Free Isn't It Romantic? by Ron Hansen Page B

blushed. “I’m not like that, really. I just want normal things. To be friendly to people. To love and be loved. To get to know someone really well and to have him know me in the same way.” She paused. “You probably don’t think that’s very ambitious.”
    â€œBut no! To love and be loved is the highest ambition!”
    She smiled. “You’re pretty good at this, aren’t you.”
    â€œAt what?”
    â€œRomancing a girl.”
    Complacently, he said, “Well, I’m French.” And then he continued his hobby, turning his shrinking ice cream cone this way and that. The soft August heat was melting it too fast and he was not practiced in the art of such eating. “ Il fait trop chaud pour une glace, ” he said. (It’s too hot for ice cream.)
    â€œAre you getting it all over your hand?”
    â€œI fear yes.”
    â€œHere.” She licked a tear of ice cream from the cone and then coquettishly licked some more from his hand.
    â€œSank you.”
    â€œGood flavor,” Iona said.
    â€œ Vraiment? ” (Truly?) He licked his cone and then Iona’s hand. She giggled. “Yes,” he said, “very good that way.”
    She saw people who knew her and all seemed to have children either on the rides or waiting for them. All stared at Iona with worship or leers or silent opinions, some of the men nodding in a hidden way or waving hello with the twitch of a finger. She told Pierre, “You don’t know what it’s like growing up here. With it being so claustrophobic. I mean, they’re the salt of the earth, but every person in Seldom has known every blessed thing about me since I was one year old. You can’t grow up, really, you can’t change, you can’t even get a little wild. You’re in front of all these cameras. You aren’t supposed to be perfect; you’re just supposed to be predictable.” She paused. “Why don’t we get out of here?”
    She took him by the hand and turned south, away from the booths and exhibits and toward a night where lightning bugs flickered and trembled and described strange golden alphabets in the air. A healthy scent of alfalfa drifted in from the fields. She got to a white plank fence and jumped her rump onto the top rail before quickly swinging her lithe legs over to the greensward on the other side. Pierre finished the remainder of his ice cream cone and wiped his hands on Owen’s green shirt before holding onto a fence post as he struggled over the fence and bulkily fell onto the lawn. She helped him up and he saw they were on the sixteenth tee of the golf course. A 412 yard, par 4. Water hazard on the left. Tricky green. She slipped her right arm around his waist and he pulled her closer so that there was friction as they strolled.
    â€œSo who are you really?” she asked.
    â€œGérard Depardieu. But younger.”
    She laughed. “I need more.”
    â€œMy grandfather was British. My grandmother, she was a countess. I have herited from her. . .”
    â€œ In herited.”
    â€œ. . . a little castle and—I am losing the English— une vigne ?”
    â€œVineyard?”
    â€œ C’est juste . And from my father I have the job in the family firm, which is buying and selling the wines in all the world. I am the director of—”
    â€œYour job ?” She gazed at him in amazement. “That is such a male answer.”
    â€œI have left out what?”
    â€œEmotions, for starters.” And he seemed so mystified that she decided to prompt him. “Are you afraid of anything?”
    â€œSpiders.”
    She could see he was withholding. “And that’s all?”
    â€œAnother question please.”
    â€œHeights? Snakes? Failure? Kitchen appliances?”
    â€œKitchen appliances?”
    She felt caught out. “But we were talking about you.”
    He stilled as he thought. “I have