Max picked up the glasses and went off, encouraged by a parting wink from Fanny, to find Christie and Charlie, who had been watching him from a table in front of the café.
“What’s so funny?” Max said, looking from one smirking face to the other.
“Nothing,” said Charlie. “Nothing at all.”
“They’ve been circling each other for days,” said Christie. “You should watch out, Max. I think she’s decided to go for it tonight.”
“You two,” said Max, shaking his head. “Vulgar speculation. I was merely being polite to a charming young lady who, I might say…”
“… is wearing a dress the size of a handkerchief,” Charlie added. “I think Christie’s right.”
They sipped their wine-which Charlie pronounced to be young and playful, but essentially good-hearted-while they watched the parade passing in front of them. The evening had attracted people from surrounding villages as well as some other, more distant foreigners: Germans the color of polished mahogany, their speech sounding harsh and guttural against the background of softer, more mellifluous French; the American cyclists they had seen in the market, now dressed like wealthy teenagers in that particular kind of cotton that never seems to wrinkle, with silver-tipped belts, pristine pneumatic sneakers, and, of course, baseball caps with sporting or military motifs; a group of Gypsies, lean and swarthy and all in black, slithering through the crowd like sharks among a shoal of tropical fish; a sprinkling of Parisians, pastel cashmere sweaters draped over their shoulders to ward off the eighty-degree evening chill. But, as Christie remarked, there didn’t seem to be any English.
“Ah,” said Max, with the knowledgeable air of an old local inhabitant of ten days’ standing, “they’re mostly on the other side of the Luberon-Gordes, Ménerbes, Bonnieux, the golden triangle. I’m told it’s a lot more social over there than it is here, soirées every soir. Right up your street actually, Charlie. Apparently they love talking about property prices.”
A few tables away, the accordion band, fortified by a final pastis, had gathered up their instruments and were now filing onto the stage. The rap singer being broadcast over the loudspeakers was cut off in mid-expletive, and the space in front of the stage began to clear. Over behind the bar, Fanny had removed her apron and was slipping it over the head of the relief bartender, an ancient, diminutive man who stood motionless, hypnotized by the proximity of the décolleté being presented to him at nose level.
Charlie gave Max a nudge. “Better get in quick before young Lochinvar over there asks her to dance,” he said as he and Christie stood up. “We’ll go and find a table.”
But getting Fanny to the table was a slow, convivial process, marked by frequent stops while she embraced friends and clients of the restaurant, watched by wary and sometimes not wholly approving wifely eyes. Fanny in the restaurant, taken up with all her duties, was somehow safe-charming and highly decorative, but safe. Fanny freed from her professional responsibilities, in a dress that could make even the best behaved husband think of a weekend in Paris, was not a sight any wife would welcome, especially during an evening of wine, music, and dancing. Max felt he had done well to cover the distance between bar and table-no more than fifty yards-in ten minutes.
Christie and Charlie had secured four places and a liter jug of wine at one end of a long table facing the stage. Charlie was at his most gallant when introduced to Fanny, springing to his feet, bowing over her hand, and murmuring enchanto, enchanto, with even more than usual enthusiasm. But this was unfortunately lost beneath the riffs and flourishes of the accordion band tuning up, and it wasn’t until she asked how long he was staying in Saint-Pons that his language problem became evident.
Fanny turned to Max. “He has no French, your friend?”
“About four words. I’m the official interpreter for this evening.”
And interpret he did, passing on Fanny’s comments about the villagers taking their places at nearby tables, a kind of informal who’s who of Saint-Pons. “Over there is Borel, the mayor since twenty years, a sweet man, a widower. He has ambitions toward the widow Gonnet-there she is at the next table-who works at the Bureau de Poste, but he is très timide, a man of great shyness. Perhaps the music will encourage him. Now, at the far end of our table is Arlette from the épicerie, and her husband. As you can see, she is very large, and he is very small. It is said that she beats him.” Fanny giggled, and paused to sip her wine. Max inhaled her scent, and controlled an impulse to brush back her hair and kiss the nape of her neck.
“Those two don’t look like locals,” he said, nodding toward an expensively dressed couple who were standing off to one side, heads tilted back, looking down their noses at the crowd.
Fanny sniffed. “The Villeneuve-Loubets, very prétentieux. They have a house in the 16th in Paris and an estate not far from Aix. She says she is descended in a direct line from Louis XIV, which I can believe. She looks exactly like him.” Another giggle. “They’re friends of Nathalie Auzet. They deserve each other.”
“I take it you’re not too fond of Nathalie.”
Fanny looked at Max and tilted a bare brown shoulder toward him in a half shrug. “Let’s just say we have different interests.”
Max was wondering if Nathalie would put in an appearance when a heavy hand clapped him on the shoulder. He turned to see Roussel in his Yves Montand outfit, and Ludivine, resplendent in deep purple. Fanny clearly liked both of them, and when they moved on to find their places, she said to Max, “There is a good man. He was very kind to me when I was starting the restaurant, and he did his best to take care of your uncle… oh merde. Here comes the octopus.”
Max looked up to see a thickset man in early middle age bearing down on the table, the beginnings of a leer on his florid face. “That’s Gaston-he supplies meat to the restaurant,” said Fanny. “A beast, but his meat is always good. I’m going to have to dance with him.”
“Bonsoir ma jolie!” The man stopped in front of the table, ignoring Max, twirling one finger in a circle and swaying his ample hips. “They’re playing a paso doble just for us.”
With a transparently false smile and an apologetic squeeze of Max’s shoulder, Fanny allowed herself to be led onto the floor, with some quite unnecessary assistance from Gaston’s hand in the small of her bare back.
Christie noticed Max’s disconsolate face. “If that’s the competition,” she said, patting his arm, “I don’t think you have much to worry about. Listen, is it OK if we leave you? Charlie says he’s the Nureyev of the paso doble.”
Max was doing his best not to watch Gaston’s wandering hands when he heard a familiar screech, and Madame Passepartout, spectacular in a dress of lemon yellow with peppermint-green feather earrings, appeared at his side. “You cannot sit alone, Monsieur Max. You must dance. We must dance.” Max glanced around in desperation, but there was no escape. And so, feeling some of the reluctance that Fanny must have felt, he took to the floor with his bird of paradise.
Reluctance was soon forgotten. She danced wonderfully well, light and precise in her steps, adapting herself to his mistakes, leading when he lost his way, whirling him around when whirling was called for, and generally making him feel like a much better dancer than he actually was. After the first few minutes, he was sufficiently as one with Madame Passepartout to relax and take some interest in the other dancers on the floor. And here, a wide and not always orthodox selection of styles could be seen.
The youngest dancer of all, a little girl of perhaps seven with coal-black ringlets, was learning the steps the old-fashioned way, by standing on the feet of her grandfather and clutching him round one thigh to avoid falling off in mid-paso. As the old man shuffled, he kept one hand on her shoulder while the other held a glass of wine. Beyond him, Max could see Fanny, her body arched backward in an effort to keep Gaston at bay. When she saw Max, she rolled her eyes to heaven, and gritted her teeth. Gaston took this as a smile of pleasure; his leer broadened.