It was hard to avoid running into plums right now. Everywhere I walked, they begged me to pick them before they fell or the bees got them: green-gold oval plums with juice that spurted out all over; purple plums that were unreliable, sometimes sweet and sometimes mouth-puckering acid; golden plums, round like a ball and brushed with orange, bursting sun-hot sweetness into my mouth.

Only two plum trees weren’t quite ready for harvest. Among plums, one species was the pride of all gardens, a queen who se faisait désirer, let people wait for her, let herself be desired. This was the fabulous mirabellier, with fruit worth its weight in gold in a city market in any ordinary summer. Some people said the mirabellier had its best harvest every seven years, and if so, this was the seventh year. Titi and Bruno’s two mirabelliers were a mass of tiny, deepening gold jewels that were not quite ripe. On the other side of the wire fence behind them, almost a dozen others lined a lot of land that had been for sale and unvisited for years, branches bowed under the weight of their fruit.

“Now about the food,” someone said as we dipped into the fondu.

“Brochettes,” Jean-Charles suggested, meaning kebabs. “They’re not very expensive, and we could do half a dozen different kinds, with different meats and combinations.”

Heads cocked. “But how would we get them all cooked?” somebody said. Nobody thought to ask how we would get them all prepared. I don’t know why.

“That’s the beauty of it,” Jean-Charles said. “The guests would cook them. We could place grills all around the garden, and that would create gathering points, where people would meet and talk.”

“Great idea!” someone exclaimed, and the echoes ran up and down the table. On the sixth bottle of wine, preparing enough kebabs to feed 150 people for two days seemed easier than making enough roasts and chicken for the same and serving them cold.

“Can we borrow enough grills?” I asked, ever focused on keeping out of debtor’s prison. “I don’t want to have to buy them.”

Rapid brainstorming ensued. How many people did they know who had grills? Could we maybe find some to buy somewhere cheap, like at a flea market? Jean-Charles brushed all ideas aside with his hand. “Oil drums.”

Even on the sixth bottle, this was a little cryptic. Everyone stared.

“We can burn them out to get rid of any drops of oil clinging to the sides, cut them in half lengthwise, and set them on something, concrete blocks maybe, so that they don’t burn the grass and don’t roll over. Then all we have to do is find enough grills to lay over them. You can always find something like that.” He opened another bottle of wine.

“You can?” I said.