Tu Aime Mon Chapaeux Verde Grande? Part 6
Fine. You guys win. But I'm still hiding it behind an lj-cut. Actually, this one at least has one good bit of dialogue.
So I dressed up in penguin colors. A black tie, a white shirt, black pants, and a studded belt. And a camera the size of my head. It bounced on my hip as I trotted down the hill from the gîte to the mayor's office. The wedding itself was just a simple signing of documents, but Gaz's entire village was packed into the small city hall, waiting with lips tightly pressed as the Mayor lectured the prospective couple at length about the trials and joy of union. Rachel stood alongside him, translating his speech aloud from a hastily written note. Gaz was handsome though bashful. Laura was slinky and jovial. Having discovered that there was no professional photographer, I comfortably snapped away, glad that I could witness their event.
Then came the reception. After throwing rice at the newlyweds, and not cakes, I was somehow placed into the middle seat of car that was driven by a frenchman at high speed through the serpentine one-lane Bourgogne.
"My God," I asked of nobody in particular, "where are they driving us?"
My sister glared at me. "Weren't you listening at the wedding? We're going to a chateau."
"A chateau? Isn't that kind of small?" I asked my sister, as the vineyards rocketed by.
"A chateau is a castle," she said.
"Oh. I thought it was a hat."
Rachel struggled to wheel herself around from the front seat. She gave me a scowl and corrected me, lips puckered like an asterisk. "No, that's chapeau. Check your Frenglish at the door."
I happened to like Frenglish. "Har har. Hey, the sun's getting down on the horizon - it's what, five o'clock? So we've got a cocktail hour, which is probably going to last for two more hours, right? Then dinner. Then merrymaking. God, I hope I can stay awake through all of this." I was still feeling the jet lag.
"I guess the drivers are going to stop drinking at two in the morning," Rachel said bluntly. "We'll probably spend the night."
"Jesus," came my only response.
"At least you'll get a lot of great pictures!" exclaimed my sister.
"One other thing," said Rachel, "there will be speeches and songs and games and stuff. The French are very particular about everybody participating. So you might want to take advantage of the free liquor."
"Oh dear," I said, nervously. Rachel smirked, amused as if by a private joke, and turned back toward the front of he vehicle.
The chateau had its own vineyard. It was actually a winery. Somebody informed me that there was a moat, as I was drinking my Kir Royale, a phrase which here means "a fancy drink with sophisticated liquor." Excited to see the moat, I walked around with my camera in one hand, my Kir Royale in the other until I rounded a corner and nearly stumbled into the moat, which was huge and impressive though bone dry. I caught Laura and Lucas burning down another pair of cigarettes, jovially talking about something. Lucas was now free of his stylish blazer and Rachel stood behind the pair silently with her striped black skirt and flaming red blouse.
I wandered over to the moat and looked down into the maw. "So, Rachel, were you serious about that participation thing? I'm all for multiculturalism, but what if I make an ass out of myself? I don't have any idea what's going on, or even if there will be anything to eat in there."
Rachel took a drag and came to stand with me by the edge of the moat.[1] "You'll probably be fine," she said.
"I guess I could just excuse myself or something and take pictures from the wall. Nobody would make me say anything then, I bet."
"You'll be fine," she said again.
"Jesus!" I exclaimed, leaning my head way over the edge of the stone wall which encircled the moat. "You could fall into that thing and nobody would find your body. Summer would come and go and Autumn would find your body buried beneath a sea of leaves."
Rachel took another drag and smiled. "I highly doubt that. Look - here comes a jogger." Sure enough, a preposterously French woman wearing a jumpsuit was plodding along thirty feet below us. As we watched, she ran over to the side of the moat where a convenient set of stairs was situated. "The moat is perfectly safe. So can I ask you something about that camera?"
It pleases me when people ask me about my camera. "Well, you see, it's a Canon, and-"
"--no," she interrupted, "I mean, there's just something about socially shy people and their cameras."
I stood agape, not really sure what she meant. "What're you saying?"
She turned to face me. "I don't mean it as an insult or anything, but you are! You're socially shy. You're like a deer in the headlights. No, seriously, your eyes are constantly wide open, like you can't believe what you're seeing. So I've got a theory."
"Give me a break! This really is totally new to me, this whole country, I've never seen anything like it. I'm allowed to be amazed, aren't I?" She blinked, obviously taken aback by my defensiveness. "What's your theory?"
She smiled like a preying mantis. "My theory is that your camera acts like a boundary between yourself and the event, absorbing a lot of the social pressure. You can hide behind it, just stay behind your viewfinder the entire time, and avoid the nasty problem of having to actually talk to people."
"I'm talking to you now, aren't I?"
"Yeah, but I'm saying, real talking. Like, you would never try to talk to Gaz's mom or anything, and tell her how good her quiche was, even if you had a golden opportunity."
"No way, I totally would."
"I bet that, if push were to come to shove, you wouldn't. You'd be taking pictures of the whole thing, but you'd never actually approach her."
"Well, how am I supposed to talk to her if I can't speak her language? I don't even know how they say goodbye in French."
Rachel sighed sarcastically. "The French say au revoir, and I'm certain you know that. You can't hide behind a feigned ignorance of French for that long, kid. I'm on to you."
I stuck out my lower lip and pouted a little. "On to what?"
"Your whole game, trying to act either inconspicuous, or failing that, cute. And your camera thing. I think a lot of guys manifest their desire to control and dominate a situation by pointing their camera at it." She flicked her cigarette. "And even you yourself hinted that the size of your camera was inversely proportional to some other vital statistic of yours." Now she raised an eyebrow. "Like you were compensating for something."
The preying mantis smile again, as if amused that she had silenced me with some words and a cigarette. "Well, I was only joking about the compensating thing," I found myself saying. "and I'm not very dominating anyway. I'm surprised you hadn't figured that out by now."
"Then you're definitely the wallflower type," she said. "You escape the blame of your social awkwardness by putting it squarely on the camera." There was a silence.
"You win," I conceded. "But it's very convenient." Rachel laughed as I turned away and walked over to Laura and Lucas, who were still chatting. I whipped out my camera and focused on Laura, who glanced at me and exhaled smoke through her nose. "Go join the party! Socialize! Mingle," she said.
"I'm just going to take one more incriminating shot of you, Laura, and then I'm gonna head back over to your wedding reception." The shutter went click. "Get out of here and go take pictures."
I tried again to mingle with the men and women of the crowd, most of whom were by now on their second or third drink, but I found myself just talking to my sister, since she was easiest. It didn't take long for her to grow fed up with me. She wrinkled her nose and made a fist. "if you take one more picture of me, I'm going to punch you in the face. Go take pictures of Natasha," Brittany said.
"But she's with her family. I can't intrude." I tentatively zoomed in from afar and took a couple of shots. "Man, I hardly know these people, this feels weird."
"You're supposed to be a photographer," she said, mockingly. I heeded her suggestion and walked around for awhile, dutifully taking pictures. After a while a waiter found me and asked me something in French, which I could not understand. He was holding a large bottle of champagne so I nodded my head and said, "oui!" very loudly. He filled my champagne flute to the brim. I took a portrait of him as he walked stiffly away. Gosh, I thought to myself, a full quantity in my champagne flute. How impolite.
Lucas and Rachel and Laura were approaching. "Watch it," I cautioned the trio, "some lunatic is running around diluting everyone's Kir Royale."
Laura regarded me incredulously. "With what?"
"Champagne." I held up my glass.
"That fucker," Lucas said. "Let's go inside."
1: This specific conversation never took place; originally it was intended to be a monologue for myself, the narrator, but I decided to take the liberty of fleshing out Rachel's character a little more. On second read, it appears a little snotty and arrogant, which isn't very much like Rachel. But every story needs a challenging character, so please understand that I've taken a couple of literary liberties with Rachel.