“And you—you? What do you do?”
“I amuse,” she said.
She thought it best to let that sink in for a moment, as both of the painters looked mildly nauseated, as if they had consumed too much information and were fighting the need to purge it. She thought that revealing her nature this way, after keeping it a secret for so, so long, she would feel unburdened, liberated. Strangely, no.
“This would have been easier for you if I was naked, wouldn’t it? I thought about it, but lying around naked in a dark mine until you showed up, well, it seemed a little creepy. Look at Lucien’s painting, which is lovely, by the way, before you answer.” She grinned, to no effect at all. Oh balls, she thought, this could be going better.
“I mean,” said Lucien, “what does Juliette do, when she’s not possessed by you?”
“I am Juliette.”
“Yes, you’ve said that,” said Henri. “But who is the real Juliette?”
“And when are you going to wipe her memories and kill her?” asked Lucien.
Balls! Balls! Balls! Great, fiery, dangling balls of the gods!
She took a deep breath before continuing. “Juliette is different. She didn’t exist before I created her. I really am her, she is me.”
“So you conjured her out of thin air?” asked Henri.
“Not exactly out of thin air. I have to start with something. I need the meat, so to speak. I found the body of a drowned beggar in the morgue and I shaped Juliette out of that and made her live. I created her for you, Lucien, to be exactly what you would want. To be with you, perfect, just for you.”
“No.” Lucien rubbed his eyes as if pushing back a rising migraine. “No.”
“Yes, Lucien, my only, my ever, for you.”
He looked distressed. “So I’ve been shagging a drowned beggar from the morgue?”
“And at the same time you were with me?” Henri said. “Possessing Carmen?”
Lucien leapt to his feet. “Slut!”
“Drowned, dead, duplicitous slut!” Henri added.
“Wait, wait, wait,” she said. “Not at the same ti
me.”
“But Henri was seeing Carmen at the same time I was seeing you for the first time!”
“Not at exactly the same time. I can’t do that. I can only go from one to another.”
“So it’s like changing trains for you?” said Lucien. “Get off at one artist, get onto another.”
She nodded. “That’s not a bad way to put it.”
“That’s a horrible way to put it,” said Lucien. “What happens to the train you were just on, I mean the body you leave to go to another?”
“They carry on with their lives. I went from Camille Monet to others dozens of times, back and forth.”
“But you said Juliette doesn’t have another life. She’s you? What happened to Juliette when you took over Carmen?”
“She sleeps a lot,” said Juliette.
“When you were first around, Carmen spent weeks with me,” said Henri.
“I said a lot.”