Sacre Bleu (56 page)

As he passed through the Latin Quarter, he found some clothes hanging from a line between buildings. They were far too large, so he rolled the sleeves and trouser cuffs, but they cut the cold somewhat.

For once, the nosy concierge at his building was sleeping, and he had remembered to find his keys in the mess of his charred belongings before making the long crawl out of the underground city. He wasn’t even sure how he had found his way. It was as if he had been given new strength from long, long ago.

Where he’d gotten it, of course, was from the intense ultraviolet light bathing his paintings at Pech Merle. Until Dr. Vanderlinden had lit his arc light, those powerful talismans had never seen daylight, never emitted their full power.

“Aha!” he said as he burst through the door. The Juliette doll was standing there in the dark, in her pretty periwinkle dress, doing nothing more than blinking. She turned to look at him but registered no recognition. She blinked. It was wildly unsatisfying. He would have fired his pistol for emphasis, but he had left it in the Catacombs because he had no more bullets for it.

“Aha!” he said again. And again, Juliette blinked.

She had her hands tucked into the small of her back, as if she was about to curtsy to her dance partner before beginning the minuet.

The Colorman limped to her, reached up and grabbed the ruffles on the bodice of her dress and tore it across the front. She blinked.

“I’m going to ravage you, then kill you,” he said with a charred leer. “Or vice versa!” He dropped his oversized trousers, then cackled at her.

She blinked.

He sighed. A key was clicking in the door and a redheaded woman burst in.

“Aha!” said the Colorman. “I’m going to ravage and—”

“Where have you been?” said Bleu. “I’ve been looking all over for you.”

“No you haven’t.”

“Look.” She held up the Toulouse-Lautrec painting. “And there’s a completed Seurat, too. We need to make the color. I’m feeling weak.”

“You got Seurat to finish a painting?”

She gestured to the canvas that was leaning against the wall by the divan. Small for a Seurat, dynamic for a Seurat, but a Seurat nonetheless.

“What were you doing to Juliette?” she asked.

“I was going to kill and ravage her—I mean, you.”

“Oh, then proceed,” said Carmen. And then Bleu jumped bodies.

“You’ll be needing this, Poopstick,” said Juliette as the Colorman turned to her.

Her hand came around from behind her back in a great arc, holding the black glass knife. She struck him deep in the side of the neck and his head flopped to one side; on the return arc she struck again and his head plopped off onto the carpet and rolled to the wall with a thump, while his body crumpled into the pile of oversized clothing.

Carmen Gaudin had her hands at her cheeks and was breathing as if she might pass out or explode. Juliette pointed the knife at her. “Don’t you scream. Don’t you dare fucking scream.”

Henri Toulouse-Lautrec stumbled through the door behind Carmen.

“And don’t you scream, either.”

Henri looked to Carmen, eyes wide to the point of panic, about to hyperventilate, and put his arms around her shoulders. “I presume all this is a bit of a surprise to this Carmen.”

“It’s not to you?” said Juliette.

“I may be becoming jaded.”

“Good, take the head. Get it out of the building.” She pulled the Colorman’s stolen shirt from the pile and tossed it to Henri. “You can wrap it in this.”

The Colorman’s body pushed up to its knees and grabbed at the black blade, pulling it out of her hand even as she could feel the edge grinding into his bones, then, quick as a wolf spider, the blackened body scuttled toward its head.

“Too late,” said Juliette.

L
UCIEN EMERGED FROM THE CAVE BLACKENED AND SMOLDERING AT THE SEAMS
but not seriously hurt, although it would be some time before he regrew his eyebrows and the dark shock of hair that normally fell over his eyes. He was dragging a mop stick with the yarn at its head burned to a charcoal nub.

“What have you done?” asked the Professeur.

Lucien smiled weakly, then saw Dr. Vanderlinden coming up the trail fifty meters behind the Professeur, and the painter slumped in shame.

“I’m sorry, Professeur, the cave paintings are no more. They’ve been burned.”

“How? The mineral on stone—”

“Magnesium powder,” said Lucien. “There was a large tin of it among the doctor’s photographic equipment. I mixed it with turpentine and painted it over the paintings with a mop, then ignited it with the electrode from Vanderlinden’s arc light. It was more of an explosion than a fire.”

“That
is
why they call it
flash
powder,” said the Professeur. “How is your vision? Have you burned your retinas?”

Lucien touched a pair of dark mountaineering goggles slung around his neck. “These were also among the doctor’s equipment.”

“You’ve destroyed priceless archaeological artifacts, you know?”

“And I hope that’s not all,” said Lucien. “I’m sorry. I had to. I love her.”

T
HE
C
OLORMAN SMASHED HIS HEAD DOWN UPON HIS NECK, BUT THE OPERATION
being somewhat imprecise, he had to hold it in place with one hand while he brandished the knife with the other. The fury had never left his eyes, even when his head had rolled across the room. He turned on Juliette.

“I’d run,” said Juliette to Carmen and Henri.

“En garde!”
said Toulouse-Lautrec, stepping between Carmen and the Colorman and boldly drawing a cordial glass from his walking stick. “Oh balls. Run it is, then.”

He turned as the Colorman leapt, knife-first, at Juliette. She was sidestepping, hoping to duck under the blow, perhaps shoulder him through the window, when there was a loud pop in the air and he simply came undone—whatever elements had shaped themselves into the Colorman assumed their original form of salt or stone or metal or gas. The black knife dropped to the rug along with the clothes, among what appeared to be multicolored grains of sand. The watery bits of the Colorman assumed their hydrogen and oxygen forms and dissipated quickly, the increased volume causing everyone’s ears to pop for a second.

Juliette stood up from a defensive crouch and poked the toe of her shoe in the small spray of sand that had once comprised the Colorman’s head. “Well that’s new,” she said.

Toulouse-Lautrec had sheathed his cordial glass and was staring at the spot where a second ago an ancient enemy had stood. Carmen was winding up to what looked to be a complete hysterical breakdown, panting, as if gathering her energy for a skull-cracking scream.

Juliette prodded the pile that had been the Colorman’s torso with her toe, then stepped back.

“Check his trousers,” said Henri.

“Sure, he’d love that,” said Juliette, but she prodded the trousers and grinned at Henri.

That’s when Carmen began to let loose with her siren wail, her eyes rolled back in her head until there were only the white eyes of a madwoman. She barely got an eighth note of terror out before Bleu jumped back into her.

Carmen’s eyes rolled back down, she took a deep breath, then she assumed the same smile that Juliette had worn a second before. “That was new,” Carmen said.

“You said that,” said Henri. “I mean, she did.” He nodded to Juliette, who was now the vacant beautiful doll with the torn dress standing in a pile of sand and laundry.

“That’s just it, Henri, it’s new.” She grabbed him by the ears and kissed him chastely. “Dear, brave Henri, don’t you see, nothing is ever new. He’s really gone, for good.”

“How? He was burned to little more than cinders before. Why is this different?”

“Because I don’t feel him.”

“But you didn’t feel him when we thought he was dead before, then you did.”

“But now I feel the presence of another. I can feel my
only,
my
ever,
my Lucien. He saved us, Henri. I don’t know what he did, but I can sense him, like he is part of me.”

Toulouse-Lautrec looked at her hands, her rough, red laundress’s hands, and nodded. “I suppose that Carmen’s time modeling for me is finished?”

The redhead cradled his cheek. “She can’t be allowed to remember this. It would break her. But she will always know that she is beautiful because you saw the beauty in her. The woman would have never known but for your eye, for your love. Because of you, she will always have that.”

“You
gave her that.
You
are the beauty.”

“That’s the secret, Henri. I am nothing without materials, skill, imagination, emotions, which you bring, Carmen brings. You obtain beauty. I am nothing but spirit, nothing without the artist.” She reached into her—into Carmen’s—bag and pulled out an earthenware pot about the size of a pomegranate and worked the wide cork lid off. The Sacré Bleu, the pure powder, was there. She poured a bit, perhaps a
demitasse
spoon’s worth, into her palm.

“Give me your hand,” she said.

He held out his hand and she rubbed the color over his palm, between their palms, until both of their hands were colored a brilliant blue.

“Carmen is right-handed, right?”

“Yes,” said Henri.

With her uncolored hand, she unbuttoned her blouse. “What I just told you, about being nothing without the artist, that’s a secret, you know?”

He nodded. “But of course.”

“Good, now put your hand, with the blue, on my breast, rub it in as long as you can.”

He did as he was told, looking more perplexed than pleased. “As long as I can?”

“I hope there isn’t much pain, my dear Henri,” she said, and she jumped to Juliette.

Carmen Gaudin became aware of a strange little man in a bowler hat and a
pince-nez
kneading her breast under her blouse with blue powder, and as quickly as she realized it she slapped him in the face, knocking his
pince-nez
completely into the hallway (as the door had been open all this time), sending his hat askew, and leaving a blue handprint from the tip of his beard to his temple. “Monsieur!” she barked, then she pulled her blouse together, stormed out the door, and ran down the stairs.

“But…” Henri looked around, perplexed.

“Ah, women,” said Juliette with a shrug. “Perhaps you should follow her, or instead, take a taxi to rue des Moulins, where the girls are more predictable. But first the secret.”

“What secret?”

“Exactement,”
said Juliette. “Good night, Monsieur Toulouse-Lautrec. Thank you for seeing me home.”

“But of course,” said Henri, having no recollection of having seen anyone home, but then, he thought it might be a safe guess that he had been drinking.

T
HE MUSE LOUNGED ALONE IN THE PARLOR OF HER FLAT IN THE
L
ATIN
Q
UARTER
, sipped wine, and gloated over the remains of her enslaver, which were contained in a large glass jar on the coffee table. Occasionally she giggled to herself, unable to contain the rising, ecstatic joy of freedom from the Colorman, whom she’d found was much more appealing as a jar full of multicolored sand.