He’s been studying film in Paris at the Sorbonne, so doesn’t really live in the house anymore, but is coming home for the summer. He’s kind of the local hero in St. Roch, the all-star football player, the guy that got the scholarship. Some days he’s all you hear about, especially from Noémie’s mom, who’s fond of getting the family albums out. Noémie must get sick of it—I mean, I’ve only been here a few months and I’m already a bit sick of hearing how amazing and handsome and smart and athletic he is. At the same time, after looking at about a million photos of him over the last few months, I’m not sure I don’t have a bit of a crush on him. After all, I practically know him already.
So I borrowed the all-star’s bike and we cycled along the dusty country road dodging Vespas and farm trucks, the boy saddle punching my girl butt with each pedal stroke. And then we were there: the pool, with its rusted green fence, its siren song of blue, its golden boy flesh pulling us through the rose-tangled gates.
In St. Roch, the pool is the place to be. There aren’t many teens in this town, maybe twenty or so around my age and a little bit older. There aren’t any jobs either: some really big scandal happened years ago from what I’ve heard, and it almost shut the place down. Now it’s the southern French equivalent of one of those American ghost towns that used to rely on coal mining and then the mine shut and the people left. You might think that in a rural town surrounded by idyllic beaches, teens would tan there every day, but no jobs means no transport. You need a car to get to the beach and almost no one has one.
Plus, no adults go to the pool, so it’s like this secret clubhouse where kids can smoke and get up to mischief. When I saw the photos on the study abroad site, the town seemed so picturesque and “so French.” Over the past few months, I’ve come to find those advertising-perfect images funny in a sad way: they’re such blatant lies. In reality, this place is dying, everything around fading and breaking as residents abandon it and tourists find better places to go.
The kids I’ve met here feel trapped, as if they’ll never go anywhere else or find anything better to do, so they make things worse by vandalizing everything, even the pool, where, unless it’s raining, they all come after lunch and lounge on the burned grass around that little rectangle of blue. Surrounded by the looping hate speech of their graffiti, they smoke and gossip and flirt and play guitar, and they swim, dive, dunk, splash, all day every day, all summer long. I guess it’s okay, if you’re good at flirting and swimming and tanning, if you’re not feeling totally paranoid about who’s stalking you.
(I know, I know. You all said to chill out and relax, and if it happens again to tell an adult. But wouldn’t you be just a *tiny* bit freaked?)
We strolled in, not greeting anyone too enthusiastically, not letting our eyes fix on anyone beautiful, boy or girl. To me, the one outsider, they all look so at home there—as if they sprang up in the night, flesh fresh from the wrapper. Twenty pairs of fake Ray-Bans turning to watch us walk in before losing interest.
This early, the pool is empty except for two acid green noodles and a busted pink inflatable raft. We reach our usual spot under the olive tree and kick off our flip-flops, shake out our towels, ditch the baguettes Émilie made us take in the nearest bin. “Get Lucky” is playing on somebody’s minispeakers as we strip off, stretch out, already breaking out the tanning oil. As usual, a knot of sinewy guys is looking our way, their eyes popping like the Photoshopped colors of a soda ad because their skin is so brown. They’re hot, but all I can think is: Is it one of them?
One is offering his hands up to the service of our un-sun-creamed backs, grinning straight-white-toothed, eager and horny. This is Noémie’s doing, not mine. Berated at home and by her own account hated at school, she is Queen Bee at the pool. And it’s not hard to see why: she totally has that French chick thing going on: the smooth tanned skin, cool, short-cropped hair, beestings of tits (French titties, I call them). Lounging by the pool in her bikini, smoking American Spirit and shooting the shit, she’s all sang-froid.
The guy with the hands—Freddie is his name—takes pride in his work. It’s a weird feeling, but not a bad one. When he undoes my bikini top, though, and gestures that I should turn over so he can do my front, I shake my head, feel my face flush. Noémie rolls her eyes at me as if to say, Prude, or whatever the French is for that, and beckons him over. I want to tell him to tuck his tongue back in. He’s her flunky. Neither of us would ever date him.
After an hour of sunbathing—and you could set your watch by this—Noémie says, “Let’s play the game.”
So we obey her, playing the daily game of dunking each other in the pool, seeing who can hold their breath the longest. The St. Roch boys love these games of dunking. Me, not so much. But Noémie eggs me on, shooting me a disappointed look every time I try to drift towards the sidelines. She’s a pro at the old peer pressure.
I’m holding my own until Freddie comes up behind me and dunks me hard and for a long, long time. I start panicking. Chlorine burns my throat and eyes. Starts stripping out my sinuses.
Alone down there where no one can hear me scream, I flail, kicking his leg, clawing his arms. I start to think—no, I start to know I am drowning.
JULY 31, 2015
The only things taken were my notes on the case, though actually, it was that choice that worried me. Why would anyone break into a car, not to steal it, not even to take the GPS—still sitting brazenly on the dash—but to take my lousy papers? I thought about the noise in the house, the headlights following me home. Maybe whoever was behind me on the road had followed me here.
“It looks to me that someone has cracked up your car,” said a French-accented voice at my elbow. “Have they also taken your things?”
I turned around, poised to take a swing, and saw a man in a panama hat and a crisp white suit, smoking a purple Sobranie and looking pretty pleased with himself for his observation.
“Computer printouts,” I said, “which were worth nothing. It’s more just …”
“… stressing, I know,” he said, his eyes twinkling sympathetically. “There have been a few break-ins around here. The hotel should have warned you.”
“That would’ve been good,” I said, slamming the door. It bounced open again.
“It would seem the locking parts are broken,” said the man. “I may have something that will be of use in this.”
“I’m fine, really,” I said.
“It’s not a problem,” he said, lifting his hat briefly to reveal thinning blond curls.
It seemed rude to say no twice. He walked a few feet, opened the trunk of a green Figaro, and pulled out some cardboard and gaffer tape. How convenient, I thought. It just so happened that he was out here when I found my car and that he had the very things I need to fix it. I squinted at the Figaro, trying to see if the headlights looked familiar from the road to St. Roch. I was still a bit bleary from the Jack Daniel’s and it was hard to tell. I got my keys ready between my fingers to be on the safe side.
When he came back, grinning with DIY man-pride, I said, “So how come you were here in the parking lot? It’s nearly three A.M.”
By way of answer, he took a drag of his cigarette. “We are both working on catching the lung cancer,
