Sacré Bleu

The Colorman didn’t remember exactly what had happened, except that it had hurt and he had been surprised, but the concierge said the island girl had been the one holding the gun when she came in.

“Well, where have you been?” he asked. “Where is the Sacré Bleu? Why didn’t you come get me out of the morgue?”

“I thought you might be angry,” said Juliette. She was fussing with the black chiffon scarf tied around her hat and noticed that there were still a few streaks of white gypsum dust on it where she’d brushed against something while in the mine. She wen

t to the bedroom and made a show of pulling a hatbox from the closet. “I’ve been to Montmartre. The Sacré Bleu is gone. I used it to clean the memories of Lucien and Toulouse-Lautrec. They have no recollection of us ever having existed.”

“But I was going to shoot them,” the Colorman said, tapping a pistol, which he had gone out just that day and purchased from a scoundrel near the market at Place Bastille. The police had taken away his first one.

“Well, now there is no need.”

“You used all of the Bleu for that?” He seemed to remember, although he was not sure, that they had made quite a lot of the color. It had been a big painting that had taken Manet a long time. “What did they paint? Where are the paintings?”

“No paintings. They painted me. In the old way. Right on my body. With olive oil.”

“Both at the same time?”

“Oui.”

“Oh là là.” The Colorman rolled his eyes, imagining it. He liked the idea of painting the color on this Juliette body; then it occurred to him. “You washed it off?”

“I couldn’t very well take a taxi across the city while painted blue, could I?” She wiped a finger behind her ear and the nail came out with a bit of blue pigment. “See, I missed some.”

The Colorman scampered over to her, grabbed her hand, and put her finger in his mouth, then ran his tongue around her fingertip as he rolled his eyes. Yes, it was the Sacré Bleu. He spit her finger out.

“If you washed it off, we can’t make more of the color. What about the painting the baker did of you? Did you get that?”

“Burned, so they couldn’t use it to remember.”

The Colorman growled and stomped around the room. “Well, you’re going to have to get the island girl back, because Gauguin?—”

“He’s gone.”

“What?”

“He’s already purchased a ticket to the South Seas. He’ll never finish a painting before he leaves. And the girl’s family won’t let her out of their sight.”

“Well you need to find someone for this theorist Seurat to paint, and quickly. Maybe his wife, I don’t know. And when you switch, drown this Juliette body.”

“No,” she said. “This body will be perfect. I have an idea.”

IT WAS JUST AFTER DAWN ON MONTMARTRE. THE LOAVES HAD BEEN OUT OF the oven for only ten minutes and were still warm. Lucien felt the baguette hit him just above the right ear but wasn’t quick enough to dodge the crumbs that went in his eyes as the loaf wrapped around his head.

“Voilà!” said Mère Lessard as she pulled the loaf away and surveyed the crunchy-chewy wiggle of the broken crust. “Perfect!”

“Merde, Maman!” said Lucien. “I’m twenty-seven years old. I know how to make bread. You don’t have to hit me in the head with a loaf anymore to make sure it’s right.”

“Nonsense, cher,” said Madame Lessard. “The old ways are the best. That’s why we do them. And it is so good to have you back baking again. Your sister can do the job, but it takes a man’s inborn carelessness to make a perfect baguette. Baking is art.”

“I thought you hated art.”

“Don’t be silly.” She lovingly brushed the breadcrumbs from his eyebrows, applying just a touch of mother spit to smooth them down. “Are these the hips of a woman who doesn’t appreciate the art of baking?” The movement she made sent a wave traveling down her skirts, which snapped at the hem, sending up a small whirlwind of flour from the floor.

Lucien pulled out of her grasp and bolted out to the front with a basket of baguettes to avoid having to even consider his mother’s question. He preferred to not think of his mother as having hips. He preferred to not think of her as a woman at all, more as a traveling mass of loving annoyance—a mother-shaped storm that inhabited the bakery and, in bringing rain for the growth of the living things over which she hovered, didn’t mind scaring the piss out of them with a few thunderbolts from time to time.

He’d thought this way, had carried this mystical view of his mother, since he was a boy. In those days, the painter Cézanne would come into the bakery, usually with Monet, Renoir, or Pissarro, and he would almost hide behind his friends until Madame Lessard went to the back room, then the Provençal would wipe the sweat from his bald head with his sleeve and frantically whisper, “Lessard, you must get your wife under control. The way the tendrils are always falling from her chignon, and the way she smiles and sings in your shop—well, I’ll say it: Lessard, your wife always appears freshly fucked. It’s unnerving. It’s indecent.”

Père Lessard, along with the other artists, would laugh at the chagrined Cézanne. Little Lucien, as the son of a baker, thought that anything that was “fresh” must surely be a good, and would only learn later what Cézanne had been talking about, and then, after having a soul-chilling shudder, he would choose not to think of it again. Ever. Until, of course, for some reason, this morning she reminded him.