If the writing below seems unusually cruddy or confusing, see this post. I've no idea what I'm doing and I've never claimed to have any skill at fiction, but I do like trying new things...
Cryn was the fourth American to move onto the street, and people were getting nervous.
That her countrymen were among the fearful didn't surprise her. In the world of extreme and sometimes blindingly wrong generalities, the 31-year-old pursemaker believed in two types of American abroad. There were the emotional ones, who were unnaturally glad to hear another accent where every /r/ came out like gunfire, and there were the wary ones, the ones who saw their fellow Americans as aberrations in the foreign landscape to be resented and avoided.
Naturally, Cryn considered herself the rare middle. As she creased last night's handbills and reached for the glue that smelled like stoppered-up shadows, she did wonder, though, if maybe she oughtn't say hello! quite so much. It seemed to make the locals worry that a sequined song-and-dance number was about to follow.
Kicking her striped socks in a step-ball-change, Cryn let a cat's smile overtake her wide face. If she hadn't been so free with her salutations, she might never have met him.
He stood beneath her window now, buying what looked like seven red pears and a length of water-lilies. Not for his wife, those pears. Maybe the lilies, but the pears were surely for his mistress. Well, his American mistress. That is, the one from Chicago. Not the one from Miami, the pinched professor with the authoritative husband. No, the one called Jane Welts who might as well be British. The one who'd done some country matriculation out in Herts but now was here on the French seaside with her UK friends, now including him, and his wife.
The wife not only knew about the liaison but had, Jane coolly relayed to the grocer, suggested it. Jane would never have told Cryn ("another American") any of this, but Cryn had a good ear for the conversation that took place outside her window below. Weaving gum wrappers and other colourful rubbish into jumbo handbags ("kitschy but serviceable!" read the hemp-tied tag) left the mind free to listen to everything from the current negotiated price of long beans to the harrowing exfoiliation stories that came with the company of the postmaster's sister.
Cryn would've told anybody (American or otherwise) that she didn't fancy (trying the verb on) married men or men with more than one partner or men that other people hyped on about. But now, as her fingers folded another Milky Bar wrapper into a slippy pocket of octagons, she sighed, and her grin widened.
His voice floated up over the battered Algerian tangerines and tiny, underripe Mustang grapes. (Cryn was disappointed that no one, not even the Americans, would marvel with her that someone in France was importing grapes. Perhaps it was not spoken of. There were already too many things like that, at least on this street.)
"That's the outgoing mail, then? Thank you."
Cryn placed the strip of wrappers on the floor, counted to thirty, then was across the peeling room and down the interior steps. The burly grocer's outgoing mail pile was a large mess just inside the narrow hall, added to throughout the day (or week, or once even month) by everyone in the street, and mailed when M. Colubriale to chose to amble the six streets over to the nearest box (and the nearest bookmaker). It was a sloppy system of communication, but to use it was to signal your defiance against efficient timeliness. In Cavalaire-sur-Mer, this was a most desirable trait, outranked only by having your wife save you the effort of finding your own lover. The persistent wind off the sea brought the crisp drive of repose into the noses and lungs of every sort, even the Americans.
Cryn betrayed her earnest flirtation with this culture by writing letters daily, multi-page letters that formed their own pink-marbled stack within the lot atop Colubriale's tray. It was her compulsion to check them daily for tampering, always a little frustrated when the ones opened were not the missives where she'd been sharp-witted on some topical issue of the street. Perhaps she should lick those envelopes more sparingly.
In kind, she often flipped over postcards and held thin C4s to the light. This time, though, she snatched his card, pocketed it, and started walking his recent path. It made her think of that maxim that, if you didn't want to hit a bunny in the road, you must drive straight for it. She scanned the back of cheery scenic card as she walked.
"Sunday 18th
"Will contact on return.
"Dear Jane, Thanks for your card and sorry we didn't see each other at R. N. O. H! We left on Sept. 4th and have been to Annecy, which was so beautiful, but turned wet and so cold. Visited here for two days and didn't care for the Riviera! Are now at Cordes near Dordognes. Weather very mixed but enjoying ourselves. Love, Jas."
James? This was his writing - why was Colin writing a tourist card to Jane? Jane, whom his wife sanctioned. Why was he mailing it when he could've slipped it under her door a few steps down?
Now she was walking on instinct, winding toward the square. Cryn could smell simmering tomatoes and whiffs of parsley. Under her feet she passed brick, brick, brick, faster, faster, brickbrickbrick, brick, brickbrick -
A hand shot out of the doorway. A red pear balanced on the palm.
She stopped, reached to touch -
- the hand coiled back and the pear disappeared.
"You can write, but you can't read?" Mocking, yes, but light.
Cryn didn't move, didn't follow the pear around the corner to the source of the voice.
"Cordes isn't perfect, but it's better."
"Cordes?"
"Near Dordogne."
"C-Cordes."
"Mixed weather, though."
She felt thrilled, delirious. Luxuriously chosen. Decadently, sheepishly, idiotically on her way.
"Mail the card properly now, will you?"
Cryn nodded, as if he could see.
"Annecy was so cold."
She finally sprinted around, but no one was there.
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