“You cannot go mushroom hunting unless you’re with an expert,” said Luc. “Sylvain was taught by his father and grandfather.”
Every mushroom Marlow found, Sylvain would inspect and dismiss.“Mais non! Ça c’est de la merde!”he’d say—meaning what she’d found was shit.“Ton amie, elle ne trouve rien!”Your friend finds nothing! Or he’d say,“mais non, ce champignon, c’est mauvais, c’est même du poison!”Which was worse. Shewasfinding mushrooms, but poisonous ones.
“Allez, les champignons, où êtes-vous? Cherchez, les enfants! Allez, au boulot!”
For a long time, they found nothing, climbing higher up the mountain. Cowbells rang in the distance. On the next big hill, cattle grazed near shepherd cottages with rusty metal roofs. Tufts of clouds hung just above them. It looked like it might rain.
“Pourriez-vous aller plus vite que ma grand-mère?”he roared over his shoulder, accusing them of being slower than his grandmother. “Allons-y, réveillez-vous! Luc, tu es trop lent! On n’est pas en vacances!”Wake up! Luc, you’re too slow! We’re not on holiday!
Marlow huffed and puffed a bit.
“Ai-je promis que ce serait facile? Non!”Did I promise it would be easy? No! Then he disappeared into a clutch of trees.
“Thank you for bringing me,” said Marlow. “It’s gotten me out of my head. Nothing good was happening in there.”
“It’s a beautiful head. Everything that happens in there is good,” said Luc, smiling. A delicious smile. Lips to die for. A mouth that wanted to be kissed. Melted into.
“I slept with Guillaume,” she blurted.
Luc kept his eyes on the ground, looking for mushrooms. “Ah,” he said.
“I’m acting ridiculous these days. I can’t even predict what I’ll do moment to moment.”
“I thought I was better in bed than that.”
“You are remarkable in bed.”
“Well … I am a grown man, and you are a grown woman. You can sleep with whoever you want. I will say, though, it makes me want to fight for you.”
“That’s just testosterone talking. It’s what I told Guillaume, too, when he talked about wanting to fight for me. Which is supremely weird, by the way. That you both said that.”
“Maybe it is testosterone. Maybe it’s desire.”
It felt good to be desired, Marlow had to admit, but could she resist more of Luc? Did she need to? Why couldn’t she just be irresponsible like the rest of the world?
Sylvain reappeared empty-handed. The area had been too well picked over. Or it was too dry, despite the recent storm. Mushrooms liked damp, mossy areas at the edges of woods.“Les bordures, les bordures!”he cried. And they were off to the borders!
Luc found a clutch of boletes.“Ah, les beaux coins magnifiques!”said Sylvain. The magnificent corners. And then chastised Luc for how he cut the mushrooms—they had to be cut at the base, not too low, so you didn’t harm the roots, otherwise other mushrooms wouldn’t grow—and not too high, or you left half the mushroom behind and what was the point?
On their way back, Marlow almost tripped over some chanterelles. Sylvain threw his hands up to the skies.“Les plus belles chanterelles du jour! Enfin!”
Sylvain picked the mushrooms and showed them the way home.
I wish I knew my way home,thought Marlow,both metaphorically and geographically.
When they got back to Sylvain’s, he told them about the paperwork piles. For years now, a clinic was to have been built inthe area so that older people like him could age at home. The local government (in other words, Rémy) had never managed to find the money to build it, so Sylvain had taken up the fight, with support letters from all over, including a politician in England, though Sylvain couldn’t read English. Marlow offered to translate it, and in doing so, was amazed at how her French had improved. She also helped compose a reply on his ancient typewriter. He kissed her goodbye on both cheeks by way of thanks.
“Back to our adventure,” said Luc, getting into the car.
She didn’t even ask where they were going. She wanted, for once, to just be in this moment with a guy who wanted her, who accepted her messy tears and let her eat all thepalmiersin the box.
Sabine, Aubin, and Yves were invited to dinner by Delphine, and then out into the courtyard for a concert given by the violinist they’d seen rehearsing earlier and a synthesizer player with purple hair and a nose ring. It was a Beethoven-eighties New Wave mash-up. Aubin was asked to layer in his own music, which he fed from his phone through loudspeakers. Residents got up to dance bathed in pink, blue, and indigo lights thrown onto the château walls by the projection designer. Aubin was in his element. Sabine leaned back in her chair and took it all in, feeling nothing but joy.
“I have just sold my film to an American distributor,” said Yves. “I have money—more than I’ve had in a while. I’d like to send you here.”
“You can’t do that,” said Sabine. “You always invest your money in your next film.”
“But now I want to invest it in you. You’re my daughter. Please let me.”
