An excerpt from Chapter 2

Kendrick, however, turned left onto a narrow, paved road through even more vineyards. After about five hundred yards, he reached a sign engraved in stone: domaine du vieux laurier, henri poupon.
     Everyone called him Poupon. He was waiting for Kendrick under the cool shade of a leafy mulberry tree, feeding his fish in a swimming pool–sized rectangular stone basin in front of his house and winery. Four brown-and-white hunting dogs were sprawled out waiting with him. Kendrick remained in the car for a moment, looked Poupon over, and a question crossed his mind. Could anyone look more Provençal than Poupon? If filmmaker Marcel Pagnol had produced a boxing film, he could have cast Poupon as a Provençal Rocky Marciano. He looked bigger than he was—a husky chest, thick upper arms and shoulders, big hands with fingers like bananas. And what a mug—clay-colored, porous, meaty, with heavy eyebrows, a thick, flattened nose, and crinkled ears. Kendrick wondered, maybe Poupon really had been a boxer. The nose and ears said so. Poupon’s gray eyes shone brightly, but they turned somber in a flash if something happened to displease him.
     Kendrick climbed out of his car as Poupon greeted him. “Bonjour, mon ami. How’s it going?”
     “It’s going well enough, but I’m thirsty.” He glanced at his Swatch. “It’s almost noon, and my stomach’s already growling for attention.”
     Poupon took Kendrick in a half embrace and slapped him on the back a couple of times. “When things aren’t going well, you don’t feel hungry, right? But you can feel thirsty all the same. Well, how shall we get started? White or rosé?”
     Such an innocent question, isn’t it, to almost anyone else, but Kendrick was Poupon’s importer and close friend, and the truth was, while he liked Poupon’s rustic reds, the white and rosé bugged him. Enologically correct, lifeless, soulless rosé robots. You’ve tasted one, you’ve tasted them all. Sometimes he wondered if he should shut up, evolve with the times, but he questioned whether evolving was always progress. Modern enological wines left him cold and never touched what he called, for lack of a better word, one’s soul. Therefore, trying to be polite, he answered Poupon’s white or rosé offer by saying, “I know your white and rosé by heart, but don’t you have a bunch of bottles—gifts from friends and clients? Maybe you even buy wine once in a while. Isn’t there something there that might capture our interest?”
     “We won’t know until I pull the cork, right? You can’t judge a wine by looking at its label, and anyone who doesn’t know that hasn’t been paying attention.”
     “Poupon, what an acute observation. You should write a song about it.” Kendrick was thinking of the old Muddy Waters song “You Can’t Judge a Book by Looking at Its Cover,” but Poupon looked puzzled.
     “Are you kidding? I don’t even listen to music. Me, write a song? That’s about as likely as me jumping into the sack with that cranky old witch up at the tabac.”
     “You’re the one kidding me. And now you’re trying to tell me you’re picky about women? I’d have thought for a macho guy like you, any port in a storm.” In his far-from-perfect French Kendrick had said, “N’import quel port dans un horage.”
     This is a popular game in Provence—men and only men get a kick out of trying to out-insult each other. Women do not seem to be bitten by the same bug. Kendrick and Poupon were developing the game to a high art, or maybe it is more appropriate to call it a very low one. A successful sally forth has the victim laughing, too. Kendrick was not born to it, but he enjoyed the constant give-and-take with Poupon. A jab symbolically below the belt was considered great fun, and to denigrate the size of your close pal’s weenie, well, it was all in the game.
     “What are you talking about now?” Poupon asked. “What storm? Which port? Bandol?”
     “Oh, you know what I mean, Poupon, you’re out in a boat, a storm kicks up, and you’ve got to find a safe place—any safe place will do—to anchor and wait it out.”
     “Ah, n’importe quel abri dans une tempète. Is that it?”
     “That’s it exactly.”
     “But what does a boat have to do with that loony woman at the tabac?” Poupon asked. He looked Kendrick up and down and chuckled. “Hey, what gives here? Are you going to Saint-Tropez after lunch?”
     “No. Why?”
     “It looks like you’re dressed for the Côte d’Azur.” Poupon laughed at what he considered his joke—as if Kendrick were the type to head off to Saint-Tropez to mix with the in-crowd—then asked, “What’s that say? There on your T-shirt?”
     “Poupon, even in French, you’d never understand.”
     “Try me.”
     “It means un gouteûr de vin fait l’amour avec du goût.”
     Poupon thought about it. “If she screams with joy at the end, does that count as tasteful or distasteful? Oops, I see that you still look thirsty.”