Sacré Bleu

will beat you to death with it and dismember your corpse with the strings.” Lucien Lessard may have been tutored by some of the greatest painters in France, but he hadn’t ignored the lessons from the butte’s finest crafter of threats, either.

Bruant grinned, held the guitar up by his face, and mimed strumming. “I’m taking requests…”

Lucien grinned back. “Two beers with silence.”

“Very good,” said Bruant. Without missing a step, he turned as if choreographed, docked the guitar on an empty table, and headed back to the bar.

Two minutes later Bruant was sitting with them at a booth, and the three of them were looking at the blue nude, which was propped up against a nearby table.

“Let me hang it,” said Bruant. “A lot of important people will see it in here, Lucien. I’ll put her up high, over the bar, so no one will get any ideas about touching her. They might not buy it, because their wives won’t let it in the house, but they’ll see it and they’ll know your name.”

“You have to show the painting, Lucien,” Henri said to Lucien. “We can put together a show later—maybe Theo van Gogh will sponsor it, but that will take time. I can’t organize it. I need to go to Brussels, and to show with the Twenty Group, and I have promised to print new posters for the Chat Noir and the Moulin Rouge.”

“And he owes me a cartoon for Le Mirliton,” said Bruant. He irregularly published an arts magazine with the same name as his cabaret, and all of Montmartre’s young artists and writers contributed to it.

“All right, then,” said Lucien. “But I don’t know what to ask for it.”

“It shouldn’t be for sale,” said Henri.

“I would agree,” said Bruant. “That’s the power of the coquette, isn’t it? Make them want it, but don’t let them have it. Just tease.”

“But I need a sale.” And therein lay the artist’s dilemma: to paint for filthy lucre was a compromise of principles, but to be an artist who didn’t sell was to be anonymous as an artist.

“If she’ll sell now, she’ll sell later,” said Henri. “The bakery makes enough money for you to live.”

“Fine, fine,” Lucien said, throwing his hands up. “Hang her. But if someone makes an offer, I want to know about it.”

“Excellent,” said Bruant, hopping up from his seat. “I’ll go borrow a ladder. You can supervise the hanging.”

When the singer had gone, Henri lit a cheroot with a wooden match and leaned into the cloud of smoke he’d just expelled over the table.

“Before he returns, Lucien, I need to tell you something—warn you.”

“Don’t be so ominous, Henri. It doesn’t suit you.”

“It’s just that, Juliette—while I will help you find her, if you wish—I need to warn you—you may not want to find her.”

“Of course I want to find her, Henri. I’m a wreck without her.”

“I think you’re romanticizing your time with her. You were a wreck when you were with her, too.”

“I was painting.”

“That’s not the point.”

“That’s always the point.”

“She was definitely living with the Colorman.”

“Are you saying she was secretly his mistress? That can’t be. Who lets his mistress spend so much time with another man?”

“I’m saying they have an arrangement.”

“He’s her pimp, then? Is that what you’re saying? Are you saying that the woman I love is a whore?”

“You make it sound so sordid. Some of my best friends are whores.”

“That’s not the point. She is not a whore, he is not her pimp. You think everyone is a pimp. That’s why you always lose the game.”