Just One Thing

After dinner we moved to the living room to enjoy a digestif. Blaireau and the Captain played dominoes. Heavy with dinner I stretched out on the sofa by the fireplace and fell asleep with the fragrance of tea roses filling my nostrils and turning my thoughts back to home and Noelle. I wanted to be with her. I wanted to forgive her. After all, it was her chicanery that started the whole thing with Roy.

Lieutenant Lothaire LaLoutre, 1955

On the first anniversary of his military career, and shortly after his first taste of combat, in the Atlas Mountains.

Making Dinner With Le Capitaine

The Captain's Garden

Captain La Loutre appeared at the garden gate, wheeling a large cart loaded with snacks, a bucket of ice, an old-fashioned seltzer dispenser, and several different bottles of whiskey. I went with 12 year old Highland Park with a splash of Volvic. The afternoon was perfect. Blaireau and La Loutre chatted away in French, about old times I guessed but I understood nothing. They laughed and shouted a lot. I let them be and wandered around the garden, sipping my scotch and admiring La Loutre's handiwork.
After a while La Loutre went back into the house and Blaireau came over to me. "Capitaine La Loutre was my commandant, in the Legion, but that was many, many years ago and far away, in St. Pierre & Miquelon. Le Capitaine is retired now, and this garden is now his avocation."
"St. Pierre & Miquelon! Isn't that in the North Atlantic? What business did the Legion have there?" To tell the truth it was hard to imagine either of them as any sort of soldier.
"It is France, St. Pierre & Miquelon. We protect it." Blaireau said, indignantly.
I let that go. No skin off my back one way or the other.
"He has six sons!" Blaireau continued. "The oldest, Lazare Jules, now takes care of the farm."
"Farm?"
"Oh yes, this garden is just a small piece of the farm. Le Capitaine inherit the farm from his father. It is many generations in the La Loutre family. They grow vegetables and fruit, make wine, and raise cows,chickens and pigs, make cheese. You are lucky, mon ami. You will taste real food tonight. All that we eat will be from the farm."
"Sounds delightful." I said, sincerely. I poured a third whiskey and we toasted La Loutre's farm. "Six sons, did you say."
"Yes, attend - " Blaireau's eyes rolled in concentration: "Lucien Georges, he is the second, he is in the Army. Louis Paul is third, he is in the Legion. Laurent Jean is in the Navy. Léger Emil is at the university and the youngest, Léonard Albert is in high school."
Pretty impressive that Blaireau remembered all their first and middle names. From the way he and the Capitaine had been carrying on I reckoned it had been years since they had seen or spoken to each other.
La Loutre reappeared at the gate and shouted "à table!" Blaireau put his drink down on the table. I looked at my half full glass. "Laisse ça" he instructed and I obeyed. The parasol over the table was a wild shade of blue. The garden had a lot of wild color to it. It crossed my mind that maybe le Capitaine was on the wild side too. We followed La Loutre up the marble steps, through the portico and into the house.

Capitaine Lothaire La Loutre

Blaireau cut the engines and let the boat drift with the current. He raised his finger to his lips and looked at me impishly. Why did he want me to be quiet? I had the impulse to check my gun for readiness but his grin told me it was not about that. We came round a bend and I noticed a dude lying on a quilt on the bank, lost in his reading. The dude did not notice the boat as we drew up to him.
"CAPITAINE! CAPITAINE!" Blaireau shouted at the top of his lungs.
The dude looked up. "Blaireau! C'est vraiment toi. Nom de Dieu! Qu'est-ce que tu fais ici?" Then the dude noticed me. Introductions followed, mostly in French since the Captain spoke little English.
"This is Capitaine Lothaire La Loutre. He was my commander in the Legion." It was news to me that Blaireau had been in the military, let alone the Legion.
"Enchanté, mon capitaine." I offered.
"Le plaisir est pour moi." La Loutre smiled at my deference. "Bon, est-ce que vous restez un peu?" It seemed more like an order somehow. We tossed the rope to him and he tied it up on a tree stump. Blaireau and I hopped down on the grassy bank and followed the Captain through a copse of alder and into his backyard. There was a good 100 yards square of various flower, vegetable, and herb gardens to pass through before reaching the patio, where we took seats around a wrought-iron picnic table. La Loutre opened its parasol to shield us from the sun.
"Un petit coup?" He asked.
"What's that mean?" I whispered to Blaireau, being unfamiliar with the expression.
"You'll find out" Blaireau inscrutably replied. La Loutre was already on his way inside. Blaireau's bemused expression brought to mind Mae West's quip that "too much of a good thing can be wonderful."

An email from Noelle

I shoulda said something about this before. Before Blaireau and me took off in the boat I went out to Starbucks and checked my email. Mostly a bunch of spam but a two day old note from Noelle. Just when I'm thinking I'm over her she has to let me know I'm not: "Hi Butter Boy, I know you don't like me anymore. I don't blame you. I wish we could have been just friends. I hope we can be friends again. I mean I want you to forgive me. You were there for me when all my so-called friends were not. I'll always owe you for that. It's just that I don't love you. Anyway it's really hot and icky here and I'm very busy but I think about you. I hope you catch Roy. I hope you're safe. I want you to come back to Miami Beach soon. Your friend,Noelle."
Friend? I had a printout of the email with me on the boat. I'd already reread it ten times and just had reread it again, leaning on the rail, watching the pleasant French countryside pass by. Blaireau was watching me, curiously, measuring my mood. I guess he picked up on what I was feeling.
"You are thinking of someone, mon ami?" He walked over and leaned on the rail a discrete length or two away.
"Girlfriend." I explained. "Well, not really, just a friend, someone I knew."
Blaireau nodded, reading my mood more than parsing any meaning from my words.
"Alors, friends are good. I have a friend not far downriver. Perhaps we say hello."
"Sure, Yves. Let's do that. Any friend of yours is a friend of mine." Truth was I was getting a little bored with the river and a little down from thinking about Noelle.

Cruising

I don't remember how I got back to Rue Des Rosiers after the party binge on Blaireau's boat, and it's better that I don't tell you how I felt when I woke up. Suffice to say I couldn't see well enough to tell what time it was. Judging from the street noise it was early evening. I did the bloody mary cure - toss it into a blender, celery, ice and all and make a smoothy. Didn't help much, nor did the rillette de porc that had been laying around a couple of days. I put an ice pack on and went back to bed, woke up the next afternoon, or was it the day after that. Someone was playing bongo drums next door, the pounding reverberating like a jack hammer in my achey head. "Nom de Dieu!" I appealed to whoever was playing. Then I realized it was someone knocking on the door. "Butter Boy! On y va maintenant." It was Blaireau. I slipped into jeans and tshirt, grabbed my backpack and opened the door. "T'es pret, mon ami?" I dug that we were on the familiar now. I swallowed down some reflux and nodded, making the best face I could. Blaireau smiled slyly at my discomfit. "Bien" he observed, then turned and led the way back to his boat. Pop Music was his boat, I noticed, annoyed with myself for not catching that before. We shoved off and cranked up the engines, making our way towards the river at about 10MPH. Blaireau threw me a blanket to warm away my jitters, then made some very strong coffee in the galley.
"The countryside will make you feel good again. Good people. Good food."
"I appreciate that, Blaireau, but aren't we on a case. I mean, no offense but..."
"You must call me Yves, okay?, and do not worry, we are, as you say, on the case."
"Okay, Yves. Whatever you say. Fill me in will you? Where are we going? When will we get there?" Blaireau stood silent for a moment, like he was thinking. I drained my coffee and Blaireau refilled it like a good waiter. He ducked back in to the galley and came out with a platter of pain au chocolat. The dude was a one-man restaurant. Finally he opened up.
"We are going after your, uh, Roy, and some others. We will find them when the time is right. I don't know exactly where or when." Blaireau winked mysteriously. "Or, perhaps, they will find us. We will be ready, you and me, no?"
"Sure" I says, "I guess we will."
We made it to the river and headed south. As we passed the outskirts of Paris and the scenery changed to country Blaireau broke into song - "Cruising Down The River On A Sunday Afternoon." He must have sung 100 choruses, interpolating improvised lyrics in French. He sang it until it stuck in my head, where it remained for days (and even now I can hear it). I had confidence in Blaireau. Anyone who can sing and party en route to a confrontation with some of the world's worst gets my vote.