The Colorman sighed and climbed off his chair. So Bleu had moved on to another body.
The Colorman said, “The concierge wouldn’t let Étienne come upstairs, the bitch. But I left some carrots with him in the stable. And I got a new pistol.” He pulled the small revolver from his waistband and waved it in the air like a tiny broken buckaroo.
Juliette said nothing, but turned to watch him as he tucked the pistol away and went to the stove to taste the stew.
“You remember this Manet?” He moved the painting into the light. “Berthe is nearly as pretty as you, eh? Darker eyes, though.”
Juliette
blinked, that was all. He knew she wasn’t going to answer. This kind never talked, which, truth be told, he liked better than when Bleu was in residence. Although this was a rare occurrence, happening only when she created a model from scratch. Most of the time she just moved from one body to another, even back and forth, often leaving the person whose body she had used confused and unable to remember where she had been while Bleu was in control. Sometimes, however, as she had with Juliette, Bleu simply found the meat, a corpse (this one had been a drowned woman in the morgue on Île de la Cité) and she would shape it into a whole new living, breathing creature. Juliette had never existed before Bleu made her, so when Bleu moved on, the Juliette shell became little more than a doll. She could move and would take instructions, do simple tasks, and she would eat, drink, and go to the lavatory without being prompted, but she had no will of her own.
“I didn’t need the note,” said the Colorman. He went back to the stove and ladled out two shallow bowls of the stew. He placed the bowls on the table and went back to the kitchen for spoons and a baguette. “Come, sit. Eat,” he said.
Juliette went to the table, sat down, and began to eat.
“Slowly,” the Colorman said. “It’s hot. Blow on it.” He showed her how to blow on a spoonful of stew before eating it and she followed him in the gesture, blowing on it exactly four times, as he had, before putting each spoonful in her mouth. A drop of brown gravy ran down her chin and dripped onto the tablecloth.
The Colorman climbed down from his chair, snapped up her napkin from the table, and tucked it into the high collar of her dress, taking the care to smooth the bib over her breasts several times to make sure it was secure.
“There, you won’t ruin your dress. See, I didn’t need the note.”
She stared blankly at a spot in the middle of the table but smiled faintly after she swallowed each bite. She really was lovely. And so pleasant to be around without Bleu inside being sarcastic and barking rules. He knew he needed to respect Bleu’s wishes, however. There had been a few times when he had not, and she’d found out, and he’d woken up on fire, which was unpleasant. But they did need a maid, didn’t they?
“Maybe after supper, you can do a little cleaning,” he said. He tore off a piece of bread and tossed it in her bowl. She picked it up and nibbled it like a squirrel worrying an acorn.
The note only said not to bonk the Juliette. It didn’t say she couldn’t clean the flat. And it didn’t say that she had to be wearing any clothes while she cleaned, did it? No, it did not.
“You can clean and I’ll see if I can frighten you,” said the Colorman. “If Bleu isn’t back by morning, you can come with me to Montmartre to shoot the baker and the dwarf. It will be fun.”
He’d forgotten how much he liked it when Bleu left one of her empty shells wandering around the house. Except for the being set on fire, of course.
AS IT TURNED OUT, FINDING ANOTHER PAINTER HADN’T BEEN THAT DIFFICULT. She’d found the perfect one, one she’d known before, known his desires, but for him to be of any value, she needed the blue, and to get that, she needed to get to Montmartre, and as it turned out, getting a taxi at midnight in the Latin Quarter was very difficult indeed, especially if you were a fourteen-year-old Polynesian girl, which is how Bleu currently appeared.
The taxi driver was snoring in his seat, the horse was dozing in his harness.
“Excuse me, monsieur,” she said, tugging gently at the cuff of the cabbie’s trousers. “Excuse me.”
The taxi driver’s head lolled in a full circle before he identified where the voice was coming from, despite the tug on his cuff. Sleeping and drunk.
“Can you take me to Montmartre, please, monsieur?” she said. “Boulevard de Clichy. I’ll need you to wait while I pick up something, then return here.”
“No, that’s too far. It’s late. Go home, girl.”
“I can pay.”
“Fine, twenty francs.”
“That’s robbery!” She stepped back to get a better look at the cab-driving pirate.
“Or we could work something out, my little chestnut,” said the cabbie with a lecherous sneer that, if not practiced, showed great natural ability.
“I’m worth twenty francs, then? How about we have a tumble in the back of your cab, you give me the twenty francs, then I’ll hire a sane taxi driver to take me to Montmartre for two francs and I’ll send the rest to my mother in Tahiti, who has leprosy?” Bleu lifted her very plain gray skirt and gave the cabdriver a look at her ankles, resplendent in brown wool stockings. “How about it?”
“Twenty francs? I could have ten girls in Pigalle for twenty francs!”
“I thought it seemed generous of you, but I am just an ignorant island girl who probably doesn’t have leprosy, what do I know?”
“Fuck off, girl. It’s late.”