“That’s a horrible plan.”
“Yes, but I have chosen to ignore that.”
BECAUSE HE SELDOM APPEARED ON THE BUTTE DURING THE DAY, MANY OF THE boys of Montmartre had actually never seen the “little gentleman.” He was rumor, a myth, a legend. They had, of course, heard of him; they knew he was of royal birth, an artist and a bon vivant, and they had concocted tales that they shared among themselves, that he was actually a troll, the cruel master of a circus, and possibly a pirate, but the things they all knew to be true about him—by way of warnings from their mothers—were that he was always to be referred to as “the little gentleman,” was never to be teased, whispered about, or laughed at, because he was, in fact, a gentleman, always polite and well dressed, usually generous and charming, and Madame Lessard had promised that any child caught being unkind to the little gentleman would be disappeared, never to be seen again except as an unappetizing pie with eyelashes in the crust. (Madame Lessard was only slightly less mysterious than the little gentleman himself, but more menacing, as she could deceive you by giving you a treat today, only to set you up for a proper poisoning later, or so the story went.)
But now, the legend had materialized, better than a bear on a bicycle eating a nun: the baker and the “little gentleman” were carrying across Place du Tertre a large picture of a naked woman who had recently been murdered by Madame Lessard, and the boys of the butte were drawn to the spectacle like sharks to blood.
“I don’t see why we couldn’t ask van Gogh to come to the studio,” said Lucien, trying to cantilever his end of the painting into the wind. (There were reasons why windmills had been built on Montmartre.) They were progressing across the square in a sideways, crablike manner, to keep the painting from being ripped from their grasp. Thus, because of the length of the canvas, nearly eight feet, and the crowd of boys who had gathered to look at the nude as it progressed, they were displacing the space normally required to allow passage for three carriages, with horses, and were going blocks off course to accommodate the wind and their entourage.
“Why don’t we hire some of these urchins to help?” said Henri. “You would help, wouldn’t you, urchins?”
The urchins, who were also moving in a crablike manner, their eyes pinned on the blue nude as if attached by mystic cords, several, unashamed, tenting their trousers with innocently stiffened peckers (they knew not the cause, only that the sight of the blue nude was simultaneously pleasant and unsettling, the exact effect she had on adults, sans trouser tents), nodded. “We’ll help,” said one boy, his finger far enough up his nose to tickle a memory nesting in his frontal lobe.
“Not a chance,” said Lucien. “The paint’s not even dry. They’ll get their dirty little hands all over her. Back, urchins! Back!”
“Was she blue in real life?” one boy asked Henri.
“No,” said Toulouse-Lautrec. “That is merely the artist’s impression of the light.”
“Did you touch her boobies?” another urchin asked.
“Sadly, I did not,” answered Henri, grinning at Lucien and bouncing his eyebrows, the very caricature of a light-opera lecher.
“Why didn’t you make them bigger?” asked Nose-finger.
“Because he didn’t paint her!” barked Lucien. “I painted her, you annoying little maggot. Now fuck off, all of you. Off you go. Pests! Vermin!” Lucien couldn’t wave them away without letting go of his end of the painting, but he was doing some powerful head tossing and eye rolling.
“Well, if you’re going to shout at us, we’re not going to help you anymore,” said Nose-finger.
“Lucien,” Henri said, “it is still a crime to beat a child to death, but if you feel you must, I will prevail, on your behalf, upon a team of lawyers my family retains for just such emergencies. My father is notoriously careless with firearms.”
“Is that why Madame Lessard killed her?” asked one urchin, who, for some reason, Lucien had begun to think of as Little Woody. “Because you were painting her instead of baking bread like you’re supposed to?”
“That’s it,” said Toulouse-Lautrec. “I’ll do the beating. Shall we lean the painting against this wall?”
Lucien nodded and they carefully set the painting on its edge. Henri had been holding his walking stick braced against the back of the canvas stretcher, but now he waved it with a great flourish and closed his eyes as he drew the brass pommel. A collective gasp rose from the urchins. Henri ventured a peek.
“Would you look at that?” he said. There, instead of the cordial glass he was nearly sure he would be holding, he was brandishing a wicked spike of a short sword. “I’m glad I didn’t offer to console you with a cognac, Lucien. En garde, urchins!”
He thrust the sword in the direction of the boys, who let loose with a cacophony of shrieks as they scattered to every corner of the square. Henri looked over his shoulder and grinned at Lucien, who couldn’t help but grin back.
“She’s too skinny,” came a voice from where had once stood a thistle of street urchins. A slight man, today wearing a broad straw hat and buff linen jacket and trousers, his gray goatee trimmed and combed, and an amused smile in his blue eyes: Pierre-Auguste Renoir.
“Monsieur Renoir,” said Toulouse-Lautrec. “Bonjour.” He sheathed the sword in his cane and offered his hand to the older painter.
Renoir shook it and nodded a bonjour to Lucien. “You are better, then?”
“Much better,” said Lucien.
“Good. I heard you were going to die over some girl.” Renoir looked again at the painting. “This skinny blue girl?”
“I was just exhausted,” said Lucien.
“Well, Rat Catcher, I guess you did learn something.”
Lucien looked at his shoes, feeling himself blush at the master’s comment.
“I like big butts,” Renoir explained to Toulouse-Lautrec. “This one is too skinny, but that’s not Lucien’s fault.” Renoir took a step back from the canvas, then another, and another, until he was across the street, then retraced the ste