Sacré Bleu

“Bonjour!” said Count Henri-Marie-Raymond de Toulouse-Lautrec-Monfa, who was quite naked.

“You wear your pince-nez when you’re shagging?” said Lucien. Indeed, the pince-nez was perched on Henri’s nose, which abided at the level of Lucien’s sternum.

“I am an artist, monsieur, would you have me miss a moment of inspiration due to my poor eyesight?”

“And your hat?” Henri wore his bowler hat.

“It’s my favorite hat.”

“I will vouch for that,” said Mireille, naked but for her stockings, who slid from the bed and padded over to Henri, snatched the cheroot from his lips, then scampered away to the washbasin, puffing like a tiny marshmallow locomotive. “He loves that fucking hat.”

“Bonjour, mademoiselle,” said Lucien, remembering his manners even as he peeked around Toulouse-Lautrec’s shoulder to watch the prostitute washing herself at the bureau.

“Ah, lovely, is she not?” asked Henri, following Lucien’s gaze.

Lucien suddenly realized that he had stepped into the doorway and was now standing very close to his naked friend.

“Henri, would you put on some trousers, please!”

“Don’t shout at me, Lucien. You come here at the crack of dawn—”

“It’s noon.”

“At the crack of noon, and drag me away from my work—”

“My work,” said Mireille.

“Away from my research,” said Toulouse-Lautrec. “And then—”

“Vincent van Gogh is dead,” said Lucien.

“Oh.” Henri dropped the finger he had raised in the air to mark his point. “I had better put on some trousers, then.”

“Yes,” said Lucien. “That would be better. I’ll wait for you downstairs.”

He hadn’t meant to, but seeing the look on the painter’s face, Lucien realized that he had just done to Henri what the shopgirl had done to him: opened a trapdoor in the world through which Vincent had dropped.

LUCIEN WAS ANXIOUS WAITING AMONG THE WHORES. THERE WERE ONLY three in the salon at this time of day (when the house probably supported thirty in the evening), but they all sat together on one of the round divans, and he thought it would be rude not to sit near them.

“Bonjour,” he said as he sat down. The girl in the red negligee who had directed him was gone, perhaps entertaining a customer upstairs. These three were new to him, or at least he hoped they were new. Two were older than he, a bit time tattered, and each had hair dyed a different unnatural shade of red. The other was younger, but very round and blond, and looked somewhat clownish, with her hair tied up in a knot on the top of her head, lips large and red, painted into an unlikely pucker of surprise. None of the three looked capable of being surprised anymore.

“I’m waiting for my friend,” said Lucien.

“I know you,” said the round blond. “You’re Monsieur Lessard, the baker.”

“The painter,” Lucien said, correcting her. Damn it. Henri had brought him here two years ago when he was in the throes of an agonizing heartbreak, and although through the mystic haze of brandy, absinthe, opium, and despair Lucien could remember nothing, apparently he had made the acquaintance of this rotund girl-clown.

“Yes, painter,” said the blond. “But you make your living as a baker, right?”

“I sold two paintings just last month,” said Lucien.

“I sucked off two bankers just last night,” said the whore. “I’m a stockbroker now, no?”

One of the older whores elbowed the blond in the sh

oulder, then shook her head gravely.

“Sorry. You don’t want to talk about business. Did you ever get over that girl you were crying about? What was her name? Josephine? Jeanne? You kept wailing it all through the night.”