"Carcassonne is like an old lady who has not changed her make-up in fifty years", Jean Lascaux thought to himself as he drove around Place Gambetta. "The façade is still the essentially the same, but looking a bit worn" he smiled to himself, appreciating the parallelism.
Driving from Caunes was not difficult, although occasionally something lying on the road caught his attention and he would pull over to have a closer look. Force of habit, nurtured over years, so many incidents requiring the gendarmerie taking place on roads. Today he had stopped to pick up a license plate, seemingly new, for a French car, CG-180-EE 34, the last two numbers indicating its registration in Languedoc-Roussillon. Across the road, he found the decaying carcass of a long-dead fawn, probably struck by a car, dried grass growing through its rib cage, head and teeth intact, one of the front legs gracefully genuflecting to its fate. Not too much further away, a brown rabbit's carcass, the well-dried bones of the rib cage shaped like a lovely bentwood basket. With all the flesh gone, cadavers lost their gory aspect and became, Lascaux thought, just another roadside attraction, unlike the plastic bottles that dotted the roadside ditches, and never became part of the soil.
He was in Carcassonne to see a tile installer about a repair that needed to be done to an installation of terra cotta tiles on the terrace of the house. He had not been there when the work was finished, he had been bicycling with his cycling club, and Josianne was the last woman in the world who would question a workman. "He must know his job, otherwise they wouldn't pay him", she would say. And Jean, of course, would check the work. Lascaux relied on her to make sure their menage --the cooking, the laundry, the shopping, the contacts with the family-- all ran smoothly. He had put a roof over their heads, and those of their son and daughter. Now he took care of technical matters --the car, the appliances, dealing with the Mairie, taxes, going to the dechetterie with the week's worth of plastic and cans, leaving the household garbage in the plastic bags the Mairie gave out for free, and packing it in the dumpster for pick up three times weekly. To amuse himself, he cultivated the potager from which they got their vegetables, one among many growing behind the abbey, the plots rented from the Mairie, which kept track of whose plot was whose, not that anyone did not know.
Lascaux cut across Carcassonne's center to arrive at the tile warehouse, which was near the little airport of Salvaza, on the west side of town. It was from Salvaza that the Ryanair flights landed, dropping tourists and seasonal residents, many British, within an easy drive of their final destinations. The big box stores abounded in the Z.I. - zone industriel -- but for once, the GPS in his car got Lascaux directly to his destination. He liked his car, a Seat "Lion" --the product of a merger between the Spanish company and a German partner. The parts were available everywhere, not like that new Renault, the Clio 4, a sports-car type of car whose unique battery meant the factory at Flins had to supply the part as a special order. The Seat was an ugly car, but that made it almost theft-proof, Lascaux had reasoned. A little like some of the cars the gendarmerie drove in France Outre-Mer.
Lascaux pulled up easily in front of a large warehouse painted grey with a sign, "Carrelage Carcassonne" on it. Outside a dark haired, broad-shouldered and deeply-tanned man in a worn red t-shirt bearing the name on the sign was smoking a cigarette. He saw Lascaux, put out his cigarette, and went into the building. Lascaux followed him as soon as he turned off the ignition and locked the car.
Inside, under fluorescent lights, were hundreds of tile displays, affixed to the walls; and, filling the floor space, simulations of dining areas, playrooms, bathrooms and kitchens. In the middle of the space there was a white module where business was done, and where the smoker now stood.
"Good day--"
"Good day, Monsieur, 'What can I help you with?'" the smoker asked, with an amusement, that seemed almost insolent, Jean thought.
"An installation of tile of the terre cuite variety was done at my home in Caunes earlier this week. The floor is not level, and this is a problem."
"Ah, well, we'll see whether you have any redress, although I doubt it--"
"How can that be?" Jean, said, looking directly at the smoker.
"That is how we work. When you are there, it is your responsibility to guide the artisan to your satisfaction. Did you sign the receipt?"
"I did not, my wife did, I was away--"
"Then you should have been there. I doubt there is any claim you can make--"
"That seems unprofessional--"
"Look Monsieur, we do business all over. We explain our terms before we arrive, when we arrange for the visit to lay the tile. If you signed, you take the floor as it is, now that the mortar has dried. You can arrange to have us remove the part of the floor whose placement you don't like, but you will pay for the removal and reinstallation. Got it?"
The smoker walked around the counter and towards Jean. Lascaux was burning with indignation, but he judged the man a brute, so he merely stared at him, his blue eyes, clear as a cloudless sky, expressing little, before he turned, saying,
"Yes, I 'Got it.' --Good day, monsieur. Do not expect return business from us."
As he walked out, he thought he heard the man laugh.
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