the shutters were closed. violent purple bougainvillea scales the peeling peach wall outside the windows: the sun poked through the slats creating an intricate lattice pattern on the wall above her head. the afternoon was over-ripe, over-saturated. with an elongated sigh, she tossed on the sheetless bed, trying to shake the prowling headache from behind her eyes.
"amelia?" alice peeked around the door. "i made some lunch, if you want any. red rouget and a little salad." alice spoke softly, tip-toeing around the corridors of the headache, coiling and settling in.
the heat, inescapable in late june on the french riviera, took the energy right out of poor amelia, usually so full of alacrity and vigor. it incapacitated her in the afternoons, especially.
"i got the fish from the market while you were sleeping. it's fresh from the islands this morning."
"lovely." amelia spoke quietly but crisply. the last vestiges of her swedish accent clung to her words despite her education abroad. her parents had sent her to the english school in france when she had shown no interest in taking over the family farm - mushrooms, blueberries, and sheep's milk - in a town north of gothenburg. it was at that boarding school, in the first form, that she had met alice.
they ate lunch in the small apartment in the dark, shutters closed but windows open; the cries of the seagulls and the horns of the boats in teh harbour infiltrated the kitchen. the chimes from the clock tower struck two.
"i finished up the zucchini flowers for the salad. i fried them up with some garlic and lemon." alice spooned more salad onto their plates. they had bought the flowers, delicate and the palest shade of orange, frmo their greengrocer the day before: they were ten for twenty francs. five of them were used for their pasta dinner the previous night, which they had made without a recipe and which tasted earthy, amelia had remarked.
"how is your sunburn?" amliea asked as she pulled pieces of fish from the slender bones.
"peeling. it's all right, though."
after a long pause, amelia said "i quite like it when skin peels. the fresh, baby skin is so raw and tender underneath. it's nice to think it has a chance to start again, that this new skin hasn't even seen the sun or felt the sea, or even been touched, yet."
the gulls chattered outside; they were probably congregating on the kumquat tree in the yard.
"here, amelia, do you want the last flower? i got the fifth one last time."
as they ate, they talked in passing of the movie playing in town, town gossip, the culminating heat of the weather, and the ways that the upcoming peak in tourist season would affect their respective jobs - an artisan baker and short story writer. it was more of a verbal list-making than a dialogue, but it was just pleasant to be in each other's company, passing words back and forth.
"conversation is a kindness," amelia thought as she washed the dishes afterwards: "an exchange." she brought chocolates into the sitting room when she had finished the washing up. she arranged them on a tray on a footstool between her & alice; they sat for a while in silence as the shadows swept up the walls & the evening formed.
No comments:
Post a Comment