When we got to the farmhouse the day before the village festival, Titi and Bruno’s friend Colette was riding the lawn mower, Claudine and Justine were picking zucchini, and Jean-Charles was pruning half-dead apple trees. The sun was out, burning away smells of must and filling the air with the scent of the honeysuckle that formed a corridor from the kitchen to the outdoor dining area. Colette, the oldest and yet spryest of us all, with a big-tipped nose and the exaggerated expressions of a born comic, wasn’t related to Titi and Bruno; but the English word “friend” didn’t seem to cover her relationship to them. She was family, their scrawny, freckled mother hen.

“Wow,” Sébastien and I exclaimed, as we did every time we came there. “This place is fantastic.”

“It is nice,” Bruno said proudly, flicking his white hair back. In the frequent masquerade parties he, Titi, Jean-Charles, and Claudine organized, Bruno favored roles that showcased the real him, like Louis XIV. The stone farmhouse with its grounds was his Versailles. He turned toward me. “Did you know this is where we had our big PACS ceremony? A huge celebration, one hundred and fifty people who stayed for two days.”

“I heard about it,” I said. Bruno and Titi had gotten PACSed almost as soon as a law passed allowing legal “marriage-equivalents” between people of the same sex, and they had celebrated it in extravagant fashion.

“It’s the perfect place for that kind of thing,” Bruno explained, smiling at me. “PACS, huge birthday parties, weddings. I’ll have to show you pictures.”

“Okay,” I said. I had seen many of them, but I was game for another round. Whenever I looked at pictures of Bruno and Titi’s PACS, I felt as if I should ask for autographed copies. The event was that famous. How many stories had I heard of two days of feasting, the baker delivering sacks and sacks of bread to replenish the supply, Sébastien rolling out champagne in a wheelbarrow, René supervising the méchoui, the long, slow process of roasting a couple of lambs over open coals? Titi had spent the entire week beforehand cooking in the kitchen of the old farmhouse. When they brought out all the desserts he and the local baker had made, it had taken four men to lift the eight-foot-long, foil-wrapped board, laden from end to end. Bruno had cried as he tried to give his speech, and people had danced for ten hours without stopping. All of these stories and accompanying pictures spilled out again that evening over dinner outside at Titi and Bruno’s huge teak table, where everyone relaxed and lingered until 4 A.M., surrounded by tiki torches.