French Leave by Anna Gavalda Page A

HA HA! STAYIN’ ALIIIIIII-VVVE!” while Simon zigzagged along the D114, yanking his tie off.
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    I put my jeans back on and Lola handed me her hat to put next to me on the seat.
    Given what she’d paid for it, she was a bit disappointed.
    â€œHey . . . ” I said, to try and console her, “you can wear it at my wedding . . . ”
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    Peals of laughter resonating through the little car.
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    We’d rescued our good mood. We’d managed to eject the alien from our spacecraft.
    All we needed now was to pick up the last crew member.
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    I hunted on the map for the hole where Vincent was living, and Lola played DJ. We could choose between France Bleu Creuse and Radio Gélinotte. Hardly the greatest sounds in the world but what did it matter? We were yakking away like crazy.
    â€œI would never have dreamt you were capable of doing something like this,” she said at last, turning to our chauffeur.
    â€œAs you get older you get wiser,” he smiled, taking the cigarette I held out to him.
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    We’d been driving for two hours and I was telling them about my stay in Lisbon when I—
    â€œWhat is it?” said Lola anxiously.
    â€œDid you see that?”
    â€œSee what?”
    â€œThe dog.”
    â€œWhat dog?”
    â€œOn the side of the road . . . ”
    â€œDead?”
    â€œNo. Abandoned.”
    â€œHey, don’t go getting so worked up about it.”
    â€œNo, it’s the way he looked at me, don’t you see?”
    They didn’t see.
    I am sure that dog was looking at me.
    It made me sad as hell, and then Lola said something about our escape and she howled the music from Mission Impossible at the top of her lungs and I stopped thinking about the dog.
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    I sat there holding the map and daydreaming, thinking about those poker games from last night. I had really stuck my neck out, that last round with my four loser deuces, but what do you know . . . I had won all the same.
    And now it all made sense.

  
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    W hen we got there, the last tour of the day had just started.
A young guy, white as an aspirin and pretty scruffy-looking, his gaze that of a cow in aspic, suggested we join the group up on the second floor.
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    There were a few wayward tourists, women with flabby thighs, indifferent families, grouchy kids, a pair of meditative schoolteachers in their Birkenstocks, and a handful of Hollanders. They all turned around and stared when we joined the group.
    As for Vincent, he hadn’t seen us yet. He had his back to us and was waffling on about his machicolations with a zeal we didn’t know he had in him.
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    Initial shock: he was wearing a threadbare blazer, a striped shirt, cuff links, a little ascot in his collar, and a sketchy pair of pants, but with cuffs all the same. He was close-shaven and his hair was combed back.
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    Second shock: the complete and utter bullshit coming out of his mouth.
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    This château had been in the family for several generations. Nowadays, he lived there on his own while waiting to start a family and restore the moats.
    The place had a curse on it because it had been built in secret for the mistress of François I’s third bastard, a certain Isaure de Haut-Brébant who had gone mad with jealousy, so the legend went, and who dabbled in witchcraft when the fancy took her.
    â€œ . . . And even today, ladies and gentlemen, on nights when the moon is orange, during the first decan, you can hear very strange sounds, a sort of groaning, coming from the cellars, the very cellars that were used as a prison once upon a time . . .
    â€œWhen my grandfather was in the process of remodeling the present-day kitchens, which you will see shortly, he discovered bones dating from the time of the Hundred Years’ War, and a few écus stamped with the seal of Saint Louis. On your left is a tapestry from the twelfth century, and on your right, a portrait of the