The Sixth Station(92)

“So I heard from the priest. Nice way to play with a human life—and thousands of other human lives, I might add.”

“No sense in trying to convince you of what the facts will show.”

“Okay, so what about the, ah, marriage?” I winced even to think of it.

“She was Cathar Perfectae.”

“Meaning—what?”

He answered me by waving his hand, as though that explained away whatever the heck he’d done to her.

“I think I’m going to be sick.”

“The nun was her guardian. She was a child who became a woman, and we each had our roles to fulfill. But she of course has a higher purpose. When Demiel came of age, she took the veil, as was expected.”

“The veil?”

At that he pushed his chair back, as though he hadn’t just hit me with several weapons of mass destruction.

“What about the ‘no interference’ rule? Is that off the table now?”

“Not all of it, but some of it changed the minute he kissed you. Didn’t it?”

Without waiting for an answer, he stood up. “It’s getting late and we have to be up early in the morning. I’d like to get started no later than six A.M.”

“Excuse me?”

“I’m afraid we really shouldn’t leave any later than that. The bill is paid. I will see you back to your hotel.”

“This is a hotel. That is a house. Since I managed to get through dinner without being killed or getting sick to my stomach, I figure there’s no sense in pushing my luck. I’ll see myself home.”

“No, you didn’t get through it. Your dinner, I mean. You didn’t eat.”

When I didn’t say anything further, he said, “A shame. It wasn’t poisoned.”

“A regular laugh riot, you are.”

“And I won’t kill you on the way up the hill, either. The locals are very picky about screaming and murder after nine P.M. You know how the French are. Anyway, there is something you must see in the morning, so you have to be alive.”

“You, mister, are a freaking weirdo.”

He took my arm again as I stood up—this time with just the half-nelson version of the death grip—and walked me back up to the house and up the rickety stairs. “I need to check your room.”

“No.”

“I need to check your room,” he said as though he hadn’t just said it and I hadn’t just refused. He dug the key right out of my red satchel and opened the door and went in. He checked every inch of the tiny room, which took longer than necessary.

“You can come in,” he said from inside my room. I walked in and we found ourselves standing very close to one another in the tiny space between the bed and the door. Suddenly I felt unexpectedly awkward—that way you feel after a first date has come to an end and neither person is sure what the vibe has been.

Ridiculous. Am I supposed to kiss him because he didn’t blow my brains out?

Well, maybe it was just I who was feeling unaccustomedly awkward. Clearly he wasn’t. He took my face in one hand and looked right at me. He leaned in and kissed me on both cheeks and then stayed almost pressed up against me—but not quite. It was close enough to feel his body heat but a millimeter shy of any part of him touching any part of me.

“I’ll be nearby. No harm will come to you. Bonne nuit.”

“Oh, yes, good night.”

Stop it! Pantera is old enough to be your, ah, cousin.

I realized that I was already upgrading him from old coot to hot, older male.

Stop it! OK, but the fact that he didn’t shoot you before the fish course—or even after—was kind of charming. Jesus Christ!





30





I didn’t exactly have a nightgown with me, so as usual, I washed up and stripped down to a T-shirt and my good white cotton panties that I’d bought in a bag in the drugstore, and lay down on the bed.

Everything seemed wrong. The pillow was lumpy, the bed was springy, the room was too hot, too cold, too quiet, too too. I was crazy restless, and couldn’t sleep, so I decided to bore myself to sleep by perusing the pamphlets and books in the room. Yes, the L’Oustal did have tourist paraphernalia just like a regular hotel, except by the look of these they hadn’t been updated since the Middle Ages. Or at least the information hadn’t.

I read the pamphlets in French and quickly discovered there was basically nothing to do in Montségur except four things: Eat at the Hotel Restaurant Costes, which I had already done; have a family-style meal at L’Oustal, which I would do in the morning; go to the tiny museum, which was closed the next day; and/or climb Montségur, which I had no intention of doing. Ever.