Opposites Attack: A Novel with Recipes Provencal (14 page)

Alyce jumped up. “GET OUT OF HERE!”

“The door was not locked. I was cold!” Philippe stood up in all his gorgeous aroused nakedness. “Let’s have some fun. Your friend is cute.”

With that, he grabbed himself with both hands and went to town.

Julien, who had mysteriously lost his briefs during the night and was also naked, dashed into the kitchen to grab the closest weapon: a metal spatula. “Get out of here you fucking—!”

Alyce couldn’t translate his insult.

He smacked Philippe, who then knocked the spatula out of Julien’s hand. Julien lunged. They hit the floor wrestling. Alyce was surprised at how well Julien fought, how passionately he defended her honor. She also wanted to laugh at the sight of them. But when he broke free, picked up a chair, and was about to break it over Philippe—

“
Stop!
” commanded a familiar voice.

The door swung open, freezing all of them in their respective positions like the dormice when they’d heard an odd sound.

“Are you all right, Al-
ees?
” Jean-Luc, still wearing last night’s clothes, took in what was going on. “Ah, you
do
know how to have fun.”

“I wasn’t doing anything!”

He took in her pajamas. “In what you are wearing, I can see why.”

Julien was mortified; Philippe was not.

Jean-Luc eyed the naked men and decreed, “For causing such a disturbance, you are to do the dishes
now
and fix me breakfast.”

They quickly dressed and dutifully followed him.

She pulled Julien back. “I understood everything you two said! But what did you call him? A fucking what?”

“
Singe.
S-i-n-g-e. Monkey. Did you see how he was jerking off?”

One thing was certain. She would never forget her 27th birthday.

Or the word
singe
.

14

The Offer

That night Jean-Luc studied the mural in the upstairs room. He reached for the bottle of red wine sitting on the floor. It was empty.

He was not.

It felt good to finally finish this project, years after he started it, even if he was drunk and it wasn’t his best work. He imagined how Colette would have enjoyed it.

Now he had to erase her and the past. He would beat this devil. He would.

He opened a fresh gallon of off-white paint, poured it into a metal tray, dipped a roller into it, and started applying it to the middle of the room. His stroke was tentative at first, then picked up speed.

Soon all traces of the mural were gone.

The Mansfield Express—Glorianna, her assistant Luther, and Nelson—was fast approaching, causing a nerve-wracked Alyce to toss and turn in her freshly washed sheets for a good hour before drifting off.

She was jolted awake by a pounding on her door and Jean-Luc bellowing, “We have important business to discuss!”

She grabbed her phone to see what time it was. Midnight!

While yanking on her robe, she bumped her thigh into the bedpost. “
Merde.
”

Jean-Luc and Didon had already made themselves at home at her dining table. Did she forget to lock her door again? Where was the New Yorker in her?

“I heard you swear in French.” He slammed his hand on the table, weaved a bit, and broke into a dopey grin. “That is a good sign.”

“Are you drunk?”

“I wrote a poem for you.” In a theatrical way he delivered:

“There once was a pale little sow

Who had herself a grand three-way plow

But the man whom she loved

Was none of the above

O, what does the poor girl do now?”

He waited for her response.

“Little
sow?
”

“Yes,
little.
Which makes it a term of endearment.”

“And what three-way plow? I didn’t have sex with either one of them!”

He leaned in, almost falling over. “Are you sure?”

“Yes!”

Wait, did she? No, she was sure she hadn’t.

“So?” he asked.

She looked at him, at Didon, and around the room. “So what?”

“What are you to do now?”

“Kick you the hell out, that’s what.”

“You need to rent a car,” he said. “You have not seen a thing. There is much beyond Marlaison. There is Avignon, Armagnac, the Pyrenees, Verdon Gorges, the Alps.”

“Do you put that ridiculous face on every time you want something from a woman? I’m not spending money—”

“You are a cliché.”

“You are an
ass.
”

“I’ve been called worse.” He took out a pack of cigarettes. She snatched them away. He snatched them back. “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times,” he said as he lit up. A long exhalation followed as he waited for a response. “It is a far, far better thing that I do, than I have ever done. Have you no idea what I am quoting?”

“What is this, a quiz show? Like I don’t get tested enough all day long.”

The next shot of smoke was right in her face. “The first and last lines of
A Tale of Two Cities
, one of the greatest novels ever written! It is about London and Paris during the French revolution.”

“Of course I’ve heard of it.”

“Who wrote it?”

“Ummm.” Damn. She knew it was somewhere in her fuzzy sleep-deprived brain.

“Charles Dickens!”

In his drunken gesturing, his cigarette fell from his fingers and onto the old wooden plank floor. She quickly picked it up and tossed it in the sink. He was more ornery than ever without Isabella.

“Just for the record, Mr. Elegance, I took a lot of math and business courses at college. Ask me anything about numbers.”

“To hell with numbers. What do they teach in American schools? How to read the television guide?” His expression darkened further as another thought came to him. “You live in New York City. There is culture everywhere.”

She made it clear she only worked in New York. She lived in Hoboken, which was in another state, New Jersey, across the Hudson River. Try leaving your house at 7 a.m., returning at 7 p.m. or later, and see how much culture you get. Occasionally a client treated her to a Broadway show.

He looked like he had smelled rotten food. “That is an existence, not a life.”

He was right about that.

“Here is what I will do for you. You procure a car and I will teach you culture. A small price to pay for learning how to be sophisticated.” As usual when he was worked up, he poked the air with his finger like a woodpecker attacking a tree. “There are thousands of women who would jump at the chance to be my student!”

She woodpeckered right back. “Then go find one! And
you
teach me sophistication? You look like hell and your dog smells like rotting fish.”

“And who called Isabella a twat?”

“You thought that was hilarious.”

“Never mind.” He switched to banging the table for emphasis. “I have the riches of the intellect, my little sow. I have dined with kings, made love to princesses, been quoted by the president of France!”

“Not that line about the five hundred cheeses. And stop calling me that.”

He brightened. “You know that quote? What is it? All of it, please.”

What had her dad said?

“It was de Gaulle who said it and the exact quote is, ‘How can you be expected to govern a country that has 246 kinds of cheese.’”

“Right.”

Warming to his new plan, “I will teach you to cook, to enjoy good food so you will never eat crap again.” Glancing at her refrigerator, “You may as well be living in a toxic waste dump.”

Wait a minute. Maybe this wasn’t so crazy. Why was she here? To work on
her.
She had a lot further to go than cutting out Cheez Whiz.

“Would you teach me about wine?”

He gleefully held up his glass as if to toast her. “With pleasure!” She responded in kind as he said, “To Beaujolais, Pomerol, St. Emilion, Graves, Viognier, and many more. I will even teach you French.” They took their respective sips. “Mornings at the school are not enough. You cheat. You find people who speak English.”

“I try to speak French. They get impatient.”

“They feel sorry for you. And please stop saying
get
or
got
so much. They
become
impatient is better. I detest when someone is recalling a conversation and says ‘Then he goes’ or ‘Then she went.’ It is wrong.”

“But everyone does it.”

“Everyone is wrong. You should strive to be right.”

He mapped out what he called his Pygmalion Plan, after telling her what
that
meant. It was vaguely familiar and she guessed it was a disease. He said Pygmalion was a sculptor in a poem by Ovid. He had sworn off women, then fell in love with a statue of a woman he created.

“It is also a play by George Bernard Shaw that the movie My Fair Lady was based on.”

There was Audrey Hepburn again. Sabrina, Eliza Doolittle. Was she any different?

She
was
getting stir crazy. With a car she wouldn’t have to bike to school in the heat or occasional rain. It would also make it easier to shop for groceries. And yes, just go and explore. Why stay in this one little area after traveling so far?

“I’ll see if Nelson will rent me a car after he leaves.”

“No, now! I will pay you back. I paid back Isabella and Mazuki didn’t I? Even more than what they spent.”

“Jean-Luc, I don’t have it. I lost my job, remember.”

“You are receiving unemployment checks.”

“No, I’m not. You have to be actively seeking employment to get those. I used all of my severance to do this!”

“You are renting your apartment.”

At a
slight
profit. Still. What condition would it be in when she returned?

She gave in to him out of exhaustion and because, after witnessing it with her own eyes, she trusted him to reimburse her. And there was her bad case of vacationitis that made the reasonable part of her brain disappear.

“It will be our secret, Jean-Luc. Okay?”

“But of course.”

She thought he would leave. Instead he jumped to another subject.

“Tell me about this mother of Nuisance. I mean, Nelson.”

Alyce was glad to have someone to share this with, even if the recipient was toasted.

“Glorianna’s father made a fortune in asbestos when she was a child,” she said, “then another fortune in asbestos removal when it was found to cause lung cancer.”

Revolted, he said, “Those are cold-hearted genes he inherited.”

Even Nelson had a similar take on it. “He’s completely different. You’ll see.”

“I’m fascinated. Tell me more about him.”

He was raised in Scarsdale, a wealthy suburb of New York. His father was a corporate lawyer. He did well, but when Glorianna’s father died she came into a fortune. Nelson’s dad now spent most of his time playing golf. Glorianna was a socialite hell-bent on looking 40 forever and “extending the Mansfield brand” with suitable offspring.

“She used those words?” Jean-Luc asked.

“Not to my face. Nelson told me. He’s an only child, so the pressure is really on him. His mother was furious when Carmelita put Nelson Mansfield, Jr. on her son’s birth certificate. She refuses to acknowledge him as her grandson. She pretends she’s from noble British ancestry. Glorianna Hope Smythe Mansfield. Even puts on an upper-class accent.”

He was sitting up straighter now. “Carmelita?”

That led to telling him all about her and Nelson’s child.

His eyes became hostile slits. “Glorianna is quintessential
nouveau riche
and the entire family sounds horrifying, including Nelson.”

“You know what?” Alyce said breezily. “You make me feel better about myself than I’ve felt in a long time.”

“Why is that?”

The carefree tone was gone when she said, “Because you’re in far worse shape.”

“Montaigne was correct. We only experience through contrast.”

“Sure.” Whoever that was.

He finally left. She lay in bed steaming over how annoying he could be. True, he just broke up with Isabella. Maybe he really did love her. He was under a lot of pressure to write something that would sell. He was going to lose his home.

He pounded on the door again. She groaned. “Go away! I’m sleeping!”

“I must tell you something!”

Cursing in French and English, she got up and opened the top of the front door.

“
What?
”

He weaved a bit before clasping the ledge. “Colette was not a dog.”

Stunned, she waited for more. “She was a woman?”

She could see his eyes shining with tears in the moonlight. “She was everything.”

He stumbled off into the night.

Wide awake now, she stayed up feeding her poor motherless baby
loirs
and thinking about how sad life could be. Was there anything that could mend Jean-Luc’s broken heart?

Before making one last attempt to get some sleep, she checked her phone to see if Nelson had texted—her new ritual that she did every 20 minutes.

She re-read his last one of the evening:
Nite baby. CUsoon xoxo

Her goodnight cyber kiss from thousands of miles away. It made her smile, feel calm, and be happy about the future. This time, she felt something different when she read it.