| Subject: À la Vie! - Chapter 1 |
Author:
Diane
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Date Posted: Tuesday, October 19, 01:28:20am
In reply to:
Diane
's message, "À la Vie!" on Tuesday, October 19, 01:16:54am
Michel Samuelle was unhappy, This was not an unusual occurrence. Ever since his mother died two years ago, he had not truly been happy. One would think that an ambassador’s son would live an exciting life, and Michel would be the first two admit that he had been to many interesting places and had seen many wonderful things in his short twelve years. However, since his mother’s death, he rarely saw his father and, moving from country to country, Michel found it difficult to make friends. This had not mattered when his mother was alive. She was his sunshine, making every day bright and cheerful. Now Michel was depressed and moody, and he didn’t mind if his father’s servants knew it.
“Please, Monsieur Samuelle,” pleaded his driver. “Your father told me to bring you on the beach to play. I must drive him to a luncheon in twenty minutes. I will be back to retrieve you in four hours.”
“I told you, I don’t want to play. I’m too old. Besides, with whom am I to play? And with what?” He gestured to the empty beachfront where the limousine was parked.
“It is a nice day,” said the driver desperately. “You can swim—or build cabins in the sand.”
“You mean ’castles,’ not ’cabins,’ Michel corrected him snidely. They were speaking English, as his father required that they speak the native language of whichever country they were in. Michel had an amazing acuity for languages, and didn’t mind showing off at the expense of others.
“All right, build castles, but I really must leave,” pled the driver.
“Just go,” said Michel dispiritedly.
“Here is your lunch,” the driver said, relieved, setting down a picnic hamper. “There is a drying towel here as well.”
“Fine.”
Not wanting to prolong the moment, the limousine driver returned to the vehicle and quickly pulled out of sight.
Michel stared dejectedly at the basket then, after a few minutes, sat beside it to stare blank-faced at the sea. He was so intent in his self-pity that he didn’t notice the presence of a small elfin-like creature until she plopped down beside him.
“G’day,” she greeted him with a sunny smile. “My name’s Nikita. What’s yours?”
She looked to be about six or seven years old, with long, tangled hair and scrawny arms and legs bursting through a dress that was at least two sizes too small.
“Where did you come from?” Michel asked, looking around.
The child pointed vaguely down the beach, where Michel could barely make out a row of tumble-down houses, hovels, really, about half a kilometer away.
“Who is watching you?” he persisted. “Where is your mother?” Baby-sitting was the last thing on his agenda.
“Mum’s sleeping it off,” Nikita replied matter-of-factly. “I’m watching myself. I do it all the time. Is that food in there?” she asked, eying the picnic hamper intently.
Michel had planned to stage a hunger-strike over what he considered to be his abandonment, but the girl was obviously not well fed. He opened the hamper and began to unpack its contents. He spread a linen cloth on the sand, and placed a basket of fruit, a paring knife, a platter of cheeses and crackers, and a bottle of wine and stemmed glass upon it.
Nikita gazed adoringly at the fruit, but looked shyly at Michel from beneath white-blonde lashes, awaiting his permission. He peeled a banana and handed it to her. He gaped at the way she shoved the fruit in her mouth—it was as if she hadn’t eaten in weeks. He started to peel an apple for her, but decided she probably wouldn’t mind a little peeling. She didn’t, and she ate the core and seeds as well. She handed him the stem, sat back on her heels, a feral gleam in her eyes, waiting to see what came next.
Michel set the platter of cheeses in front of her, and Nikita gasped in wonder. She took a bite of everything, sometimes finishing off the morsel, sometimes wrinkling her nose and handing the uneaten portion to Michel. The crackers disappeared in a heartbeat.
A slight grin tugging at the corner of his mouth, Michel uncorked the bottle of wine, and poured a glass for Nikita. However, when she smelled it, she jumped up and backed away as though she had been stung.
“No!” she cried vehemently. “No booze!”
Michel was astonished. He would never have categorized a good Cabernet as “booze” but, as the wine obviously upset the child, he obligingly emptied the glass into the sand and recorked the bottle.
He reached back into the fruit basket and began to peel an orange for them to share. As she took a section from him, she asked again, “What’s your name?”
“Michel,” he answered, amused at her serious tone.
Then she giggled. “Michelle is a girls’ name!” she taunted.
Michel didn’t bother to explain her error. “You can call me Michael.” As he handed her another section of the orange, he considered informing her that Nikita was a man’s name, but decided he didn’t want to make her mad. He wanted to hear her giggle again.
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