The sun brightly declines. I sip my Barbie-colored fruity drink from a fancy glass and try to pretend it doesn’t exist.
“Where the heckle –” My hands scrabble for my sunglasses, and I shove them on my face. “Ahh, temporary relief. So sweet, so transient, so Gucci.”
“Mademoiselle!” A voice rings out. I groan and sit up, watching Gregory waddle his way through the sands towards me. Even the southern French villagers, used to bright and colorful Mediterranean clothing, stare at his atrocious green-and-orange Hawaiian shirt.
“Gregory, you’re an eyesore,” I complain. Gregory laughs and offers me a hand up, his eyes taking in my white swimsuit with the low-cut back.
“And you, madame, are quite the opposite.”
“No!” I protest as I stand up. “No no no, look at these thighs! I’m far too young to be a madame. Try again in like, a seven thousand years.”
He chuckles. “Very well. Come on, he sent me to fetch you and for some reason he’s antsy as f**k-all.”
“Antsy? Jack?” I quirk a brow, picking up my towel and drink and slipping on my sandals, trudging through the sands with Gregory. “Are we talking about the same human being I’m in regular personal contact with?”
“The one and only.”
“Are you taking him back with you? Please say yes, please! I want those amazing little chocolates from Paris again - I want them with all my crappy idiot heart.”
“God knows you deserve them, putting up with him all the time,” Gregory huffs. “He’s been so off-kilter lately. After that last case, I told him to stay home, but it’s only made him worse.”
“He needs to get out,” I assert. “Put him on a nice case, something that has to do with saving the world or at least, like, non-fatal revenge. That’s his specialty. He’ll love it and I’ll love you for it and my love is, frankly, the most important thing you should be bargaining for here besides oxygen.”
“And French ladies,” Gregory eyes a village woman who passes in a short skirt.
“We have the crème de la crème here,” I agree, and wave at the villagers. “Bonjour! Francois! La bouche un petite chienne! Oh dear, they don’t look happy about that last one.”
“That last one didn’t even make sense,” Gregory emphasizes, and makes little ‘pardon’ noises at the offended nearby villagers. I walk briskly past him and up the cobblestone road. The village is tiny – white-washed, cramped store fronts housing bakeries and butcher shops and candy stores on the street level, and houses on the second level, windowboxes spilling with fresh herbs and flowers. Lines of laundry are thrown between windows, sheets and shirts flapping in the summer breeze. The smell of the ocean is everywhere, children carrying boogeyboards and floats bob and weave between bikes and too-slow couples. A pair of old men in stodgy caps take turns playing chess and drinking wine under the eaves of a flower shop.
Towards the edge of the village the cobblestone fades, replaced with a well-worn dirt road. Tall summer grasses sway on either side. I scoop up yellow and purple and white wildflowers, a honeybee fighting me for a particularly beautiful orange blossom.
“Go on!” I shoo her. “There are a thousand more, you can afford to donate one to the poor humans!”
Gregory chuckles, looking out at the ocean and the small farmhouses we pass.
“I’ll miss this town. You two’ve picked the best place in the world to settle down, I reckon.”
“Hey! No one’s settled! We’re going to Cambodia next year, and we went to Greece this spring! This is home base, not a settlement.”
“What’s the difference?”
“Settlement means like, minivans and baby barf. Home base implies we are explorers of the highest caliber.”
Gregory shakes his head. “Still, this place is fantastic.”
“Oh yeah, it’s great. Fresh honey and bread and lots of fruit in the fall, and I can’t speak a word of French but at least my boyfriend can.” I smack my lips. “Boyfriend. Ugh, that word still tastes funny. There should be another word. Prince, maybe? No, that’s too regal. Significant other? Ugh, too suburban. Buttbear?”
I pause, then turn to Gregory.
“I think I’ve struck gold.”
“Buttbear sounds like a carebear,” He sighs.
“Exactly!”
Gregory and I walk in silence, me skipping and him sticking to the shade of the oak trees. Another farmhouse passes, all white stone and logs and dogs chasing goats around.
“Will gets his parole hearing today,” Gregory tries. My heart stiffens a little, but the warm air is too sweet for it to last for long.
“Yeah. I heard.”
“He won’t get parole, of course,” He adds. “Felonies aren’t easy to appeal, and from what I’ve heard the judge seems very determined to keep him right where he is.”
I smirk, and Gregory smirks back at me.
“I’ve also heard a funny, beautiful girl has a cooking show that’s gotten very popular lately on a certain you of the tubes. Something about…a network approaching her? And a contract?”
I wave him off. “It’s nothing big, really. People just like to watch me slop sauce around and say weird things. That’s pretty much been my entire life. So really they just like to watch my life. Not bad for a girl who got kicked out of college for defacing a Professor’s office, huh?”
“But you make enough to live here,” He presses.
“Yeah. I mean, Jack helps too. A little.”
We share another smirk. Jack helps a lot. Gregory’s business of ‘information dealing’ pays well here in Europe, and now that Jack’s the head of his own cell with Charlie as his co-captain, it pays even better. Politicians and moguls and nosy, jealous husbands always want to know what’s going on with the competition. And sometimes the CIA contacts him, but Jack usually turns them down more than he accepts, for quote, ‘personal reasons pertaining to the fact my lovely girlfriend isn’t in the same country they want me to work in’ endquote. Whatever. He’s a dunce.
“He’s your dunce,” Gregory corrects, and I roll my eyes and run up to the gate that is the entrance to our house.
It can’t really be called a house – more like a run-down shack planted next to a peach tree. The walls are white stone reinforced with wood. The windows are a little crooked and don’t keep much heat in the winter, but our wood stove takes care of that, and the roof never leaks, so it’s the small things that count, really, and also the big things, because we have the biggest claw-foot tub and the fattest gray cat named Oolong sitting in the windowsill sunning himself. I dash up to the door and Oolong raises his head, giving me a thorough and vastly intimidating once-over before purring himself back to sleep.
“The party has arrived!” I herald my own return and throw my towel on the back of the chair and survey the kitchen – seaglass and shells decorate the windowsill by the rusty sink, mugs of morning coffee still sitting on the counter next to stringy remnants of the waffle-maker’s mess. I fish around in the fridge and look up as Gregory seats his weary butt at the kitchen table. The chair protests loudly.
“Do you want milk? Fresh from the cows next door. Or, ooh! We still have some wine left from last night.”