“This weekend was good for Jérôme,” said Lucie. “Though in my opinion he is still behind with his sleep.”
Gilles reached over the pile of fruit and flowers to grope for the radio. “Shut up,” he said to the silent dog. He was remembering his brief glimpse of the Girards with narrowed faces, as unpredictable as animals, and he said to himself, I’ve got two killers there in the back of the car.
“Be sure you turn on the right Haydn,” Lucie said.
Between collar and cap, Gilles felt the coldest touch he had ever imagined. He gripped the wheel. It was a matter of keeping the car steady. But when he stole a look at them in the mirror he saw they had gone to sleep. He was alone in the world with something soothing — Vivaldi. No need to worry about the right one because there never had been another. He was not in any great danger, for the moment; the essential Gilles was not yet slumped, shot, hacked, with a dunce cap crowning the remains, though it seemed that nothing less than a murder could round off the Burgundy weekend. Why had he invited them into his car to begin with? If it was a matter of company, even the dog would have been better.
One of them stirred, sighed, leaned forward.
“Lucie?”
“Yes.”
Like all the poor, they were ungrateful. Like all the ignorant, they were unconcerned with knowledge. Like all of the past, they were filled with danger. “Is Jérôme all right?” he finally said.
“He has just proved it,” she said. “And he proved it all weekend. But nobody knows that I know.” She sat back and looked out the window, away from both men, wishing them vanished, for the rest of their time together.
1970–71