Céline and Gil: A Gamble in Mougins

THE NEXT DAY WAS A free-for-all, with everyone arranging outings and day trips, now that the working part of our class was over. Lola and Ben were taking off to make various stops along the coast, ending up in St. Tropez, so they weren’t coming back. Magda, Joey and Peter invited Aunt Matilda to join them on the ferry to Corsica for an overnight trip.

“Want to come?” Aunt Matilda asked. I told her about my little rendezvous with Rick.

“Hmm,” she said. “Ordinarily I might hang around in case you needed a chaperone. But if I don’t go with the others, Magda will put the moves on Peter,” she said with all seriousness. I couldn’t believe that at their age, the dynamics of courtship were the same as in high school. As if reading my thoughts she said, “It only gets more immature as you get older, because everybody has less time.”

I kissed her and said, “Have a great trip!”

A little while later, when I went downstairs, I found the lobby uncharacteristically silent. Rick didn’t show up, so I had no idea if he intended to honor his promise to take me to Monaco, and I had no way to reach him without arousing suspicion. Even the front desk was unattended.

I stepped outside for a breath of air, trying to regroup. To my surprise I came upon Gil sitting on the stone wall near the entrance, slumped and defeated-looking, his coffee cup in his hands, staring into space while talking on his mobile. As I drew nearer I saw that he hadn’t shaved, and this gave him a slightly derelict look. He ended his call just as I came out.

“How’s Martin?” I asked. The French doctor who’d been summoned had insisted on keeping Martin under observation overnight at the hospital, just in case he’d had a concussion or retained any water in his lungs.

“He’s fine,” Gil said, with that vulnerable look crossing his face again. “I get to bring him home tonight.” He paused. “Look, I really want to thank you for springing into action as you did. That dumb kid. He owes you. Well, I owe you one.”

“You already thanked me yesterday,” I said, “and you don’t owe me anything.”

There was something else bothering him, though. I could hear it in his reserved tone. I sat down beside him and asked in dread, “What’s the matter? Is it about the mas?”

“Why don’t you ask your boyfriend?” Gil could not resist saying. I shot him a puzzled look.

“You know who I’m talking about,” he said bitterly. I immediately wondered if Rick had blabbed about my interest in the furniture storage.

I felt myself flushing guiltily, but I said, “What are you talking about?”

“He told me he had a nice conversation with you yesterday, and he thinks you’d make an excellent hostess for the hotel. Yep, he definitely sees a future for you in his new operation.” Gil smirked as if daring me to deny it. But it didn’t appear that Rick had said anything about taking me to Monaco.

So all I said was, “His new operation?”

“That’s right,” Gil replied in a self-mocking tone. “As of Thursday, if I sign his ruddy contract, Rick will own this entire place—lock, stock and barrel. So you picked the right horse to back.”

“What happened, Gil?” I asked. “Aren’t you guys partners anymore?”

“Partners?” Gil said with a hollow laugh. “As it turns out, we were never going to be partners. He knew how to play me, though. Back then, money was tight with all the banks, so the only way I could raise enough to cover the renovation costs for the mas was to borrow from the loan sharks. I only did it because I had Rick’s assurances that if I made him my partner, he’d sell off some of his other properties in time to raise the cash so I could repay my loan to—”

“Those thugs!” I exclaimed in alarm.

“To their boss, Gus,” he corrected. “Who absolutely will not extend the loan period no matter what I say. So, after months of back-and-forth with Rick’s lawyer and mine just ‘ironing out the details’ of our ‘good-faith’ agreement—suddenly, at the eleventh hour, Rick tells me he can’t come up with the promised cash to pay back my loan—UNLESS we modify our contract with his new clause to satisfy his bankers. Now I find out that, all along, he only wanted to take over my beautiful, newly renovated mas and simply add it to his hotel chain. It will be, as he put it, ‘another diamond in the tiara’.”

“And what happens to you?” I asked in disbelief.

“Hah!” Gil said hollowly. “He wants me to stay on and ‘cook for him’. He bloody well wants to use my chef’s brand for his own profits, and keep me on as an indentured servant, basically. Or, as he puts it, ‘You just be creative, Gil, and leave the business end to me.’ ”

“Well, that’s preposterous!” I spluttered. “You don’t have to take a rotten deal like that.”

“In fact, I do,” Gil said heavily. “Because those are the only terms under which Rick will go to his bank and transfer enough funds to cover my reconstruction loan. I have to sign his deal tomorrow, in order to pay off the bad boys on Thursday. Otherwise I sleep with the fishes. And if I don’t take Rick’s deal, then the loan shark will own the mas. Either way, I lose it. Thing is, this place will soon be worth so much more than what I owe! Well, maybe I should just let Gus have it!” he scowled.

“Can’t you get any other backers to take Rick’s place?” I asked. Gil gave me a withering look.

“What do you think I’ve been trying to do ever since I got wind of the fact that Rick has no intention of honoring our original deal? But this is too short a window for most investors, and I don’t blame them. I was, in retrospect, a raving idiot to believe that Rick has been negotiating in good faith, just ‘tweaking’ the damned contract here and there to appease his investors. The bloody bastard had this trick in mind all the time; he was just stringing me along with the promise of good terms to make sure I didn’t make a better deal with anybody else. Well, more fool me, for believing it was in the bag.”

I realized that Rick was a well-dressed thug, no better than the loan shark—worse, really, for betraying Gil’s trust. A little voice inside my head—sounding an awful lot like Aunt Matilda—was telling me that if I had to deal with Rick instead of Gil, I could just kiss that Picasso goodbye.

“NO!” I cried. “Don’t sign it! You can’t sell this place!” Gil was taken aback.

“Why should you care so much?” He stared at me keenly. “Are you ever going to tell me what you’ve really been up to in France? All I want is some truth. From somebody! Rick’s gone to London and left me in the shit unless I sign to his demands.”

“Rick’s gone to London?” I echoed. “But—when’s he coming back here?”

“Never; unless I sign his wretched contract,” Gil said flatly.

“But—but,” I stuttered. “Are you sure he’s gone?”

“Of course I’m sure,” Gil said, sounding irritable again. Then he recovered and said, “Hey, this isn’t your problem. Thanks for asking, though.”

I figured it was a pretty good bet that Rick had no intention of returning here today just to honor his promise to take me to the storage area, because why would he care about decorating the mas now that Gil was resisting signing his contract? So how was I going to find the blue cupboard before this takeover happened? I knew I’d reached the point of no return. I could either get Gil on board right now, or go home and forget the whole thing.

“I just might have a better backer for you,” I said carefully. “It’s a long shot, but you’ll have to promise that no matter what happens, the deal is, the ownership of the mas will be divided fifty–fifty.”

Gil looked dubious. “An equal split with someone I don’t know? Just who’ve you got in mind?”

“Me,” I said with more boldness than I felt.

Gil eyed me speculatively. “Well, you have been casing out this place ever since you got off the plane. So it’s been business all along, eh? With most people, it’s always about the money. But for some reason I got the idea that you had higher priorities, and the money was secondary.”

“It was—but I can’t afford to think that way anymore,” I said. “If I turn up the money you need, no matter how I do it, then fifty percent of everything at the mas is mine, right?”

“Are you going to rob the bank of Monte Carlo or something?” he asked.

“You don’t need the details,” I answered.

“Are you using legal means to obtain this money?” Gil pursued.

“Mostly,” I said. “So you have to swear that you’ll honor this agreement, even-Steven.”

Gil looked as if it occurred to him for the first time that I might actually be serious. The desperate expression on his face abated, and I detected a faint glint in his eyes. “If you can really come up with the money before Thursday, it’s a deal,” he said suddenly, offering his hand for me to shake.

“You can’t welch on it like Rick did,” I said, before letting him take my hand. I was watching his face more closely than I’ve ever looked at anyone’s face in my entire life.

“I won’t welch,” he promised with his most winning, convincing smile. “Swear to God.”

“Write it on a napkin,” I said, and he actually did scribble out our impromptu deal on his coffee napkin and he signed it.

But he couldn’t resist asking, “Are you going to sell off a yacht or a string of pearls?”

“Something like that,” I replied. “If you want the money you’ll have to help me get my hands on it.” He gave me a deeply suspicious look. I plunged on. “Do you know where Rick’s storage facility is?”

“Yeah, sure,” Gil said, bewildered. “It’s in Monaco. Why?”

“Do you have a key to the place?” I asked.

“It’s not a key. It’s got a code,” he answered. “I think we can get in. Why?”

I had to tell him now. “Rick’s got something that belongs to my mother in there,” I blurted out.

Gil said in surprise, “As far as I know, all he’s got is the dairyman’s old furniture from the mas. What’s that got to do with your mum?”

There must be something about Monte Carlo that brings out the gambler in people. I knew what my lawyer would say if he had any idea of the risk I was about to take. But lawyers, I’ve discovered, know nothing about life. As Aunt Matilda said, Sometimes, you just have to roll the dice.

“Brace yourself, Gil. And don’t freak out. That dairyman that you bought the mas from?” I said. “Well, he bought this place from my grandmother.”

Gil looked stunned, but then the light broke across his face as if it all made sense to him at last.

“So, that’s it! No wonder you’ve been hanging about here. I knew it couldn’t be your love of cooking, that’s for sure. But what good’s the old furniture? Is one of them some rare antique?”

I shook my head. “I’ve got reason to believe that my grandmother left something extremely valuable in it for my mom, which she desperately needs,” I said softly. “Grandma didn’t want my dad or anyone else to get hold of it. I think it’s hidden in a blue cupboard. Does a piece like that ring a bell?”

Gil glanced at me as if he now feared for my sanity, and said with some confusion, “But, I’m pretty sure all that stuff was empty when I took possession of it.”

I paused, remembering what my mother had told me about Grandmother Ondine: She did have her little hiding places…

I told Gil this. “So I really have to see it for myself,” I insisted. “Otherwise I’ll be haunted by it for the rest of my life, just like my mother was.” I explained to him that I was facing a custody battle with siblings. “If I do find this item, I might be able to sell it, for a lot more than what you need, and then I can pay my lawyer to fight for Mom.”

“Oh,” he said gently. Then he added doubtfully, “And that’s how you’re going to raise the money to save this mas as well? On this slim chance of finding some family heirloom?”

“Yes,” I said. “Laugh if you want to. Just get me into that storage area, right now.”

Gil said under his breath, “Well, fuck me, this is just about what I deserve.”

“What other chance have you got?” I pointed out.

Gil pondered this for several seconds, then said, “Not a one. Let’s go.”