Generous, that Pantera.
We walked around the back of the house, up another ridiculously steep set of stairs, with cats sleeping on at least half of them, until we reached the top floor. She unhinged an old wooden door, and we walked past a beaded curtain and up another few interior steps. She opened the door to my room and, yes, it was charming. Complete with a sink across from the monk’s bed. She was quite proud to show me the tiny attached bathroom, since this was one of the only rooms equipped with its own toilettes et salle de bain.
There was already fruit and wine laid out on the tiny cheesecloth-covered table in the center of the room. When she left, I immediately sat down on the wooden dining chair and turned on my iPad. I had been too long without information.
No signal.
It was only a few hours until I was to meet Pantera—or the alleged Pantera—so I decided to try to relax. I ran a scalding-hot bath in the chipped but clean oversized claw-foot tub and inched my way into the steaming water, yelping with every inch conquered. I sank down and dunked my head. The water turned an orangey color. The bad dye job was still running.
Ahhhh. Forget for a minute that you are hunted. Just pretend you’re back in college visiting France on the cheap.
As I came up for air, suddenly great heaving sobs escaped from me like steam from a busted pipe. “Mom, help me!” I cried. I felt just like that poor little kid who wanted her mom to come save her from that house of horrors in Ephesus. I knew, however, that my wish was even more impossible than the kid’s had been. My mother couldn’t even know where I was—for her own safety, and mine.
I am completely alone in the world. Like Blanche DuBois, I depend on the kindness of strangers. Well, the kindness of professional assassins, more specifically.
28
I soaked and sobbed until the water was no longer painfully hot and the tears had subsided into gasps for air. I composed myself as best as I could, climbed out, and dried off with the towel. The operative word being the.
I realized that my wardrobe choices for dinner, or what I presumed would be dinner, were slim, none, and completely ridiculous. It wasn’t like I had a party dress in my bag.
So I just rinsed out my undies, hung them on the windowsill in the hot sun to dry, and lay down on the monk’s bed. I was afraid to nap for fear of not waking up, so I didn’t close the wooden shutters.
At 6:45, I got up, put on my jeans, a T-shirt, my leather jacket (it cooled off at night up there in the mountains), and my Frye boots. I attempted to do something—anything—with my scary bright red killer clown hair, but it was impossible.
The attempt to hide the puffy eyes with under-eye concealer didn’t work, either, since industrial-strength cover-up was needed at that point. I compensated by putting on too much black eyeliner, mascara, and red lipstick. The light in the room was so bad I had no idea if I looked OK or like I’d wandered off from Cirque du Soleil.
What are you trying to pull off here? You think the old coot with the honeyed voice will melt at the sight of you and give up all his secrets? You’re lucky if he doesn’t drop dead walking up the hill. If he was in his twenties back in ’82, he’d be—what?—mid-to-late fifties? Or more.
As I was leaving, I double-knotted the Gap scarf around my neck, hoping for a pulled-together look. It wouldn’t pay to show up to meet an international man of mystery looking like a slob—despite my terrible dye job that was beginning to fade in places. One more check in the mirror.
Crap. I look like a traffic light melted on my head—red, greenish, and yellow.
I climbed down the rickety wooden stairs—it was chilly as could be—and attempted to make my way down the rocky (need I mention unlit?) and unnecessarily steep path, past the welding shop. Three large dogs happily followed me, so I carefully secured the gate so they wouldn’t wander off.
Pantera was right. It took all of a minute to walk to the Hotel Restaurant Costes. It was a lovely old plaster-and-stone building with quaintly chic shutters and a terrace overhung with vines, under which tables were aglow with candles, just waiting for customers. I had my doubts, however, about a big alfresco dinner crowd showing up in this chill.
I walked into a gorgeous (warm!) tiny lobby with an unmanned reception desk. There was a bar to my right and a minuscule library with books—all in French, of course—every one with a title that had the words Pays Cathare (“Cathar Country”) in the title.
I walked a few steps to the ancient stone arch that led to the adjacent dining room. Lit by a few brass hanging lanterns and candles, it was one of those magnificently homey, beamed-ceilinged rooms with exposed stone where the plaster had worn away. There were only a dozen or so square wooden tables, each set with pristine beige-and-white tablecloths, linen napkins folded like lady’s fans, candles, and tiny vases of local flowers. The walls were hung with swords and tapestries that looked equally old, depicting what I assumed were historical albeit pastoral scenes. Many of the figures in the tapestries were dressed as knights with those strange-shaped yellow crosses on their chests.