She lay still, on her back, with her hands clasped on her chest. She rarely moved in her sleep, unlike his thrashing. Was Clément right in suggesting that Verlaque, as a young man, had been short-tempered? Verlaque knew that over the years he had softened; 30 percent due to aging, and 70 percent due to the calming effects of the woman sleeping in the bed opposite him now.
He opened the doors to the terrace and stepped out; the wind had stopped and he could see the hotelâs garden, lit up by well-placed spotlights, and beyond that, the still black sea. What had he wanted when he was in his early twenties? Probably a bit of Sylvieâs getting laid; he had also wanted, and received, love and affection from his grandparents; he wanted to get good marks; and had loved running fast, alone with the ball, during his rugby games. He must have had fantasies of being a famous courtroom lawyer, but these memories were fuzzier. He breathed in the night air, which smelled of pine trees and the sea.
Did he dream of marriage, and children? No, probably not. Half of French marriages ended in divorce; the Viales were a perfect advertisement for staying single. But there were successful marriages too. His commissioner, Bruno Paulik, was happily married to a winemaker, and at this moment they were watching their first crop of grapes ripen in the July sun; their funny, chatty little daughter, Léa, most likely dancing and singing among the vines. If he had children, he wanted girls. What in the world would he do with a boy?
Chapter Six
About the Manager
T he village of Néoules was in the middle of Provence, a region that some enterprising local mayors had coined La Provence Verte to try to entice tourists. It was south of the A8âa highway that stretched from the Riviera all the way to, as the signs proclaimed, Barcelona. There were few reasons to go to Néoules, unless you knew someone there: no sea or mountains; the roads were windy; and there were no cultural sites or Michelin-starred restaurants. The economy was thinly spread: chickpeas were the local specialty crop; there was a sprinkling of winemakers making good to mediocre wines; a bottled-water company was one of the bigger employers with a staff of fifty-five; an enterprising Dutch woman made soaps and cosmetics out of donkeyâs milk; and the rest of the inhabitants appeared to be either retired or unemployed. And it had never been greenâ
verte
âto Nicola; for her it would always be orange, the color of rust.
Rusting farm equipment was her parentsâ idea of garden decorating. They had been unemployed as long as Nicola could remember; when she was very young her father had worked part-time fixing motors, but he grew so unreliable that farmers began taking their work to a mechanic in neighboring Rocbaron. But M. Darcette loved the motors, and instead of taking broken, useless motors to the dump, he arranged them around their half-finished terrace, as if they were art objects. Her mother found a broken cherub fountain behind an abandoned hotel in Garéoult and had made her husband put it in the middle of the terrace, surrounded by the rusty engines. He had given up trying to rig water up to itâthey couldnât afford a pumpâso every now and then, when Mme Darcette was feeling energetic, she filled the basin with old dishwater.
Nicola and her older sister Aude went through the first half of their childhood thinking the Darcettesâ way of life was normal. They didnât think it odd that their parents went almost everywhere, even into the village, wearing their slippersâwith cigarettes hanging from their mouthsâas the other villagers werenât much better dressed. But Nicola knew that at least some of the other men in the village met at the
bar des sports
and laughed a bit. Not her father; he and Mme Darcette kept to themselves, nourished by a constant supply of bulk wine they got from the
cave cooperative
. Mme
He opened the doors to the terrace and stepped out; the wind had stopped and he could see the hotelâs garden, lit up by well-placed spotlights, and beyond that, the still black sea. What had he wanted when he was in his early twenties? Probably a bit of Sylvieâs getting laid; he had also wanted, and received, love and affection from his grandparents; he wanted to get good marks; and had loved running fast, alone with the ball, during his rugby games. He must have had fantasies of being a famous courtroom lawyer, but these memories were fuzzier. He breathed in the night air, which smelled of pine trees and the sea.
Did he dream of marriage, and children? No, probably not. Half of French marriages ended in divorce; the Viales were a perfect advertisement for staying single. But there were successful marriages too. His commissioner, Bruno Paulik, was happily married to a winemaker, and at this moment they were watching their first crop of grapes ripen in the July sun; their funny, chatty little daughter, Léa, most likely dancing and singing among the vines. If he had children, he wanted girls. What in the world would he do with a boy?
Chapter Six
About the Manager
T he village of Néoules was in the middle of Provence, a region that some enterprising local mayors had coined La Provence Verte to try to entice tourists. It was south of the A8âa highway that stretched from the Riviera all the way to, as the signs proclaimed, Barcelona. There were few reasons to go to Néoules, unless you knew someone there: no sea or mountains; the roads were windy; and there were no cultural sites or Michelin-starred restaurants. The economy was thinly spread: chickpeas were the local specialty crop; there was a sprinkling of winemakers making good to mediocre wines; a bottled-water company was one of the bigger employers with a staff of fifty-five; an enterprising Dutch woman made soaps and cosmetics out of donkeyâs milk; and the rest of the inhabitants appeared to be either retired or unemployed. And it had never been greenâ
verte
âto Nicola; for her it would always be orange, the color of rust.
Rusting farm equipment was her parentsâ idea of garden decorating. They had been unemployed as long as Nicola could remember; when she was very young her father had worked part-time fixing motors, but he grew so unreliable that farmers began taking their work to a mechanic in neighboring Rocbaron. But M. Darcette loved the motors, and instead of taking broken, useless motors to the dump, he arranged them around their half-finished terrace, as if they were art objects. Her mother found a broken cherub fountain behind an abandoned hotel in Garéoult and had made her husband put it in the middle of the terrace, surrounded by the rusty engines. He had given up trying to rig water up to itâthey couldnât afford a pumpâso every now and then, when Mme Darcette was feeling energetic, she filled the basin with old dishwater.
Nicola and her older sister Aude went through the first half of their childhood thinking the Darcettesâ way of life was normal. They didnât think it odd that their parents went almost everywhere, even into the village, wearing their slippersâwith cigarettes hanging from their mouthsâas the other villagers werenât much better dressed. But Nicola knew that at least some of the other men in the village met at the
bar des sports
and laughed a bit. Not her father; he and Mme Darcette kept to themselves, nourished by a constant supply of bulk wine they got from the
cave cooperative
. Mme
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