“Shameful,” I agreed, hoping to keep the conversation away from the pink Cadillacs. I’d just run through the whole Bruce Springsteen song in my head and come up with not a single detail that would save me from sounding like a complete idiot. I escaped with Sébastien and Justine down to the old lavoir just below the café, an ancient stone half-building by the river, where laundry used to be washed. The sun was just penetrating into the lavoir’s coolness, and Sébastien and Justine amused themselves by dancing hand-shadows across the floor. The café’s German shepherd scrambled frantically after the shadows, trying to dig through stone to get at them.

We bounced and jounced away from the café at last, the wind in our hair, people smiling and waving as we passed. At a couple of intersections, we passed so close to the car waiting to turn onto the road that I could see its male driver biting his lip with envy. Or was that alarm at getting behind twelve cars that wouldn’t go over thirty-five miles per hour?

The oldest car’s top speed was a perfect speed for touring Provence. In an open convertible, the scents of lavender washed over us off those endless fields of purple. Some of those fields had been cut by now, but many still had blooms to harvest. In our first real town, we slowed for a flock of people carrying baskets across the street. I turned my head, and as far down the side street as I could see stretched color after color: bright red peppers and tomatoes, yellow peaches, leafy greens, golden brown bread.

“What’s that?”

“A market.” Claudine turned to look at me. “You’ve never been to a Provençal market?”

“No.” I craned my head to look back. “You don’t think we could . . . ?” Well, no, I could hardly bring our caravan to a pause; everyone else here saw legendary Provençal markets twice a week. It was too late, anyway; we were rumbling over the baked gold span of a two-thousand-year-old Roman bridge toward a granite rock face. The river plummeted into a gorge below us.