Valère took a big gulp of champagne. “So why did you start with that one?”
“It was your first, and you wrote it when you were my age. Twenty-nine. Before you—”
“Before I became a shithead!” Valère yelled.
Justin smiled awkwardly; that wasn’t the way he had intended to finish the sentence. “Let’s get down to business,” he said.
“Négociations? Déjà?”
Justin laughed. “No, M Barbier. Let’s look at tonight’s menu and wine list.”
Justin was careful not to argue too much about the wine. He was there to try to sign Valère Barbier as an author, not to show off his own knowledge. He had asked for the market list instead of the impressively thick reserve list, not wanting to spend all of the publishing house’s money. That was the way he had been raised. But he also surmised that one should be able to find a great wine at a reasonable price in such a good restaurant. He shared this second line of reasoning with Barbier, who was impressed and agreed. Valère silently thought that any other editor would have chosen from the reserve list. They agreed on a burgundy, a few years old, from Puligny-Montrachet.
“We’re showing off,” Valère said. “Even if the price is good, eh?”
“I know,” Justin agreed. “But I’ve never had it.”
Valère laughed. The waiter, a young man with freckles and dark-red hair, walked in and announced the amuse-bouche, “Peekytoe crab in a cucumber roll,” placing dishes in front of each diner, “with smoked corn chowder and a yellow-tomato sorbet with balsamic vinegar.”
“Merci,” Valère said as the waiter left. He leaned over to Justin and asked, “What is this peekytoe crab?”
“It’s all the rage in New York right now. It’s just an Atlantic crab whose legs curve inward.”
Valère raised an eyebrow and said, “You seem to know a lot about food and wine. When I was your age, my books were selling, but I was still counting my centimes.”
Justin smiled. “I like to read foodie magazines. But always on a full stomach.”
Valère laughed, selected a spoon, and dipped it into the tomato sorbet. “Bon appétit.”
“Same to you,” Justin said. “I love the look of this sorbet. It’s like egg yolk.”
“I was just thinking the same thing,” Valère said. “It could almost be zabaglione. Very imaginative . . .”
Justin set down his spoon when he had finished and looked at Barbier. “I’ve read a lot about your life, but I have questions.”
Valère set his own cutlery down and looked at the young man. “Go on.”
Justin saw something in the writer’s eyes change. Up to now he had been a bon vivant, a man without a worry in the world. All of a sudden he looked older and more pensive. His large brown eyes narrowed, and a few wrinkles appeared on his forehead.
Justin said, “This château you bought in Aix-en-Provence—”
“Bastide,” Valère corrected. “La Bastide Blanche.”
“Right. I’ve read a few articles about the fire and everything that happened this summer. I became a little obsessed by it.”
“Tell me what you know,” Valère said.
“Well, that the bastide burned down, and, no offense, that some people accused you—though that was never proven.”
“No, it wasn’t proven.”
“But you were there when it happened.”
Valère nodded and began eating. “I can’t remember much from that night,” he said. “They tell me I was yelling something about Agathe—”
“Your late wife.”
“Right,” Valère replied. “There was a time when Agathe was more famous than me. But only very briefly. Do you know anything about her?”
“Well,” Justin began, “I know she was an artist, that you guys were married a long time, and that she died in 1988.” He resisted using the word “mysteriously” after “died.”
Valère smiled and picked up his wineglass. “Do you believe in ghosts, Justin?”
Was Barbier talking about Agathe? Justin rested his chin on his folded hands and tried to think of an honest reply that would also get Barbier talking. He now remembered reading that Barbier claimed the house was haunted on the night of the fire. “Yes. Yes I do,” he answered. “I believe the dead prance around old buildings at night because they think they are still living there. When I was in high school we had to memorize a poem. I chose Shelley. All I can remember now is ‘When night makes a weird sound of its own stillness.’”
“Night’s weird sounds . . . I couldn’t sleep at La Bastide,” Valère said, sighing. “It was their busy time.”
Justin asked, “Their busy time?”
“It’s a long story,” Valère said, draining his champagne. “But we have all night. If I’m going to write one last book, my potential editor needs to hear, and believe in, my story. Are you up for it?”
“Oui, monsieur.”
Chapter Two
New York City,
September 22, 2010
Valère Begins His Story
As its name implies, La Bastide Blanche had a stucco facade, painted white but cracked and peeling by the time I bought it. The house was perfectly symmetrical, as bastides usually are: a wooden front door—three feet across—in the center, flanked on each side by two tall windows. Above that were two windows in the same configuration, and over the front door another window, bigger than the others, with a Juliet balcony. A large B was woven into the balcony’s wrought-iron railing. The third story, not as tall as the other two, allowed room for five bull’s-eye windows, ovals set on their side rather than vertically. The red-tiled roof—obligatory in Provence—was a patchwork of new and old tiles, replaced over the centuries, each one a different shade of red, orange, and even yellow. Sometime in the future, I imagined, I would restucco the crumbling facade and paint it yellow; the shutters, a faded red, would be olive green.
When I bought La Bastide Blanche last winter, I was prepared for Provence’s hot and dry summers. We had vacationed in the South often enough that I could remember the early morning ritual of closing the shutters and windows in every room and opening them up again late
