Chapters (45)
- Cover
- Blame Iton Paris
- Copyright Notice
- ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
- Book One
- One
- Two
- Three
- Four
- Five
- Six
- Seven
- Eight
- Nine
- Ten
- Eleven
- Twelve
- Thirteen
- Fourteen
- Fifteen
- Sixteen
- Seventeen
- Eighteen
- Nineteen
- Twenty
- Twenty-one
- Book Two
- Twenty-two
- Twenty-three
- Twenty-four
- Twenty-five
- Twenty-six
- Twenty-seven
- Twenty-eight
- Twenty-nine
- Thirty
- Thirty-one
- Thirty-two
- Thirty-three
- Thirty-four
- Thirty-five
- Thirty-six
- Thirty-seven
- Thirty-eight
- Thirty-nine
“I’ll take care of it,” he said, as a veteran flea-market scavenger. “And we’ll burn wood down to coals in them. Then at night, when it gets cooler, people can gather around them to warm up.”
“So that’s settled,” Bruno said from the end of the table. “More wine down there? Now about the rest of the food. . . . ”
Thank goodness we had hurried to get here, because the planning proved time-consuming. Not nearly as stressful as I had thought, but a definite time sink. Before we finished plotting, stars shone bright and clear overhead, as they never did in Paris, and everything seemed possible. It had nothing to do with the alcohol; that’s just the way Sébastien and his family made things feel. Now that the sun was gone, the night grew cold, and I tucked my hands and sandaled feet under my legs and shivered. Having learned the hard way what kind of summer weather I was used to, Claudine and Titi kept coming back from trips into the house with more wool sweaters to push over my head. By midnight, we had finished making wedding plans and were re-making the world. Refaire le monde is a peculiarly French expression used to describe energetic discussions over wine that last until 6:00 A.M. God might have done it in six days sober, but even a Frenchman can’t do Him better in one night without wine.
The females yielded first, one by one, and climbed upstairs, for our first night sharing the communal sleeping quarters. Even Bruno and Titi would be sleeping up here until they got a restoration project cleared out of their bedroom. Ensconced on mattresses on the floor, comforters pulled up snug around us, we heard the men begin to sing. “Oh, Lord,” Justine said out loud. Claudine pressed her head into her pillow and snickered. Titi and Bruno’s mother-hen friend Colette, being of stronger stuff, started to snore.
Tiens, voilà mon zob, zob, zob,
Tiens, voilà mon zob, zobi!
We giggled ourselves to sleep to lullabies about weenies, only to be wakened four hours later, as day was lightening in the east.
“Jean-Charles, not the dogs!” Claudine exclaimed, starting to laugh again.
Ah, so that was what had just galumphed over me.
“Why not the dogs? The dogs love us! The dogs want to be with us! Bruno! What are you doing?” I peered out from under the covers to see Bruno in his underwear trying to climb into the wrong bed. “That’s my woman, go find your own!”
At six in the morning, he, Bruno, and Titi all found that hilarious.