Guy Kay - Ysabel

As he turned off the main road, taking their own uphill lane, the words hit him hard, a different sort of blow. Tidings from that still-distant, really complicated adult world he seemed to be approaching. And from somewhere else, as well, a place farther away, that he also seemed to be entering now, like it or not.

A few dozen strides later it occurred to Ned Marriner that if he’d wanted to, or had been thinking clearly enough, he could have taken those last words as a thank-you of sorts, after all. A confiding, explanation, even an apology from someone not obviously inclined to any of those things.

As the villa came in sight at the top of their roadway, beyond a sloping meadow and the lawn, framed against the trees that sheltered it from the wind, he was thinking of a rose placed yesterday beside a sculpted figure that was not the Queen of Sheba.

The others were on the terrace having a drink as Ned came up the gravel drive. The sun, west over the city, sent a long, slanting light. It fell on the cypresses, the house, the water in the pool, and on the four people sitting outside, making them look golden, like gods.

“You should see yourselves,” Ned called, keeping his tone cheerful.

“The light’s amazing.”

In a moment like this, he thought, you could get a pretty good idea of what people loved so much about Provence.

He kept on moving; he didn’t want to get close to the others until he checked himself in the mirror. “I’m gonna shower, be right out.”

“Dude,” Greg called out, “you were supposed to phone me for a ride!”

“Too nice a day,” he shouted back, going around the side of the house to enter through the front, not from the terrace doors where they were.

“Ned, are you all right?” his father called.

They’d told him about earlier, obviously. He supposed they’d had to. He’d been pretty sick.

“I’m fine,” he said, not breaking stride. “Down in twenty minutes.”

He passed Veracook in the hallway and she didn’t seem too alarmed at the sight of him. He looked in the bathroom mirror upstairs. His shoulder hurt, he’d have a bruise, be sore for a couple of days, but nothing worse than what you got in a hockey game, and he didn’t think his cheek looked too bad. They might not even notice.

“OH, MY GOD, Ned! What happened to your face?” Melanie cried, the second he walked out on the terrace with a Coke.

Melanie, he thought. He bet the three men wouldn’t have seen a thing.

He shrugged. “Stupid accident. I got rushed by a dog near the fruit-and-veg market and fell over a café table.”

“A dog?” his father said.

“Big one, too,” Ned said, taking a chair and stretching out his legs casually. He sipped from his Coke and put it on the table. Larry Cato had told him years ago that when you lied you cut as close to the truth as you could or way far off. One or the other. It was aliens with ray guns, or a dog and a café table. Larry was the type who had theories about these things.

“What the hell?” Steve said. “Did you, like, get bit?”

“No, no, no. I just fell. He ran off when people yelled at him.”

Melanie had gone into the kitchen. She came back out with ice cubes in a plastic bag, a dish towel wrapped around them. She handed it to him, wordlessly.

“My own fault, probably,” Ned said. “I was jogging through the market and who knows what the dog thought I was. A terrorist or something.” His father looked dubious. “I’m okay, really. A bruise. I’ll live, Dad.” He held the ice dutifully to his face.

“What about earlier?” his father asked. “On the drive?”

He really did have a lot to explain. “That was weird,” Ned said.

“And then it totally went away. Don’t say food poisoning or Veracook will kill herself.”

“We all ate the same food, anyhow,” Melanie said. “I’m thinking motion sickness after jet lag.”

Ned managed a grin. “You just keep thinking, Butch, that’s what you’re good at.”

Steve laughed. Movie joke. Ned saw that his father was still eyeing him.

“I’m fine, Dad. Honestly. How did it go at lunch?”

Edward Marriner leaned back in his chair. “Very pleasant. Perfectly likeable man. Likes his wine. He said he saw the book as more mine than his, so I said the opposite and we got on like a house on fire.”

“Where does that expression come from, anyhow?” Greg asked, of no one in particular.

No one answered. Ned relaxed a little. He heard birds from the slope above the house. Aix gleamed below them, down the valley in the late daylight.

“This,” said Steve, looking the same way, “is pretty cool, have to say.”

It was, Ned thought. There were at least a couple of more hours before sunset, but the light was already turning everything an amber hue and the shadows of the cypresses were falling vividly across the grass.

“I told you,” he said, “you guys were a photograph up here—for your own albums.” A thought occurred to him. “Dad, if you tried Barrett’s money shot right around now the mountain would look pretty goddamned unbelievable.”

“Language, Ned,” his father said, absent-mindedly. “Your mother’s calling soon.”

“Right. And God forbid I swear within an hour of talking to her. She’ll know!”

Steve laughed again.

His father grinned. “Touché. Steve said Barrett’s would be a tourist shot.”

“Maybe not at this hour,” Steve said. “Ned could be right. And those plane trees we told you about—if you didn’t shoot down the alley but across, from the west, with the sun on them, their shadows, maybe an hour later than this…”

“We’ll have a look,” Ned’s father said. “One day when the light looks right we’ll drive out. If I buy it, we can arrange to set up another time. It’s only—what? — twenty minutes from here.”

“Bit more,” said Melanie. “Ned, keep the ice on your cheek.”

Ned put the ice back. It was really cold. He knew what she’d say if he said that. How did someone with a punk look and green-streaked hair get so efficient, that’s what he wanted to know.

“How was the hot date?” Greg asked. “Before the dog had to beat you off her.”

“It wasn’t hot or a date. But it was fine,” Ned said, repressively. There were limits.

“Who is this?” his father asked, predictably.

Ned gave him a look. “Her name’s Lolita LaFlamme, she’s a stripper at the HotBooty Club in town. She’s thirty-six and studying nuclear physics in her spare time.”

Melanie giggled. Edward Marriner raised an eyebrow.

“I do sometimes forget,” his father said slowly, brushing at his moustache with one hand, “that amid the blessings of my life, which are many and considerable, I am raising an adolescent son. Having had your brief moment of dubious wit, my child, could you enlighten me more cogently?”

His father talked like that to be funny, Ned knew. He wasn’t actually upset. You had no doubts when his dad was really angry.

Ned sighed, rattled it off. “Kate Wenger, my age, here for a term at school, exchange from New York. Met her yesterday. Student-geek type. Giving me some help with one of my essays.”

That last, he realized—too late—was a mistake.

Larry Cato would have shaken his head sorrowfully. Dude, never tell more than you need to, he’d have said.

“Ah. Some help? I believe I know what that means. Are you going to copy her paper?”

His father asked it mildly. His mom would have gone ballistic.

“Of course he’s going to copy her paper!” Greg said. “Jeez, cut him some slack, boss, he’s in the south of France!”

“I do know his approximate geographic location,” Ned’s father said, trying to sound stern. He looked at his son a moment. “Very well. Here’s our deal, Ned: you can get notes for one paper from this girl, the other two you write yourself. Fair?”