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
The fumes from the grandparents’ 1952 Peugeot 203 convertible wafted back at us, mixing with the scent of roadside rosemary. I bounced on the edge of my seat and twisted this way and that, examining the tiny wood pegs that locked and unlocked the door, the system that folded and unfolded the second windshield. The twenties were my favorite decade; I had always wanted to be one of those jaded, flippant, and yet somehow life-embracing flappers. I had even tried to wear those straight Twiggy dresses during my adolescence, but at five-foot-three and with my overblown curves, I only ended up looking like a barefoot, pregnant housewife. Nudging Sébastien, I kept whispering to him to ask what this and that dial on the dash was for.
“Ask Jean-Charles,” he said, a smile curving his sexy mouth. So finally I did. Chest swelling, increasingly pleased in that growly, amused way as I continued to pester him, Jean-Charles explained at length. Sébastien grinned and leaned back with his arm stretched behind me, teasing his little sister and watching the vineyards and tomato fields we passed in slow motion, at thirty miles per hour. I tried to look everywhere at once. Claudine twisted and grinned at my enthusiasm, as proud as if she and not her husband had been the one to rebuild this Torpedo with painstaking manual labor.
We met the rest of the car club in a gravel lot filled with classic cars, none less than forty years old. On the shady terrace of the only café in St. Pantaléon, a village that would almost fit into the palm of one hand, waiters bustled with our breakfast. Coffee, hot chocolate, juice, pains au chocolat, and some cream-stuffed pastry that was the café’s specialty appeared before us. We quickly fell behind schedule as two dozen French enjoyed their meals, caught up with everyone’s news, interrogated me on pink Cadillacs and means of getting them from America to France, and lamented the poor turnout. Jean-Charles, Robert, and the others shook their heads and muttered, slanting looks down the table at another gray-haired man obliviously immersed in his own conversation. The year before, they had had fifty cars, but then R. had gone and upped the participation fee thirty francs. That was the equivalent of almost five whole dollars more than last year’s participation fee; no wonder people got mad and refused to come.