My Grape Escape by Laura Bradbury Page B

the wine vapors which emanated from his pores.
    “ Bonjour, Maître ,” Franck said. “Which house will we be visiting?”
    Le Maître waved vaguely toward the three houses on the opposite side of the road. “That one.” He patted his pockets. “ Mon Dieu , where are the keys?” This was annoying but it also made me less wary. It didn’t appear that, unlike Maître Ange, Maître Lefebvre could organize a scam even if he wanted to. Franck and I exchanged a look and retreated to the cool of the nave once more.
    After five minutes of searching every pocket and tuck in his clothing as well as emptying out the glove compartment of his car, Le Maître made an irate call to his secrétaire . He demanded what she could have possibly done with the keys to the house. It was clear from the vastly entertaining string of swear words that followed this brief exchange that she basically told him to go to hell.
    Just when I was sure that the visit was not going to happen, a huge bundle of long, iron keys was extracted from some hidden rear pocket of Le Maître’s pants. It was incredible that he could have missed them in his body search. The wine consumption at lunch must have been prodigious indeed.
    Le Maître triumphantly dangled the key ring in front of us. I had always loved old keys, and these ones were spectacular, but that didn’t mean I wanted the house that went with them. I had to keep a clear mind.
    He beckoned us across the street and we followed him underneath a little archway of stone, which the enamel plaque on the crumbling plaster wall designated as the “Passage Saint-Martin”. Le Maître veered to the right and began to climb a flight of large stone stairs, each one about seven feet wide.
    Mid-climb Franck stopped in his tracks and I bumped into his back. “These have to be from the local quarry,” he said, pointing down at the ripples of pink and ochre that ran through the stone. Uh oh. His grandfather (the fabled Pépé Georges who could sulk for days and who was now one of Franck’s squad of Guardian Angels) had worked all his life in the local quarry; Franck had a soft spot for anything that came from there.
    The first door the Maître unlocked was a run-of-the-mill metal door, painted an unedifying shade of gray. I peeked around Franck and was satisfied to see the walls of the veranda itself were unpainted concrete. Ugly. The veranda was roofed with pieces of glass that magnified the heat. I was sure I was going to keel over while Le Maître tried several keys unsuccessfully.
    When the door finally swung open we all surged forward to get into the relative cool of the house. I turned to shut the door behind me to keep out the heat and my hand fell on one of the most arcane and complicated latching mechanisms I had ever seen on a door. My eyes travelled higher. The door itself was intricately carved wood that reminded me of the door of the church across the street. Inserted in it was a black metal design of flowers.
    Franck had a thing for stone. I had a thing for keys, locks, and doors.
    As I penetrated further into the dark interior of the house my nostrils were assaulted by the stench of mothballs and mildew. It took a good minute or two for my pupils to dilate, but when they did I could make out the wallpaper - a fake rattan pattern of greens and yellows in the hallway that gave way to a leaf and flower explosion of browns, greens, and oranges in the living room beyond.
    “It reminds me of my grandmother’s house when I was little,’ Franck commented, wistfully.
    “It’s hideous,” I said, loud enough for Le Maître to hear.
    Le Maître waltzed into what looked like a tiny kitchen, the walls of which were papered in green ivy.
    “It is hideous,” he agreed. “But look at this view.” He swung open the shutters, and I saw from the flaking white paint that we were in the house I had noticed after emerging from the church following my stream-of-consciousness conversation with the Virgin Mary