“One minute,” she said. Bleu padded to the kitchen, leaving powdery blue footprints on the parquet floor. She wiped her hands on a tea towel, then returned to the parlor. “Did you light the fire under the water?”
The Colorman grinned. “Before we even started.” He was folding up the oilcloth, coaxing the last of the blue powder into its creases so he could pour it into a jar.
“Good,” she said. “Then we can clean up.” She went to the writing desk in the foyer, listened—yes, the concierge was still out there—then she pulled a roll of bills out of one of the desk’s pigeonholes, took it to Juliette, and stuffed it in the girl’s bag.
“Your hat,” said Bleu to the Juliette doll. “The one with the black chiffon band and train.” The hat was on the oak hall tree by the door and Juliette retrieved it and put it on. When she turned back around, Bleu was placing the jar into Juliette’s bag on top of the money.
“Perfect,” said Bleu. She padded over to the couch, reached between the cushions, and pulled out the Colorman’s revolver. To Juliette she said, “Scream.”
Juliette screamed, a pathetic little toot of a scream.
“What are you, a baby chicken?” said Bleu. “Louder and longer!”
Juliette screamed, much louder and longer this time.
“What are you doing?” asked the Colorman.
“Cleaning up,” said Bleu. She pointed the revolver at him and fired. The bullet hit him high in the chest and knocked him back. She cocked the revolver and fired again.
“Ouch,” he said. Blood fountained from a hole in his sternum.
“Keep screaming,” she said to Juliette. She cocked and fired again, three more times, until the Colorman lay motionless on the oilcloth, his blood pooling around him in the ultramarine powder. She cocked the revolver, pointed it at his head, and pulled the trigger. The gun just clicked.
“Hmmm. Only five shots. Okay, stop screaming and open the door.”
Juliette pulled open the door to reveal the concierge, a large, severe woman, who peered into the room, her eyes wide with horror.
And Bleu jumped bodies into Juliette. The island girl dropped the gun and began to scream hideously.
“I came in from the other room and he was attacking her,” said Bleu as Juliette. “The poor thing had to save herself, I don’t know what horrible thing he was doing to her. I’ll go get a policeman.”
Juliette whisked by the concierge, down the stairs, and out into the Paris morning.
Part III
Amused
All varieties of picture, when they are really art, fulfill their purpose and feed the spirit.
—WASSILY KANDINSKY, CONCERNING THE SPIRITUAL IN ART
He made painting his only muse, his only mistress, his sole and sufficient passion. . . . He looked upon woman as an object of art, delightful and made to excite the mind, but an unruly and disturbing object if we allow her to cross the threshold of our hearths, devouring greedily our time and strength.
—CHARLES BAUDELAIRE, ON THE DEATH OF DELACROIX
Twenty-three
CLOSED DUE TO DEATH
THE SIGN ON THE DOOR OF THE BOUSSOD ET VALADON GALLERY READ “CLOSED DUE TO DEATH.” The three painters stood by the front window, looking in on the small array of paintings displayed in the window, among them one by Gauguin of some Breton women in stiff, white bonnets and blue dresses, threshing grain, and an older still life that Lucien had painted of a basket full of bread. One of Pissarro’s landscapes of Auvers’ wheat fields stood between the two.
“I would paint more farms,” said Toulouse-Lautrec, “but they always put them so far from the bar.”
“That bread still life will never sell,” said Lucien. “That painting is shit. My best work is gone. Gone…”
“How will I survive now?” said Gauguin. “Theo was the only one selling my paintings.”
Hearing Gauguin’s selfish lament, Lucien suddenly felt ashamed. Theo van Gogh had been a young man, just thirty-three. He had been a friend and supporter to them all, his young wife with a baby boy not even a year old would be distraught, yet the painters whined like kittens pulled from their mother’s teats, blind to anything but their own cold discomfort.