Sacré Bleu

“I’m going.” She slid from the lounge and again gathered her clothes while he watched.

“Where are you living now?”

“A little place in the Batignolles. I share with some other shopgirls.”

“Don’t you have to work tomorrow?”

“The owner of my shop is understanding. He enjoys art.”

“Stay. Have dinner with me. Stay at my apartment. It’s closer than yours.”

“Tomorrow. I need to go. The day is gone.”

She was dressed now. He would have given a fortune, if he’d had it, to watch her pull her stockings up again. He sat up.

“Tomorrow,” she said again. She put her hand on his shoulder and kept him from rising, then kissed him on the forehead. “I’ll go out through the alley.”

“I love you,” he said.

“I know,” she said as she closed the door.

“WELL?” SAID THE COLORMAN.

She put her parasol in a stand by the door and untied the wide ribbon that held on her hat, then set it gently on the hall tree. The apartment’s parlor was small but not shabby. A Louis XVI coffee table in gold leaf and marble sat before a mauve velvet divan. The Colorman sat in a carved walnut chair from the same period and looked like a malignant, twisted burl infecting the elegant wooden form.

“He didn’t paint,” she said.

“I need a painting. Since we lost the Dutchman’s picture, we need the color.”

“That was a waste. He’ll paint. He just hasn’t started yet.”

“I mixed colors for him. Greens and violets made with the blue, as well as the pure color. I put them in a nice wooden box.”

“I’ll give them to him tomorrow.”

“And make him paint.”

“I can’t make him paint. I can only make him want to paint.”

“We can’t have another perfectionist like that fucking Whistler. We need a painting, soon.”

“He needs to be handled gently. This one is special.”

“You always say that.”

“I do? Well, perhaps it’s true.”

“You smell of sex.”

“I know,” she said as she sat on the divan and began to unlace her shoes. “I need a bath. Where’s the maid?”

“Gone. She quit.”

“Frightened?” She kicked off a shoe and sat back on the divan with a sigh.

He nodded, looking at the ground, looking very simian and ashamed, as if he were the bad monkey confessing to eating the sacred banana. Again.

“You didn’t try to fuck her, did you?”