There's Something About St. Tropez (38 page)

 

52.

 

 

Lying on the beach in his faux-Hawaiian surfer shorts, Nate felt like a fraud. He was no surfer and had never been to Hawaii. And no matter how Belinda dressed him up, he wasn't like these people, the hedonistic sunbathers, the women sun-bronzed and half-naked, the men keeping an eye on their children, running with them into the sea, kids screaming with joy. He envied those men returning to the pretty young wife, dropping sly kisses on her neck as she wrapped a child in a beach towel to dry him off. He envied them when the pretty young wife turned her face up for that extra lingering kiss, a hand on the bare brown shoulder still glistening with seawater. He almost envied them their kids, squirming little bundles of trouble, eager for the next adventure.

Of course this was simply their vacation and Nate knew from experience nobody's life was perfect. But for them, moments like these made up for it.

For Nate, despite the Riviera vacation, despite the new French clothes, despite the fresh grilled fish and the rosé wine, it was still the same, this disassociation from what he guessed was “real life.” He still woke every morning thinking he should leap out of bed and get to the office as fast as possible: be first there, beat out the others in the numbers game. He should be thinking about making money, not about Sunny Alvarez, or Belinda Lord. Other men's wives.

Impatient with himself, angry that he couldn't shrug off the “mortal coil” of making money, he went to his room, showered, put on the new shorts Belinda had talked him into, a Hanes white tee and sneakers. He grabbed his helmet, went downstairs, collected the Ducati from the parking lot and set off
on the road out of St. Tropez. He didn't know where he was heading but he guessed it was for the hills.

Three hours later he stopped the bike. He was somewhere in Provence, in a walled hilltop village that clung desperately to a rock face so steep and so sheer he marveled they had ever built a road up it. He hadn't even checked the signs, and did not know where he was; he'd just roared away, wanting to escape himself and his life, yet not knowing how to achieve that escape. Now he took a look around.

He was in a place called Gordes, in a wide cobbled square surrounded by narrow stone houses and tiny shops selling all kinds of goods from lavender bags to olive wood bowls and those gaily patterned yellow and blue tablecloths. The Café Renaissance took up one corner, spilling into the square. It was doing good business; people were packed under the umbrellas, sipping cold drinks, taking their ease. Looking at them, Nate marveled that no one but he seemed to have this urge to move on, to always be somewhere else, to be doing something.

He realized that wasn't quite true. What he meant was “to be doing what he always did.” Even as he stood admiring the view of the valley stretching into infinity under a haze of heat, hearing the snatches of laughter from the café, watching local women pushing babies in strollers, buying oranges and cucumbers and grapes, and fish from the refrigerated van that had parked in the square, planning their dinners, living their lives, Nate felt out of it.

He climbed back on the Ducati and roared off through the village, the bright yellow bike turning heads as he passed. He drove along a leafy road where the grass grew in great clumps from the rock face and the bleat of goats and the tinkle of their bells could be heard from the rocky landscape known as the
garrigue
. The thrum of the powerful motor beneath him, the sky above, blue and cloudless, the heat of the sun, the sudden stillness in the air, combined to make him feel as though he were the only person left in the world. He was completely alone and quite suddenly he found himself smiling. For a fleeting moment, a stranger in an unknown place, he felt free.

A sign in front said he was coming to the village of Bonnieux. He slowed, wondering whether in fact he wanted to go into another village, whether he wanted to become part of the “real world” again, a world in which he did not belong. He reminded himself that
his
New York was the real world: Nate Masterson and Wall Street went together like coffee and cream, like Scotch and soda, like women and men. He smiled as he idled into the village, canceling that last thought. There had been too many women in Nate's life but none for any long period of time. And none with whom he had been able to contemplate
living. Face it, he told himself, parking in a lot on the village outskirts, you are meant to be alone.

He found himself in another small medieval fortified stone village that clung to the top of a rock by some miracle of construction, to which the olden-days builders had obviously had the secret. Narrow cobbled streets; tall thin buildings leaning into each other; paned windows deep-set; stone the color of the rocky earth. A butcher, a baker, a greengrocer, cafés and small boutiques, a cherry-laden tree in the garden of a small hotel; a church that looked as though it had been there for all time, ever since people believed in God. An ironmongers called a
quincaillerie
; a sign outside a row house that said a famous artist had once lived there; the smell of something good floating from a tiny kitchen window. Suddenly hungry, Nate closed his eyes, sniffing, trying to identify it.

“
Daube de bæuf
,” a man's voice came from behind him.

Nate swung round.

“A kind of a beef stew,” the man said in English. “Beef and vegetables, always in a rich sauce, no doubt made with an entire bottle of good red. A bit heavy for a hot day like this but I suppose when the man of the house returns home tonight he'll be hungry.”

For a second Nate found himself envying that unknown “man of the house.” His own kitchen in his supersmart steel and concrete loft had never been used.

“Thanks for the information,” he said with a smile. “He's a lucky man.”

“That he is. But if you're hungry I can recommend a little place down the hill a-way. Le Moulin de Hubert. Used to be an old olive mill before the new civilization here in the Luberon caught up to it. Now it's run as a small restaurant by a couple of English folk.” He grinned at Nate and offered his hand. “One of whom is myself. So you see, I'm not entirely impartial.”

Nate laughed as he shook his hand. “At least you're honest.”

He was looking at a slightly built man in his sixties, balding, gray, tanned, short and with a raspy-looking gray beard.

“Malcolm Finney,” the man said. “Pleased to meet you.”

“Nate Masterson. And good to meet you too.” Nate eyed him curiously from behind his dark glasses. “A silly question I know, but do you live here?”

“I do. And have for twenty years. Wouldn't live anywhere else.”

“And why is that?” Nate wanted an answer so he could understand what the holy grail was everyone but him was looking for.

But Malcolm Finney shook his head. “Young man, if you can stand here and ask that question then you obviously don't understand.” He hesitated,
eyeing Nate, then he said, “Look, why not come and have a bite of lunch? My partner, Roger, cooks other stuff besides
daube de boeuf
. Come with me and I'll tell you all about it. Or better, I'll show you.” He grinned, showing large horsey-looking teeth. “My treat,” he said. “Just to prove I wasn't trying to sell you on my restaurant for lunch.”

Nate found himself laughing as they shook hands again. “Agreed, but I buy the wine.”

He followed Malcolm Finney's ancient Land Rover down a bumpy side road that ended in a low wooded area and an old stone mill house on a small rushing stream, complete with the original mill wheel. Tall, for a Provençal house, and built of rugged grayish stone, it had obviously once worked for its living, grinding whatever could be eked from the rocky valley. Now though, an awninged loggia had been built out over the millpond with a view of its busy little weir. Tables set with green-and-white-checkered oilcloth and white paper napkins, were dotted with lazy lunchgoers, who, Nate thought amazed, sipped their wine the way everybody did here, as though time were never of the essence, and anyway who cared, there was always tomorrow.

In the rear of the loggia, large sliding windows had been pushed back to reveal a low-beamed dining room crammed with copper pots and dominated by a large fireplace. It was, Nate thought, a place where a man could seek refuge on a cold winter night, settled near the flames with a glass of Scotch and a
daube
of beef to keep him warm.

That old feeling of envy crept over him again as Malcolm Finney showed him to a corner table under the awning, then waved down the waitress, a pleasant woman in a blue overall with a matching kerchief tied over her dark hair, and asked her to bring Badoit water and a bottle of the Vieux Télégraphe.

“Since you're buying, thought we'd try the good stuff,” he told Nate with a cheeky grin. “And trust me, it doesn't come better around here than the Télégraphe. It's one of the best Côtes du Rhônes you'll ever taste.”

He went off to find his partner, who, he said, was in the kitchen doing the cooking. “Or most of it anyway.”

He came back with a tall dark guy in a chef's white jacket and red shorts, wide-built, mustached and Mediterranean-looking. Turned out he was Welsh and the two had been together for twenty-five years.

“Don't know how we've lasted,” Roger said, shaking hands and accepting a glass of the Télégraphe.

“Truth is we wouldn't if we hadn't come here on vacation and found this place,” Malcolm added.

Roger lifted his glass to him with a smile. “Our lifesaver.”

Malcolm turned to Nate. “It got us out of the rut, that thing some folks call ‘living.' We were in catering. That posh dinner-party circuit, all fancy hors d'oeuvres and small exquisite portions on smart plates and it like hell better not be the same as anybody else's party they'd been to.”

“After a while you begin to run out of ideas,” Roger said. Then added, “My God this wine is good.”

The dense fruity wine tasted simple at first on Nate's palate, then became flavors he knew would have wine writers going on about spice and varietals and overtones of this and that. Godammit, all it tasted to him was good. Great, in fact.

“That your Ducati?” Roger nodded at the bike, propped up in the shade of the massive trees.

“Just bought it,” Nate confessed. “I live in New York, in the city. Not much need for a car there.”

“So what d'you do?”

“Wall Street,” Nate replied, not wanting to go into it. He was having too good a time.

Roger had asked the waitress to bring out the hors d'oeuvres, a dozen baskets of good things. Then there was roast chicken with tiny potatoes and baby vegetables plucked from the garden, sautéed in butter and with a gray sea salt that came from the Camargue to sprinkle on top, and a green salad dotted with orange nasturtiums and fresh lavender.

It was a first for Nate: vegetables and herbs fresh-picked from the garden, flowers in his food, and a wine that tempted him to have more, though he would not. A guy in charge of a powerful Ducati had to know exactly what he was doing. Instead he drank the Badoit water.

Roger had gone back to his kitchen and, surprising himself, Nate said to Malcolm, “I envy you.”

“Oh? And why is that?”

“Because I'm looking at a man who found exactly what he wanted in life. A man who found freedom.”

Malcolm smiled. “You know well enough none of us are ever free. That's just the way life is. Responsibility of some sort always claims us, whether it's a woman, a partner, a business. Or even a Ducati.” He eyed Nate levelly. “A Ducati costs money. And that kind of money has to be earned by your soul.”

“Then my soul's a slave to that fuckin' Ducati. I paid cash for it. But I envy you this.” Nate waved an arm, taking in the old mill, the shady loggia, the wine-drinking summer-lazy diners, even the little tribe of ducks that suddenly waddled across the yard making for the pond set amid the trees.

“Too Disney for words, isn't it?” Malcolm said. “But this isn't for you.”

“No? And why not?”

“You're a bachelor. Busy man. This place needs constant upkeep. We've made a go of it here but it's hard work, even though it looks like one long lovely day of pleasure. Still, I do think I know exactly what would be right for you.”

“What do you mean?”

Malcolm looked at him. “I must warn you, I'm in real estate.”

Nate nodded, seeing what was coming. “Okay.”

“It's in Bonnieux,” Malcolm said. “A village house. Front door leads right off the street. Five floors with a room on each floor, small courtyard out back overlooking the entire valley. Currently owned by a German guy who's getting a divorce. Fully restored, fully furnished, very old outside, very modern inside. It's the perfect bachelor pad.”

“For a bachelor who lives in Manhattan?”

Malcolm shrugged. “It's a better bet than a Ducati for keeping your soul warm on those cold lonely winter nights.”