Sacre Bleu (49 page)

“She smells suspiciously of lilac and can put either leg behind her head while singing ‘La Marseillaise’ and spinning on the other foot.”
Jane Avril at the Jardin de Paris
(poster)—Henri Toulouse-Lautrec, 1893

H
ey, have a look at these!” said the muse.

J
ULIETTE BREEZED INTO THE FLAT AS IF MAKING A STAGE ENTRANCE.
S
HE
paused by the hall tree for applause, which, not surprisingly, did not come, since it was only her and the Colorman in the flat.

“You’re angry, aren’t you?” said the Colorman.

“No, not at all,” she said. “Why would you say that?”

“You shot me. Five times.”

“Oh, that. No, that wasn’t me. That was the island girl. I jumped into this body to help Juliette adjust her hat, and before I looked around, Vuvuzela had a gun and was shooting you. Where did she get a pistol, anyway?”

“It was mine. Five times.”

“I’m sorry, I wasn’t thinking. Juliette is so peaceful when she’s unoccupied, I’d forgotten how disturbing it can be to suddenly wake up naked, painted blue, with a crooked little monster standing over you holding a knife.”

“What are you trying to say?” Sometimes she was more subtle than he liked.

“That to a young girl, you can be a horrifying nightmare.” She smiled.

“In what way?”

“Penis,” she explained.

“But of course.” He grinned.

The Colorman didn’t remember exactly what had happened, except that it had hurt and he had been surprised, but the concierge said the island girl
had
been the one holding the gun when she came in.

“Well, where have
you
been?” he asked. “Where is the Sacré Bleu? Why didn’t you come get me out of the morgue?”

“I thought you might be angry,” said Juliette. She was fussing with the black chiffon scarf tied around her hat and noticed that there were still a few streaks of white gypsum dust on it where she’d brushed against something while in the mine. She went to the bedroom and made a show of pulling a hatbox from the closet. “I’ve been to Montmartre. The Sacré Bleu is gone. I used it to clean the memories of Lucien and Toulouse-Lautrec. They have no recollection of us ever having existed.”

“But I was going to shoot them,” the Colorman said, tapping a pistol, which he had gone out just that day and purchased from a scoundrel near the market at Place Bastille. The police had taken away his first one.

“Well, now there is no need.”

“You used all of the Bleu for that?” He seemed to remember, although he was not sure, that they had made quite a lot of the color. It had been a big painting that had taken Manet a long time. “What did they paint? Where are the paintings?”

“No paintings. They painted me. In the old way. Right on my body. With olive oil.”

“Both at the same time?”

“Oui.”

“Oh là là.”
The Colorman rolled his eyes, imagining it. He liked the idea of painting the color on this Juliette body; then it occurred to him. “You washed it off?”

“I couldn’t very well take a taxi across the city while painted blue, could I?” She wiped a finger behind her ear and the nail came out with a bit of blue pigment. “See, I missed some.”

The Colorman scampered over to her, grabbed her hand, and put her finger in his mouth, then ran his tongue around her fingertip as he rolled his eyes. Yes, it was the Sacré Bleu. He spit her finger out.

“If you washed it off, we can’t make more of the color. What about the painting the baker did of you? Did you get that?”

“Burned, so they couldn’t use it to remember.”

The Colorman growled and stomped around the room. “Well, you’re going to have to get the island girl back, because Gauguin—”

“He’s gone.”

“What?”

“He’s already purchased a ticket to the South Seas. He’ll never finish a painting before he leaves. And the girl’s family won’t let her out of their sight.”

“Well you need to find someone for this theorist Seurat to paint, and quickly. Maybe his wife, I don’t know. And when you switch, drown this Juliette body.”

“No,” she said. “This body will be perfect. I have an idea.”

I
T WAS JUST AFTER DAWN ON
M
ONTMARTRE.
T
HE LOAVES HAD BEEN OUT OF
the oven for only ten minutes and were still warm. Lucien felt the baguette hit him just above the right ear but wasn’t quick enough to dodge the crumbs that went in his eyes as the loaf wrapped around his head.

“
Voilà!
” said Mère Lessard as she pulled the loaf away and surveyed the crunchy-chewy wiggle of the broken crust. “Perfect!”

“Merde,
Maman!” said Lucien. “I’m twenty-seven years old. I know how to make bread. You don’t have to hit me in the head with a loaf anymore to make sure it’s right.”

“Nonsense,
cher,”
said Madame Lessard. “The old ways are the best. That’s why we do them. And it is so good to have you back baking again. Your sister can do the job, but it takes a man’s inborn carelessness to make a perfect baguette. Baking is art.”

“I thought you hated art.”

“Don’t be silly.” She lovingly brushed the breadcrumbs from his eyebrows, applying just a touch of mother spit to smooth them down. “Are these the hips of a woman who doesn’t appreciate the art of baking?” The movement she made sent a wave traveling down her skirts, which snapped at the hem, sending up a small whirlwind of flour from the floor.

Lucien pulled out of her grasp and bolted out to the front with a basket of baguettes to avoid having to even consider his mother’s question. He preferred to not think of his mother as having hips. He preferred to not think of her as a woman at all, more as a traveling mass of loving annoyance—a mother-shaped storm that inhabited the bakery and, in bringing rain for the growth of the living things over which she hovered, didn’t mind scaring the piss out of them with a few thunderbolts from time to time.

He’d thought this way, had carried this mystical view of his mother, since he was a boy. In those days, the painter Cézanne would come into the bakery, usually with Monet, Renoir, or Pissarro, and he would almost hide behind his friends until Madame Lessard went to the back room, then the Provençal would wipe the sweat from his bald head with his sleeve and frantically whisper, “Lessard, you must get your wife under control. The way the tendrils are always falling from her
chignon,
and the way she smiles and sings in your shop—well, I’ll say it: Lessard, your wife always appears freshly fucked. It’s unnerving. It’s indecent.”

Père Lessard, along with the other artists, would laugh at the chagrined Cézanne. Little Lucien, as the son of a baker, thought that anything that was “fresh” must surely be a good, and would only learn later what Cézanne had been talking about, and then, after having a soul-chilling shudder, he would choose not to think of it again. Ever. Until, of course, for some reason, this morning she reminded him.

Lucien handed the basket of bread to Régine, who had been working the counter. “We need to hire a kid for Maman to hit with the baguette,” he said. “You were supposed to have children by now for just that reason.”

Régine looked at her brother, aghast that he would say such a thing, and without her saying a word, Lucien knew he had hurt her feelings.

“I’m sorry,
ma chère,”
he said. “I am a cad.”

“Yes,” she said.

She was about to elaborate on just what variety of cad he was when someone at the counter snarled, “Bread!”

Lucien looked over to see a bowler hat floating just over the counter, and beneath it, the simian visage of the Colorman.

Lucien took his sister by the shoulders, kissed her on the forehead, then steered her through the curtain into the back. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry. Now, please, for the love of God, stay back here.”

Lucien came back through the curtain wearing a big smile.
“Bonjour,
monsieur, how may I help you?”

“You are the painter, no?” said the Colorman.

“I am the baker,” said Lucien, extending his hand over the counter, “Lucien Lessard.”

The Colorman shook Lucien’s hand while squinting at him and tilting his head, as if trying to lever his way past Lucien’s smile to the lies behind it, or so it felt to Lucien. What was he doing here?

“I am the Colorman,” said the Colorman. “I sell color.”

“Yes, but what are you called? Your name?” said Lucien.

“The Colorman.”

“But what is your surname?”

“Colorman.”

“I see,” said Lucien. “How may I help you, Monsieur Colorman?”

“I know where the girl is.”

“What girl?”

“The girl in your painting. Juliette.”

“I’m sorry, monsieur, I don’t know what you’re talking about. I don’t have a painting of a girl and I don’t know any Juliette.”

The Colorman considered him again, tilted his head the other way. Lucien was trying to radiate innocence. He tried to assume the beatific look he’d seen on the Renaissance Virgin Marys in the Louvre, but he only succeeded in looking as if he were being touched inappropriately by the Holy Ghost.

“Two baguettes, then,” said the Colorman.

Lucien exhaled with relief, then turned to retrieve the loaves and heard the bell over the door ring. When he turned back with the baguettes in hand, Le Professeur was standing behind the Colorman.

“Bonjour,
Lucien,” said the Professeur.

“Bonjour,
Professeur,” said Lucien. “Welcome home.”

The Colorman looked from Lucien to the improbably tall and thin Professeur, then back to Lucien, then blinked.

“Excuse me,” said Lucien. “Professeur, this is the Colorman. Monsieur Colorman, this is the Professeur.”

The Professeur offered his hand to shake, and the Colorman just looked at it. “Your first name is
‘The’?”
He seemed disturbed.