Five Quarters of the Orange / Пять четвертинок апельсина

I dressed – an old skirt and a red sleeveless man’s shirt cut down to make a smock. My clogs. I did a perfunctory check on my fishing traps, tipping out the small fry or leaving it in place as bait. In a cray pot by the Lookout Post there was the unexpected bonus of a small pike – not Old Mother, of course – and this I slid out into the bucket I had brought from the house. Other catches: a mess of eels from the muddy flats beside the big sandbank, a sizable bleak from one of my catch – all nets. I piled them all into the bucket.

They would be my alibi if Cassis and Reine were already awake. Then I made my way home through the fields as unobtrusively as I had come.

I did well to bring the fish. Cassis was washing under the pump when I got back, though Reinette had warmed a basin of water and was dabbling delicately at her face with a soapy washrag. They looked at me curiously for a moment, then Cassis’s face relaxed into an expression of cheery contempt.

“You never give up, do you?” he said, jerking his dripping head at the fish bucket.

“What you got in there, anyway?”

I shrugged.

“Couple of things,” I said carelessly. The purse was in the pocket of my smock, and I smiled inwardly at its comforting weight. “Pike. Just a small one,” I said.

Cassis laughed.

“You might catch the small ones, but you’ll never catch Old Mother,” he said. “Even if you did, what’d you do with it? A pike that old wouldn’t be any good to eat. Bitter as wormwood and full of bones.

”

“I’ll catch her,” I said stubbornly.

“Oh?” His tone was careless, disbelieving. “And what then? You’ll make a wish, will you? Wish for a million francs and an apartment on the Left Bank?”

I shook my head mutely.

“I’d wish to be a movie star,” said Reine, toweling her face. “To see Hollywood, and the lights, and Sunset Boulevard, and to drive in a limousine and to have dozens and dozens of dresses…”

Cassis gave her a brief look of scorn, which cheered me immensely.

Then he turned to me.

“Well, what about it, Boise?” His grin was brash and irresistible. What’s it going to be? Furs? Cars? A villa in Juan-les-Pins?“

I shook my head again.

“I’ll know when I’ve caught it,” I said flatly. “And I’ll get it too. See if I don’t.”

Cassis studied me for a moment, the grin sliding from his face. Then he made a little noise of disgust and turned back to his ablutions.

“You’re something, Boise,” he said.