WSOWOB
I’m in a time warp.
An elderly woman has been standing outside the post office in La Napoule for an hour, waiting for it to open. Walking with Janya past her, along the slope behind my parents’ apartment, I find myself in a bizarre flashback. When I was a young boy, I would always see an old woman who looked just like the one waiting there, and who kept forgetting that the post office wasn’t open on Saturday. She would spend hours outside the door, ignoring people’s advice to come back the next week. Standing under the searing sun, or sometimes in the rain, she seemed to believe her defiance alone would prove everyone wrong, that this was in fact not Saturday, that a small miracle was going to happen, and the doors would open soon.
That could be the same woman, exactly as she was some thirty years ago. She is wearing the same black billowing skirt that once terrified me, the same scarf wrapped loosely around her head, its butter-yellow print dulled by repeated washing.
I tell her the post office isn’t open today.
“Eh,” she rasps. “Don’t believe everything they say.” She turns around and walks away, muttering curses to herself.
This is a day when everything is significant. Everything is a sign. I’m thinking of a story by Nabokov that Janya had me read on the plane, about a boy suffering from referential mania. Maybe it’s time for a little referential mania of my own. This, for the moment, is important and necessary. I have a very good excuse.
Across the rotunda, at the librairie managed by the same Italian family that moved here from Ventimiglia when I was a kid, Janya stops to buy a pack of cigarettes.
A lady from Florida, an anorexic grande dame with blindingly bleached hair, has been chatting with the manager and interrupts their conversation to ask me if Janya and I are a couple.
I tell her we’ve just met in Bangkok, and, pulling her aside, I confide that I’ve decided last night to ask Janya to move in with me. I’ve been trying to find the right moment to say it.
She’s overjoyed by the news and, confident that we have made a connection, she tells me that the most amazing thing happened to her this morning: her husband turned the radio dial to some local station airing an old American pop tune—Irving Caesar’s “Tea for Two”—the very same song he sang to her on the day they moved here thirty years ago.
“I can tell he was listening with me,” she says.
“Who?”
“My husband. He died last April, but this morning, when the song was playing, it was as if he was back, listening with me.”
I look to see where Janya’s gone, hoping she’ll rescue me. She’s chatting with the manager’s son, whose pregnant wife is waiting silently at the door.
The lady from Florida whispers in my ear, “There’s something about your girlfriend.” She’s leaning very close to me, her dark red lips all but smudging my ear. “Something new,” she says. “Something about to begin.”
I ask her if she means Janya’s going to be okay about moving in, and she gives me a wink. I add that she’s terribly sweet and her husband must miss her a lot.
“Oh, no,” she says. “He’s right here, as we speak.”
Janya joins us and I wrap my arm around her waist. She’s purchased a pocket-size journal and wants to show it to me. The pages are lined with grids and held together by one large staple, like a metal navel. The cover is a shade of blue exactly like the sea, which can be seen from here. She holds it up against the blue horizon to compare. She’s right, it is the exact same shade, the notebook seems to disappear against the Mediterranean, and her hand appears to be holding nothing but the staple. Somehow that discovery seems so important, so touching, and I clasp her hand as we walk out.
I glance back and see the lady from Florida following us with her gaze, her lips moving as she silently hums a tune.
* * *
Farther down the block, the weekend market is already open. A dozen tables have taken over a small parking lot, displaying a modest if rather pathetic array of local vegetables and kitschy souvenirs. La Napoule is a weird town, one of those intermediate places that people don’t really stop for, overshadowed by its larger, grander cousin, Cannes. My parents moved here to work in Cannes. Its anonymity has always appealed to me, and I never saw any reason to give up their apartment.
Janya’s been looking at a bunch of souvenirs. One of them is a clay figurine of a little boy, a little imp poised to take a leak, its little hand wrapped around its penis. Beside it is a replica of a grinning gargoyle, an elongated tongue sticking out of its wide mouth. Both were designed by the late eccentric American millionaire Henry Clews, whose outlandish chateau by the shore is probably the town’s most prominent attraction.
“Don’t tell me you’re going to get that,” I tease her.
“The peeing boy or the gargoyle?”
“Doesn’t matter. They’re equally disgusting.”
“I think the boy’s pretty cute. Reminds me of the boy in your films.” She holds it up to the light. “Kind of looks like him too.”
“All little boys look the same.”
“I want to look at the real thing. Let’s go there.”
“The chateau?”
“It’s right across the street, right?”
I agree to go reluctantly. I’ve been inside the place just once, when I was a kid. It didn’t really impress me much. Walking toward the chateau, I ask her, “What about your story? I’ve told you a lot of things nobody else in the world would ever know. What dark, delicious secret will you share with me?”
“Nothing,” she says.
“Not fair.”
“Compared to yours, my life story is really dull. I’m almost ashamed to even talk about it.”
“Try.”
“Okay. I have eight brothers, and twelve uncles, and I’ve always wanted to be a boy.”
“Hmm. Interesting.”
“I’m not a lesbian.”
“Okay, just a passing thought.”
“You’re my first real relationship.”
“Hmm. And the others were, what, unreal?”
“False starts.”
We reach the chateau’s gates and walk around the garden. The castle itself is closed. Janya’s disappointed. I lure her farther into the gardens, beside the shore. There’s a moss-covered sundial surrounded by a topiary garden of odd-shaped trees whose chopped-off branches, she says, remind her of the upraised hands of the screamer in Munch’s The Scream. We can see the outlying islands from here. No one else is around.
“I want to suck your cock,” she says.
“Right here?”
“Al fresco.”
I look around, hoping not to see any other visitors. There’s a Japanese couple walking toward the castle, seemingly lost in the garden’s maze. Janya’s mouth feels soft and warm.
“Oh, Janya.”
“Call me Vasin.”
“What?”
“It’s a man’s name.”
“Uh, okay.”
The sound of the waves is both harsh and soothing, drowning the loud moans that I can’t help from coming out of my mouth. I try to pull out when I come, but Janya grips my butt and presses me closer. The sensation of pleasure and pain as she keeps sucking overwhelms me. My knees buckle. When it’s over, she’s