Sacré Bleu

“Are you a painter?” she said, a quiet voice, shy.

“No, not a painter. What I am is your new boss,” said the pimp.

“Oh, then I have no use for you,” she said.

She knocked his hand away and grabbed him by the throat, her fingers sinking into the flesh around his windpipe, then slammed him against the brick wall as if he were a rag doll, crushing his skull. As he bounced off the wall she yanked him backward over her bent knee and his spine snapped like kindling. It had taken a second. She dropped him to the bricks and a last breath sputtered out of him like a wet, lifeless fart.

“No use at all,” she said, a quiet voice, demure. She trudged down the alley and was making her way up the butte when she heard the whore begin to scream.

RÉGINE SAW HER YOUNGER BROTHER OPEN THE DOOR TO THE BAKERY FOR A very pretty dark-haired girl in a blue dress. Strange, she thought, Lucien never brings his girls to the bakery.

“Juliette, this is my sister Régine,” said Lucien. “Régine, this is Juliette. She’s going to model for me.”

“Enchanté,” said Juliette with a slight curtsy.

Lucien led Juliette around the counter and into the back room. “We’re going to take a look at the storage shed in the back.”

Régine said nothing. She watched her brother grab the ring of keys from the wall, then lead the pretty girl out the back door of the bakery and into the little, weed-choked courtyard behind. A pentimento rose in her heart now, too, of another pretty girl being led to the storage shed, one she’d barely gotten a glimpse of. She backed to the stairs and took them two at a time up to the apartment.

LUCIEN THREW OPEN THE WORN PLANK DOOR, REVEALING A LONG, OPEN, whitewashed interior filled with sunlight from a large skylight. Particles of dust, or perhaps flour, chased one another through the sunbeams in faerie maelstroms. Bags of flour and sugar were stacked near the door. An old, disused easel covered in dust stood at the far end of the room.

“My father put in a skylight,” said Lucien. “And look, there’s plenty of room for you to pose.”

Juliette joined in his enthusiasm, squeezed his arm and kissed his ear. “It’s perfect. Private, and with plenty of sunlight. You can pose me like that Manet you took me to see.”

“Olympia,” said Lucien. “A masterpiece, but you are much prettier than Manet’s model, Victorine. He painted her for Luncheon on the Grass, too. Both masterpieces. Monet and Degas are trying to get the State to buy them from Madame Manet for the Louvre. If Manet had a model like you, France would go to war to get those paintings, I promise you.”

She slapped his arm playfully. “I think it is the painter, not the mod

el. Will you paint a masterpiece of me? Shall I undress?”

Lucien felt the storeroom suddenly get very warm and his collar very itchy. “No, my sweet, we can’t start today. I need to clear out these supplies, sweep. My paints and easel are at the other studio. I need to move the fainting couch down from the apartment upstairs to pose you on so you’ll be comfortable.”

“Will we both be comfortable on it?”

“I—we—I can start tomorrow. Will you be ready in the afternoon?”

“I’m ready now,” she said. She leaned into him for a kiss. He leaned back to avoid it. There was no place he wanted to be more than lost in her embrace, but not now, in the doorway of a storage shed, with the sound of footsteps coming from the bakery.

“We need to go now,” he said, taking her hand and pulling her out of the way so he could close and lock the door. As he turned the key, he said, “There’s a narrow passage between the buildings to the square. Only boys use it, but it’s wide enough for a determined thief, too.”

When they stepped back into the bakery Mère Lessard was standing by the bread board, her arms crossed over her bosom, her jaw jutting out so she might sight accurately down her nose at her son.

“Maman!” said Lucien.

“You made your sister cry,” said Mère Lessard. “She is upstairs weeping like you slapped her.”

“I didn’t slap her.”

“A grown, married woman, weeping like a little girl. I hope you are proud of yourself.”

“I did nothing, Maman. I’ll speak to her.” Then he composed himself, shaking off the prickly lust from a moment ago and plunging forward into the fiery recrimination coming from his mother. “This is Juliette. She’s going to model for me, and I need to use the storage shed as a studio.”

“Enchanté, Madame Lessard,” said Juliette, again with a suggestion of a curtsy.

Mère Lessard said nothing for a moment but raised an eyebrow and regarded Juliette until Lucien cleared his throat.

“Is this the Juliette who broke your heart and sent you on a drunken binge? The Juliette who nearly killed you and the rest of us for having to do your work for you? That Juliette?”