“It’s a good time, I’ll tell you,” she said, reaching for sarcasm. “A total cakewalk.”
“What is this, a walk with cake?”
“It means something is super easy. Which it wasn’t. I was making a joke. I guess if you have to explain a joke, it maybe wasn’t so funny.”
“But it does need explaining. Because walking with a cake is not easy. So it makes no sense.”
She had to laugh at that. He was right.
“So what is there to do in Toronto?”
“Changing the subject, very clever. Lots, but I’m not the one to ask, remember? Nerd who studied all day and night. Besides, we’re talking about you.”
“You get one more question this week,” he said, “and I do, too. Then we will talk about fixing your terrible social life when you go back to Canada. Because someone told me we only live four thousand weeks.”
“Fine. Go for it.”
“Do you have regrets?”
“Not breaking the rules, I guess.”
“Ha! Too bad I can’t go to university with that skill alone. I would be top of the class.”
“You could teach me a thing or two, then,” said Sabine.
“But I would never do that. Because once you have broken one rule, it just becomes easy to break them all … which isn’t as good as it sounds. Eventually you end up not knowing what is important. And one thing I already like about you is, you know what is important.”
“You give me too much credit.”
“I don’t think so. I think you are a very, very good person who is good for the world.”
He shot her a sincere look she hadn’t seen on his face since that moment right before they kissed in the Parc des Roches. She had an impulse to kiss him again, right then and there, but turned back to scraping instead.
Marlow bought new mattresses, linens and pillows, and she and Sabine moved into Maison Perdue. Thereafter, she divided her time between working on the house with Luc in the mornings and driving the moped to Guillaume’s in the afternoon to work for the festival. She had lunch from noon to one, then started working right through until eight at night. Oscar rolled in at the beginning of his day, whenever that was, and dialed her up on video call—he liked having her available online from the moment she sat down, even if they weren’t meeting; his theory was that if she were there in the open-concept Renegade office in Toronto, she would be available to him, so why not have her available to him from France, too?
Guillaume thought this was ridiculous and found little ways to try to counter the effect of Oscar’s challengingpersonality, like sneaking Marlow a caféau lait just out of Oscar’s eyeline in the laptop camera, or a slice of whatever dessert Madame Klein had made. By the time she finished her festival work and brought her dishes back to the kitchen, Guillaume was usually in phone meetings with North America, so she started leaving him little notes to say thank you, on the kitchen counter, or just outside his office. It also allowed her to practice her French.
Merci pour le gâteau délicieux.
C’était un café merveilleux—c’est très gentil.
Sometimes when she raced in the next day from her work on Maison Perdue, she found replies from him.
De rien—which meant “of nothing,” as in, “it cost me nothing to do you this kindness.” So gallant. Or …
Avec grand plaisir.Meaning, it was his great pleasure. Also pretty damn gallant, which made her feel almost wooed. It was a charming and old-timey way to communicate and felt like a bit of courtship. But they didn’t often connect face-to-face.
It was not the same at Maison Perdue. Luc went about his house repairs, she went about hers.
One early morning she woke up and found him way up a ladder, working on the house’s stones just underneath the roof line. She instantly went over to spot him at the foot of the ladder. He looked down at her, said nothing, kept working, then looked at her again.
“I have never had anyone do me this service,” he said finally. “Do you think I am a child?”
“Not going to answer that,” said Marlow.
“Very funny. You do not need to stand there.”
“Safety first. I don’t have one-euro house insurance to cover you if you fall. And if I do, it might only be worth—”
