I drove from the July heat into the mountains. When I took the road out of the low country, I carried the memories of the Salins and their mineral glare. I wanted Étienne. I had him. I left. He remained with me for a day afterwards, leaking into my panties.

The plains bend and fold into hills and mountains. The air cools by degrees. It is a dry warmth scented with pine resin. The woods close in around me, and old schist walls hold the ancient terraces back. The crystal waters of the Tarnon flash like mercury between the trees.

Florac sits at the confluence of two rivers, small and pale as a knot of grey roofs and plane trees. It is a town, and only by decree.

On my easel is a canvas of the pond, along the slate flank of the Mairie. The idle jade water has forgotten it is a river. I am painting in oils, reunited with my familiar friend. I put the last of the light onto it with a translucent white where the tree canopy breaks. It shimmers as coin-shaped sparkles on the water. A flick of a rigger brush defines the last reflection and gives the morning back to me.

I wipe the brush on a turpentine-soaked rag and step back. I smile.

I glance at the van. She has served me well since her fit of pique in the Luberon. Marthe’s commission dries in the shade. White horses stand in shallow water under the acid-blue sky. Her house is a pale mark on the horizon. Small enough to be a lie if I did not know the woman who lives there.

A scuff of grit on the cobbles surprises me. I turn, and instinct makes me laugh with her. She is pink in the cheeks, wearing a linen dress. Her hair hangs loose, framing her features. I would place her as someone a little younger than me. She does not try to be attractive. She just is.

“I saw you here yesterday, but I missed you.”  She is a little breathless. “We don’t have artists here often.”

“Ah, I see. Are you looking for something to buy?”

Marthe’s painting distracts her in the same way I might linger on a landscape.

“Wow. That is not from here.”

I like the genuine interest in her voice. “No, it’s the Camargue. A commission piece.”

“That’s my loss; it’s beautiful. Yet, the light is bright. You have not softened it.”

Now I am intrigued. “It’s for a dimly lit wall. It will look right in its setting.”

She nods appreciatively. “Then you have great skill.”

Behind her, a man arrives wearing a shirt with rolled sleeves. He holds a bag of groceries and a baguette as if he is weary from shopping.

“My husband thinks he can paint.” She looks at him with a kindly smile. “He cannot, and that just saves us a great deal of argument.”

He glances from the horses to the pond and then at me. “I can recognise the good ones, though. That is my entire talent.”

“I am Sophie.” She provides it as an ordinary fact. “This is Laurent.”

“Elodie.”

Sophie gestures towards the easel. “Is this a commission piece, too?”

“Oh no, this one’s for myself.”

Laurent laughs under his breath. “That is what all the unsuccessful artists say. Or the successful ones who leave Marais, move to Opéra, and pretend their wealth is an accident.”

“You know Paris?”

“We lived there for nine years on Rue de la Chaussée-d'Antin. It sounds grander than it was. Three decent rooms and a kitchen tap that always dripped.”

“I live on Rue de Caumartin.”

I watch their surprised faces. We were two streets apart and in the same quartier; the same boulangeries, cafés, and wet pavements in November. We shared a view of the Palais Garnier as an oversized confectionery.

Laurent compliments me with an urbane smile. “Then you are a more successful artist than you give yourself credit for. Nobody keeps an address like that on studies of river ponds.”

Sophie agrees and smiles with her eyes. “Unless she has a secret collector in Neuilly. Or a benefactor in the Camargue with a difficult wall.”

I let them have their joke.

“I inherited my grandparents’ old apartment.” I pause, looking at them both in turn. “The success was theirs. Only, I kept the keys and failed to sell their furniture.”

Sophie laughs properly. “That is the most Parisian sentence I have heard since we left.”

“It is also the most honest one I have.” I grin back, resting my brush on the easel.

Laurent smiles. “We used to walk down to Rue Thérèse some nights. After the theatre, or instead of it.”

He says it lightly. He is looking at the white horses, not at me. Sophie is watching me.

“And perhaps, the blue door there,” she adds. “The people who know it… know.”

A child skips a stone on the pond and ruins the reflection I have just painted. A shutter bangs on the Mairie.

I do not name that blue door. Names are for people who must prove they belonged there. I am on Martin’s arm, wearing a dress that cost more than I spend in a month today. The doorman at the reception only smiles for regulars. Beyond him, the crimson passages and long red shadows. In an open doorway, a woman kneels before a man. Another woman sits and watches, with fingers between her legs, waiting her turn. He groans, and neither of them hurries. Martin’s hand at the small of my back does not steer me in or away. It only says we belong here.

Sophie sees my acknowledgment. She does not look triumphant.

“The mountains are quieter, and we like the quiet.” She pauses to smile. “But we have not become other people.”

“We enjoy hosting guests, but not often,” Laurent adds, as if it were a comment about the weather.

“Interesting company here is rare.” Sophie muses. “Perhaps you might join us for dinner?”

I smile. “I would like that.”

She points to the hill. “Mas de l’Éperon on Route du Causse. It’s a white farmhouse. Say seven o’clock?”

I look at them both. “I will be there.”

-=- 35 -=-

The creamy vanilla house sits under a lichen-covered roof. It is set into a slope as if it grew there. I find the courtyard, and a fig tree allowed to be wild. The terrace looks west over the long drop into the valley. The light retires earlier now, but with a longer goodbye. It will turn the walls into the colour of ripe apricots.

They show me their home, and entertain me in the kitchen. Old copper pans hang on their hooks. There is an old table too large for two. Lemons rest to ripen on the sill, and an antique radio is left to murmur.

I bring wine I cannot really afford. Sophie takes it without inspecting the label, which is a small mercy.

Laurent tends the stove and a stew left to ponder since this afternoon. He tears fresh basil over cut tomatoes. The bread from town rests, roughly cut, in a basket.

We eat outside. They ask about my painting and my life on the road.

I tell them I live in the van for now, and I sell enough paintings to pay for paint and petrol. I share that my apartment still has my grandmother’s drapes. I admit it does because I am not someone who buys curtains.

Then, they ask me why I am alone. I am divorced. That is as far as I can go.

“So the year in the van was a consequence?” Sophie asks.

“I did not understand what independence meant to me.” I taste their wine. It is better than mine. “My apartment can wait until I find out.”

Laurent tears some bread. “We walked past those apartments and invented lives for the windows. Yours would have been the one with a good lamp.”

I laugh. “Oh, that lamp is ugly. I do not buy those either.”

Sophie watches me over her glass. I like how she covets me. “If I can say when we mentioned that blue door… you knew.”

“Have you been through it?” Laurent asks.

His question avoids any innuendo. I prefer it.

“Yes,” I state quietly. “But not recently.”

I do not say Martin's name. The night does not belong to him. He will not sit on this terrace with me.

I sip my wine. “It was easier to deal with then. Or I was. Maybe it was both.”

“How so?” asks Sophie.

“It was before I got married. I decided it was a phase I had outgrown. I was very proud of that decision. But… it made me miserable being so virtuous.”

Laurent tears at another piece of bread. “And now?”

I take my glass. “I prefer honesty as a virtue. Anything else feels ridiculous.”

“We can offer you the guest room,” he suggests, “and morning coffee on the terrace, if you are unsure. But I think you already know how this works.”

“If you want more, just say so,” Sophie adds.

“Tell me what more looks like.” I look at them both. “I am too old for insinuations.”

Sophie leans in. “First, no rules copied from that club.”

Smiling, I sip my wine.

Then, Sophie grins. “You with me, you with him, the three of us together as it unfolds. You stop when you wish. We have done this enough times to know it can be that simple.”

Laurent adds, “And we are not collecting souvenirs of Paris, or that place. If that is in your head, put it out.”

I laugh. “It was in my head. Now you might understand my reticence.”

I look at the last of the apricot light on the wall, and at Sophie's mouth, and at Laurent's hands on the table.

“I want much more than morning coffee.”

Sophie looks at him, then she looks at me. “Good.”

We share a mischievous smile. She raises the bottle and tops up my glass.

-=- 36 -=-

Paris, in Madeleine, Martin stood in our bedroom doorway. He held a chilled bottle of wine and three glasses. She languished, still flushed, resting her head against my naked self. We walked out through that blue door two hours earlier.

His hand rested on my hip. Her mouth on my breast. I came with loud cries, thanks to her quick fingers and Martin inside me. My climax was easy, the first of many that night. We were three in a bed, and no one took charge.

A month later, we broke up, and I decided it was a dangerous excess. I preferred that foolish lie.

In Aix with Marc and his wife, I took control because I did not trust myself.

Sophie is watching me. “You went somewhere.”

“Only as far as my younger and more foolish self.” I finish my wine.

“You must tell me about her.”

I shake my head. “Oh, she is too dull.”

Looking at Sophie, I show her that I am finished with being careful. “Show me your bedroom.”

She stands, and so do I.

She takes my hand as if we were crossing a road.

-=- 37 -=-

The bedroom keeps the day’s heat in its walls. The tall windows are open to the silent and dark night. A single lamp on the pedestal throws a halo of light across the bed and leaves the rest of the room alone.

Sophie unties her hair, and it falls in loose curls, dark against her pale skin. Her linen dress loosens and falls. I do the same. Her brassiere slides from her, and mine follows. We stand as light and shadows. We are brunette and blonde.

She has the trim figure of her youth with slender curves. I linger on her shoulders, and down to her full breasts. My mouth is dry. Laurent is not here. Sophie wanted this first interlude to belong to us.

We kneel on the bed. The sheet is cool for a second. Our lips find each other. The last of the wine is on her tongue. We tilt our heads one way, and the other. We press, recede, and then chase. She makes the hairs lift on my arms when she kisses my neck. Her delicate fingers arrive on my breast, and Sophie takes the weight of it. Flicking at its nipple, she captures my whimper with her mouth. Her tongue slides in to silence me.

Her thigh rests between my legs. I cannot help but writhe against it. I dwell on the places that make her gasp. When her fingers find my cotton panties, I am wet through them. I find hers in the same condition. We stay like this, circling those places, goading the other to act.

“Good,” she murmurs. “Stay like that.”

I do not want to stay. I am restless, as the floorboards behind us creak. Laurent enters without a shirt. He looks strong and purposeful. I obey Sophie as he comes to the bed. She reaches over and kisses him. I am level with the open fall of his trousers.

Sophie looks down at me. “Let us use you. Kneel at the edge. Here.”

I watch as Sophie undresses him. She takes my hand, and my fingers curl around him. He is erect, heavy, and hot to the touch. I hold him and look up into his eyes. My pulse races in my throat.

She draws my head forward. I lick his shaft once, never letting my eyes waver. There is the tang of musk and the scent of soap. I take the head, pulling on it, taking in more. Above me, they kiss. Her full breasts press against his chest. His hand rests in my hair and pulls me closer. I press as deep as I can until his grip tightens.

I break, my eyes streaming. I take him again, until he groans. I feel her behind me. She pulls my panties off my hips. Sophie opens my folds while I suck on him. She does not hurry until her twisted fingers make me groan, and he stifles it.

Together they have me. She pushes her fingers into me as he uses my mouth. They keep me here until my hips move without a single thought.

“Enough,” she says. “On your back.”

They turn me. Sophie removes my panties and casts them from the bed. Hers follow. He clasps my ankles, and I let him raise and part my legs.

Sophie purrs with approval. “Take her.”

He slides inside me in one slow movement. My eyelids flutter with a long exhaled breath, until I am full of him. I reach back and find Sophie’s soaked folds.

When he moves, I feel every place he touches, and the swirling fingertips of Sophie’s caress. He is deep, and then shallow. Her fingers find the swollen peak of me and stay there, matching him. I hold his hip. I hold the sheet. The feeling comes up through my stomach and into my throat.

I groan to his thrusts.

Sophie swings a knee over my face and lowers herself. I embrace her thighs and push my face into her. She holds me in place by my hair. I find what she likes when her hips move.

“Mmm. Yes. Like that,” she murmurs.

Her words embolden me. Laurent drives into me, and his fingers stir me to move with his wife. I lap at Sophie with my tongue, and I will not stop looking up at her. Sucking on her clit, she floods, and I drink it. I chase her clit with the tip and flick. Her thighs tighten on my ears, and her breathing fractures. She comes on my mouth, shaking, with a tight grip that keeps me there. I watch her shudder until the shaking slows.

Sophie slides away and kisses the taste of herself from me. My face is wet. Laurent hooks an arm under my knee and goes deeper. He takes me faster, provoking how I moan. He has that place inside me and does not ease from it.

The rising tension swells, tying me in knots. Sophie kneels alongside me and finds my clit. I face her so she can see me. The pressure rises, and I slide my fingers through hers.

“Come for us,” she whispers.

I arch behind closed eyes, and her lips press to mine. Our tongues swirl until I have to break. I am loud. My climax pulls me under, and I drown in it, so intense that I croak. I squeeze her hand. The sheet is clenched in the other. I feel how I bite against him, convulsing through my body.

He is close. Swollen and crammed in tight, the drag of him feeds my aftershocks. He grips my hip tighter. The even rhythm of his thrusts falters.

“Where do you want him to finish?” she asks.

I swallow. My croaky voice comes back small. “In my mouth. Will you share it with me?”

Sophie smiles. “My favourite.”

He withdraws. The loss of him makes me gasp. We rise. I take the head, drenched with me. Sophie takes the shaft. Our mouths meet around him. His hand finds our heads, but he does not push. I taste myself. I taste her. His breath goes ragged above us.

He comes. I take the heat over my tongue, and the tang of salt and musk. We keep him between us through it, then we miss him on purpose and find each other’s mouths instead. It splashes my cheek. We share what he left, with squirming tongues. Our lips meet, and she makes a pleased murmuring sound.

We lie abandoned, hot and listless.

“Yes?” Sophie beams.

I smile wearily. “I am not sure. Can we do that again?”

Sophie laughs and kisses me.

-=- 38 -=-

The heat has not yet climbed the slope. Breakfast is coffee in thick cups, and croissants from Florac. It is a time of day that would infuriate Parisians. I feel the echo of him inside me.

Sophie wears Laurent's shirt and nothing else. I admire her look, and I will do that when I get home. He reads a newspaper as if any news still matters.

She gazes out over the courtyard. The illuminated stone is the colour of creamy vanilla. The fig tree takes the sun on one side of its leaves. She lingers on the old well with its lip worn smooth with use.

“We always meant to have the courtyard captured as a painting.”

Her statement rests without any pressure.

“In oils,” I add.

Sophie smiles into her cup. “In oils.”

“I have a canvas in the van; it’s the right size.”

Laurent does not look up from the paper. “It would take a few days. You would have to stay.”

“You’re right,” I add, “I would.”

“There is a spare room if you want it.” He ruffles his newspaper. “Or you can keep using the one you already found.”

I look at the tree, and at the two of them, and at the van on the track below.

I share a rueful grin. “I will stay in your bed until it is finished.”

-=- 39 -=-

I work in the cool of the morning until the shadows have climbed the well. Occasionally, Sophie hovers when she brings me a drink. Laurent works in his home office and says nothing about the painting. They feed me jambon-beurre for lunch. The afternoon is allowed to be an afternoon.

At dinner, the radio murmurs on in the kitchen. Laurent opens the wine and pours it out. I smile. He smiles back. We have that satisfaction of a good day’s work, and we share it.

Sophie asks more about the van, and my life in it so far.

“It would drive me mad,” he adds. “That’s a compliment, Elodie.”

“Oh, I like it now. My travels have helped me resolve difficult emotions. My daughter lives with my ex-husband in Nice for her education. Better than the one I could provide in Paris.”

Laurent looks up. “That must be tough.”

I nod. “It is.”

“Our son is at summer camp for the month,” Sophie adds. “I cannot imagine anything longer than that.”

We share a look only mothers know. “I miss her terribly.”

She leans in. “We moved from Paris because the pressure of work almost claimed our marriage.”

Laurent looks around the kitchen. “This house gave it back.”

I smile. “One day, my apartment will feel like mine.”

We continue. Sophie listens in the way she watches me paint. Laurent slides his hand into hers.  

I hear myself speaking in a voice I faintly recognise, absent of self-pity.

-=- 40 -=-

I missed a tiny streak of Terre Verte on my wrist. Sophie finds it and takes my hand to the bathroom to wash it off me. I play along until I cannot. My arms rest on her shoulders. I kiss her again and again. She takes me and bundles me into the shower. The jets flow, and I shriek. We are still clothed. We cast them off, and they hit the tiled floor with a slap. Our underwear follows.

My blood is up. I take to my knees, and pull on her hips. My tongue makes her melt.

I only know of one bed in this house.

Our clothes leave us every night. The water is still on us when we reach the sheets. The welcome breeze cools my wet skin. Sophie’s mouth goes to the place it has gone all week. I know the sound she makes when I take her breast. She exploits how I writhe when her fingers rub there.

We lie opposite each other. Her mouth is between my legs. Mine is between hers. Our hands keep us locked together. We are lost in the moment, as Laurent’s steps rise in the corridor. I know where he is by her muffled sounds.

Sophie holds him in place. I sink onto him in one go. He is familiar now, and I enjoy the strength of him. I know the way I want him to fill me, the depth and angle. I lean back and show them, hungry for more.

Her mouth is already between us. When I lift, her tongue is there. When I drop, she follows. Her hand stays on my hip to stop me from running too fast. I ride him with my eyes peering down. He likes it when I watch him like this. My damp hair lashes my shoulders. I meet Sophie’s eyes, reach out, and clasp the back of her neck. Her lips slide, and her tongue in my mouth drives my hips.

When my arms begin to fail, she draws me forward and positions me on all fours. Laurent comes in from a deeper angle; he knows how it animates me. Sophie gathers my hair over one shoulder so I can look at her. Her fingers know the side of my breast and my nipple. Her fingers pinch at them, and she knows its effect. Each time he goes to the limits of me, I make the same sound. She grins because she has heard it before.

Laurent gathers my hair into his fist. Sophie lies there, and my restless lips taste hers. The brink comes, and I do not stall. I push back onto him, and I cannot stop. I cry out hard with my eyes open. I let her see it all until it has washed through me.

Panting and limp, I tremble, glowing hot. Laurent withdraws, and I whimper when I am empty.

“Sophie,” he says, and only that.

She lies back and opens her legs. He holds her thigh, keeping her exposed, and pushes into her in one motion. I kneel at his side, where my hands can reach both of them.

From here I have all of it. The swell of her around him. The wet sound of each stroke. I use my tongue on her, flat against the wet peak of her clit, and then along the join of them. My fingers replace my tongue, making circles, working left to right. I do not tease. She is too far gone for that. I stay on her as her whimpers strengthen into soft cries. Her hips lift, and I do not stop through the first spasm and the second, until she throws her arms out, clenching at the sheet and wailing.

Sophie eases, flushed, her body glistening with perspiration.

“Stay,” I tell him, and I mean inside her.

I put my hand at the small of his back and keep him there. He does not stop moving, and I know he will follow her soon. I can feel how his body tenses. I wrap my fingers around his shaft. I hold the base of him, wet with her, and trap him half inside.

“Cum,” she pleads.

I kiss his neck and start to stroke him.

“Cum,” I whisper into his ear.

Laurent thrusts and thickens, feeling both of us on him. He makes a muted sound, and then a deeper animal groan. Then he goes, locked in place, and she pushes up to my hand. Sophie keeps her eyes on him, and I stroke every racing pulse of him into her. I count how many times he twitches.

He is still, and I ease my hand away. Sophie pulls on him until he is buried up to the hilt. She takes him into her embrace. I see the look in her eyes, and then they kiss.

It jars an old feeling. I loved a man like that once.

-=- 41 -=-

Later, we finish the last of the wine, and talk until our laughter fades. Laurent rests on his back, asleep. I lie between them, facing Sophie.

“For someone who chose virtue over this,” she whispers. “You seem to have changed your mind.”

“Oh, I tried to make that decision on my travels. It only made me better at leaving people and places.”

“And now?”

I flash my eyes. “I have a courtyard to finish.”

She giggles quietly.

Sophie caresses my face, gazing at me, and wishes me a good night. Her eyes close. I reach out and stroke her hair.

I lie in the dim light and let my younger fool have her say.

She tells me I made my decision years ago and that I was proud to become someone else. If I get up now, I can go back to being that woman, and sleep in the van.

I listen. Then I tell her she does not get to call what I want ‘a phase’. Not again. Not ever.

She can leave. I am staying.

I sleep.

-=- 42 -=-

The shadow on the well is perfect. When I step back and tilt my head, I have the burden of the fig tree and the mid-morning warmth of the wall. It exists as a record of my stay, and I hope they will always remember me.

I pore over it one last time. It is complete.

Sophie comes out barefoot and stands next to me.

“Yes, that’s perfect. Bravo.”

I refuse their money. I am richer now than when I arrived.

Taking her hand, we look at each other and share the same smile.

-=- 43 -=-

I pack the van slowly. Sophie walks me as far as the fig tree. She kisses me once, on the lips, in the ordinary light of day.

“We visit Paris occasionally to stay in touch with friends.”

I smile, hoping this is going where I think it is.

“Perhaps you might show us your apartment,” she asks, “and the ugly lamp in the window.”

From my bag, I find a business card, and hold it out. “I would like that. Perhaps you might help me choose a nicer one… and some new curtains.”

Sophie clasps my hand, and kisses me again.

“Oh.” She is suddenly startled. “I almost forgot. Here, I have something for you.”

I frown as she hands me a business card, too.

I look at it. “Camille Barreau.”

“She’s a friend in Paris who works in art procurement. You can thank Laurent, I had forgotten about her. Perhaps you might find a wealthy benefactor after all.”

I did not expect this, and I thank her.

She grins. “Just say that you met us.”

“In case she has forgotten?”

We laugh and embrace.

Laurent raises a hand from the terrace. I raise mine and wink. I smile when he does.

The van starts on the second attempt, which is as close as she comes to loyalty. I drive with the windows down, ready for the descent back into the heat.

The road opens out, and Florac sits in its pale bowl.

My younger fool starts again. She wants to call this week an excess.

I tell her to make me feel like this. I ask her if she ever did.

I think of Manon, and I cannot turn time back to Collioure.

The fool is silent.

I will not apologise for who I am any more.