Page 52 of Summer After Summer

She makes a face. “Really?”

“No one told me he’d bought the house.”

“So many secrets.”

“I’m kind of sick of them.”

“Yeah.” She fans herself. “Fuck it’s hot in here.”

“I can’t find an air conditioner anywhere.”

“I can take care of that for you.”

“How?”

She pulls out her phone again and taps, taps, taps. “I have people.”

“Air-conditioning people.”

“People for everything.” She puts her phone down. “Someone will come tomorrow. In the meantime, we need to get out of here.”

“Where do you want to go?”

“Let’s go to Bonne Amie. My driver will take us. And before you even start that eye roll you want to make, yeah, yeah, I know.”

“I wasn’t going to eye-roll.”

“Uh-huh,” she says.

“Okay, maybe a little.”

“I’d be upset if you weren’t. Because then that would mean I don’t know you at all.”

Bonne Amie is a French restaurant, on the main street, that you usually need a reservation for. But Ash has always operated by her own set of rules, so when the car drops us in front of the white and blue facade surrounded by cute black bistro tables full of people, we sail past them to the maître d’, Claude.

“Bonsoir,” I say.

“Good evening, madame,” he replies in thick, accented English. His black hair is mussed, and he’s got a very French-looking mustache, too large and droopy. He’s wearing a crisp white shirt and black dress pants. He directs us to a table in the corner and pulls out Ash’s chair and then mine.

“White wine?” I say to Ash.

“Please.”

“Que nous conseilleriez-vous de boire? Nous aimons le blanc.” For years on the tour, I had a French hitting partner who insisted I learn French, but I don’t get to use it much.

“Oui, oui. White wine is good,” Claude says without adding a suggestion.

“Avez-vous une recommandation?”

Claude is clearly struggling to understand me, and I wonder if it’s my accent, though I never had any trouble being understood in Paris.

“We have some excellent white wines for you this evening,” he says.

Ash gives the eye-roll she was chastising me for earlier and takes control. “Do you have any Domaine Leroy or Domaine Lecomte?”

Claude’s eyes light up, and I gather Ash is speaking his language now. “Oui, oui, I will bring you a bottle.”

He beetles off and I watch him go. “You think he speaks any French at all?”

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