Prodigals by Greg Jackson

the Auvergne?” he said. “The Auvergne, you know, is a mystical place. Very strange. Full of old, secret societies.” He cut into the chicken to see whether it was cooked through. “It was the center of the Resistance, did you know? They would hide in the mountains and hills.”
    I asked if that was why he’d chosen to live here.
    â€œOf course,” he said and winked.
    That night Vicky and I turned in early after dinner. We had a second-floor bedroom that looked out on the tennis court and the moonlit hills beyond. Fresh wildflowers sprouted from a vase beside our bed.
    â€œI’m worried about Marion,” Vicky said. She lay looking up at the ceiling. I was reading next to her.
    â€œIn what sense?” I put my book down. “Your friends couldn’t be more wonderful.”
    Vicky was quiet for a minute, then she said, “Marion told me some disturbing things. Léo refuses to touch her, she says. They haven’t slept together in a year.”
    â€œThat is disturbing,” I said. “Marion’s very attractive.”
    â€œDon’t make a joke of it. She thinks Léo’s turning into a … an ascetic or something.” Vicky toyed with my arm hair, self-consciously, I thought, as though to confirm we still had this.
    â€œThat’s not all,” she said after a minute. Her voice had grown soft, so soft I could barely hear her. I leaned over and felt her damp breath in my ear. “Léo has a workshop he keeps locked, but Marion found the key when he was out on a walk…”
    Vicky stopped speaking. The moon fell through the sky and through our window to pool on the tile below. I didn’t want to betray my curiosity, but this excited me. My heart beat with a hollow, winey depth.
    â€œAnd?” I whispered.
    â€œThere was a video camera on a tripod. A chair. A bunch of old-looking electronic equipment she doesn’t understand. Maybe a VCR or something.”
    I laughed. “What does she think? He’s some sort of abductor?”
    â€œIt’s not funny,” Vicky said. “She doesn’t know what to think. She’s afraid to ask him.”
    I told Vicky not to worry, but despite my jet lag and my fatigue I found it difficult to sleep. I had the impression of being awake the entire night, turning from side to side. I must have fallen asleep, though, because in the middle of the night I awoke to find Vicky gone from bed. I hadn’t heard her stir, so I got up to check our little bathroom, which was empty. A sudden fear gripped me. I saw a grisly scene: Vicky tied to a chair, gagged, camera rolling. I was not in my right mind, struggling into a pair of shorts, when I glanced out the window and saw Vicky on the tennis court, hitting imaginary ground strokes by herself in the moonlight. She moved as I had seen her move on tennis courts for many years, with the litheness of a cat and a shot that snapped so hard it looked like it could dislocate her lovely shoulders.
    My heart was heaving. First with fear, then with relief, then with a second fear that what I was witnessing was madness. I lay down for a minute to calm myself and awoke in the early morning with Vicky sleeping next to me. She was in a good mood when I nudged her awake and laughed when I told her what I’d seen.
    â€œYou must have dreamed it,” she said and turned over to doze some more. But I hadn’t dreamed it, I was sure I hadn’t, and as Vicky fell back asleep I dressed and went out to look for scuff marks in the clay. I walked the lines of the court, but could scarcely find a stray crumble of brick. When I looked up, Léo was walking toward me with a pair of mugs.
    â€œTiens,” he said, handing me a coffee. “I saw you out here, sniffing around the cage.”
    He stood at the gate. I sipped my coffee. “We say ‘court’ in English.”
    â€œShall we go exploring?” he said. I thought he meant around