A DOZEN KILOMETERS AWAY, in the old part of Villeneuve-Loubet, Paul Burke poured a little water into his pastis while keeping an eye on the small, ancient television that Claude Brière had hooked up for the customers at his Café de Neptune. Burke sipped the licorice drink to ensure he had the right blend of water and alcohol, but quickly forgot about it as the cyclists, many of them standing on their pedals and feverishly maneuvering their bikes, sprinted the last two hundred meters to the finish line. He felt someone standing beside him but didn’t take his eyes off the screen until the British favorite cleared the line first, a wheel ahead of the runner-up from Germany.

“I’m surprised you aren’t there at the finish,” came Claude’s husky voice.

Burke looked up at the owner—a beefy man in his fifties who had grown up in this village and, as far as Burke knew, had always worked at the café, which had once been owned by his uncle.

Burke brushed the comment aside with a classic Gallic wave. “Not worth my time,” he said in his fluent, Québec-accented French. He shrugged. “I have better things to do.”

Claude, who was always cheerful, grinned. “Yes, I can see your Sunday is bursting with activity.”

Despite himself, Burke laughed. He liked Claude. In fact, he liked almost everyone in the hillside community for their good spirits and jovial pessimism, which had taken a few months to get used to. These people were to be respected and appreciated. He felt differently about the residents of the neighboring developments. They were a well-heeled, self-absorbed bunch who cared little for the social niceties of a small community. As for the tourists who were coming in droves to the expansive resorts being developed at an extraordinary pace, Burke did his best to avoid them. Too demanding, too elitist and too loud. The area was changing.

“Just killing time,” Burke said.

“But surely you must feel some association or kinship with those cyclists,” Claude persisted.

Burke and Madame Marois—the quiet, eightyish, pinch-faced woman from just around the corner—were the only customers. Burke had learned it was at such times that conversation was appropriate. It was even expected.

“My career is long over,” Burke said, his mind suddenly filled with memories from a score of races, most of them not involving the Tour de France.

“Just, what, three years?” Claude asked. “That’s not so long ago. Then you did television commentary, too. And you were good. You know strategy as well as anyone.”

Burke smiled as they went through a conversation they’d revisited a dozen times since he had moved to the village. “I was crap, and everyone knows it. That’s why I got fired so quickly.”

“A bad decision by the television people,” Claude said with a sympathetic smile.

“Ah, you’re just being kind again, Claude. You know I was terrible. Everyone knows it. And it didn’t help when I reported that last race pissed. Not a good decision by me.”

During Burke’s final telecast, he blurted out a string of curses on the air just as the riders had finished the race. Not only had Burke been fired immediately after, but his outburst had become a YouTube sensation and had led to a legislated change so there would be a minor delay in French coverage of sporting events to ensure no commentator ever unleashed profanities on the air with such enthusiasm again.

“Well, as you Americans say, shit happens,” Claude said.

Burke smiled at their inside joke. Claude was fully aware that Burke was a Canadian expat who had grown up in Montréal, but he liked to tease Burke on occasion by lumping him in with American tourists.

“That’s exactly what we Canadians say,” Burke said. “Since you’ve got so much advice and so few customers, why don’t you sit down and join me? Madame Marois over there doesn’t look like she’ll need your services for some time.”

Claude glanced at the old woman, who was swathed in a black shawl despite it being thirty-five degrees Celsius—a temperature that sucked the energy out of most people. As usual, the woman was statue-like, her eyes boring holes into the wall of an old stone house on the other side of the tiny courtyard. Beside her stretched her curly-haired Jack Russell, Plato, a ball of white fluff with caramel-colored ears and one sandy spot on his back. The dog moved as much as his mistress. Claude shook his head, then looked back at Burke.

“You’re only in your late 30s, Paul, and you look fit, so maybe you could return to racing,” he said.

Claude graciously ignored that Burke was starting to show a little more stomach and maybe drank a few too many pastises than average.

Burke sighed. “Get a pastis, Claude, and I’ll tell you once again why I don’t race anymore.”

He watched the café owner go, catching the crooked finger Madame Marois extended to him, which meant she wanted another glass of rosé.

Burke thought about the rest of his day. Maybe he’d stay and have a salade Niçoise, which he had always craved during his decade of pro racing but had avoided due to the salty anchovies. And a bottle of a Bordeaux red would work. Pastis afterward, too. The French might frown on such a sequence of beverages, but screw them. They were a little too rigid about food and drink for his liking.

He turned his attention back to the television, where the stage winner was holding up the day’s trophy—a piece of abstract sculpture that resembled a dog humping a leg. The crowd was cheering wildly.

He wished he’d experienced such a moment just once. His only win had been in an unnoticed, three-day event, when he had taken the last day’s stage after all the favorites in front of him had crashed. The stage trophy had been a small teddy bear that looked like it had already been used.

Claude returned, nodding at the stage winner on TV as he sat down with his own pastis and another for Burke. “He’s a prick, I think,” Claude said. “I think all sprinters are like strikers in football, totally caught up in their own deeds without a care about others. They pretend they’re good teammates, but they’re just shits. I would very much enjoy telling them the facts of life, but no one takes me up on my offer.”

Burke smiled. Yes, the salade Niçoise would work if it came with more of Claude’s good company. Life wasn’t always so depressing, he thought. Then after his meal, when he’d likely be feeling a little drunk, he’d go to the highest part of the village, near the old castle, and see how much of the Mediterranean he could see. It would be quiet up there, except for the diminished roar of distant vehicles on the highway, and the air would be perfumed.

And maybe he’d sleep well. He was tired of nightmares. Too many goddamn nightmares.