“Ta gueule, Fabien,” one of the older boys said. The boys were all very handsome and might have been dressed for a photo shoot: white cotton tennis shorts, matching boat shoes, different colored but otherwise interchangeable Lacoste pullovers with little neck zippers. “You shouldn’t play with it in front of them,” Marion told Vicky. “Léo has forbidden tennis and predictably they desire to do nothing else.” “Qu’est que t’a dit?” Fabien demanded, pulling his mother’s skirt. “Arrêtes,” Marion said sharply. “The older two, Michel and Antoine, speak English, but Fabien is a beginner. N’est-ce pas, Fabien? Tu parles anglais ou quoi?” “Oui,” Fabien shouted. “Pussy!” The older boys laughed and Marion slapped Fabien hard on the back of the head. “Mais vraiment. They watch too many movies,” she said. Madame Lévesque appeared serenely oblivious to this exchange and herded the children out after we’d said our hellos. “I can’t find Léo,” Marion said, “but c’mon, I’ll show you your room.” By the time we settled in I had lost any faith in my imaginary friendship with Léon Descoteaux and had begun instead to imagine a prickly recluse liable to resent our being there. Marion and Vicky were off drinking wine and chatting on the garden terrace, and I had excused myself, setting up around back in a wooden chaise with my books and notepads. It was a brisk day. I was wearing a cable-knit sweater Marion had given me from Léo’s dresser. I’d found coffee in the kitchen and was finally feeling like myself again, looking out over the lush grounds behind the Descoteaux’s house, which sloped down prettily to a pond and an orchard. I had decided to read up on Rome. A year before, I’d written a long piece on Mexican wrestling and I’d found it easier to pick up
as light and delicate as wind chimes. “Léo...,” Marion said, “is peculiar these days. He spends ages in his workshop. He’s always taking long walks in the forest. Maybe he’s crazy.” She laughed, so we laughed too. “Does he still play?” I asked. “No,” Marion said. She looked out the window and added softly, mostly to herself, “No, no, no.” We pulled up to their house not long after, a large but not immodest country home, tidy on the outside and nicely fixed up, built in the French farmhouse style, with peach- colored terra-cotta roof tiles, small casement windows, stone masonry: an elegant and unpretentious house set back a half mile from the road. To the right was a fenced-in tennis court with mounted lights for night play. The net wasn’t strung, but the clay surface was neatly rolled and swept. Marion left us in the front room with Vicky’s bags while she went to find the others. I drifted over to a desk with a visitor log and Vicky peered over my shoulder as I flipped through. “Is this what you expected?” I said. I didn’t mean the guestbook, but I might as well have. The last entry was from five months before, late January, and the entries from the last few years were sparse. Before that, the Descoteaux had had regular visitors. I even recognized a few names as those of tennis players famous a decade ago and a French soccer star from the good national teams at the end of the century. “So this is a bit more bizarre than I was anticipating,” Vicky said. She looked at me with one eye closed. “But I promise they’re sweet.” She kissed my cheek and then, unable to resist, took down a racket hanging with the coats to test its swing. I looked over to see a small boy peeking at us around a corner. I grinned at him. “Maman!” he shouted. A moment later two slightly larger versions of the same boy appeared, and then Marion and an older woman.
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