Living alone was one of Roland’s only luxuries, and, like many people who afford themselves so little, what he had wasn’t much. An apartment in the rough part of Amiens, where the old ornate buildings were either left derelict or converted into housing blocks. Val had often told him that he should move, but Roland liked the area. If he wanted to see the Cathedral of Amiens, indisputably the most beautiful in France, or the maze of les hortillonages, the water gardens, then a short walk would take him there, but the beauty of it was that if he didn’t want to, then he had that option too.

“I said ‘no smoking!” he called from the kitchen when a sharp spike of need snapped his focus for a moment. He almost dropped the bowl he was carrying to the counter.

“You’re getting better at that, you bastard!” Val replied grudgingly from the living room.

“Yeah, I wish I wasn’t. Oh, there’s some Porto here if you want it?” He pulled it, still three-quarters full, from the ranks of dusty bottles in the cabinet. It was already clear that Val approved of his choice.

“Bring it out!” Roland felt him get more comfortable. He’d be taking off his shoes and putting his feet on the furniture any minute.

“It’s just that the more sensitive I get, the harder it is to go out, you know?” He piled the bottle, two glasses, and several bowls of olives, cherry tomatoes and radishes on a tray and carried them through to where Val was lounging.

As he entered, tray balanced on one hand like a waiter, Val moved the table so it was between the seats. “It’s been ages since I had a proper aperitif,” Val said. Roland poured two glasses of Porto, the sweet, dark wine filling them like blood. “I guess there’s nothing you can do about the sensitivity.”

“I know, but sometimes I wonder. What happens?”

“What do you mean?” Val skewered an olive on a cocktail stick and took it in his teeth.

“Well, I get more and more sensitive to emotion, right, and then what? What happens when it gets so bad I can’t even stand to be a hermit?”

Val picked up his glass and gestured to Roland to do the same. “This is all far too heavy for an aperitif,” he said.

“You’re right. Anyway, santé!”

“Santé.”

The Spanish wine was sticky and heady to begin with, and an extended stay in Roland’s neglected drinks cabinet had only increased its potency. All of the thoughts and feelings Roland had thought he could get out this afternoon swirled incoherently around his head, the inevitability of one day leaving Val bumping into the guilty admission that Val wasn’t exactly the most emotionally stable person in the world anyway. And on top of this, Val’s intoxicated contentment washed like a pale, buoyant sea. Little by little, the future retreated back where it belonged.

“Yeah, but she’s not human, Roland!” Val was arguing, more spirited than usual and more willing to take things seriously. “She doesn’t understand all that lovey-dovey touchy-feely human crap.”

Roland arched an eyebrow at Val’s murky, lustful lies.

“Okay, she’s pretty good at touchy-feely. But God, she is something else!” He didn’t mean it in a sexual way, though it would have been easy for others to misconstrue his rapture.

“That’s what I don’t get, though, Tin-tin,” said Roland, who was deceptively good at holding his liquor and rather enjoying the conversation. “You always talk about her like that, like she’s some mysterious creature, but she was just carved out of rock by a sculptor. A human sculptor.”

“Wait, wait, Roland, you’re not telling me that she’s somehow inferior to humanity?” Val took a cherry tomato in his fingers. “That she’s like, a smaller being? Because she’s not. She’s so much bigger.”

Roland shrugged, his lips pursed mulishly. He could barely make any sense of what Val was saying and feeling, and his intimate encounter with the subject of their conversation, the Winged Victory of Samothrace, did provoke some jealousy.

“Now don’t sulk!” Val chided carelessly. “What did you think of her, really?”

Roland took another mouthful of Porto and swallowed, savouring the heavy, sweet taste it left in his mouth. “I knew she was strange before you did,” he said. “She didn’t feel like anything alive, but then she’s walking and talking and freaking you out, so I assumed she was one of your lot.”

“One of my lot?” Val barked with laughter. “You know how I feel about all that stuff!”

“More trouble than it’s worth,” Roland grinned back. “Yeah, I know. Hey, fancy going down the water gardens for the afternoon? Lovely weather for it.”

“I’m not paying five bloody euros for a tour where you’ll be too sparkly-eyed to bear,” Val objected.

“I’ll borrow Yves Deschamps’ rowboat.”

“Then I’ll pay for the wine on the way.”

As much as Val looked every inch the smart young high-flyer in his designer shirt and smart shoes, it didn’t take much drinking to loosen him up into a normal, even cheerful, person. Roland assumed it was a natural effect of being so high-strung all the time, but it was still something of a surprise to see. Val just looked like the kind of person who was designed to stand in richly furnished rooms and drink strong cocktails at dinner parties.

“Who’s Yves Deschamps, anyway?” Val asked while Roland locked the door behind them.

“He moved into the old courthouse. Or maybe he’s lived there a while? I’m not really sure.” It was hard to be sure of anything with a tipsy Val beside him.

“But that’s not a house.”

“Well, not really,” Roland admitted. It was probably all for the best that Val had had a drink before meeting Yves. He was so touchy about anything even remotely out of the ordinary that even popping round to borrow a rowboat from a small colony of squatters would probably annoy him.

Luckily, Val must have been distracted by a stray thought or something exceptionally shiny, because his interest splintered into liquid shards so quickly that Roland almost left with the key still in the door. “Get it together, Tin-tin,” he muttered, not for the first time wishing that his empathy worked both ways, just so he could sober Val up.

The weather outside was perfect for visiting the water gardens, warm and sunny and making the cool water an irresistible prospect. The few tourists they encountered on the way were happy but not unreasonably so, a couple of them merely confused, glaring at maps that refused to cooperate. After offering directions as best he could, a pulsing bass line or drumbeat on the air let Roland know that Yves was probably in, and if not, then someone else was.

“Someone having a garden party?” Val asked.

Roland grinned. “That’ll be Yves spending his days as only he knows how.”

“Sounds like a nice life.”

“I know.”

The music got louder as they approached, revealing itself as unselfconscious guitar playing over a tripping beat that compelled all who heard it to dance. The slightly tilted spire of St Stephen’s church became visible over the rooftops.

“You know, this really isn’t a house,” said Val, eyeing up the rough stone façade of the old courthouse. “People aren’t meant to live here.”

“Don’t tell me that,” replied Roland. The building hadn’t been used ever since Roland could remember – why not put it to some use? He cupped his hands around his mouth and yelled over the music, mouth stretched in a grin still. “Yves!”

Val took out a cigarette and rummaged in his pockets for a lighter. “Oh, fuck. Got a light?”

Roland shook his head. “Yves! Are you there?”

“Some friend you are,” Val grumbled. He looked around as though seeking inspiration from the grey street and closed Chinese takeaway on the corner, and his eyes lit on a couple of girls crossing the road and chattering to each other in English. “Oi, girls, got a light on you?” He waved his box of cigarettes encouragingly, in case they hadn’t understood.

They looked at him as though he was mad, and one looked to the other questioningly, bewildered by his slang-laden French. The other replied primly, “No, sorry,” with barely the trace of an accent.

Val was just surprised that they had given him an answer, though the one who hadn’t understood was pestering her friend for a translation. “Oh. Oh well. No worries.” Foiled once again, he returned his attention to Roland. “Your mate in or not?”

“He just can’t hear,” said Roland. “He’s in there.”

“You can feel him, then?” Come to think of it, Roland was almost deliriously happy, and had been since they got here. The music was upbeat and all, but it wasn’t that great.

“I love this place. I love it so much.” The intensity in his voice made Val uncomfortable. He had never been that good at dealing with emotion.

“Why?” Val started to ask, but Roland was already looking around furtively, and, seeing no one, let himself in. “Hey-!”

The music got suddenly louder, and there was a sudden flurry of delighted voices over the top. “Whoa, Roland! Hi!”

Val got the feeling, just in the pit of his stomach, that the day wasn’t going to go to plan. He despised that feeling.

“Come in then!” urged Roland.

With a sigh, Val stepped over the threshold and into a small, curious crowd. Names that he didn’t quite catch were thrown at him from all sides, and he kissed so many cheeks that he quickly lost track of whom he had greeted and who he hadn’t. It was like being mugged by… the right word was elusive. Something benign, and possibly fluffy, and lovely, like rabbits or kittens or people of the Bahá’i faith. He was being offered so many drinks that he thought it more prudent to politely decline them all rather than end up with a pile of cups. Or cans, he thought, observing the state of the kitchen. The Porto he had drunk with Roland had settled and mellowed, so at least he wasn’t afraid of embarrassing himself.

He was gently persuaded to sit down on one of the huge quilts or beanbags that provided seating while Roland remained in the thick of things, hopefully making progress on the borrowing of the rowboat. It was easier to get his head around the place now, differentiate between the individual components of the mob. They were mostly girls that he could see, and all dressed oddly. Piercings glinted at him from unconventional places.

“I probably won’t remember all of your names,” he said apologetically to no one in particular.

“Don’t worry,” someone consoled him. “I’ve forgotten yours already.” She wore her hair in what would have been a buzz cut had it not been for the vivid red streak of long hair down the middle of her head.

He smiled. “Valentin. Val.”

“Inès. Would you like some coffee while you’re waiting?”

They were, without a doubt, the strangest people that Val had ever seen. Stranger than St Sebastian, with his gentle smile and arrow wounds, stranger than the Winged Victory of Samothrace, with hidden wings and imperfect body. The usual kind of people Val met were just what they were made to be. This lot seemed to have taken that into their own hands. “Yeah, all right. Thanks.”

“No problem!” said Inès with a little wave.

Roland rejoined him at last, flopping down beside him on the quilt as though this was his house too. “They reckon it’ll be absolutely fine for us to borrow it but Thérèse and Antoine are off looking for him anyway, just in case he has plans.”
Val nodded, looking around the scavenged, patchwork décor of the place. It was a lot bigger than he’d assumed from the outside.

“Still overwhelmed?” It wasn’t the usual tone Roland would use to ask something like that. There was too much of an actual question in it, and not enough superficial politeness. Roland should be well aware that Val was feeling overwhelmed and out of his depth.

“Yeah. It seems like a nice place and all, but… you know. Too much, all at once.”

“It shouldn’t be long now.”

“Hey, Val?” Inès was coming back, picking her way through punks and makeshift seats with a steaming mug in her hands. “Is it okay to call you that…?”

“Absolutely fine. Thanks for the coffee.” He leaned up to take the mug. It said ‘World’s Greatest Mam’ on it in bright, comical letters, but he didn’t remark on it. The coffee was passable.

Inès smiled suddenly at Roland. “Oh, sorry! Do you want one?”

“No, it’s all right,” said Roland. “We’ll be going soon.”

Val wasn’t used to feeling this way, especially around Roland. He was supposed to be the one who made friends easily, slipping into any social situation like an otter into a river.

Inès plonked herself down with them, drawing a couple of other spectators, and they made polite conversation until Yves came downstairs and found them. Val told them a little about himself (censoring for plausibility of course) and in return he learned that Inès and the others seemed to be mostly environmentally concerned activists of one kind or another.

“But it’s not like you have to sab or rally or anything to be here,” Inès assured him. “Yves lets pretty much anyone live here with him.”

Val politely pretended he understood what ‘sab’ meant. Infuriatingly, Roland was no help at all. “So this is Yves’ place then?” he asked.

Inès looked a little surprised by the question. Another girl, tall and willowy judging by the length of her legs, curled underneath her now, answered instead. “It’s not anyone’s place.”

“I find that kind of hard to believe,” said Val, unable to help himself. “In somewhere like Amiens? That’s what the mayor’s for.”

“Him and Yves go way back,” said the tall girl, and Val didn’t have to ask any more on that front.

“It’s like an open house,” Inès chimed in. “Anyone can come in and stay as long or as short as they want, no questions asked.”

“And Yves?”

“Oh, he’s been here far longer than anyone else.”

The cogs had begun to turn in Val’s head, and he was unsurprised when Yves made an appearance at last. He knew it was Yves before being introduced because it was just so obvious, and he felt free to be as suspicious as he liked about this whole set-up because, for some reason, Roland didn’t seem to be listening.

Even at a single glance, Yves was annoyingly likeable. “Roland!” His voice rumbled from somewhere deep in his chest, rich and powerful. “Where’ve you been, brother?”

Roland stood up, overjoyed, and greeted Yves with an enthusiastic kiss to each cheek. “Yves, you getting deaf in your old age, man? I was yelling like crazy outside!”

“Gotta shout louder than that if you wanna drown out the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, kid,” replied Yves with a dirty grin. “Though I see you’ve brought a sacrifice, so all is forgiven. I’ll go get my knife.”

For a second, Val thought he was serious. Everything clicked into place – the weird feeling in the pit of his stomach and Roland’s curious indifference towards him – but another look at Yves dispelled the idea.

“Oh, sorry, this is Tin-tin –”

“Val.”

“And this is Yves.”

“I guessed.”

Yves still wore that irrepressible smile on his face. “Val? Tin-tin? Which is it?”

“They’re short for Valentin, so take your pick. Make up your own if you’d like.”

Yves just laughed, and Val felt his own lips twitch in an answering smile before he could suppress it. “So, you two travellers staying for dinner?” he asked. “’Cause if you are, we’re seriously out of red wine…”

It was Roland’s turn to laugh. “Sorry, we just came to ask to borrow your boat. We want to mess around les hortillonages this afternoon.”

“Deserters! Go on with you. Jake, did you leave the boat moored in the usual place?” he called into the crowd. Val didn’t know how he could even tell if Jake was there or not.

“If the usual place is the place where I found the boat…” came the hesitant reply in somewhat halting French. Val got the impression of someone huge and dark, savage power that could barely be held within one body. He tried hard not to stare.

“That’s great, kid,” said Yves warmly.

“Jake?” Roland asked, more quietly than usual. He seemed to have noticed Jake’s unusual size as well. “I don’t remember him.”

Yves frowned, and then lit up again, sitting down at last beside Roland. “You must have been in Paris when he came,” he said. “He’s a good kid. A little angry, and quiet, but a good kid.”

“Where’s he from?” Roland asked with his usual tactlessness.

“Roland!” Val snapped.

Yves looked amused by Val’s knee-jerk reaction, so much like an older brother keeping a sibling in check. Like someone with more claim on him than just a friend. “Native American, he says.”

Val glared at the way Roland’s eyes goggled. “He came all that way? What for?” he asked, awestruck. There was a fervent new respect in his gaze when he looked back at the hulking Jake, who was making awkward conversation in a corner with a dreadlocked, pierced man.

It was definitely a strange feeling, to be surrounded by so much individuality that it all started to blend into one. “Hey,” said Val. “We should be going.”

Roland looked a little disappointed.

Yves was sprawled comfortably across the thick, folded quilt, back against the wall and just his eyes slid to the side to prove he was paying attention. “If you really must abandon us,” he said cheerfully. “Have fun, and come back for dinner. Preferably with wine.”

“Course we will. Thanks for the boat!”

“No problem.”

Val nodded a thanks and goodbye, and followed Roland out of the surreal, idealistic little world in the old courthouse and back into sunny Amiens. They skirted the tourist area as best they could, but there was no way of crossing the river without being greeted by rows of restaurants like flytraps.

“Tin-tin?” Roland asked at last. “What’s up?”

“Mm?” When Val looked at him, it was almost wary. So Roland had started listening again. He hadn’t known he could turn it off – he certainly never had before – but at least it answered the question of becoming a hermit and retreating from all social contact.

“Maybe we should have bought more wine if you’re going to be like this.” Roland nudged him gently, shaking the plastic bag he was carrying.

“Why do you like it there so much?” asked Val carefully. They turned off the main road and down the steps that led to the riverside, where the river branched off into a hundred twisting tributaries.

“You noticed?”

“It was quite hard not to. And you told me before.”

“So I did.” Roland’s eyes lighted on one rowboat in the line, and he scampered over to it. It shouldn’t have surprised Val that it, like so many other things about Yves, looked decidedly second hand. “Here we go, l’Héron Volant.”

The dock was a place where no one but those who had business there would go, and it was suitably simple and designed for those who knew what they were doing. The jetty beside each boat was nothing more than a plank. Val was a competent rower, but the nautical knots and fiddly things were still Roland’s territory. He let Roland check that the battered little craft was still in order, and helped him remove the canvas cover from it while standing on the bank.

“This doesn’t seem very secure,” said Val, folding the cover tightly.

Roland laughed. “It’s not. But Yves just says that it hasn’t been stolen yet when I try to tell him that. Finished with the cover? Do us a favour and stow it, will you? In that cabin over there, in the trunk. Here’s the key.” He tossed over the key, a tiny silver comet that glittered in the air, and somehow Val caught it.

The cabin was small and the trunk was easy to find. Lifting the lid to find other people’s rowing gear stashed inside together, meticulously labelled with the names of the boats they belonged to, Val was struck by the sense of trust and community, like the atmosphere of Yves’ house that had put him on guard. Surely it was all too idealistic to work. It had to be.

When he went back to Roland and l’Héron Volant (which looked like it had seen much better days) he asked Roland again what he loved so much about Yves’ house. Courthouse or not, it was definitely someone’s house.

Roland pushed off, the boat dipping and rolling a little in protest. What surprised Val the most out of this so-far-ridiculous day was the fact that his feet were dry, and when he looked at the bottom of the boat there was no muddy water sloshing around. That Jake must have been a decent boatman.

“It’ll sound stupid,” Roland warned.

“I think I can deal with stupid by now.” Val picked up the oars and started to manoeuvre the boat into the maze of the water gardens.

“Yeah, that’s true. Anyway, it just… it’s so quiet in there. You know?”

“Quiet?” It was the last word Val would use to describe the place or any of the people in it.

Roland looked at him meaningfully.

“Eh? Oh. Quiet. Are you sure? I was pretty flustered in there, and everyone else seemed really excited.”

“I know!” Roland’s eyes were bright. “And I couldn’t feel a thing!”

“That explains a lot,” Val grumbled. “And I hope you brought a corkscrew for that,” he added, nudging the wine bottle on the deck with his feet.

Roland produced one with a flourish.

The boat drifted quietly through the water gardens, though birdsong and foliage that was radiant with life. The vegetation was so thick that not even Amiens’ famous skyscraper, a delightfully phallic construction by the Poet of Concrete, Auguste Perret, was visible over the trees. The only sound from the boat aside from the gentle splash of water under the oars was Roland’s occasional directions when the river’s fingers pointed in two different directions around a tiny island.

These islands weren’t just for show. Many of them were inhabited, abundant gardens overflowing to the water’s edge and neat little houses sitting in the middle. The gardens were works of art in particular, and many were filled with hand carved wooden sculptures or colourful garden ornaments, the gateways proud to display their contents to the tour boats.

“One day,” vowed Roland. “One day I’ll live here.”

“You’d better start saving, then.”

Paper windmills spun in the garden beside them, and a coot led its young on long, strong legs through the trimmed grass. Val felt his shoulders beginning to ache from the rowing.

“Not long now,” said Roland.

It was immensely comforting to hear him react like that. Val could have kissed him.

Roland smirked.

Val’s expression quickly returned to neutral, and he pulled harder on the oars, one of which slipped on the water and sent up a pair of ducks, squawking, into the green fringe of the riverbank. But he couldn’t help a little smile of his own.

Mooring the boat was less graceful than untying it and pushing off. Roland had Val move in close to the bank of a long, thin, spur of an island, empty and green and shaded by black-barked trees. He managed to leap from boat to land without too much trouble, and pulled l’Héron Volant in by the mooring rope and an oar till it bumped against solid ground.

“You wouldn’t even know we were still in a city, would you?” Roland remarked, as Val set to work on the wine they’d brought.

“Don’t be daft,” said Val, pulling violently on the cork. “Amiens isn’t a city. It’s someone’s back garden. A really nice back garden, but still.”

Roland knew better than to ask Val if he needed help. “Aha, but that’s not how it works. Anywhere with a cathedral is technically a city. If you don’t have one, then it doesn’t matter how big you are – you’re just a really big town.”

With a final, straining pop, the cork came loose. “I didn’t know that.” He didn’t care, either, but he thought it would be rude to say so.

The world passed by, ad herons flew low over the dark water, monstrous birds that folded into streamlined predators. A fish splashed somewhere, and both Val and Roland thought how nice it would have been if they’d only thought to bring fishing gear. Val blamed Roland because he was the one who lived in Amiens after all, and Roland complained and called him cruel. The grass was cool under their backs.

The world kept on turning.