“So, you speak English?” interrupts Dumestre.
“Yes.”
“That’s neat, speaking another language. My parents spoke patois. The local dialect that’s not too different from French. Except I can’t speak it. Shit, it’s raining.”
“What should we do?”
“What do you think we should do?”
Heavy drops—mature, transparent fruit from the steel-colored sky—beat down on their foreheads, their cheeks, the backs of their hands.
“We could…”
“Continue the story. We’ll be soaked one way or another. We’ll tell the firemen to give us new clothes.”
Dumestre sniggers, turns his head to one side, exposing the dry part of his face to the shower of nails, daggers, sabers.