Free Curio Vignettes 05 Exposure by Cara McKenna Page A

scrubby trees silhouetted against a darkening blue sky. We’ve missed the lavender, but the air is crisp, promising deep sleeps under warm blankets…should my brain allow such a thing beneath an unfamiliar roof.
    I don’t like new places. The only explorations I’ve been comfortable undertaking are those bathed in candlelight, above, beneath and inside a new woman’s body. As a prostitute, my role was to navigate those landscapes with the intuition and confidence of a perennial lover, and I can say without bravado that I was excellent at my job.
    But the outside world… There I’m as good as blind, lacking even the most basic internal compass, head full of static and screaming chemicals from my disorder at the mere thought of an unknown journey.
    We’re here in Provence for only four days—a short time by most vacationers’ standards, yet this is monumental. I’ve slept in the same bed every single night for the past five years, with the exception of one evening I passed slumped in a chair at my mother’s bedside in the hospital. Four days is an eternity to be away from my routines, stranded far outside my precious, hateful safe zone.
    Yet somehow…
    I don’t feel as I’d expected. My panic faded when we left the town behind, calm growing with every kilometer we put between us and civilization.
    “Ooh,” Caroly calls. “This is lovely.”
    I follow her voice across the living room and into the master bedroom. Its double glass doors open onto an overgrown garden and in the far, far distance, you can make out a steeple and the roofs of a tiny village, and the dark stripe of a river snaking through the valley.
    Caroly bounces on the bed. It’s wide, made up in a thick, colorful quilt and lit by matching sconces on either side. So different than my dark bedroom, set for seduction. No pigeons roosting beyond the windowpanes, just the hum of insects getting ready for their evening shift. No twinkling city lights, but soon enough, surely more stars than I’ve seen in half a lifetime.
    “I wonder what sort of moon it will be.” I should know these things. People who leave their homes know these things; people who keep their curtains open and enjoy things as vast and crushing as the sky.
    “Just past full,” Caroly supplies, staring through the windows at the sinking sun. The edges of her dark-blonde curls are tinted pink by the light, skin stained rosy. I move to sit beside her, taking her hand atop the covers.
    “This was a very good idea.”
    “How are you feeling?”
    I shrug. “I’m still a bit raw from the journey. And from the…differentness. I doubt it will fade completely while we’re here, but it’s the being here that’s important.” I squeeze her hand. “Getting you your stone cottage. A trip to mark the official start of all these new changes.”
    And so much will change when this holiday is over. A few days of leisure in a calm place where I may stand a chance at truly relaxing, then the stress of the drive and the train and the taxi. Then home, blessed familiarity with the added excitement of Caroly. Her things have been moved in; welcome additions that make me see my flat through new eyes. A brief domestic respite before the hard adjustments begin. Necessary struggles.
    I accepted a job two weeks ago, one that fell into my lap custom-made, the answer to an unarticulated prayer. The elderly proprietor of a shop in Gobelins offered me part-time work, mending antique watches and other mechanical curiosities. His eyes and back and fingers are growing too weak for the task.
    I took Caroly there one afternoon and the owner had been at work, operating on the guts of a grandfather clock. He’d been struggling with the escape wheel, and Caroly volunteered me to take a look. To say I “dabble” with clockwork is to say an alcoholic “enjoys the odd tipple”. I’d never have offered my help, afraid to sound too pushy or patronizing. But my help was welcomed gratefully, and we left an hour