. Julien was ecstatic. Alyce was impressed as well.

“And now let us move to a subject I want to discuss before dinner is on the table. The
loirs.
” Looking at Julien, “She is keeping several as pets.”

“
Loirs?
I have heard everything now.”

“Pauline insists they go, Al-
ees.
I am sorry.”

She knew this was coming. “Don’t worry. I purposely didn’t name them so I wouldn’t get too attached.”

Jean-Luc found her comment funny. He then launched into a discourse on exotic foods. A polar bear’s liver has such a high Vitamin A content it can kill a human, but its fat is perfect for pastries. Muskrat is a delicacy in Belgium—look for
waterkonijn
on the menu, which translates to water rabbit, but isn’t a rabbit at all.

Alyce yelled “Enough!” in the middle of a sentence about sheep vulva.

Julien gently, discreetly, ran his fingers around her lower spine. It felt good.

Jean-Luc said the French were not as accepting of trysts outside of marriage as is commonly believed. “We like to think about it, yes. Attraction is up here.” He tapped his head. “Where do you think the word
voyeur
comes from? Or
frottage?
The French.”

“I know
voyeur
, but what’s the other one?”

“
Frottage
is when you rub against someone, especially a stranger, and pretend it’s an accident.”

“Like what guys do in the subway? I thought that was called perverted.”

Jean-Luc held up both hands. “Silence.” He swayed to the song that was playing, a woman singing something about a rose. The life of a rose? It sounded familiar.

Julien took Alyce in his arms. As they slow danced around the large kitchen, she carefully guided them toward Jean-Luc, who was stirring dinner. She gave him a butt
frottage.

“
Pardon
, monsieur.”

“Shhh!” he said, though he didn’t seem that upset.

When the song ended, he turned the stereo off. “I cannot listen to anything after Edith Piaf sings ‘La Vie en Rose.’”

She asked him what the words were in English.

“It is about looking at life through rose-colored glasses.”

No one said anything for awhile.

Two hours and two bottles of wine later, Julien and Alyce faced a mountain of dirty dishes in the kitchen. He took her hand and led her to the door toward her cottage. “I’ll do them later. It’s your birthday.”

She croaked, “I don’t feel so good.”

She felt much better after she threw up and brushed her teeth. Much.

Julien was suitably good-humored when she came to bed in her un-sexy pajamas. “That wonderful meal. What a waste.”

Wearing only his black briefs, he attempted to spoon behind her.

“I want to
sleep
, Julien.” She pulled away, then scooted back into his body. “Just sleep.”

“
D’accord,
Al-
ees. D’accord.
”

The cicadas hummed. At first they drove her crazy. Now they were comforting. Her mind drifted to all that Jean-Luc had revealed over the evening. Again she wondered about Colette.

They both sat up at the sound of light knocking. Jean-Luc’s knock was harder. She tiptoed to the door with Julien behind her.

“Who is it?”

“
Le Gentil Gendarme.
”

“Philippe! How did you know where I lived?”

“Solange knows everything. Al-
ees
, I miss you so much.”

She opened the door, glanced at the main house to see if Jean-Luc had heard him. The light in his office on the second floor was still on.

“You must go now.”

“My ride dropped me off. I have no way home.”

Now she was pissed. “You just assumed I would—”

“Oh, you have company.” He took a closer look at Julien. “Are you a boy or a girl?”

“I’m Julien. Who the hell are you?”

“Philippe.” He bowed gallantly. “How old are you?”

“Get out of here! Can’t you see she is with me?”

“I cannot
walk
home from way out here.”

“I’ll take you home.”

“No, Julien, you’ve been drinking. Please don’t.”

She succeeded in parking Philippe on the lounger by the pool with a blanket over him and briskly commanded, “
Stay there and be quiet.
”

She climbed back into bed with Julien, eventually falling asleep.

She woke to the sound of chirping birds greeting the day. Still groggy, she snuggled up to Julien. He brought her hand to his hard-as-a-rock
zizi
.

She was wide awake now. Should she go on? She turned to look at him.

“Philippe!”

Julien sat bolt upright next to him. “Get out of our bed!”