“I don’t know what that is,” said Aubin.
“A pick-up is a scene you still need. You might be working with your editor, and you see that two scenes will not fit together, or there is a problem, or the story won’t make sense unless you add something new. I am in that place on the film I am finishing now. It is never good—it can be very costly on a film with a big budget—but thankfully I am not only the director, I am also the writer and the crew, so I can achieve this without much difficulty.”
Sabine could see it sounded like as much fun to Aubin as it did to her. “We’d love that.” She’d have to lie again to her mum about not getting back around noon, but maybe late this evening? Tomorrow? The lies were piling up.
“Merveilleux,”said Yves. “Hopefully we won’t get arrested this time.”
No word from Sabine. She’d no doubt be sleeping in.
On the way to Neufchâteau, Marlow and Luc saw more destruction. There was a washed-out road in the valley, so theyhad to pick a different route past battered road signs. A coop had been crushed by a fallen tree that had also flattened its enclosure fence; the chickens had escaped. An older man in rubber boots and worn corduroy pants with patches on the knees chased the chickens to no avail.
They helped pull the tree off the fence and propped it back up. They chased the chickens this way and that, laughing at the mayhem. Marlow found the corrugated metal coop roof twenty feet away in the tall grass, curled up like a sardine lid. She dragged it back, using her broken French to ask if the man needed anything from Neufchâteau, given she and Luc were headed there. He was touched, especially given they didn’t know each other.
“Je suis de Mirabelle, en haut de la colline,”she said,“et vous êtes sur la route de Neufchâteau, donc ce ne serait pas un problème du tout.”(I am from Mirabelle, and you are on the way to Neufchâteau, so it isn’t a problem at all.)
“C’est très gentil, Madame,”the man said.
“Je m’appelle Marlow Linden. Et je voudrais vous présenter Luc Celeste.”She could now not only introduce herself and Luc, she could use“vous”correctly. Not bad.
“Gérard Dubé,” he said.
They said their goodbyes and got back into the car.
“I want to keep sleeping together,” blurted Luc, pulling back onto the road.
She laughed. “Is chasing after chickens so sexy?”
“It is. It is you helping someone you don’t know.”
“That’s just being human.”
“You also told him you were from Mirabelle. And you used French freely with a stranger. That is not the French from when you arrived a month ago.”
“So chasing chickens, saying I’m from Mirabelle, and using my bad French are a turn-on?”
He nodded. “It’s only that this ‘situationship’ is not for me.”
“That works out then, because I think it’s a mistake to have sex with a neighbor.”
“Bah.That would not bother me at all. It is very convenient,non?”
“All the easier to get into trouble.”
“And a ‘situationship’ wouldn’t get you into trouble?”
He was right about that.
“So. If you decide to get rid of this strange idea and commit to one man—the better man—me—I will be there. When Ruth buys the house, for example. You won’t be a neighbor then.”
“We’ll see.”
“I live in hope.”
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Sabine, Aubin, and Yves headed out to pick up some equipment for his shoot that afternoon. They borrowed it from a friend on Boulevard Saint-Michel, and on the way back, Yves pointed out a beautiful domed building with columns, statues, and a clockface.
“La Sorbonne,” he said. “If you so choose, your university. There is not a more prestigious place in France you could go.”
