Caught him red-handed. Caught him at midnight, up to his elbows in juicy, sticky, yellow cherries. Would you say your marriage had turned a corner? Might medication, or at least an extended yoga retreat, be in order? I WOULDN’T SAY the idea for an artisanal ice cream business came to us overnight, but almost. It had been a long winter. Sometime between the saffron harvest and Christmas, Gwendal negotiated his way out of his job. It felt dangerous to give up a well-paying position in the middle of a recession, and I suppose it was. It also felt necessary. He was forty-one years old and thoroughly demoralized—it was either start his own business or buy a Porsche, pick up a nineteen-year-old, and take that one-way street straight to the corner of Crazy and Unfulfilled. We had his severance, some savings, a small inheritance from his grandparents, and French unemployment benefits for the next eighteen months. Never one to sit idle, he’d spent the dark afternoons editing a book of contemporary Afghan poetry for a friend who lives in Kabul, sourcing alcohols made from protected mountain herbs for a friend on the cocktail-bar scene in New York, and organizing a screening of an American documentary for the local anti-fracking campaign.
