Sacré Bleu

There came a whirring sound from under the Professeur’s chair and the rat-sized brass nut-counting machine scurried out into the room and skittered from shell to shell and gaily chimed its findings.

“Ah, it’s two o’clock,” said the Professeur.

Seventeen

IN THE LATIN QUARTER

DID YOU FIND US A PAINTER?” ASKED THE COLORMAN WHEN SHE CAME IN. He was sitting on the divan, feeding a carrot to Étienne, the donkey, who was wearing a straw boater with holes cut out for his ears.

The Colorman had rented them an apartment in the Latin Quarter, on rue des Trois-Portes, just off boulevard Saint-Germain.

“What is he doing here?” she said, unpinning a rather complex hat from her hair, and in the process releasing several silky black tendrils from her chignon.

“He was on holiday,” said the Colorman.

“Not what is he doing in Paris, what is he doing on the divan?”

“Eating a carrot. I am eating a carrot as well. We are sharing.”

She had already folded her parasol and put it in the stand by the door, so she thought perhaps she could use the Colorman’s walking stick to drive into his eye socket and out through the back of his head. Only the thought of trying to get brain stains out of the rug stopped her, as they, of course, had not yet found a maid.

She was annoyed. The Colorman was annoying, made more annoying, perhaps, because it was a warm autumn day and she’d been out strolling through the Jardin du Luxembourg, looking for a new painter, and she was sweating under the ridiculous layers of skirts, corsets, petticoats, and other accoutrements required of the fashionable, modern woman. A bustle! Who had thought of that? Two of the city’s finest painters had declared this bottom exquisite, had they not? Had this bottom not been favorably compared to the finest bottoms in art and been judged superior? Had she not willed it to be thus? So why, why, why did she have to strap a pumpkin-sized tumor of silk and taffeta to her backside to appear acceptable to Paris society? Sweat was running down the crack of her ass and it was annoying. The Colorman was annoying, this new apartment was annoying, and Étienne, sitting on the divan, his front hoofs on the floor, crunching away at his carrot, was annoying.

“Take him outside,” she snapped.

“His stall isn’t ready. The concierge is going to have her man clean it out.”

The new building had a stable and carriage house for the residents’ horses, a feature that was becoming a rarity in the city.

“Well take him out with your color case and you find us a new painter.”

“I can’t go out. We have an appointment.”

“An appointment? You and Étienne have an appointment? Here?”

The Colorman pulled another carrot out of a flour sack and chewed off the tip, then held the rest out for Étienne. “We are interviewing a maid.”

“And Étienne has to be here because…?”

“Penis,” explained the Colorman.

That was it. She’d just have to clean the brains out of the carpet herself. She snatched the Colorman’s walking stick out of the brass stand and assumed an “en garde” posture, the cane’s silver tip aimed at the little man’s eye.

“Mine doesn’t frighten them like it used to,” said the Colorman mournfully. “I think I am losing my touch.”

Étienne nodded sadly, or it seemed sadly, but to be fair, he was actually just signaling that he was ready for another carrot. Juliette let the tip of the cane drop, then sighed, whirled, and plopped down on the couch between the two pathetic penis plotters.

“Besides,” said the Colorman, “we’re out of the blue. I gave the last I had to the dwarf. He would be easy for you. And he paints fast. Find another redheaded laundress to tempt him.”

Yes, he would be easy, but she did not want to return to Toulouse-Lautrec, desp

ite his talent. She didn’t want any of the painters in the park, or the dozen with their easels lined up like dominos on either side of the Pont-Neuf. She wanted Lucien. She missed Lucien. She had been sleeping with a shirt she had stolen from him, snuggling it to her face and breathing in his unique yeast-and-linseed-oil-mixed-with-man aroma. It was a problem.

“This apartment is rubbish,” she said.

“It’s nice,” said the Colorman. “It has two bedrooms and a bath. You should take a bath. Étienne hasn’t seen this one naked. He’ll like her.”

“There are too many bloody cathedrals. Every way I turn here, it’s like gargoyles are biting my ass.” The rue des Trois-Portes was, in fact, situated in the midst of three large churches. A hundred or so meters to the southeast stood the Church of Saint-Nicolas-du-Chardonnet (patron saint of wine in a box); to the west was the Church of Saint-Séverin; and a hundred meters to the north, perched on the Île-de-la-Cité, riding up the middle of the Seine like the bridge of a great warship, stood Notre-Dame Cathedral. And that wasn’t even counting Sainte-Chapelle, another two blocks from Notre-Dame, the jewel box of stained glass that she had helped inspire. And although they had avoided it in the case of Sainte-Chapelle, probably because the Colorman had established himself as an imbecile bell ringer up the street at Notre-Dame at the time, it was the burnings that she’d hated about cathedrals. And the windows. And being the Mother of God. But mostly the burnings.