Isn't It Romantic? (3 page)

Owen was friendliest with Dick Tupper, a purveyor of cattle whose ranch was three miles north of town and who was just lately wealthy, having sold off four hundred acres of sorghum and soybeans to an agriculture conglomerate. Dick was a fine-looking, hard-bodied, mustached man just past fifty, and the sole misery of his life was that a decade ago his perpetually unpleasant wife ran off to Idaho's Salmon River Mountains with a wildlife manager named Calvin who wanted to be a fishing guide. Thenceforth Dick lived like a widower, still feeling married and faithful and carrying on like a chilly Lord Byron in spite of the divorce she'd gotten. But his fiftieth birthday was a jolt to his system, and since then he'd been meeting flirtatious and lonesome husband-seekers in Internet chat groups and driving as far as Lincoln to share rack of lamb and I-and-Thou talk in the halo of glimmering candles. With that history as his guide, and in just a short glimpse, Dick was able to postulate that Natalie was unhappy with her hulking companion, and he too got up to introduce himself.

Pierre gloomily registered the two men's genial approach and urgently told Natalie, “
Ne fais pas de mouvements brusques
.” (Don't make any sudden moves.)

Owen stood aside to free his workshirt of the stained paper napkin and shyly told Dick, “You go.”

“Excuse me,” Dick told them. “We don't mean to intrude upon your precious time here together, but we haven't seen you in these parts and I was wondering if you had some problem on the road or you had people here or just where it is you hail from.”

Pierre and Natalie stared at him in silence. Eight, maybe nine seconds passed.
The Young and the Restless
was the only sound. And then Owen shouted, “Wants to know who you are!”

Dick nodded toward the gas station owner and said, “That's Owen.” Extending his hand to Natalie, he said, “My name's Dick Tupper.”

His hand was held out there for a moment before Natalie cautiously took it. “Natalie Clairvaux,” she said.

Dick turned to
Il Penseroso
for a handshake. “Pleased to meetcha.”

Pierre said with sarcasm, “Hi.”

“Didn't catch your name.”

Pierre smiled at Dick and said, “
Je vous déteste tous
.” (I hate you all.)

Owen asked, “Was that French you were speaking?”

Pierre, suffering, held his face in his hands.
“Mon Dieu
.”

To Owen's question, Natalie nodded uncertainly, as if they'd committed a crime.

Dick smiled at Natalie and said, “Pretty language.” And to Owen he said, “She could be a sister to that French actress we like.”

“Which?”

“Pretty brunette, bee-stung lips. She was in that sand dune motion picture. And
Camille Claudel
.”

“Oh yeah,” Owen said. “Isabelle Adjani.”

Dick smiled at Natalie. “Are you kin?”

She shook her head.

Owen invited himself to join the travelers by swiveling a chair around and straddling it at their booth. “Okay,” he told Dick. “We got an intricate situation here. They could be penniless and adrift and far from any kind of help, or they could be viticulturalists just traipsing hither and yon, scouring the vineyards of our fair Nebraska homeland.”

They all gave Owen the look he so often deserved, bless his heart.

Dick helped out by saying, “My friend wants to know if either of you are employed in the wine trade.”

Natalie answered, “Yes.
He
is.”

Owen lifted his eyes heavenward. “Owe ya one, Big Husker.”

“Well, this is real
seldom
for us here,” Dick said.

Everyone in the café groaned.

He ignored them. “Just how long did you plan to stay?”

Pierre sourly told him, “We have miss-ed our bus.”

“Owen, when's the Greyhound due next?”

With a grin, he answered, “Way afterwards.”

“Are you thinking what I'm thinking?”

“We are on the same page, my friend.”

Worriedly, Pierre whispered to Natalie, “
Qu'est ce qui se passe?
” (What's happening?)

She shrugged.

Watching intently from the kitchen, Carlo Bacon—whose real name was Carl—thought it high time to insert himself into the plot, and he walked out into the dining room, wiping his hands on the “Kiss the Cook” apron he wore in hopes that Iona would one day take the hint. He'd been a high school classmate of the waitress, and he hankered for her in the worst way, but he was skinny as a clarinet and toad-eyed and shrewd, with a Dick Tracy mustache and dyed black hair that he slicked back with Wildroot, and whenever he was around Iona he was so jittery that people said he made coffee nervous.

“So they're waylaid here?” he asked Owen, and Owen gave him a coded look. Carlo nodded, tilted toward Iona to confide, “I'll go get your Grandma,” and then hurried outside to the three-story rooming house next door. But when he was hurtling up the front porch steps, he saw the paisley See America bus warily rolling into Seldom, all its windows filled with faces hunting the lost Europeans.

Wildly waving his arms, he jumped to the lawn and sprinted toward the tour bus, halting just in front of it. The brakes whined and a side door wheezed open as he went around to it. “Are you looking for a French couple?” Carlo asked.

With irritation the bus driver turned to his paying customers. “Were they French?”

Opinions were multiple.

“Had accents,” the bus driver told him.

“Well, they've decided to stay in our Arcadian greenery for a while. The Revels and all. So: mystery solved.
Au revoir
.”

Eyeing him with suspicion, the bus driver asked, “Do they know there's no refund?”

“Oh, they're real cavalier about that.”

A funk settled on the See America man as he shifted into reverse. “But they were just about to meet Little Miss Middle-of-Nowhere!”

Carlo ticked his head. “That's why it was such a thorny decision.”

In the Main Street Café, Pierre heard a familiar noise of grinding gears and squeezed his face against the window to get a view south as he asked, “
Est-ce que c'était notre auto-car?
” (Was that our bus?)

“
Vous le détestiez
.” (You hated it.)

“
Mais c'était avant que je ne sois venu ici.
” (But that was before I came here.)

Dick heard their fractious tones and asked, “Excuse my being so personal, but you two married?”

And Pierre said, too fiercely, “Ha!”

Natalie scorched him with her eyes. “
Ha?
”

“
Oui
,” he said. “
C'est très drôle
.” (Yes. It's very funny.)

She inched further away.

Carlo Bacon strolled back in and gave Owen a wink. “She's coming.”

Owen confided to Pierre, “You'll be staying with me.”

Pierre just stared at him.

With jealousy, Dick said, “I was the one first introduced myself.”

“And why would he want to hole up on a cattle ranch?” Owen asked. “Anyone could tell by just looking that these are cosmopolitan people.”

“So-called urbanites,” said Iona.

Elderly, tottery, but grandly elegant Mrs. Marvyl Christiansen entered the café. She was seventy-five and a widow and a former high school instructor in French language and culture to a majority in the café. She was still teachy, and Owen and Dick alertly jumped up like this was homeroom and a certain protocol was expected. Owen called, “We got company from France, Marvyl!”

She smiled and seated herself in a queenly way before softly gesturing that the men could sit again. And she said in a good accent and a higher voice than normal, “
Bonjour, Mademoiselle. Bonjour, Monsieur.
”

Natalie nodded.
“Bonjour
.”

“
Comment allez-vous?
”

Iona informed the others, “She's asking them how they are.”

Natalie told Mrs. Christiansen, “
Bien
.”

Iona translated. “She said she's just fine.” Iona observed Pierre observing her and failed to blush with embarrassment.

Mrs. Christiansen asked, “
Comment vous appelez-vous?
”

And Iona said, “She might could be asking them who they are.”

Natalie gave their names and Pierre scowled as if she were committing treachery.

Mrs. Christiansen asked, “Shall I tell them about The Revels?”

“That would be the primary option,” Dick said.

Mrs. Christiansen seemed to pause to construct sentences worthy of the Académie Française, but she was confused as to vocabulary and fell back onto phrases in her high school textbooks. She asked if that was Natalie's spoon. She said her father had a splendid tailor. She said poodles were good swimmers, and there was a danger of asphyxiation in a room full of shoes.

Natalie smiled pleasantly, but Pierre leaned toward her and whispered, “
Ils sont tous fous.”
(They're all crazy.)

Closely watching the two, Dick had a hunch that his former teacher's language skills had slackened some, and Mrs. Christiansen was lost in the Ardennes forest and seeking a post office on a Sunday when Dick interrupted to say, “I hate to interrupt, ma'am, but she does speak American English.”

Natalie nodded as she touched Mrs. Christiansen's wrist. “But really, you were doing quite well.”

“
Merci
,” Mrs. Christiansen said. She gathered her thoughts into English and then instructed both visitors on their local custom, which was that each summer in Seldom there was a three-day festival in honor of its founder, a nineteenth-century trapper from Bordeaux whose name was Bernard LeBoeuf.

Carlo said, “It's why Nebraska used to be called The Beef State.”

“Oh, foo,” Iona said. “Where'd you get that?”

“Common knowledge,” Carlo said. And then he got defensive and sullen for a while.

Mrs. Christiansen went on to say it was their habit to invite a visiting couple who strayed into town to be king and queen of The Revels.

Iona said of The Revels, “We have lots of parties. And fun stuff at the fairgrounds.”

Dick said, “Often the royalty are carefree and footloose retirees, such as Archie and Lynette Doolittle of Detroit.”

Owen grinned in reminiscence. “Claimed they were spending their children's inheritance. Wore those ‘I'm With Stupid' shirts. Real comical people.”

Mrs. Christiansen continued chidingly, “But they could not speak a
lick
of French.”

“Oh no,” Owen said, tee-heeing. “You put a shotgun to Archie's head and he could not get out a
merde
.”

“Owen,” Mrs. Christiansen said, and when he faced her, she put three fingers to his lips. He hushed.

“Seldom's founder was French,” she went on, “so it seems perfectly just and charming that you two should be our royalty.”

“For three days?” Natalie asked.

“You will be our guests until Saturday evening.”

Pierre was uncivil over the prospect and was shaking his head from side to side, but Natalie pretended not to notice as she smiled and said, “Oh goody.”

Pierre's face communicated half loathing and half what-have-you-gotten-us-into?

Mrs. Christiansen sharply said, “Stop tapping your feet.”

And Carlo Bacon said, “Sorry, ma'am.”

Mrs. Christiansen held out both arms and Owen and Dick helped her stand. She asked, “And where is Monsieur staying?”

“With me,” Owen said.

Mrs. Christiansen patted Pierre's forearm with sympathy and said, “Will you please come with me, Mademoiselle?”

7

W
alking south on Main Street, Natalie watched a husband and wife in their eighties pleasantly hold hands on a front porch swing. Calliope music issued from an ice cream truck as it trolled ahead of chasing children. Two barefoot boys with bamboo poles scuffed along in the cool of the bluegrass front yards, sharing the weight of a stringer of cat-fish. Natalie told Mrs. Christiansen, “It is a charming village, Seldom.”

“Oh my yes,” Mrs. Christiansen said. “That Norman Rockwell's got nothing on us.”

Mrs. Christiansen's rooming house was just next door, a grand, three-story, Victorian affair, with a wrap-around porch and many gables, each element of carpentry differently painted in imitation of the houses she'd seen on her lone trip to San Francisco. Owen and Pierre watched from the street as Dick gallantly hefted Natalie's red suitcase from the café for her, carefully set it next to the front door, and rapidly retreated to the front lawn. Mrs. Christiansen noticed Natalie's puzzlement and explained, “We don't permit men on the premises.”

Natalie smirked triumphantly at Pierre and said, “No problem.” She went inside.

Owen threw his arm around his newfound pal and escorted him to his gas station across the street, saying proudly, “You got one glorious surprise in store for yourself!”

Owen's late father had not troubled himself to modernize the gas station, which was a flashback to the forties, just a one-bay garage with a hoist and oiled cinder floor and a full-service area with faded red pumps topped by white globes of illumination that had red-winged horses leaping skyward on them.

The Reverend Dante Picarazzi was there, holding a gas nozzle as he filled an old, faded Volkswagen van that had an excess of New York decals on it. He was a fast-talking priest in his forties, just a little beyond a midget in height, with crow-black hair and mustache and goatee, and without the Roman collar you'd have thought he was an East Coast movie director scouting talent or rural locations.

Owen whispered confidingly to Pierre, “You know that Paul Simon song where he sings about me and Julio down by the schoolyard?”