The House

Chapter 23 - Day 3: Speak French to me Baby

Whatever is hiding inside the clock is not all that keen on coming out again. I'm relieved when David's fingers disappear into the open door, and he doesn't immediately scream in pain. Nothing is trying to eat him alive or drag him inside.

Apparently, only my luggage is prone to that kind of behaviour.

He is struggling, though and after a minute, he asks me for the steak knife I'm still clutching at the ready. I surrender my weapon to him and retrieve the rolling pin from the floor, happy that it didn't break when I dropped it earlier.

David patiently prods and pries with the tip of the knife, and I finally see the edge of something browned with age appearing over the lip of the small doorway. I admire his patience; I would have smashed the clock by now... well... maybe. It is a rather beautiful clock. Even a savage like me might've actually taken my time getting it out.

It looks like a thick wad of folded paper, and when David finally pulls it free, it starts to unfold itself from its forced compression, and a hard object pops out, landing with a vibrating clang on the stone worktop. Neither of us jumps with fright this time; apparently, we're becoming used to things popping out of other things.

It's a key! Oh, hurrah! I don't have enough of those yet!

"Enough with the keys, already!" I groan, and I don't blame David for giving me a questioning look. I consider explaining to him the complexities of my recent development of a serious key phobia but give up on that idea when I think about all the Belle weirdness I'll have to confess; therefore, I just shrug and give him an enigmatic smile. 

Guys like mysterious women, don't they?

"Wonder what this is for?" Just like with the clock, David is more interested in the mysteries of the key than the mysteries of me.

"None of the rooms in this house, I can assure you."

Actually, I cannot assure him because I haven't found the dining room yet. I haven't even seen its door, but...

"It's too small to be a room key. Maybe a box or a cabinet or something."

Awesome! There is not a gazillion of those in this house!

"Perhaps there are instructions in there?" I say, indicating the thickly folded paper David placed on the counter when he picked up the ornate little key.  "A diagram showing hidden footpaths running through caves, mysterious pouches in Matryoshka dolls and how to shut clocks up that aren't supposed to be alive... you know... normal things like that."

I do believe that David is starting to question my sanity, but that is just because he probably doesn't know La Belle Pêche as intimately as I do. 

Wait, wait! What am I talking about? 

I do believe that David is now convinced of my lack of sanity. He is looking at me with narrowed eyes, and he seems to be a little worried. I am glad I kept it hypothetical and didn't try to tell him that I'm speaking of actual things in this house.

I was just testing the water.

To his credit, he doesn't say anything, he just unfolds the paper, and when he realises that it is an envelope with a broken seal on the back, he opens it and pulls out what appears to be a letter.

"Hmm," he says, glancing at me after scanning over the first page. "How good is your French?"

"Voulez vous coucher avec moi ce soir?" I give him a dazzling demonstration of my vast linguistic talents.

"What?" he says, and he flashes that blinding lightning smile of his again, paralyzing me for a few seconds.

"I-It's from a very old song. It has some kitsies and yah-yahs in it as well. I heard it somewhere when I was a kid and used to say the chorus part often in conversations because I really wanted to be able to speak French."