Sacré Bleu

“If we have no blue, what good is a new painter?” Juliette said.

“And the Dutchman’s brother. You don’t think he has our paintings? You know if the Dutchman told the dwarf about us, he told his brother.”

“If he has it, he wouldn’t show it to me. I looked at a hundred of Vincent’s canvases. None painted with Sacré Bleu.”

“You need to fix the brother’s memory.”

“I can’t go back to Montmartre looking like this anymore. When the family starts conking you on the head, it’s time to change strategies. If you want me to go back, I need the blue.”

“If we can get the color, you need to clean this up.” The Colorman took off his hat and scratched his head, a patchy carpet of coarse black hair. He could, perhaps, get the color, but he didn’t want her to know the source, which was going to be awkward, since he’d need her to help him make it. Maybe he should just buy a new gun and start shooting painters. It was much simpler that way. “If you can’t make them forget, the baker and the dwarf, the Dutchman’s brother, then you need to finish them.”

“I know.” She pulled her carrot greens away from Étienne, who snapped at her in protest. Then she noticed that his great erect donkey dick was jutting damply out from under him and off the edge of the sofa. She smacked its tip with her carrot and the donkey brayed like a broken bellows in protest.

“He missed you,” explained the Colorman.

Eighteen

TRAINS IN TIME

IT’S TWO THIRTY. IT’S TWO THIRTY. IT’S TWO THIRTY.”

“You’re supposed to use the watch as a point on which to focus,” said the Professeur, who was swinging his pocket watch by the chain in front of Lucien’s face. “Not to continually check the time.”

“You didn’t say that.” Lucien squinted at the watch. They’d been at this for a half an hour, trying to access Lucien’s earliest memories of the Colorman, but all they’d discovered was the time. “You just said concentrate on the watch. I thought you’d want to know what time it was.”

“When does he start to behave like a chicken?” asked Henri. “I need to get to the printers.”

“A subject for hypnosis must be suggestible,” said the Professeur. “Perhaps we should try it on you, Monsieur Lautrec.”

“And waste the thousands of francs I’ve spent on alcohol trying to destroy the very memories you are trying to raise? I think not. I have an idea, though, that may work on Lucien. Could we try an experiment?”

“Of course,” said the Professeur.

“I’ll need what is left of the blue oil color I gave you for analysis.”

The Professeur retrieved the color from the bedroom/laboratory and gave it to Lautrec, who uncapped the tube.

“I’m not eating paint,” said Lucien.

“You don’t have to eat it,” said Henri. “You merely have to look at it.” And with that, he squeezed a dollop of paint out onto the Professeur’s watch and smeared it around on the face.

“This was my father’s watch,” said the Professeur, frowning at his newly painted timepiece.

“In the name of science!” pronounced Toulouse-Lautrec. “Now try it.” He limped off to the kitchen. “Don’t you at least keep some sherry for cooking?”

The Professeur dangled the watch in front of Lucien’s face. “Now, if you just concentrate on the watch, on the blue.”

Lucien sat bolt upright on the couch. “I don’t see the point of this. What am I going to remember?”

Henri was returning to the parlor with a very dusty bottle of brandy in hand. “We don’t know what you’re going to remember until you remember it.”

“You think it will help me find Juliette?” And therein lay the resistance. Lucien was afraid that the Professeur might, indeed, be able to conjure up lost memories, but what if Lucien remembered that his Juliette was some sort of villain? He couldn’t bear it.

“Wait. Henri, you said that Carmen didn’t remember you, but she wasn’t unkind to you, right? She didn’t seem to be trying to hide from you? Perhaps she was an unwilling participant in the Colorman’s scheme. Perhaps she loved you deeply and he made her forget. Perhaps Juliette, too, is being manipulated against her will.”

“Perhaps,” said Lautrec absentmindedly, “but she is too beautiful, I think, to not be inherently evil.”

Henri was ambling around the room looking in various nooks and crannies, moving different machines and instruments, and finally settled on a small graduated cylinder. He began to pour brandy into it.