The Fiat spiraled down through the underground garage and out past the city wall, and Stefan turned onto a road that circled the wall like a moat. To our right were the wall’s stone ramparts; to our left, the green waters of the Rh?ne. Halfway around the perimeter, we re-entered the old city and doubled back, this time hemmed tightly between the wall’s inner face and the press of densely packed houses, their stone and stucco fa?ades crowding the narrowest sidewalk I’d ever seen. We pulled up in front of a three-story structure that offered only one tiny, round window—scarcely more than a porthole—at street level, though the upper levels each had several large windows. An arched wooden door, painted emerald green, was set into the wall to the left of the porthole, but the door was locked, and didn’t look like a gateway to hospitality, at least not to my bleary eyes. Stefan rapped sharply on the door, waited a bit, and then rapped again, harder. Miranda, meanwhile, wandered farther up the street, stopping at a vine-draped opening in the wall that was secured by a pair of barn-style doors, also emerald green. “I think this is the entrance,” she called. “Here’s a sign, and a doorbell.” She pressed the button, and deep within the building I heard a faint buzz.
The sign, partly hidden by the vines, consisted of three repetitions of the word “Lumani” cut from a thick plate of steel and bolted to the wall, one atop the other. The vines hung halfway down the doors, an irregular fringe that varied between chest and head high. The tendrils reminded me of kudzu, the fast-growing Tennessee vine that, given half a chance and half a week, could swallow trees, barns, even slow-moving cows. Inside, I heard footsteps approaching the doors, then the rattle of a key in the lock. I suspected I was about to be greeted by an eccentric, crabby old Frenchwoman in bathrobe and slippers.
The left-hand door swung open, and the crabby old Frenchwoman turned out to be a lovely woman, possibly fifty, with wavy brown hair, warm brown eyes, and an even warmer smile. “Ah, bonjour. Hello, and welcome to Lumani,” she said. “I am Elisabeth.” An elfin-looking man with sparkling eyes and a short fringe of gray hair rounded a corner and joined her. “And this is my husband, Jean.” The final sound of his name—the -on of zhon—lodged in her nose rather than emerging through her lips, and I was reminded that French pronunciation was a mystery I would never master. “Please, please to come inside.”
Miranda, Stefan, and I ducked beneath the curtain of vines, followed my hosts down a short driveway, and stepped into a place of enchantment: a huge, enclosed garden courtyard complete with an arbor, hammocks, a gurgling fountain, large plane trees, and an immense metal mobile hanging from a cable rigged to one of the trees.
“What a lovely place!” exclaimed Miranda, turning in a slow circle to take it all in. Jean offered to show us around, while Elisabeth went to pour drinks—wine for everyone else, orange juice for me.
Lumani was like a cozy private gallery. The walls were covered with abstract paintings, and the garden and indoor spaces were full of sculptures, large and small. “The art is beautiful,” I said. “Are the artists local? From Avignon?”
“I made the sculptures,” Jean said shyly; then, with obvious pride, he added, “The paintings are by Elisabeth.”
Elisabeth emerged with the tray of drinks. I’d requested orange juice, but what she’d brought me was a deep red. Was it cranberry? Not my favorite, but I took a polite sip. Surprisingly, it was orange juice, freshly squeezed with a hint of pulp, but a richer flavor than regular orange juice—as if even the fruit in Avignon spoke with an exotic accent. “Delicious,” I said.
“Merci. Oui, it’s very special,” she said. “L’orange sanguine. Do you say ‘bloody orange’?”
Miranda grinned. “Blood orange,” she said, arching her eyebrows. “How appropriate.”
After we finished our drinks, Jean took me upstairs to my room. It was a third-floor aerie—I was practically nesting in one of the plane trees—with a bird’s-eye view of the garden. In the distance, beyond Jean and Elisabeth’s smaller, separate house, sprawled a jumble of tiled rooftops and spiky church spires. One of the spires, silhouetted against the sky a few blocks away, was unlike any I’d seen before: an open iron frame, its cluster of bells completely exposed. It was a bare-bones skeleton of a steeple, I realized; exactly my kind of steeple.
I pointed. “That church steeple—is it being restored?”
He followed my gaze. “Ah, non,” he said. “That is the design. It’s built that way for the mistral.”
“The what?”
“The mistral. Strong wind from the northwest. The tower is open so it doesn’t fight against the wind. The wind blows through, instead of pushing it down.” I liked the steeple even more now; its spare skeletal beauty was born of function.
As I leaned on the sill, lingering over the view, I noticed Miranda looking up, waving. “I’m jealous,” she called. “I wish I had a room overlooking the Garden of Eden.”
“Come visit anytime,” I said. “Just watch out for snakes. And don’t eat the apples.”
“SORRY, MIRANDA. WHAT?” I HADN’T HEARD THE question. My brain was empty but my mouth was full. Blissfully full.
“I know carbon-14 dating’s pretty good,” she repeated, “but how close can it get? How precisely can it nail the age of the bones?”
“Pretty damn close,” I finally answered. “Man, that’s good.”